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Michael Jordan – in our opinion the greatest athlete ever. Fierce defensively and smooth offensively, it was no wonder why Joe and I both as kids wanted to be like Mike.
Well, now we kind of want to be like his advertising agency. They continue to produce great work – work that has truly elevated his brand. In tribute to yet another great spot that launched earlier this month, here’s one of our all-time favorites. It’s been around for a bit but still a very cool ad.
The “a-ha” moment – that rewarding occasion where all of a sudden you just get it. Life’s full of them and so is great marketing.
From smart logos and witty taglines to great television and radio spots, nothing rewards an engaged viewer like a clever reveal. These are the little moments that make a crappy Super Bowl worth watching. These are the little pieces of brilliance that make you rip an ad out of a magazine because you thought it was clever or funny. These are the ideas that inspire – or at least nerdy ad guys like us.
So with no further ado, some inspiration: an “a-ha” ad we stumbled upon named “Mr. W.” Click the link below. It’s worth the two minutes.
Yep, you guessed it – another film-related post. I can’t help it. I see something I like and I immediately want to tell everyone about it, encouraging them to hurry out and see whatever caught my fancy. In this case, it’s the new Batman (The Dark Knight). So…go see it. It’s terrific. The effects are great, storyline solid, villains eerie and new gadgets, well to sound like a teenager, awesome.
With that said, like any business owner, I couldn’t help but think about business while I was sitting in my seat trying to get away for a bit. In my case, it was discovering the strength of the Batman (the actual superhero, not the overall comic) brand. It’s all stuff that’s been in place since the POW! and BOOM! days of old, I just simply failed to realize until recently.
My realization came in the fact that Batman (again – the actual superhero, not the comic) is the perfect metaphor for a strong brand and strong marketing. He’s a culmination of so many important factors: a strong name, a strong logo, always has a finger on pulse of new technology, attentive to PR but not dedicated to it, etc.
But really, I think what should be most noted, is the attention to the Batman brand experience. He’s more than what’s mentioned in the paragraph above. Put simply, Batman’s cool, and he’s such by a perfect orchestration of intrinsic characteristics. Anything Batman puts his name on or uses is easily identified as being part of his brand. I guess the easiest comparison would be the classic Apple computer example. Everything from in-store experience to the actual use of their product feels the same – same with Batman.
He’s modern and edgy yet still leans to the conservative side. Anything he does is going to be strategic and smart. He’s effective and efficient in all of his efforts. He always utilizes the sleekest, most current technologies. All of these things build to create the perception of what we know as Batman.
Your brand is no different. You have a logo, tagline and website – great. But what kind of promotions do you have running? Do they line up with your brand platform? What about your ads? Do they have the same look and feel as other marketing pieces? It’s this idea of consistency and cohesion that makes for a strong and memorable brand – hence a classic “brand” like Batman.
Thanks for reading. And go see The Dark Knight.
Jon
“If the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough” – a memorable line delivered by the fictitious newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane in the cinematic masterpiece Citizen Kane. It’s a bold sentiment that can be applied across life’s many platforms. However, I find it’s truth to be particularly relevant when thinking about the role a strong website can play in the small business landscape.
It’s that idea of making your brand look bigger than what it actually is that I find so interesting. It’s a thought that’s always kind of been in the back of my head, but it took a film from 1941 to make it really jump to the front. It’s something that small business owners often face in everyday marketing – you of course know you’re legit; you just have to convince your audience that you’re legit as well.
The way of doing that in today’s digital-centric landscape: a well-designed, well-written, easy-to-use website.
As pointed out by Nicholas Carr in his recent book The Big Switch (which I strongly recommend), companies such as Craigslist and PlentyOfFish serve thousands upon thousands of people on a daily basis. And that makes sense because they’re big companies, right? Not so much.
At the time of Carr’s publication, the companies were 22 employees and 1 employee, respectively speaking. I thought this was pretty amazing considering these are two very well-known, web-based companies. While their sites are not design-focused, their structures were built for usability, making them popular choices for their intended markets. What started small has now evolved into two significant players. I’m sure that’s something you wouldn’t mind as a small business owner.
I guess the takeaway is fairly simple: a strong web presence is getting more and more essential. The web is allowing for a bigger, more impressive “storefront”, giving the smallest companies an equal voice on a national, even global scale.
Thanks for reading (and sorry for the delay in the first post).
The writerly half,
Jon