Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

I see Procter & Gamble (P&G) are up to their usual tricks. In recent times they’ve moved away from purely functional branding (and problem-solution advertising) towards more image based marketing. Left: the sinister one. Right: P&G. So their big toilet paper brand in Germany, Charmin, used fluffy bears to talk about a personal issue in [...]

My thanks go Ferdinand from a previous MBA course for the contents of this bottle, which went down like amber nectar. Thanks too for this example of a product endorsement à la Allemagne. They do like their stamps of approval. And what better for a beer than a stamp stating “Golden Prize winner”…

I see Ryanair has been upsetting people again. This time in France. UK residents will be used to their slapstick approach. And they’re clever at saving money on testimonials. They use people in the public eye (like comical Ali, the Iraqi information minister) but not in a serious way (otherwise the celebrity would feel “used” [...]

Some product endorsements become so powerful, they take over the brand. For years, Spiller’s brand Kattomeat (now engulfed by Nestlé, possibly even extinct?) used a white cat in its ads. The cat was offered a number of varieties of catfood, hidden in black packaging. And always choose the Kattomeat. A simple “preference strategy”, endorsed by [...]

Another way to use personality endorsements (testimonials) safely is to invent someone. They won’t hit the headlines and wreck your image by misbehaving (more: here). That’s what this Chinese company did. It’s the Golden Throat man… None of the Chinese people I have spoken to can tell me if he’s the owner of the company, [...]

Testimonials are still all the rage, though some marketing people argue they’ve already gone over the top. But sometimes they are a wonderful quality endorsement. HM QE2′s Royal Warrant For example, in the UK arguably the ultimate honour for any company would be to supply the royal family with chocolate, shoe laces, cars, whatever. Let’s [...]

Sales worth watching Choosing the right celebrity to endorse your brand is never easy, especially when you know they’re expensive. And many marketeers are now saying testimonials have gone too far. Problem is, they work. Even if this crowd stopper has NEVER won a major tournament, and her faultless frolics off the tennis court attract [...]

Boris Becker starred in one of Germany’s best remembered campaigns in recent years, for AOL. The advertising concept was as simple as the message. A monologue about his wife (in those days) telling him it’s about time they went online, but “I know nothing about techy things”. So now he’s trying AOL. Click. Click. Then [...]

On German TV you see regular reports and documentaries about people who built their own home, or got a builder in to build their home – and all the awful things that go wrong. A friend of mine who is about to move into a new flat had a draught test done (the door is [...]

Sitting in the late afternoon sunshine in the father-in-law’s back garden I am handed a cool weizen beer. Malteser. The brand I know well from a town in northern Bavaria: Amberg. There used to be 12 breweries in Amberg but with only 40,000 inhabitants some had to fall by the wayside. One of them was [...]