Winner:

Glenn Beck is our winner for the week.

Let’s be frank, no one really expected this man to become the spokesperson for the strong patriotic fervor sweeping the nation.

But he has. This past weekend’s rally has proven everyone wrong. The official estimates pegged attendance at 300,000-plus strong. That is a mighty turnout.

How did he do it?

Winner:

Sometimes personal branding is best done by simply being who you are and doing what you do.

This sums up Mitch Daniels, Republican governor of Indiana and a potential sleeper brand for the next presidential election.

Folks, what I’m getting at here is the idea of authentic brand behavior versus mere brand promotion.

There are personal brands in business and politics that become well known for promoting themselves, but there are also brands that become well known because they labor quietly and successfully for years and the world eventually comes to them. Warren Buffet is a standout example of the second kind.

Winner: General Motors

As predicted in this space, General Motors just keeps on getting better…

This past week, GM posted its best quarterly profit since 2004.

All because of government money?

Fuggedaboutit!

It’s all because the company was forced to get back to what had made them strong in the first place: their brands.

John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week:

Winner: Ellen DeGeneres

For a brand sometimes choosing not to do something is just as important as doing it.

That’s why Ellen DeGeneres is this week’s winner. She understood that American Idol and the DeGeneres brand were simply not compatible and she made a clean break.

For a celebrity brand, choosing not to do something so high profile is courageous. After all, today’s most sought after celebrities can become yesterday’s news. he Idol job widened DeGeneres profile.

But she probably realized that even though it widened her profile, exposing her to even more people, that it wasn’t necessarily strengthening her brand. For example, fans of the Idol show noted that she didn’t seem to have the edge that judges on the program are noted for –and in a statement DeGeneres said she doesn’t want to have that kind of edge.

Absolutely right. DeGeneres brand is likeable first. She’s funny, but never mean-spirited. The fact that she recognized that her brand strength didn’t connect with Idol and the acted on it should be a lesson for celebrities and non-celebrities alike.

Bottom line, we all have personal brands and if the shoe doesn’t fit, whatever you do don’t try to squeeze in –it will only crimp your style!

Winner: BP

BP is the tentative winner this week with its bold decision to appoint an American as its new CEO.

Finally, the company seems to be taking steps that make sense. This appointment sends the clear message that BP is shaking up the management that helped get it into the Gulf mess.

But, folks, they’re only a tentative winner for two reasons: 1) the change of leadership apparently won’t happen until October and, 2) it was U.S. officials who announced the news, pipping BP to the post and even leading BP to initially deny the news.

Let’s start with #2. Rule #1 of brand crisis management response is to assert affirmative, positive and undisputed control over your response. A news leak like an oil leak reflects lack of control. So the news of the management change might be welcome, but the way that news got out serves to re-enforce the image of a company that is still at loose ends.

As for the delay in the change until October, fact is this too runs against brand crisis management. If a change needs to happen, then making it happen fast–and being seen by the public to make it happen fast— is very important. Again, BP isn’t doing this.

Still, the shake-up at the top is a big one since getting rid of the current CEO, a walking brand disaster, signals a big improvement. Now BP needs to telegraph its seriousness by taking control of the way big company news reaches the media and speeding up the transition process.

Winner:
Toyota has gone through some of the toughest marketing waters known to man: the court of angry and relentless public opinion.

But, folks, it’s the way a brand reacts that matters!

Beginning with the dignified and effective response of its top executive, Akio Toyoda, to a congressional panel several months ago in which he committed himself and his company to aggressively promoting safety, things have been turning around.

Bottom line, even if the sudden acceleration problems had proven to be 100% Toyota’s fault, their cars were still statistically very, very safe. Not only that, but the general consensus is that Toyota builds reliable vehicles.

Now, in a further vindication of Toyota, the U.S. Department of Transportation has done some preliminary research into those sudden acceleration accidents and has found that many were caused not by technical malfunctions but by driver error (something which Toyota was claiming early on but backed away from in the face of growing public anger).

Fact is, Toyota has done three marketing things absolutely right in the face of this worldwide brand crisis: 1) once it was clear that they had to apologize and promise to do better (despite the actual facts about their vehicles’ safety), they did so in an incredibly forceful and constructive way; 2) they continued being Toyota, a great company with a commitment to reliable and safe cars, and thus didn’t do anything else to mar their relationship with their customers (basically they let individual customer satisfaction bear the bulk of the marketing load) and 3) having put themselves in a sympathetic position to public opinion, as new facts favorable to them emerge, these facts have an even bigger impact on improving the company image (everyone feels sorry for the person or company that has been wrongly accused but has worked hard for redemption).

Sure, some analysts point to Toyota’s sales numbers in the new car market slipping behind not only GM but also Ford in 2010, but look at those figures again and you see that what really happened. GM and Ford expanded their market share by a couple percent (not a surprise in the current post-bailout climate); Toyota’s market share slipped but by little more than half a percent –not too bad in the face of a major public relations disaster.

Simply put, Toyota is positioned for a powerful brand recovery thanks to their decisive public response and the top to bottom marketing integrity of this great company.

Bonsai!

One other deserving mention under the winner column this week: Apple.
Like Toyota, they’re getting some bad press, but, folks, the key here is to focus on how they respond as a company. At first there was some waffling, but the Steve Jobs spoke decisively about just how they are going to fix the antenna problem on the iPhone telling the world that Apple is “working our butts off” in an around the clock effort that entails bringing cots into the engineering department. That’s responsiveness and that is great marketing!

Loser:

A few weeks ago, we looked at an error GM made when they tried to force a name change onto their employees and, ultimately, consumers. In that case, they wanted to have the more formal Chevrolet replace the popular Chevy.

That was a mistake and they were smart to backpedal.

Unfortunately, the YMCA is making a similar mistake but in the opposite direction. They are re-branding their organization more informally, shortening YMCA to the “Y”.

Fact is, people have been calling the YMCA the “Y” for years, so on the surface the change doesn’t seem like a big deal. But this name change is a mistake, because it’s unnecessary. A brand change should never be done simply because it can.

Bottom line, why eliminate YMCA? Coke has never done this with Coco Cola. There’s something valuable about keeping brand continuity with the past and by officially dumping it’s longer, formal name, YMCA is endangering that continuity.

Moreover, what exactly is this going to achieve? The old YMCA logo was already a big Y. Unfortunately, this looks like spin-the-wheels branding, the kind of knee-jerk updating of image that makes consultants feel good but does little for their clients.

And as if there weren’t enough reasons not to do this, why make the Village People unhappy (not to mention, doing away with free advertising every time their song YMCA is played)?

And, remember, things are always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.

TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY -
Rebranding should never be done just because it can be done.

John Tantillo is an AMA member and president of the Marketing Department of America, a New York-based marketing firm.
http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/

A guest post from Linda Sedloff Orton

Evolution has compelled our brains to use vision primarily to flee from danger, seek a mate or to search for our next meal, and that “vision trumps all other senses,” writes Dr. John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, in his book Brain Rules. It also helps explain why a well-made video advertisement or other compellingly crafted video goes viral on YouTube.

Summit Entertainment, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based studio behind the immensely popular Twilight film series (the latest installment, as I’m sure you know, is out today), stands for more than vampires, werewolves and teen angst. The studio scored another substantial victory this year when The Hurt Locker, an independently-produced Iraq War drama it acquired and distributed, won six Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, despite competition from Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time.

By Bette Marston, Editorial Intern

I was a little nervous walking into the Chicago AMA’s 2010 BrandSmart conference held at the UIC Forum in downtown Chicago yesterday because it was my first out-of-office event as an editorial intern at Marketing News. However, when I snuck in the door during Walgreen CMO Kim Feil’s opening keynote talk (yes, I was a few minutes late), I noticed just how many of the approximately 200 AMA members in attendance had smartphones in hand, on their lap or on a nearby table. As I reached into my bag for my own BlackBerry, I knew I was going to fit in.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Staying Relevant in an Ever-changing World,” with breakout speakers giving presentations according to three tracks: innovation, engagement and social media. I attended one presentation on each track to get a little bit of everything. Here are a few things that stood out to me (other than the number of smartphones) as a first-time BrandSmart conference attendee:

Considering that Forbes called Jeffrey Hayzlett, former CMO for Kodak, a "Celebrity CMO," it's not surprising that Hayzlett appeared on this spring's "The Celebrity Apprentice" for a challenge where Bret Michaels, Holly Robinson Peete, Sharon Osbourne and other celebrity contestants had to put together a storefront experience to promote the Kodak brand and products. The season boiled down to Michaels, who survived a brain hemmohrage during the show's run that placed him in critical condition, and actress Peete, with Donald Trump picking Michaels as the winner of the show.

But if Hayzlett was in Trump's place, he said he would have picked Peete to win it all.

"I thought Holly did an unbelievable job," he told me in a recent interview. "From a business perspective, I would have given the edge to Holly."

Not that Michaels was totally undeserving, Hayzlett says.

"Bret did a nice job. He had a lot of good things going for him," Hayzlett says. "Obviously he used his illness as an advantage, and there's nothing wrong with that. ... Look at what he's done to raise awareness for the American Diabetes Association," the charity that Michaels, a diabetic, represented on the show.

Either way, Hayzlett turned out to be a big winner thanks to his association with the show (this spring's appearance was his fourth in two years). Hayzlett was able to get Trump and the show's super producer Mark Burnett to offer quotes of praise used to promote his new book, "The Mirror Test."

To learn Hayzlett's reasons for leaving Kodak and his plans for the future, read the next edition of Marketing News Exclusives, Marketing News' e-newsletter product, which you'll be able to access beginning June 17.