BP’s oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico might be the first true national calamity to occur during the social media era. As such, exploring what BP has done and has not done, along with the unfolding consequences, offers the rest of us an illustrative case study on how best to act before, during, and after events such as these – even if on much smaller scales.

Here’s one initial observation. Prior to the spill, BP’s overall reputation was generally neutral – relatively evenly split between people who had positive, neutral, and negative opinions about them. However, since the spill opinions are strongly skewed to the negative.

Also, prior to the explosion, BP had very litle presence on major social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. They did a lot of advertising (“Beyond Petroleum”), but not much engagement with the public, especially the online public.

So, whatever they have tried to do since then cannot be effective because they have no initial base of fans from which to draw help and support. As a counter example, consider what would happen if some disaster involved a company such as Starbucks. Excluding all discussions of the nature of the disaster itself, Starbucks would at least have a couple of million people with whom it has established an online relationship and who could (and would) join the discussions from an initially positive perspective.

So, one lesson to be learned is that engagement in social media is not just for ongoing brand strength; it’s also an insurance policy against unanticipated problems – even on scales much less than BP’s disaster.

Domus is a creative and digital marketing agency based in Philadelphia. We combine expertise in classic marketing, social media trends, technology, and business acumen to provide effective short- and long-term solutions for our customers’ marketing needs. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Everything has a natural cycle of life – even major brands. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that Ford Plans to Kill Storied Mercury”. Although as early as 1985 Mercury was still dominant US brand, since then it has increasingly declined. In 1985 Mercury sold over 500,000 vehicles, but by last year that number had dropped to just over 92,000.

For 25 years (and especially over the last 10) the brand has declined. As such it is a good business decision for Ford to cut its losses and move on. After a certain point, there is not much that can be done to revive a dying brand, no different than a dying person.

That doesn’t mean that there is no room in Ford’s line-up for another brand – Volkswagen does very well with multiple brands – but just no longer Mercury. Mercury’s demise began when it no longer stood for anything special, unless you consider replicating a Ford sister car with fancier trim as something special.

As such, hopefully Ford Motor Company has learned the importance of brand management for its future. Good brand management means that you don’t only declare and communicate the position in the consumers’ minds that you intend to hold, but that you consistently and exclusively deliver products and/or services that meet the consumers’ changing ideas of what that position means. Mercury failed to do so.

Moreover, it’s a recognition that sometimes a brand position can be squeezed into non-existence by other brand positions. Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln represented a “ladder of brands” strategy, giving people smaller stepping stones between levels of prestige. But when foreign auto makers started selling higher quality cars with more standard features at lower price points, Ford had to respond by improving its main Ford brand, which squeezed Mercury from the bottom. Similarly as Lincoln offerred cars at lower price points, it squeezed Mercury from the top. That has left no distinguishing position for Mercury.

Domus is a Philadelphia-based advertising and PR firm as well as a digitial and social media marketing agency. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

In less than a month, the most-watched sporting event on the planet will begin, the 2010 World Cup. But an associated competition is now well underway – brand sponsorship and advertising, specifically the rivalry between Adidas and Nike. Adidas is currently the biggest world cup brand, sponsoring major players and fully one-third of the teams going to South Africa. But Nike is not far behind, sponsoring some of the biggest names in the sport as well as their own teams. Worldwide, Adidas sells about $1.8 billion in soccer gear while Nike sells about $1.7 billion.

This week Nike launched their official World Cup campaign with a new three-minute video created by Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu (Babel, 21 Grams). Called “Write the Future”, it features soccer stars like Wayne Rooney, Franck Ribery, Cristiano Ronaldo, Landon Donovan, and Ronaldinho, as well as non-soccer stars such as Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, and Homer Simpson.

Adidas, on the other hand, won the rights to be the overall World Cup official sponsor, so it will be interesting to see who wins this battle as Adidas counters Nike’s move.

Domus is a marketing and digital advertising agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Google recently released a new advertising feature called “Remarketing”. Basically, it allows you to create an AdWords campaign that targets people who’ve been to specific pages of your web site.

This opens up a whole new area of online marketing segmentation. Previously, you could target people who searched for your keywords or who visited other sites, but without knowing much more about them. Or you had to wait until they explicitly entered their email address for you to contact them directly. Now you can focus some of your effort on people who, by their own actions, have clearly indicated some interest in you specifically but haven’t yet given you direct contact.

Consider the possible conversion rate performance improvements by offering something special to previous visitors. It’s not quite the same as email marketing directly to people who have left you their email addresses, but it has the potential to be more than marketing blindly to everyone who meets a generic demographic.

If you haven’t at least begun to explore Google Remarketing, you’re probably doing your brand a disservice. Check it out at Google Remarketing.

Domus is an innovative advertising agency and digital marketing agency based in Philadelphia. For more information visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Social media marketing, advertising, and PR are all important components of an effective marketing strategy. However, those components lose their effectiveness, and even become detrimental, when the brand itself is faultering. Advertising is about increasing brand awareness, but when people think negatively about your brand, increasing awareness does not help. Similarly, the social media landscape is where people are communicating among each other about you, about your competition, and about everything else. But again, when people have negative thoughts about you, encouraging more conversations is counterproductive.

Successful brands are those that are singularly focused on delivering the best products and services in markets consumers demand. Consider companies like Apple. On top of their other successes, their iPad is on target to being the fastest product in history to reach the $1 billion mark. Although Apple invests in marketing (principally advertising and minimally in social media), it own’s the public’s perception as a company that delivers the most innovative and desirable devices. Apple is focused on product and customer first, which then enables effective communication options.

On the other hand, companies that cannot consistently meet and exceed their customers’ expectations will faulter no matter how much attention is paid to the remainder of the marketing mix. Their focus should instead be on their products and service. Once those are on the right track, companies can once again employ communication tools to regain growth.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia, focusing on fundamental marketing strategies that employ wide ranges of communications media and delivery. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Volkswagen deserves kudos for creating an integrated campaign that spans traditional and new media in ways that support and enhance each other, while effectively working towards a classic marketing goal. Basically, Volkswagen is trying to own the word “fun” in consumers’ minds – VWs are fun, driving VWs is fun, VW is a fun company – and they’re doing a pretty good job laying claim to that brand position.

First VW started their “Fun Theory” campaign. This includes a number of experiential locations that entice people to choose a fun option that also coincides with useful behavior (walking stairs instead of an escalator, throwing trash in receptacles instead of littering, etc.). These locations have, in turn, become the basis of much local and worldwide PR. Moreover, videos of people experiencing the VW locations have been the basis of viral internet videos and other social media sites.

Finally, VW has complemented its “Fun Theory” campaign with its ubiquitous “Punch Dub” television advertising. Look at one of those commercials and one of the first words that comes to one’s mind is “fun”.

VW is successfully marrying a broad array of communication outlets with its one common brand positioning goal. They’re a textbook case study for how it should be done.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit our web site at http://www.domusinc.com.

Hershey Co. just announced its first quarter financials and they show impressive growth in sales and market share gains. Nt coincidentally, they are also a full year into a major advertising push following years of muted spending.

In today’s world, where marketers are looking for – and expecting – immediate returns on investment on their marketing dollars, Hershey provides another example of the importance of taking a longer term view of marketing efforts. Insistence on high targets for click-through rates, numbers of fans/followers, comments, etc., is not the wisest approach for every campaign. Brand building requires time and patience.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Apple’s iPad had an impressive launch, and many people believe it has the potential to be a game changer in the way we consume media. But possibly more important than the iPad is Apple’s introduction of iAd, its new mobile advertising network. The iAd platform will enable dynamic ads that can be viewed from within Apps, allowing the user to return to the App when finished with the ad – no more jumping off to an advertiser’s web site. Apple plans to share the revenue stream from these ads with App developers (60% to Apple’s 40%).

Think about how many people have been conditioned NOT to click on ads for fear that they will take them away from what they’ve been doing, bring them to a site that generates annoying pop-ups, download a virus, etc. Think about people’s trust in Apple. And think about 4 billion apps – and counting – already downloaded. This might be a massive revenue stream for Apple and App developers. But it might also be one of the most engaging ad platforms for advertisers.

Marketers should take note, though. Apple users expect something special from their Apple products, and that will include the ads that they see run on their Apple products. So, plan to advertise, but plan to make your ads a step above the rest.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Last month we we had a post titled Marketing Lessons from Games and Sports. In it we discussed the necessity of thinking through our marketing moves, including asking what will our competition – the other “player(s) – do in response?

Nike’s new Tiger Woods commercial featuring the voice of his late father (timed for the opening of the 2010 Masters) is another good case study for that post, but with a twist. In that post, we referenced the potential response of the the competition, but in today’s social media world, you and the competition aren’t the only players in the communications game. The rest of the world – customers and non-customers alike – are also players. So, it is just as important to consider what these other “players” will do.

As it turns out Nike put out an ad showing a silent Woods staring at the camera while the disembodied voice of his deceased father asks if he learned anything. Separate from the question as to whether this ad was effective in its direct communication, I wonder whether Nike thought through the next moves of the other players, specifically the universe of consumers. Immediately after the ad aired, in addition to negative comments throughout the internet, video parodies of it started appearing. Nike might say that they hoped for this (generating buzz), but I’m not so sure that they hoped for all of it; otherwise, why are they now making youtube pull the commercial parodies, invoking copyright infringement?

Below is an original posting of one of the parodies on youtube.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia offering advertising, public relations, digital, and social media marketing expertise in an integrated approach based on sound, classic principles of marketing. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Advertising Age is reporting that AT&T is “undertaking an ambitious rebranding effort under the banner of “Rethink Possible” to reposition itself as a “lifestyle company”. In other words, AT&T is implicitly declaring that it is losing the marketing positioning battle in the minds of consumers and wants to try something else to retain and gain customers.

Similarly, last month, Comcast decided to rebrand itself “Xfinity”. (“Simply put, XFINITY is about offering our customers more — more HD, more speed, more choice and more control over their services…”) Or, alternately simply put, Comcast is feeling the pinch of Verizon Fios’ competition and wants to try something else to retain and gain customers.

Interestingly, in both situations a company who has faltered in delivering upon the promise of its stated brand position decides to fix the problem by rebranding itself to a new position instead of improving upon its original promise. And just as interestingly, in both situations, the faltering company is being aggresively challenged in the marketplace by a company who dedicates more resources and commitment to delivering its brand promise better and better – and correspondingly communicating its success.

It doesn’t take a marketing genius to determine the better strategy for companies to mimic – especially in this age when consumers communicate with each other faster and more effectively than any one company can do on its own. Continue to invest in your brand promise – improve your product, improve your service, improve your delivery – and then your marketing communication efforts have legitimacy. On the other hand, no matter how many times you rebrand, if you don’t have the commitment to invest in your brand promise (whatever that may be), you’ll continue to come up short.

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia offering advertising, public relations, digital, and social media marketing expertise in an integrated approach based on sound, classic principles of marketing. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.