Category: Uncategorized

Benihana:  Scaring away the brand awareness

So I was reading Lamebook, as I do, because I really am serious about that procrastination I mentioned on the homepage, and came across this little gem:

This is a great example of how not to use the new Facebook feature to link statuses to actual businesses – if people start to realize that brands are not only monitoring them like Big Brother, but then punishing them for mentioning their names, they’ll pretty soon stop mentioning them.  Which is a potential loss of a lot of eyeballs.

And Benihana:  Really?  Was the $20 or less you ‘saved’ calling Jason out on his possible double-couponing (which, by the way, isn’t even clear from his status – his reference to multiple birthday coupons could have meant anything from gift certificates to coupons from other retailers) really worth the damage you just did to your brand by looking like the kind of company which stalks people on Facebook and punishes them like this? 

Especially when we all know that Jason could have been in the system twice through no fault of his own – plenty of companies have terrible data collection and management systems, and it’s entirely possible that poor Jason wasn’t trying to run a ‘scam’ at all, but was simply sent two free lunch coupons in error because Benihana has a junior halfwit managing their database, who doesn’t know how to run a script to catch duplicates.

Though this little incident goes a long way to explaining why every Benihana I’ve ever been in has ratty carpets, old-fashioned (and just plain old) decor, and is correspondingly overpriced. 

So I noticed a blog over on Head2Head’s RecruitSmart site about what looks like a great recruiting video which also functions as a good little branding piece:

Now, I agree that it’s a great little video – having done a lot of work in recruitment marketing over the years, including the odd video, I know that videos like this can be great for the brand, great for attracting potential employees, great for building employee morale (“Look at the cool stuff we do!”) and can become a great calling card when talking to clients about how you (and the people who work for you) really are different and better.

However.

StepChange then goes on to explain their video with what looks to be a media release:

“Every major industry’s saddled with stereotypes: lawyers are heartless, bankers are money-hungry and clowns are downright terrifying. So it’s no surprise the advertising world is just as riddled with clichés and hackneyed typecasting…except of course that with every stereotype comes an element of truth. That’s the thinking behind the cheeky recruitment drive of growing start-up consultancy firm ‘Step Change Marketing’ and their ‘Wankers That Don’t Work Here’ campaign…”[that’s just the first of several paragraphs explaining why they did the video and how ‘edgy’ it is].

This is where they lose points.

First of all, the target audience for this video (i.e. people who work in advertising) already knows all about these stereotypes and clichés – they don’t need them explained.

Second of all, an explanation like this is sort of like someone telling you a joke, hearing you laugh, and then saying, “But, see, the frog put the hat on – get it? And then the duck took it off again! Did you get it?

The best work speaks for itself – it doesn’t need defending or explaining, and if there are a handful of people who don’t ‘get it’, well, they weren’t the target anyway, were they?

Welcome to the new and improved StayAwake site.  I know it looks a lot like the old StayAwake site, but I’m a big believer in maintaining long-term brand equity.  More importantly, I still love the paramecium image just as much as I did when we first put it up here back in 2003.

So we’ve been here at StayAwake.tv for 10 years now – I think having the same email address (sarah@stayawake.tv) for 10 years straight has to be some kind of record.  We’ve changed some in the past 10 years, but our basic principles are still the same:  We think that marketing isn’t brain surgery.  It’s really just about keeping someone’s attention long enough to tell them why your product or service is important, and giving them a reason to care about it.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out why your product or service is important, who it’s important to, and then getting their attention.

I’ll be talking more about that as this blog goes on, but in the meantime let’s just answer some FAQs, to get them out of the way.

 

Why the name StayAwake?

StayAwake, the marketing consultancy, may have started in 2001, but StayAwake was actually born in 1992 as a ‘zine (remember ‘zines?).  My friend Martha and I, recent English grads, felt that our recession-era careers in real estate just weren’t giving us sufficient creative outlets, so we started putting together this little DIY magazine with stories, photography and poetry by ourselves and others.  One of these days I’ll scan some samples for you; in the meantime I think it’s enough to know that some of our contributors have gone on to win awards, fellowships and even some fame.  We had good taste.

 

Why the paramecium? (that single-celled organism on the homepage) 

Because paramecia have all these little cilia (hairs) on the outside, enabling them to move super-fast and absorb everything from the environment in which it lives.  Which is I think the job of a great marketer:  to move quickly, to be aware of everything in the environment, and to absorb and assimilate new information all the time.)

 

Why the .TV extension?

Because back in 2001 when I first set up the website, the .com extension was taken by a cyber-squatter (still is, actually), and you could only get a .ca extension if you could prove you had offices in more than one province, which of course we didn’t.  So .tv seemed like a good alternative.  I still don’t know why more people don’t use it.

 

Is StayAwake really just you, Sarah Welstead?

Well…sort of.  Think of me as a virtual marketing director, who can assemble the right people for whatever marketing initiative you’re undertaking.