Martin Lindstrom Brand Sense-Book Review

Martin Lindstrom’s book Brand Sense is an easy step by step guide for companies looking to ‘Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight and Sound.’

What I would like to share with you are some excerpts that I found quite interesting and useful….enjoy!

In the United States, the average child is exposed to more than 30,000 television commercials a year, while adults see 86,500.  Today’s sixty-five-year-old American has on an average watched more than 2 million commercial throughout life-equal to watching TV commercials every day eight hours a day, seven days a week without any break for close to six years.

In 1965 the average consumer remembered 34% of the ads shown on TV.  In 1990 they remembered only 8%.

Carrots once came in every color but orange.  There were red, black, green, white, and purple varieties.  Then sometime in the sixteenth century Dutch growers decided to give this root vegetable a patriotic edge.  Using a mutant seed from North Africa, breeders began developing an orange variety in honor of their monarch, William I, the Prince of Orange, who led them independence against the Spaniards.  A country with an orange flag now had an orange carrot.

The average consumer is bombarded with an astonishing 3,000 brand messages a day.

Teenagers’ sense of smell is 200 percent stronger than that of adults beyond middle age.

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”- Henry David Thoreau

Two identical pairs of Nike running shoes were placed in two separate, but identical, rooms.  One room was infused with a mixed floral scent.  The other wasn’t.  Test subjects inspected the shoes in each room and then answered a questionnaire.  Consumers overwhelmingly-by a margin of 84 percent-preferred the shoes displayed in the room with the fragrance.  Additionally, the consumers estimated the value of the “scented” shoes on average to be $10.33 higher than the pair in the unscented room.

Emotional Response = Senses Brought to Mind x Positive Response x Emotion

Not only does Mr. Lindstroms books provide us with scientifically proven results on how to increase the value of our brands but value added content with “DualBook,” a feature which allows purchasers of the book to gain extended knowledge and up-dates for a year via Internet and e-books for FREE.

Hope you enjoyed a little glimpse of what you will expect from this book. Purchase through Amazon.

Have a good one!

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy-Book Review

As I do on many Sunday’s is visit a local used books store……and on every occasion I find exactly what I need.  One of the books I was so fortunate to find was David Ogilvy’s Ogilvy on Advertising.  The flow of the book was second to none as well as his insights on the advertising industry past, “present” and predictions of the future.

What I would like to share with you are some exerts from his book that I found quite valuable.

Mr. Ogilvy states 5 parameters to know  if you have a great ad.

It will help you recognize a big idea if you ask yourself five questions:

1.  Did it make me gasp when I first saw it?

2.  Do I wish I had thought of it myself?

3.  Is it unique?

4.  Does it fit the strategy to perfection?

5.  Could it be used for 30 years?

Mr. Ogilvy has a ritual when he appoints a new member to his head offices that I found quite amusing & thought provoking.

-”When you are appointed to head an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send you one of these Russian dolls.  Inside the smallest you will find this message: ‘If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs, but if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, Ogilvy & Mather will become a company of giants.’”

Mr. Ogilvy quote on profit and service:

-’If your service is too generous, your clients will love you, but you will go broke.’

One of Mr. Ogilvy’s favorite headlines:

For a pile remedy: -‘Send us your dollar and we’ll cure your piles, or keep your dollar and keep your piles.’

Mr. Ogilvy on creating an advertisement for traveling:

-”People dream about visiting foreign countries.  The job of advertising is to convert their dreams into action.  This can best be done by combining mouth-watering photographs with specific how-to-do-it information.”

Mr. Ogilvy view on marketing in a recession:

-”What should you do in times of recession, when you need every penny to sustain your earnings?  Stop advertising?”

-”If you stop advertising a brand which is still in its introductory phase, you will probably kill it-for ever.  Studies of the last six recessions have demonstrated that companies which do not cut their adverting budgets achieve greater increase in profit than companies which do cut back.”

Mr. Ogilvy book recommendation:

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.  -”Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times.  It changed the course of my life.”-David Ogilvy

Well I hope you enjoyed the exerts that I choses here is a link to David Ogilvy’s, Ogilvy on Advertising

Have a good one! B

Neuromarketing…Buyology, A New Book by Martin Lindstrom

Did you know that 10 million cigarettes are sold every MINUTE?!?!?!?!  That amounts to 15 BILLION cigarettes sold a day!  How many have you had today??  I’m not telling how many I had just writing this. lol 

NO, that’s not what Martin Lindstrom’s newest book Buyology primarily focuses on.  Neuromarketing my friends is the newest and most advanced way to literally see the effectiveness of advertisements, using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) & SST (steady-state typography.)

What I’m going to share with you are some captivating issues found in the book.

- In 1965 a typical consumer had a 34% recall of ads.  In 1990, that figure had fallen to 8%.

- On November 6/06, Nick Baily before opening his Nintendo Wii decided to record his reaction and allow consumers to view it on YouTube.  The video was seen approximately 71,000 times in the first week alone!  What Nick did was create a trend for others to show their emotions when receiving a new product.  Sites such as http://www.unbox.it.com & http://www.unboxing.com soon followed.

- In Asian cultures, the unluckiest possible number is 4, since the Mandarin word for that number is read as ‘si’, which perilously close in sound to ‘shi’, which means “death.”  As a result, in hotels in China, and even in Asian-owned hotels around the world, there are no fourth or forty-fourth floors.  California researcher David Phillips even found that heart attacks among US residents of Chinese descent spiked as much a 13% on the fourth day of EVERY MONTH.  In California, where there is a strong influence of Chinese culture, the ration was even higher, reaching a peak of 27%.

- Procter & Gamble, recently rolled out Puffs facial tissue tinged with the scent of Vicks, attempting to play on consumers’ childhood memories of their mothers’ treating their colds with Vicks’ ointment.

- Kellogg’s, too, has spent many years cultivating a signature sound, even going as far as to hire a Danish lab to design a one-of-a-kind CRUNCH, so that any child would be able to hear the difference between the sound of eating generic Cornflakes and the Kellogg’s brand.

The entire book is full of mind blowing and mind altering information.  I highly recommend you buy Buyology!