By Simon van Wyk
In this month’s podcast and in his book “Branding Only Works on Cattle”, Jonathan Salem Baskin discusses a few examples of “anti-branding”, successful branding by companies that are focused on getting people to buy things, rather than simply creating an image or a feeling. I’ve collected some links to more information about these successful anti-branders. read more
We recently had a lively discussion here at Hothouse that was sparked by the mention of Flash website indexing. HTML has traditionally claimed superiority when it comes to Google’s ranking, but now Flash is fighting back and is walking the walk in a number of cases. Here’s (roughly) how the discussion flowed: read more
This is a project that my group has been working on for some time. It’s interactive, it’s multimedia and it’s in open spaces. The idea is to provide a public display that’s not an Ad, but something that might provoke thought or interest in the wider community. Check out the SoapBox Project.
By Simon van Wyk
I’ve been on my soapbox for a long time about the need for advertising and marketing to focus on delivering commercial value and not rely on vague concepts like “brand dialogue” (see, for example, my rant on interactive agencies trying to be ad agencies).
HotHouse founder Simon van Wyk talks to Jonathan Salem Baskin, a branding consultant and author of “Branding Only Works on Cattle”, who has declared branding is dead, replaced by the “messy village of communication” of online marketing. He discusses his “heretical” views on where advertising and marketing have gone wrong over the past 40 years, and what companies can do to focus on important things like “selling more stuff”.
Listen to the podcast below.
I recently came across an article that reported that most U.S. small businesses have not found social media sites to be beneficial in generating business, despite the growth in usage.
What I found interesting is that those results come in complete contrast to big business’ enthusiastic embracement of it. In contrast to the previous report, this Telegraph article reports that Microsoft is setting up an 82-person Future Social Experiences Labs designed to stimulate social media innovation.
By Simon van Wyk
The Internet, as they say, is a broad church. It’s becoming easier to find both global and local news online.
Found this super cool Apple ad on Wired
The header plays (with music of course) and takes over the whole mast head and main nav on the page whilst it plays. Apple has done this with a few other sites as well which is very cool. It’s such a fun ad to watch, it doesn’t feel like it’s getting in your way at all!
