Just a quick word on two marketing efforts I heard about over the last couple of days.
Brilliant
A wager between two micro-breweries, one in San Francisco, one in Maryland. Depending on who wins the Superbowl, the loser town brewery has to serve for 1 week the beer of the winning town, plus wear the winning team's jersey. Both breweries win and get massive brand exposure and leverage the hype paid for by others.
Excellent!
Stupid
Research in Motion is rebranding itself...as Blackberry! A few folks have known all along that RIM is the maker of Blackberry. Most folks just think of and/or reference Blackberry, both as the company and as a product. For a company desperate to stay in existence, spending thousands of dollars to rebrand itself as what folks already know them as? Waste of time, money and good will.
Usually, a big marketing agency that is brought in to help 'save' a company defaults to the rebranding strategy - because they have gotten lazy and used to having large budgets with which to work.
No marketer can (or should) be tasked with saving a company or getting sales to a certain number if the product is bad, doesn't work or isn't something the consumer wants.
Personally, I'll stick with the micro-brews!
