Stefan's Branding Blog

TED Talks: Twitter and BMW cars, in Romanian

Translations number 2 and 3 are in. Back in 2007 Chris Bangle talked about BMW and about cars as art.

And in 2009, Evan Williams listened to Twitter users and talked about it.

TED now boasts 72 Romanian translations. All worth watching :)

The Weekly Wire's 400th Issue

Old habits die hard. The Weekly Wire, Grapefruit's weekly digest of branding, identity and design news, opinions and case studies has its 400th issue out today.

Published uninterruptedly since 2001, TWW goes out to over 1,300 marketing and communication professionals from all over the world, both client and agency. Ingredients for success include:

- it's a non-intrusive, text-formatted weekly email newsletter. Oh, and it even tweets between issues now

- it's always free and ad-free

- it's edited by yours truly, so it doesn't represent a particular media interest or group.

I'm starting preparations for issue #500 and hope you'll be on board by then :)

Translating TED Talks

My first Romanian translation is live on TED Talks.

This is Dan Gilbert with a captivating take on happiness. More of my work due out soon; until then, the other Romanian translations are here.

B&N Strikes Back

And touts its new "mega e-bookstore" as the world's biggest, according to this NYT story. Good for publicity, not so good when 500K+ from the 700K titles are free, public domain (read: old) books. But still, in my opinion there's one key issue that makes B&N more palatable than arch-rival Amazon.com: B&N's e-books are available on existing, generic technology (hard and soft) that's long been in use by industry pioneers Fictionwise, recently acquired by B&N. From iPhones and Nokias to Macs and PC's, via any carrier or ISP in the world, you can easily get PDB-formatted e-books.

Not so with Amazon.com's proprietary Kindle technology that's become a media darling in the past months. But I predict Kindle's not going to succeed in the long run, at least as a piece of hardware. The reason is the lack of a good answer to this question: "Why an extra dedicated device when my life can be easier with just a mobile and/or a laptop?" However, going proprietary has its attractiveness and B&N may well prepare a direct response to Kindle via the upcoming PlasticLogic technology.

Amazon.com has already covered the non-proprietary base too, with their generic platform e-bookstore, Mobipocket. But they never let revenue slip outta sight and think of putting ads in e-books, as per AdAge. To their credit, however, Amazon.com also did one very good thing, consumer-wise: pricing e-books lower than their printed counterparts. Sounds like a 'doh' gesture, but e-books have curiously been just as (if not more) expensive than books without any economic justification. That is, if you rule out greed and fear.

All in all, IMHO there's no clear leading brand in an emerging market that's still in its late infancy. But many heavyweights are already operating in it, which shows it has a bright future.

Disclosure: I'm a long-time reader of e-books. I've used Fictionwise's eReader.com for over five years.

Formats and Brands

Nice preaching by Tim O'Reilly urging Amazon to adopt an open ebook format for Kindle. Nice self-promo,too. Very interesting comparison between Amazon's situation and Apple's.

What matters, though, is that big, public companies like Amazon just don't do that. Not naturally, I mean. Uncoerced by huge forces in their socio-economic environment, they never go for open instead of proprietary, simply because financial minds at their respective tops crave sustainable long-term profits. Proprietary assets (such as technology) are logically irresistible from this point of view. Software houses (Apple, Microsoft), electronics makers (Sony), online retailers, publishing houses--everyone does it if they can. And you know what? The public doesn't care much about formats. Only when it feels discomforted by proprietary technology it rejects or bypasses it with such a force and sheer momentum that biggies can no longer ignore it and produce a "fight or flight" response to change. A great quote from Tim's article:

While Apple maintains tight control over what goes into the App Store, there's a loophole big enough to drive a truck through: Any Web page can act as an application for the iPhone.

I am looking forward to the day when I will be able to access any ebook in any format on any platform. The day when epaper will be ubiquitous. Millions like me share this desire. And the brand or company that achieves that will get our undivided attention.

Branding for Good

Friends of ours in the UK are launching an extraordinary branding project. Bubble Squeak is a free-to-use brand supporting microbusinesses (ie individual car cleaners) and fighting the current economic environment with immediate results for the unemployed.

Like I always said, branding is an instrument. You can use it to do anything, either evil or, as in this fortunate case, good.

The Medium Is Not The Message

And the message (sometimes also known as the "hype") is not the reality. It's an obvious truth that somehow requires refreshment when one of the trade journals runs titles like Forget Twitter; Your Best Marketing Tool Is the Humble Product Review.

To set the record straight, Twitter's the medium. The product review is the message. McLuhan was wrong. Operating on wrong premises is one of the causes of this industry's current bewilderment. And the article's fine, except for the said confusion.

Identity Forum

Our friend (and Wireality member) Tony Spaeth has made a great addition to his admired website, Identityworks. The new Identity Forum features leading identity experts - designers, strategists and corporate brand managers. My very own Marius is there.

Go check it out, it's a must.

Video Naming Reviews

Friends at Catchword produce some great naming reviews that come as short videos available via their YouTube channel or their own website. Witty and sweet, so don't miss them.

Logo Impersonator

My cat, Miso, aptly posing as the McDonald's logo.