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Advertising

Canon’s Flickr-ing Halo

It is a new media world, defined by consistent and instantaneous connectivity.  This trend has had premium brands in the world of photography finding themselves in competition with mobile phones equipped with increasingly more competent digital camera capability.  But when it comes to capturing the treasured moments of our lives and sharing them across the [...]

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A QuikTrip to a Premium Brand

There are a variety of premium brands I’m fiercely loyal to. Mobil 1 Oil. Mirado Black Warrior Pencils. KTM motorcycles. All of them share premium traits like impeccable performance, superb fit and finish and long-lasting quality.
But few brands impress or excite me more than my favorite place for gasoline and sundries—QuikTrip. Do you [...]

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Does Anyone Know Panera Has Premium Meat?

I was recently looking for some more healthy food options when eating out. My friend, Lauren, immediately pointed me toward Panera. I really like Panera, but had never heard that their chicken was all-natural. I went to their website to see what else they offered, and no where on their website could I find any [...]

Advertising

Emotional vs. rational benefits: getting the mix just right

When it comes to marketing premium brands, there’s usually no shortage of RTBs (Reasons To Believe) to choose from. Although brands in commodity categories are sometimes challenged to differentiate themselves, the premium brand(s) in any “vertical” should carefully choose which RTBs make it to the front lines of consumer messaging. Whether or not emotional or [...]

Advertising

Premium Tools vs. Social Media

In case you’ve missed it, we at the WD tout our specialization in premium brands as our differentiator among other full-service advertising agencies. In our endeavor to be the experts on premium brands, we’ve developed some proprietary Premium Tools—one of which being our Premium Brand Index ™. Basically, we take up to ten brands within [...]

social media

I’ve Been Facebook Murdered!

While this is the story of what happened to my boss, he’s in Florida escaping the bitter Arctic cold front while at a sales conference for one of our esteemed premium brand clients—so, I don’t feel bad stealing it away for a blog entry.
The other day, Mr. Bossy Boss told me a tale about this [...]

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Why It’s Hard to Be Premium

We all know how hard it is to turn a profit in today’s economy. What’s even more difficult is sustaining the value of a premium brand, what with brand names shelling out coupons, cutting all marketing and even changing their product ingredients to become the “chipper chicken” of their category. (Thank you, Steve Martin.)
The video [...]

Advertising

Pepsi: Showing Brands How Not to Behave One Misstep At a Time

Pepsi has gone and done it again. If their AMP iPhone App catastrophe wasn’t bad enough–where they completely alienated their entire female consumer population–they’ve gone and offended the public in yet another colossal blunder.
Last Saturday, Pepsi sponsored a concert in Uganda featuring controversial murder performer Beenie Man. An account of just some of the contention [...]

Advertising

Premium Brand Communication 101

Premium brands distinguish themselves from the competition not only in their products, but also in the way they communicate with their customers. One good example of this is in e-mail marketing. Although e-mail is growing and consumers are likely to opt-out if they feel the messages to be irrelevant or impersonal. There are more than 200 billion email messages sent each day, and of the 91% of consumers who opt out or unsubscribe to emails, 46% are driven to brand defection because the messages are simply not relevant.

Public Relations

Does Macy’s Really Bring the Magic?

Until recently I had never shopped at Macy’s, but I always knew it was a place I wanted to be—kind of like Disney World. I credit the beloved holiday film Miracle on 34th Street for creating in me a loyalty to a place and brand I had never actually experienced—they did have the real Santa [...]