Tuesday Quickie: Is Your Company Drinking the Kool-Aid?

Thought-provoking stuff on marketing and brand management from BlueBird Public Relations in Dallas:

All the “branding” in the world can’t change those simple equations, which is why the concept of “brand marketing” is intellectually bankrupt."

This absolutely reminds me of the old maxim: "Great PR makes bad products fail fast."

An agency or internal public relations and marketing extraordinaires can create all the buzz, find the perfect product position in the market, launch relevant campaigns to build a brand and demand the attention from target markets, but (surprise!) this will not change a bad product or service.

You can't hide behind fabulous marketing, at least not for long.

Read the rest here.

KC Event Planners Talk About the State of the Industry

Bernays Saunce mothership EventPros, Inc.'s owners are featured in an interview in Special Events Magazine, where they discuss the state of the Special Events industry and the birth of EventPros, Inc. They also touch on marketing and public relations firms doing special events:

In 2008, for instance, while other event business owners were wringing their hands about tightened budgets, canceled events and the prospect of more bad news to come, Svoboda and Short debuted a communications services department. As Short explains, the duo created the new department to compete directly with marketing and public relations firms that were cutting into EventPros' market share.

“These companies were handling events, but they didn't even like doing it — they were just doing it because their clients needed it,” Short says. “Because they weren't making any extra money on events, they weren't hiring us to do them. They were just doing the events themselves, and not doing a very good job.”

With its new division, EventPros is able not only to sell clients on the strength of its event-production capabilities but to add value by offering marketing and communication services such as Web development, scriptwriting and video production. Short adds, “It speaks to our fiscal responsibility that we were able to bring in-house a lot of services we were farming out.”

Read the rest here.

Friday Sauce: With Tonic

Looks like noted Kansas City PR firm Sprenger McCullough has rebranded in hopes it will be just the right Tonic for today's challenging business climate.

Now called "Tonic," the firm's new website is lively and has a definite focus on branding services with a touch of liquid-flavored "fun." Fun figures heavily on their team bio page:

"We take fun very seriously, in fact we hire for it."

The overall philosophy seems to be one of taking the stuffiness and bureaucracy out of the agency experience:

"Ready for a refreshing change from that bloated agency feeling? Tonic offers light and fresh branding solutions from effervescent pros who don't just talk about the work... we actually do it ourselves. No thick, heavy layers to slow you down. And no unpleasant billing after taste..."

Sure this is fun, but why shed the tried and true Sprenger McCullough brand? The site explains:

"As an industry, we have routinely stamped our names on the doors of our businesses, as a choice of pride or arrogance, or maybe, simply tradition. For us, it was time to put a new stamp on the door that better represented what we stand for and what we do. Tonic represents true passion and unlimited energy. And that’s what makes it the perfect culmination of all we do."

The site also features a blog, "Spitballs at the Battleship." We'll let you read up on that one.

The Sauce
If you're going to be a company that brands and rebrands products, services, companies and people, what better place to start than yourself? It's a bold move, but one we think can really "gin up" business (sorry). Having once worked with "Chief Brandologist" Stacy McCullough's team on a project, we can certainly testify that they are positive, fun, talented folks. We at the Sauce wish them the very best.