How’s Your Brand Personality?
Add to your required reading list Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back by Rohit Bhargava and published by McGraw Hill.

If the name Rohit Bhargava sounds familiar it is because he is the publisher of IMB or Influential Marketing Blog and a founding member of Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence Group which helps multinational clients better understand and utilize social media.
His new book is fun, accessible and full of great examples from all over the world. Not only does Bhargava discuss how brand personality inspires loyalty, but he shows how social media is changing how brands and their parent organizations communicate and form customer relationships.
Personality Not Included also outlines 10 major personality-focused marketing techniques —curiosity, karmic, participation,
un-whatever, sensory, antimarketer, fallibility, insider, incidental, and useful — which can contribute to making one think differently about branding in today’s world.
INFO: www.personalitynotincluded.com

Add to Outdoor Vocabulary: PowerPolesTM
JCDecaux is certainly in the business of revolutionizing concepts of outdoor advertising with their various “street furniture” and ad-funded model for self-service bicycle hire in Paris. Now, with client Samsung Mobile, they are rolling out Mobile Phone Charging Stations or PowerPolesTM throughout their airport locations in North America.

The latest addition to the airport line-up is New York area’s Newark International where sponsor Samsung can literally connect with up to 222 million passengers annually. The 8.5-foot or 2.6-meter tall charging units provide waiting passengers with power outlets for a variety of electronic devices — free of charge. This is another example of how advertising can fund consumer services while building brand equity, and certainly underscores that Decaux is living up to it's new tagline — “Out Is In.”
INFO: www.jcdecauxna.com

Publicitas Makes a Colorful Change
This September, Publicitas, the worldwide media sales company, introduced a new identity in the 23 countries it serves, symbolized largely by a new colorful letter “P” in its logo. Designed to bridge the company’s past history with the excitement of media’s future, the logo, created by Zurich-based brand agency, Scholtysik Niederberger Kraft (SNK), is comprised of two key elements. The lowercase word “publicitas” in simple black represents accessibility, as well as the company’s local connections and long experience. The colorful letter “P” that follows is created as 27 dots or pixels to usher in today’s digital age. When shown on screen the “P” also pulses with alternating colors, and three variations — red, green or blue — are used randomly as official trademarks in all company communications.

Publicitas sees a dynamic media future ahead. According to CEO Robert Schmidli, "We understand international media and the fundamental changes taking place in the media markets worldwide. Our new branding marks the digitization of our business and the change that Publicitas has gone through in the past years and will see in the years to come. As a leading international media sales company, we offer a unique and modern ‘all media’ interface between our advertising clients and top media worldwide."
www.pubicitas.com

BPA Worldwide Announces Multi-Media Metrics
In an announcement at the ABM-FIPP World Conference in New York this September, BPA Worldwide President & CEO, Glenn Hansen, outlined how his organization was going to embrace the increasingly-integrated and increasingly-digital media world. BPA, in cooperation with Nielsen Online, will now bundle enhanced website traffic measurement with all print and event audits without increasing existing dues and fees. Within hours of the announcement, numerous publishing companies representing all regions of the globe made inquiries about signing on to the new program.
Hansen told the audience that “In a shift toward total brand metrics and away from single channel measurement, BPA members around the world will now have near real time online reporting of audited web activity included with circulation audit of print products and attendance at exhibitions or events.” The global media auditing organization has been eager to create this added-value package for its members so that they can measure their entire brand offerings. “Last year,” said Hansen, “we made the decision to manage revenue and expenses of our not-for-profit organization to enable BPA to offer more services for the same existing rate.”

The new tag-enabled census tool, powered by Nielsen’s SiteCensus service, will be launched in beta test to BPA members already participating in BPA’s log file-based interactive audits, as well as those members with print audits who have volunteered to participate in the test. The beta test is scheduled to run September through December with full roll-out to BPA’s membership in January 2009.
INFO: www.bpaww.com

EMS Measures Media Multi-Tasking in Europe
In an effort to better understand consumers’ digital media consumption habits and help advertisers take further advantage of today’s multimedia opportunities, Synovate offered results this September from its first EMS Digital Life survey. As part of the EMS survey which measures media consumption habits among a representative sample of Europe’s top 13% of adults based on income, the new Digital Life project tracks the types of media with which affluent Europeans are engaged, the digital devices they use, the manner and places such devices are used, and also seeks to find a pattern to media multi-tasking.

Reinier Schaper, Head of EMS said “With the overexposure of different media sources today, it can be difficult trying to determine when and why elite Europeans actually use different media platforms. With EMS Digital Life, we can accurately track this information to the minute detail of each hour. Hence the attitudinal behavior effecting actual consumption is accurately recorded”.

Some quick takes from the study include:
• TV watching occurs daily and is the media source that garners the greatest amount of this audience’s time
• Evenings between 8PM and 10PM are peak television viewing times and Thursday is the most popular TV evening among European affluent consumers
• The Internet is the second preferred media source — in terms of time devoted to use
• Radio listening ranks 3rd in terms of total time spent with the medium, followed by reading newspapers or magazines in 4th place
• The PC and laptop are the most popular devices — more so than the television

The survey was conducted among respondents from European 19 countries — Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary.
INFO: www.synovate.nl/ems

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