Brand Architect

My Other Writing

Over the past couple of months I have ben writing on brands for a number of publications (which goes part of the way towards explaining why posts on this blog have dropped off) including a relatively new specialist magazine in South Africa called Brand.

I write a column for Brand called Brand Tools which looks at the best and latest in brand and business theory and how it can be applied to the real world management of brands. Space restraints prevent me from going into too much detail so the column is primarily an introduction to the theory and its application.

In the first column, I wrote about Kevin Lane Keller’s Customer Based Brand Equity Pyramid which is an excellent basis for much thinking about how brands should be positioned and communicated in the market.

After that I wrote on transmedia planning and co-creation which represent some of the foundations for the development of brand strategy in the digital realm.

The next one, which has yet to be published, will look at Synovate’s new brand research tool, the Brand Value Creator, which takes a more holistic view on how brands and their performance should be researched.

All the articles are posted on the website of Sagacite Brand Agency, where I work, in the section titled “Thinking”.

I’m Still Here, Coming Back

February has been an unbelievably busy month on both the work and personal front, which means updating of the blog has suffered… badly. Thanks to all who have noticed and urged, cajoled and threatened me to resume posting articles and commentary. I have a couple of important items that deserve a posting, even if it is late, and I will start putting them up shortly.

Beckham the Brand

I think The New York Times nicely summed up soccer star David Beckham’s upcoming transfer to The Los Angeles Galaxy for a reported $250 million in playing and endorsement fees over the next five years:

“David Beckham has never been simply a sports star. He is a brand, and one who briefly lived at the spot where fashion, celebrity and soccer met. The soccer component of that equation has eroded, but his star power still reverberates worldwide, so much that Major League Soccer has lured Beckham to Los Angeles.

Beckham will make the move from Real Madrid, the most glamorous team in Europe, and the United States’ top professional soccer league will try to cash in on his celebrity appeal — and perhaps that of his wife, Victoria, the former Posh Spice of the Spice Girls pop group...

For Beckham, whose time as a world-class midfielder has passed, the move may be a savvy exit strategy from the intense European soccer spotlight... Although at 31 he is a step or more behind the world’s elite players, he still has a deft right foot that serves him especially well on free kicks and crosses. That, coupled with his celebrity, may be enough to capture the attention of sports fans in the United States.”

Second Life’s Population Grows

I first blogged on Second Life – an online 3D digital environment where people create second, virtual lives and international brands follow – on September 29 at which time there were about 800,000 inhabitants of this virtual world with a population growth rate predicted at 20% per month.

It seems that growth rate was conservative. On October 18th, the virtual world welcomed its one millionth member and by today another 68,025 people had joined Second Life. Big question would seem to be whether the software, computer hardware and bandwidth foundations of this virtual world will hold.

This was posted on Second Life’s official blog as the counter hit 1,000,000: “...our performance and experience right now for new users is not good! We’ve been able to handle 10,000 new residents or more every day (which is a mind-altering 10x increase since April of this year), but right now the media coverage we are getting is taking us to unreal levels of new users - we will probably sign up more than 50,000 new people today. The new user system is fairly scalable, but it will take us a few days at least to adapt to this level of load. As a result we’ve got slow website performance, way too many people on the orientation islands, and an overloaded set of new user landing points in the main grid.”

Related posts:
Interesting Stuff

Reuters Opens Bureau in Second Life

Reuters is a serious organization. I have spent about 12 years of my life competing against them as a foreign correspondent, product marketing manager and consultant and appreciate the seriousness with which they tackle the reporting of news. They do not commit ongoing resources to the coverage of trivial events.

So when Reuters turns experienced media and technology journalist Adam Pasick into a virtual reporter called Adam Reuters in Second Life, an online phenomenon where people create second lives in a 3D digital environment, you know that they are taking this seriously.

And when he reports on serious issues such as US congressional deliberations on the taxation of virtual economies and Reuters run charts showing the exchange rate between Second Life’s virtual Linden dollars and the US dollar that underpins it you know they are taking the Second Life economy, which is expected to generate US dollars 60m this year, seriously.

Adam Pasick / Adam Reuters will report on events and issues happening within Second Life and the digital world’s inhabitants will be able to follow events and issues in the real world by visiting Reuters’s atrium in the virtual world.

Related posts:
Interesting Stuff

Sagacite Update

It has been about six months since we launched Sagacite Brand Agency and I thought it was time to report on how we are doing, especially since Sagacite embodies a lot what is written in this blog about the intersection of marketing services and management consulting. For a quick introduction to Sagacite read here.

After the initial period of sorting out admin, putting together our marketing and credentials documents, and meeting with prospective clients and partners we pitched on two great projects and I am very happy to say that we won both.

The first is for a global wine brand that is looking to establish and expand its presence in the South African market and the second is a tourism project for the African continent. On both projects we have reached into our network to include creative, PR and technology skills and are very pleased with the way this collaborative approach is working.

We are also doing some ad hoc project work, both business and creative, for a couple of other clients in the creative and fashion industries, and have several exciting projects in the pipeline. So, life is good.

Related posts:
Introducing Sagacite

New Phone Number

My new office number is +27 (0)21 715 3621. Mobile number remains +27 (0)83 616 0967. My fax-to-email number remains +27 (0)11 507 5703.

Blog Comments

I’ve just discovered the TypePad system meant to notify me when new blog comments are submitted hasn’t been working since June and there were a number of unprocessed comments gathering electronic dust. They up now and apologies to those who submitted comments into the void. As for the spammer’s comments that also piled up, Little Richard says it best: “You keep a-knocking but you can’t come in”.

Telkom, You Are Losing Me

About three weeks I wrote a post on the joys of wireless communication and how I had been able to set up a temporary 3G wireless network and rely purely on my mobile phone whilst waiting for Telkom, South Africa’s national telecommunications company, to install data and voice lines in my new premises.

At the time I wrote that installing lines could take a couple of days or weeks and that I could happily exist without fixed lines for a week or so. Well the couple of weeks has passed into several weeks and while my wireless solutions are performing admirably I am getting tired of Telkom’s ineptitude.

Telkom missed the first appointment; rescheduled and then the technician couldn’t find an exchange slot to connect to; rescheduled and another technician found the exchange slot but couldn’t find a way to route it to my premises; rescheduled and simply didn’t pitch. I’m currently waiting for someone to call to say when they will try again: yesterday’s promised call didn’t materialize.

Every time something doesn’t happen I appear to get dropped down Telkom’s to do list which seems to work on the assumption that non-completion of a task on a specific day doesn’t mean coming back the next day and continuing with the task until it is completed.

This lack of delivery is playing out against a backdrop of a) a second, private fixed-line telecommunications player about to enter the South African market and b) wireless providers expanding the telecommunications services they deliver.

If I were the national telecommunications company, I would be working flat-out to nail down every existing and potential customer as quickly as possible.

I am still holding out for a broadband line to be connected as equivalent wireless broadband is about triple the cost and I’m not sure when the second network operator’s services to my area will be ready.

But I can’t wait forever as my wireless broadband contract needs to be upgraded to handle the daily communications expectations of a business. Given the fact that 85% of people looking to reach me first try my mobile or email, I am seriously considering ordering my overdue, new business cards without an office number.

Telkom, you are losing me as a client and once gone I won’t be back any time soon.

Related posts:
The Ubiquitousness of Wireless

State of the Blogosphere

David Sifry, founder and CEO of blog search engine Technorati, has just posted a fascinating article about the state of the blogosphere. Below, in David’s own words, is a summary of the article which can be read here.

• Technorati is now tracking over 50 Million Blogs.
• The Blogosphere is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months.
• From January 2004 until July 2006, the number of blogs that Technorati tracks has continued to double every 5-7 months.
• About 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day.
• About 8% of new blogs get past Technorati's filters, even if it is only for a few hours or days.
• About 70% of the pings Technorati receives are from known spam sources, but we drop them before we have to send out a spider to go and index the splog.
• Total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.
• This is about double the volume of about a year ago.
• The most prevalent times for English-language posting is between the hours of 10AM and 2PM Pacific time, with an additional spike at around 5PM Pacific time