The Apple Maps App fiasco is having an interesting effect on the company’s brand and its loyal fan following.
The inevitable “this would not have happened had Steve still been here” conclusion is all over the internet.
Of course, that conclusion ignores the antenna problems with the iPhone 4 when it was launched, and it ignores the fact that Siri was launched under Steve’s watch even though it was (and still is) not ready for prime time.… Read more
Permanent link to this article: http://blog.insead.edu/2012/10/apple-directionless/
Speak to enough brand managers of a global brand in countries around the world and you’ll soon come to expect the all too common refrain: “…but my market is different.”
Ask them to elaborate, and you’ll get the low down on how consumer habits in their market are different, their consumers’ purchase behavior is different, preferences and tastes are different, how the media and the retail trade are different, and how their consumers and customers require unique, tailored, and delicate handling.… Read more
Permanent link to this article: http://blog.insead.edu/2012/09/no-really-my-market-is-different/
The monarch and the pipevine swallowtail are the Hermès and Louis Vuitton of the butterfly world – other butterflies imitate them.
Non-toxic butterflies, through genetic mutation over generations, come to resemble toxic species so that predators are fooled into leaving them alone.… Read more
Permanent link to this article: http://blog.insead.edu/2012/05/brand-mimicry/
In 2007 The Washington Post carried an astonishing article describing a social experiment the newspaper had conducted. The Post had asked Joshua Bell to play in the Washington metro during the morning rush hour. As the newspaper describes it, “No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made….in a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”
You can judge the answer to that question in this video.… Read more
Permanent link to this article: http://blog.insead.edu/2012/03/marketing-is-context/
The saying “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan” goes back at least as far as Tacitus (around 100 B.C.). So calling the financial crisis of 2008 a financial crisis, has the benefit of finding at least one father for that failure: the field of finance, and its real-world embodiment, Wall Street.… Read more
Permanent link to this article: http://blog.insead.edu/2012/02/marketing-lessons-from-the-financial-crisis/
We use the term “brand” with such frequency, such alacrity, and such assurance, you’d almost think we know what it means.
So what does it mean?
Fact is, we use “brand” to mean many things. Many different things.
So I thought I’d start a glossary of the different meanings of the term brand.… Read more
Permanent link to this article: http://blog.insead.edu/2011/09/what-the-heck-is-a-brand-anyway/
