Bogdan’s Blog

A recent article appeared in Advertising Age entitled “Corporate Campaigns Hint at Brand-Advertising Revival” has made some interesting revelation with regard to the corporate world – recession is the best time to hike up your marketing spending, re-do your corporate branding all with the purpose to increase the market share.

The article features a study conducted among some big market players, such as IBM, SAP, GE, Unilever, L’Oréal etc.

Their main points were 3:

1.  In times of uncertainty, a company’s duty is to show they’re stable and reliable (SAP model)
2.  Others, such as Unilever or L’Oréal are keen on increasing their market share
3.  Or simply re-position a brand through added value (the Made in America theme).

The Agency reported significant budget increases to support their spending in the new fiscal year – all this based on a forecast with leading numbers from last year’s results (for example, Schawk, a US company, reported only 16% drop in sales in last quarter as opposed to 22% in the previous one).

Results are to be expected in the light of the new spending, but what it would be interesting is to see their course on the market and their further developments.

And the CSR battle has begun. Corporations are struggling with new social realities – CSR, the Corporate Social Responsibility – intended for companies to “do well by doing good”. I’ve recently been through the entire The Economist special report on CSR, Jan 17th 2008, and I was quite impressed.

Google, for instance, hired a veteran, a prominent figure in the business and NGO world, Larry Brilliant, to lead the company’s policy on social responsibility and

But as a former NGO activist, I wonder: Is this good, something to be put forward and supported, or this actually is a shift in responsibility, very cleverly disguised, from governments and/or local authorities to money-making organisations?

Or is this in fact ‘dust in the eyes’ from corporations to draw the attention away from their other misdeeds? As a journalist from The Economist put it, “an ever expanding army of NGOs stands ready to do a battle with multinational companies at the slightest sign of misbehaviour”.

People may call me a cynical when faced with such positive changes, but I believe in the old saying,”the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
Let’s wait and see!

I have recently come across a very interesting site: http://gooruze.com – which is basically a web 2.0, social/professional networking tool for marketers (you can also see My Profile: http://bogdans.gooruze.com).

The interesting part is that it offers the full functionality of a social/professional network, but what brings new is that is highly specialised.

Marketers / PR people, new media people from all around the place, gathered in one place, discussing new strategies, new approaches to communication and strategies.

Happy browsing and interacting to all joining Gooruze.com!

Going through my RSS subscriptions today, I’ve noticed something interesting (something that I slipped my attention before), but … I’d better let the picture speak for itself.

As a huge fan of Facebook, I always want to be well informed about its capabilities, because, in all frankness, I’m really using it as a real networking tool (including professional) and even more than LinkedIn.

But the question popping up in my head is – are people in Facebook so lucky to get all the attention and user branding from all over the place ( including me, obviously), or their PR strategy is that good that they get all the attention?

In any case, Facebook, I think, has overpassed its goals – everybody is talking about them, writing in all blogs and … using it.

A nice online branding to be followed.