Chandler Chicco's employee of the year -- a friend of BIC

Marianne Eisenmann
Head of Determinus,
the research division of
Chandler Chicco Companies

In our opinion, it doesn't happen often enough -- that a leading, international agency selects its top researcher as "employee of the year." But that's exactly what Chandler Chicco Companies did for 2013, as Chandler Chicco Companies (CCC), a world-leader in integrated communications in the healthcare and nutrition sectors. selected Marianne Eisenmann as their "employee of the year."

Chandler Chicco says: "Marianne has helped shape nearly every campaign at CCC over the past year – she has pushed us all to think about how to improve programs with a solid foundation of research, how to measure programs from the start, and then how to gauge and showcase success."

Marianne Eisenmann (center)
with BIC students at the
Y&R Mix & Mentor Recpetion
October 2013

Marianne Eisenmann has been a long-standing supporter and well-wisher of BIC -- and will be making some command performances at BIC classes in Spring semester 2014.

Contemplating the costs of customization, personalization, ad avoidance, and ad blindness

Rob Norman, Global Chief Digital Officer at GroupM and member of the BIC Advisory Board has written a post about the "now and next of digital development as it affects advertising, marketing, and media." Norman presents the ad industry with a dual challenge: 1) age shift: "by 2020 Millennials will represent 50% of the West's population. Half the world's population will be under the age of 30 by the same date," and 2) the "hyper-fragmentation and attention deficit" that increasingly characterizes entertainment, media (and thereby advertising) consumption.

In an era in which the business models of content distribution, and advertising, are threatened, if not shattered, Norman worries about the future of brands and branding (as we know them today): "awareness [broad awareness by a wide public] remains critical to brand health and the creation of demand which, in turn, depends on a strong mass media."  Norman poses the question -- What if, soon, there is no "mass media"?

Brands and mass media co-evolved in the second half of the twentieth century. Without that mass media, what's the future of brands?

Check out Rob Norman's post, here.  Also, follow Norman on tumblr.

Guinness is good for appreciating a brand

Guinness's "Best Ad of All Time" (The Sunday Times 2002)

Jemima Maunder-Taylor, a brand analyst with Interbrand in London, has written an insightful and entertaining post on the Guinness brand -- its evolution, milestones, and enduring characteristics. So few commercial brands have such a long history as Guinness; the continuity of both the product and brand attributes along with the record of marketing and communications successes provides a compelling view of the potential of well-managed brands.

Refreshing the world's biggest brand

Quietroom provides a brand refresh for Santa. (No less an authority than Fast Company sees this as a "genius spoof.") A little more theoretical than what LogoDesignLove provided last year.

Santa has a long history (not easily "suited" for a blog post).  But we cannot ignore the contribution that Coca Cola Company has made to the Santa Brand along with branding for Coco Cola.  Here's a history of the Coca Cola contribution from Executional.co.uk.

Happy holiday.