Must Market

Plum Branding Secrets
After starting 4 companies and marketing some of the world's biggest brands (M&M's, Nutrasweet) I have hard won logo and branding best practices shared in this  Curagami post:

http://www.curagami.com/plum-branding-secrets/  

Here is the list of branding and logo development secrets" shared:
 

• Keep It Simple Stupid
• Tell a story
• Co-opt universal symbols or images to help tell your story fast
• Clean and FLAT work better in a mobile world
• Colors communicate too, so choose wisely

http://www.curagami.com/plum-branding-secrets/

Brands are under attack by 5 Ninja: clean slate, social media, death of old media, mobile & User Generated Content. How defeat attacking Ninja horde?

Great Cause Marketing
+Unilever's Project Sunlight (https://www.projectsunlight.us ) is some of the best #causemarketing I've ever seen and I spent a year creating CureCancerStarter.org. Lots to learn from here including:

* Arresting Visual Marketing.
* Collage of stories under a united theme clearly defined yet artistically balanced.
* Multimedia approach (pictures, video, text, & multiple sites).
* Consistency of tone & pitch.
* Curation of THEIR stories, passion and emotion.
* Splash of logic kissing hand of emotion.

Great work, good cause and lots to learn from. #toogood

Social Media It's The Conversation, Stupid is about the new rules of branding created by a social / mobile / connected world.

There is a new ecommerce creating new "best practices" such as: easy free shipping, new him, her, kids merchandising, social shopping & UGC conversations.

We Are All Media Companies Now
Working on how to create community with our new tool (http://www.crowdfunde.com) has me realizing sometimes you write things that don't SUCK and whose meaning becomes more clear as we move forward in time. 

Red Bull's Branding Lessons: We Are All Media Companies Now is reading that way. Evergreen content? Not quite yet. We need to think and write some more, but glad to see shares continue to increase as that means we've touch a nerve.

Social shares increasing over time also means as new people come in they find the piece valuable and that is an indication the content's sell by date is still off in the future. I'm thinking on a Red Bull II. If you have suggestions for similar GET IT social or content marketing companies please share in comments or email to martin(at)crowdfunde.com.

Much appreciated and glad to provide attributions and links back once Red Bull Redux is written. Red Bull On. Marty  

SEO & Brands
Cart gets in front of horse a lot these strange marketing days. Team+Curagami has clients who know more about #seo  than branding. Cart squarely in front of horse. 

Think about the process. You know how to tell Google's spiders about your pages better than you know how to tell your customers why your products, services and company are their best bet (i.e. branding). Cart in front of horse. 

Don't be seduced by the latest shiny object. The core of online success is similar to the core of offline success - create great things that people MUST talk about, tell their friends and marvel at. Average need not apply anymore. as we share in Why The New SEO Looks Like the Old SEO: Brands: http://www.curagami.com/new-old-seo-brands/?v=7516fd43adaa 

Social Media: It’s The conversation, stupid Are You Listening? Why is it so hard for institutions and companies to listen? Here is a sequence of social marketing I created to support the James Cancer Hospital that underscores how listening creates opportunity in a social / mobile / connected time. 

Burn Down The House: Marketing's Big Bang Manifesto
Insufficient describes how I felt driving to Columbus, Ohio to visit the wizards at Ohio State Medicine. Yesterday I created an outline for a book via a new Haiku Deck and it sucked.

It was no Cluetrain Manifesto.

First piece I wrote arriving at The Blackwell Inn on the Ohio State University Campus built on a piece Eli Fennel wrote yesterday. BURN DOWN THIS HOUSE: Marketing's Big Bang Manifesto is getting some great response so closer to the mark this time thanks to friends such as Mark Traphagen and great G+ voices such as David Kutcher and Eli Funnel.

Share your VOICE. Jump in with comments here, on G+ https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/Tf9GNsX35qn or email martin(at)Curagami.com.

Brands are under attack by 5 Ninja:
* Death of Traditional Media.
* Mobile Me.
* Clean Slate Brands.
* Social Media is a Conversation.
* User Generated Content. and the rise of online communities.

What are the most powerful ninja attacking your marketing? How will you defeat attacking Ninja horde?

Red Bull's Branding Lessons
* Follow Your Customers Not The Other Way Around.
* We are all media companies now.
* Curation trumps creation.
* Some creation is needed to have authority.
* Brand and Publish, Publish and Brand.
* COPE - Create Once Publish Everywhere.  

Content's Marketing's Hard Rain A-Gonna Fall
As much as I love a good debate the one I covered on ScentTrail Marketing on Friday between Scoop.it CEO Guillaume and ace content blogger Mark Schaefer is moot.

Google's algorithm is set. Facebook's "edgerank" is tightening. As Barabasi notes in his highly recommended book LINKED: How Everything Is Connected To Everything Else a hard rain is about to fall on content creators.

Do I believe in Guilluame advocacy of content curation? Yes, do I believe content curation can save PR4 blogs? Not even a little bit. The rich are about to get richer. Smart move is to pay the freight - cut partnership deals with content hubs in your business segment.

This G+ post shares how to structure such a deal since you need to discuss a lot of dimensions of support (not just what you owe them for their greatness lol).