Geico’s Lizard Offers a New Message of Reassurance

New York Times, February 19, 2009 — FOR years, prosaic consumer products sought to puff up their appeal by boasting they contained “secret” ingredients that improved their performance. Colgate toothpaste had Gardol, for instance, while Dial soap had AT-7 and Certs breath mints had Retsyn.

Now, confronting consumer anxiety over the economy, the giant insurer Geico is for the first time rolling out a secret ingredient of its own: Warren E. Buffett. The financier controls Berkshire Hathaway, the company that has owned Geico for more than a decade.

Navigating Recession With CRM, Direct, Online†

Q&A: American Airlines' Roger Frizzell on Staying Steady in a Tough Economy

Advertising Age, December 1, 2008 — Roger Frizzell knows why you fly. He also knows you're frustrated by it. Not long after joining American Airlines as VP-corporate communications and advertising in late 2003 — a period of time he describes as the beginning of American's "turnaround plan" from its near bankruptcy earlier that year — he and his team came up with the "We know why you fly" campaign. In an interview with Advertising Age, Mr. Frizzell describes his outlook for the airline with a phrase every marketing executive seems to be using with great frequency: cautiously optimistic.

Goodbye Seduction, Hello Coupons

New York Times, November 10, 2008 — As the economy rapidly deteriorates from flourishing to floundering, marketers are scrambling to remake their advertising so products seem affordable and sensible rather than indulgent and fabulous. For many big marketers, including automakers, retailers, consumer product companies and even financial services, a major shift in consumer psychology spells an end to the aspirational advertising that has dominated their campaigns for the last decade.

Veteran Marketer Promotes a New Kind of Selling†

Outgoing P&G Adman Sets Up New Shop, Hoping to Persuade Clients They Need to Show How They Can Improve People's Lives

Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2008 — Jim Stengel, the outgoing global marketing chief at Procter & Gamble, is moving from a big advertiser to a small start-up, hoping to remedy some of what he thinks is wrong with the industry.

Starting Monday, the 25-year P&G veteran is opening Jim Stengel LLC, which will try to persuade companies to buy into a newfangled way of selling. It's called "purpose-based marketing," which Mr. Stengel says is about defining what a company does — beyond making money — and how it can make its customers' lives better.

An Old Buzzword Is Back: Bargains

New York Times, October 24, 2008 — As the year began, consumers started to see a trickle of advertisements that played up brand value rather than attributes like status or prestige. As the economy worsened in the spring and summer, the trickle became a torrent.

Now, as the crisis in finance continues, a veritable tidal wave of ads devoted to saving money is washing over the country.

Marketing textbooks suggest, however, that a focus in the short term on pinching pennies could in the long run have a deleterious effect on the images of brands or products by cheapening them.

Life Takes Visa in New Marketing Direction†

CMO Antonio Lucio on How It Plans to Keep Consumer Confidence Up and Use Media to Get Results

Advertising Age, October 20, 2008 — Visa's first global chief marketing officer, Antonio Lucio, joined the company last November after 12 years at PepsiCo. In less than a year, he's overseen both a global-media-agency search and a global-creative-agency search and consolidation of the marketer's $600 million account. Now he is preparing for next year's review of interactive and direct agencies and is helping Visa navigate the transition from private to publicly traded company after an $18 billion public offering in March. He's also consolidating messaging and marketing processes around the world.

Barack Obama†

Adaptable Team Stays on Message While Using Social Networking to Build Voter Roles

Advertising Age, October 17, 2008 — Detractors may mock Barack Obama these days as a celebrity, a candidate who promises little more than vague abstractions such as "hope" and "change." But no one should forget that he usurped the inevitable Clinton machine and has been considered the man to beat in this election.

How did he do it? The first step was taking the lessons learned from the Howard Dean campaign four years ago and turning them into internet-based fundraising that stunned Democrats and Republicans alike.... His campaign team has had a firm grasp of branding, messaging and old-fashioned political ground organization. It's also been able to balance mass marketing with social media and niche marketing.

Clinton's Road to Second Place†

Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2008 — Sen. Hillary Clinton, once positioned to be Democrats'"inevitable nominee," won't be. On Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama won enough delegates to claim the party's presidential nomination.

Inside the Clinton campaign and out, the finger-pointing has begun. The bottom line is this: She called the biggest plays, and she got them wrong.

Still, these people say, Sen. Clinton is responsible for what one confidant called "grievous mistakes." Those help explain why Sen. Clinton — the best brand name in Democratic politics, and an early favorite to be the first female nominee in U.S. history — lost to a relative newcomer who would be the first African-American major-party nominee.