Protecting Your Brand Experience

At Hardly Square we love getting new branding projects. These are some of our favorite projects. We feel branding is more than a logo design and some corresponding marketing collateral though. Branding is about creating meaningful and specific experiences for an organization’s customers, supporters or end users. That means zeroing in on the essential connection between the brand and its business.

Jun 23, 2011 | Posted by PJSullivan | Published in Branding | One Comment

Is Any Press Good Press?

As you may have seen, my last post was on the Dominos advertising campaign. We had a great discussion on this campaign’s strategy and how social media and peer-to-peer communication have altered how companies advertise. So it’s interesting to see the same agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, in the lime light for its latest Super Bowl advertisement with Groupon. Crispin Porter used a preemptive apology in the Dominos ad with great success, then they go and create an ad that caused Groupon to have to apologize after the fact.

Feb 15, 2011 | Posted by PJSullivan | Published in Branding, Business | 2 Comments

Domino’s Ad Campaign of Shame

The message I get from the new Domino’s advertising campaign can basically be summarized as so:

I know you think our pizza tastes like robots made it from shitty tomatoes, but look it’s not… Just tastes like it.

Not the best message to take away. However, the overall strategy isn’t a total whiff.  It’s more of a home run. Actually, it’s an excellent example of how new mediums are effecting big brands these days.

Feb 1, 2011 | Posted by PJSullivan | Published in Branding, Business, Social Media | 4 Comments

Succeeding with New Strategies

I recently read an article on Read Write Web touching on many of the points I wrote in my previous piece called Stay Nimble: A Successful Design Philosophy. Those points were primarily the strategy of creating at the speed of the Internet and trusting your creatives. These will be two huge strategies we’ll see a lot of in marketing campaigns moving forward. This article in particular…

Jul 19, 2010 | Posted by PJSullivan | Published in Branding, Business, Social Media | 4 Comments

A New Era in Branding

It’s a new era in branding. Your brand is no longer a mark on the corner of a business card or a sign on brick and mortar. It’s more than that. Seth Godin, in his book Linchpin, talks about how branding is changing. Seth writes,

Years ago, someone decided that there was a predictable, scalable, industrial solution to marketing, They asserted that coupons and incessant advertising, combined with distribution and aggressive pricing, were not only sufficient but essential to growing a brand. Now, as we’ve seen over the last decade, none of that by-the-book marketing shtick works so well…

Mar 23, 2010 | Posted by PJSullivan | Published in Branding, Business, Social Media, Web | 3 Comments