CALL TO ARMS. SAVE THE BRANDS.

Alert! Read Immediately and Pass Along to All Caring Citizens of the World.

BRANDS ARE BEING SILENCED

Brands have personalities and marketers are silencing their voice, emotions and behaviors. Bad people are trying to make many brands of the world act and say things that aren't authentic to the brand's spirit - in effect, suffocating them. We must join forces to help give brands back their voice!

This is serious stuff. Before we know it, all brands will be extinct. They will be killed off by greedy marketers who only care about the bottom line and NOT the consumer experience. Brands will be commoditized into just being products with features with NO authentic brand personality or voice. They will be contrived. Just like robots.

Is this what you want? Is this the kind of world you envision your children living in? One without the joy of counting on a Fred water in your time of dryness or refreshing your home with a pump of Method cleaning soap! These are 2 brands that have honorable protectors and I call on them and other caring citizens to help raise the awareness of this serious national crisis.

The time is now.

I'm calling on all good people of the world to help me on this new mission to help Save The Brands. Pandas and redwoods are not the only things worth saving. So are the Saabs, AOLs, Jaguars, Gaps and Dells of the world.

Consumers - we must join together and make these marketers aware that brands are worth preserving and saving just like the pandas of the world or our national parks. Brands are like people and they deserve to live happily and, in today's day and age, a little more freely. Give them back their personalities and let them breathe! Stop suffocating them by making them feature heavy. They are more than just features. They have real, emotional benefits to offer us, the consumers of the world. Brands have authentic personalities and they can make you smile, cry, scream, feel comforted. And now, more than ever - they need our help!!!

If you have a great brand, marketing it becomes easy and obvious. The brand's personality will lead you to the right distribution channels, the right marketing channels, the right tonality and the right messaging at the right times.

In the next few weeks I will start activating this movement and I am calling on you, good people of the websphere - and specifically, you, Mr./Ms. Brand Planner - to join the movement. Stay posted, spread the Save The Brands Movement to other concerned citizens and get prepared to join the crusade!

Visit SavetheBrands.org in the near future to make your mark on the world and help the brands regain their voice and actions.

Why People Bond With Brands & The Role of Design

One of my favorite books, Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things, was referenced in the below MIT blog post about a study that was done on how people bond with brands. What you'll witness below is the no duh, big a-ha phenonema.

"During the doctoral research, Ruth Mugge investigated the topic of product attachment – the strength of the emotional bond a consumer experiences to a specific product. Based on literature, four factors were distinguished that can influence product attachment:

1) self-expression (can I distinguish myself from others with the product?)
2) group affiliation (does ownership of the product connect me to a group?)
3) memories (related to the product)
4) pleasure (provided by the product).

Although these factors are all relevant for stimulating the experience of attachment to products, they differ in the degree to which designers can influence them through product design."

Agree! Read the aforementioned book to learn more about the submimenal effect design has on consumer and user emotion.

Sony Playdoh ... It's Almost Here

I can't wait!!!! Bravia Paint and Balls were awe-inspiring. Creatively and consumer wise. Have you seen the consumer response to the most recent Paint spot. So genuis. Sony/Fallon nice work! And thanks for inspiring me and help me remember part of why I love this biz so much. Simply Brilliant. Product Attribute: Color.

In the meantime, check out this tweeter if you're hungry like me to see Sony Brave Playdoh. Holding my breath...

I LOVE Starbucks!

It makes me sooo happy. Today is my birthday and I treated myself to a Skinney Cinnamon Dolce Sugar Free Light Whip Latte and it just put a smile on my face. The bustling noise of the crowd working and conversing inside the Starbucks (feel like that's what saloons back in the day must have felt like), to the barista chatting with me and calling me by my first name ("Hey Margaret, how's it going today?"), to the cleanly designed white cups with the cutest insightful messages (like The Way I See It #267). Starbucks thanks for making me smile. Raise your prices, I don't care. My frequency might change, but my loyalty will not. Ahhhh....yummmm...Starbucks...