The brandgym blog

1006!

Quick follow-up my post last week about trying to break the 1000 mark for subscribers by the end of the year. Thanks to everyone who helped: we're now at 1006 :-)

Can you help us break the 1000 mark?

We set a target of reaching 1000 active subscribers this year. And today we're at 981... growth has been steady but consistent since we started. Thanks to everyone reading and contributing to the "conversation".

It would be great to get a little help reaching the 1000 mark before the end of the year. So, if you know someone you think would like the brandgym blog, perhaps you could consider suggesting they sign up to the Monday morning email. They just need to enter their email address in the top right box on the blog site, as shown below.

If you don't feel like it, or want to keep the brandgymblog to yourself as you secret weapon to be ahead of the game on Monday morning, thats' fine! ;-)
 

Guest blogger: David Nichols

This week my business partner at the brandgym, David Nichols (on the right), will be your guest scribe. He will do a couple of posts, including one on lessons to learn from the genius behind The X-Factor/American Idol.

We'll also publish the highly acclaimed article he has written on innovation for Market Leader: "Why funnels don't work and rockets do".

Thanks to all 566 of you!

Thanks to all 566 people who subscribe to the brandgym blog, either through the Monday morning email, or through a blog reader.

Its nice to see the readership grow during 2007, having started at c. 100 back in January.

The blog has also been a great tool for networking. If you're thinking about blogging, here are some of the ways its helped me in 2007:
- Getting feedback on the draft of my latest book, Where's the Sausage?
- Voting for the best cover for the same book
- Doing online research on what people thought about the chances of success of the iPhone
- Getting leads to help us find brandgym partner 5
- Setting up talks to do as part of the Where's the Sausage? book tour with the CIM and IABC
- Going to Fruit Towers to meet innocent's creative director
- Meeting Tom Fishburne, genius cartoonist and UK marketing director of method
- Meeting Denise from Lush

Thanks again, and here's to another great year in 2008!

Thanks,
David

Favourite Posts of 2007

As there are a lot of new readers who have joined in during the last couple of months, I thought the end of the year was a good time to do a re-cap of my personal favourite posts from the year. These are the ones I find myself referring back to often:

Great ways to bring to life your brand vision in a way that is inspiring and exciting: The 30 second pitch for your brand , writing a brand manifesto and creating a brand film like Harley Davidson.

And how NOT to do brand positioning: worshipping the brand onion!

Beyond customer understanding to customer empathy: really, truly connecting with your consumer, by being one yourself

The top 10 viral ads of all time: including those that actually help sell, and those that are just "sponsored entertainment"

The magic of innocent: my trip to Fruit Towers to meet their creative genius, and a summary of the hundreds of little things that make them special. And meetings with people from two other brands that really marked me: Lush and Method.

The power of people: learning from Pret a Manger, and research showing the positive impact of company pride from selling great products.

The power of being consistent, as shown by Stella Artois in the "Stella Test"... that they then went on to fail themselves!

Brand consultant, heal thyself

This one's about a change to the blog. So please feel free to skip it.

The content will stay the same: "Bite sized insights on brand growth". But the name is changing. As I've been hard on other brands making a song and dance about name changes, I'll keep this short.

I've been trying to turn "Where's the Sausage?" into a brand in its own right. However, if I follow my own advice, as given to innocent (regarding their new That Water brand), I should focus on our main brand, the brandgym. This is the brand used for our book series and our brand growth coaching network... so it should be the same for this blog as well.

So, from today, this is the "brandgym blog". If you're a subscriber you don't have to change anything. For new people, I'll direct them to brandgymblog.com

1st birthday for Where's the Sausage?

Yup, Where's the Sausage? is one year old.

200 posts in the first year, which makes 4 a week on average...which is a fair old bit of work. But worth it. Its a great discipline if, like me, you're in an ideas businsess. It forces you to capture, codify and share your thinking. And those 200+ posts are an invaluable data base of case studies and concepts.

But just as important, if not more so, are the human connections WTS? has created. I've got to visit Innocent's HQ, Fruit Towers, and meet Dan. I had lunch with Brandcamp genius and Method marketer Tom, who was kind enough to read and plug the WTS? book. And only this week I met Denise from Lush, who works on their communication.

Then there's the feedback from all of you, that helped pick a cover for the WTS? book, re-work the draft manuscript and vote on whether the iPhone would be a hit or miss, in addition to commenting on the issues I've raised. Almost 300 comments in total, which is OK, but not much compared to other blogs. Ironcially, the most comments I got was when I posted about there not being many comments!

And the nice thing about blogs, which appeals to the P&G in me, is the way you can measure stuff. And the graph of subscribers below looks quite nice doesn't it? Getting close to 450 subscribers I thought was pretty good. Until I found out that one of the US marketing blogs I read had one hundred bloody thousand subscribers! So come on, pass the sausage on. Only another 95 550 to go to catch up.

Thanks for reading,

David

The Brandcamp Genius - now blogging from London

A belated welcome to London and the blogsosphere to Tom Fishburne. Now Tom has at least two major claims to fame in my book.

First, he is the genius behind the Brandcamp cartoons. These are painfully funny, and very much in the spirit of WTS? In fact, I must talk to him about an illustrated version of a future WTS? book...He is now featuring his cartoons on his blog, along with interesting explanations of the inspiration behind them.

Here is one his latest cartoons, inspired by a chainsaw manufacturer trying to claim it had "green" credentials!

Second, since April Tom has been working in London as the UK marketing director of Method, a very cool company who are aiming to be the innocent, or perhaps as I suggested the Green & Black's, of household cleaning. They are a great example of making a brand ethical values aspirational, not second best.

On his blog Tom posts on interesting stuff from brands with similar values to Method, such as this one on spontaneous street sampling from innocent.

Welcome Tom!

Sandwiched between Playboy and M&M's

Our brandgym partner in Buenos Aries, Diego Kerner, just sent me this clipping from Argentina's biggest marketing/advertising magazine...and the WTS? blog is THERE.

We're sandwiched between...on the left, M&M's...and on the right, Playboy. Fame at last!

Nice one Diego...

Adding a comment if you read the Monday email

A few readers have said they "can't dfind the comment button". This may be because if you're reading the Monday morning email you need to
1. Click on the title of the post to go through to the WTS? blog itself
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the post, and click on "Comments"
3. Add your name and comment, then hit "Post" (you can leave email blank, and even use a made-up name!)

Or, you can do like Nick and Fergus and just email me the comment!