allen & company

Recent Articles

• New Agency Leader Ship

  September 9, 2010 in Marketing

  Paul Gumbinner, a friend and one of New York’s most successful advertising recruiters, wrote a post this week about how little diversity there is among agencies today.  The unique agency segments of yore are no longer apparent.  He is quite correct.  Part of Paul’s argument is that the leaders of those agencies created cultures the [...]

• Product. Package. Brand.

  September 8, 2010 in Marketing

  Product, Package and Brand are three fundamental marketing words for the 21st Century. The traditional 4 Ps of marketing: product, price, promotion and place are still workable cornerstones but for my money consumers have evolved so far and product management has devolved so far that success can not be achieved focusing on these three alone. [...]

• Chase What Brand Strategy.?.

  September 7, 2010 in Brand Planning, Brand Strategy, Marketing

  Question: What is a brand strategy?  Answer: A brand strategy comprises a strategic idea or claim and three support planks that vivify the claim.  Three planks, because two don’t always allow for a complete, differentiated story. Getting the idea right is key. Selling it to consumers day after day is the heavy lifting…called brand management. [...]

• Let’s Not Call it Strategy.

  September 3, 2010 in Marketing

  (A self-absorbed poem about brand strategy.) My paper is power. My paper is freeing. My paper creates tension. My paper doesn’t need pictures. My paper is musical. My paper creates language. My paper is rose-colored. Always rose-colored. My paper creates feelings. My paper encourages doing. My paper is your paper. My paper quickens. If you [...]

• Burger King Futures.

  September 2, 2010 in Fast Food Marketing

  The Burger King Whopper is a great product. Many people, myself included, feel it is far superior to McDonald’s Big Mac.  The problem with BK has always been product consistency. One day a Whopper can be sublime – the perfect fast food burger.  Fresh, crunchy, a perfect combination of backyard BBQ, veg. and condiments (the [...]

• Under Armour. I wick. I mean, I will.

  September 1, 2010 in Brand Strategy

  I love Under Armour.  I do. It’s an amazing, important brand. If the company didn’t invent compression shorts, it certainly gets credit for it.  The story is great, the product meaningful, and the company with its Baltimore provenance has people rooting for it.  Sports apparel is a category alone in its ability to push through [...]

• Salesmanship vs. Packaging.

  August 31, 2010 in Advertising

  Albert Lasker, a seminal advertising figure and CEO of Lord and Thomas (a predecessor agency to FCB) and a copywriter by the name of John E. Kennedy had a discussion in 1905 about a Kennedy theory suggesting advertising is no more than “salesmanship in print.”  Smart dudes Kennedy and Lasker. If the goal of salesmanship [...]