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Becoming a “Fan” of Premium Thinking.

Does the name James Dyson ring a bell?  It should.
As the inventor and marketer of revolutionary Dyson Vacuums, Mr. Dyson has cornered the market on unconventional thinking for a very conventional task–vacuuming carpets and rugs. Mr. Dyson’s fresh, new approach to the technical aspect of dust removal and collection proved that if you can invent [...]

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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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The Premium Nature of the “Real McCoy”

I’m what you call a gear head. A car and bike nut, if you will. I’ve been crazy for fast cars and motorcycles since I was a kid. So when the Internet came along, and with it sites like eBay, I was as happy as a pig on ice. Why? Because [...]

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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 [...]

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Small Things Show Insight in the Office and With Clients

Tom Peters’s new book, The Little Big Things, communicates the message that sometimes the very smallest gestures reap the best rewards, not only in the office arena but also with your clients. There really are some great tidbits of useful business tactics that he communicates in his book. MY favorite, since I am the office [...]

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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 [...]

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The Legion of Extraordinary Things

Extraordinary: going beyond what is usual, regular, or customary. — Merriam-Webster
Last night, while watching my recording of Wednesday’s So You Think You Can Dance (yes, I’m one of those people), the show’s host introduced me to a group called “The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers.” While this seems like a fun name, I was hardly going [...]

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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.