South Africa’s low cost airline and equivalent to Ryanair  Kulula.com, has been called off sides by FIFA for its recent guerrilla marketing ads.

“A multimedia campaign by the fun loving airline brand  featured advertisements with the headline, the Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What, showing stylized pictures depicting the Cape Town stadium, soccer balls, vuvuzelas and a soccer player has been withdrawn following a letter from FIFA threatening the airline with damages.”

The offending advertisement (see above) was part of a campaign to communicate to passengers that it was not charging higher ticket prices during the World Cup.  The South African public and local media  have been very vocal about high prices from airlines and hotels in the run up to the soccer which kicks off in June this year.

Kulula has a reputation for irreverent, tongue-in-cheek marketing campaigns and the brilliant creative concept and headline “The Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What” has certainly unleashed a media firestorm as well as terrific local and international awareness  for this upstart challenger brand. The response to the campaign has gathered momentum with people  discussing the advertisement and FIFA’S actions on Facebook and Twitter, and the issue has also been picked up by the national media as well as BBC News.

FIFA says the ad campaign breaks the law with “ambush marketing” by, “Seeking to gain a promotional benefit for the Kulula brand by creating an unauthorized association with the 2010 FIFA World Cup.” Like the IOC, FIFA is known to come down hard on any brand making even the slightest unofficial reference to their event.

The campaign, which is drawing an increasing following on the Internet, also challenged other carriers to keep their fares low during the World Cup. Kulula.com, for its part, broke the news to the country via Twitter, “Oh dear, letter from Fifa’s lawyers says we broke their trademark of the use of ‘South Africa’.

Kulula.com was not only told they could not mention the World Cup, but they also could not use the country’s flag or even pictures of the country’s new stadiums in their ad. They also could not use images of a “vuvuzela,” a traditional South African horn that has been used by rowdy fans at soccer games in the country for decades.

Although Kulula.com has stopped running the ad, a spokesperson for the airline said that another tactical ad is being designed, so we’ll need to watch this space! Whatever happens the online outrage it has provoked in South Africa toward FIFA, who seem to have trademarked everything South African, will probably earn this little airline some big marketing points in the run up to the World Cup Soccer.

The Credit Suisse Research Institute recently released a research report titled “Great Brands of Tomorrow.” It’s an in-depth look at how a company’s brand can be one of the few true competitive advantages remaining in modern industry. The research is   based on Credit Suisse’s proprietary framework and analyzes  brand case studies over the last century. The  framework uses two filters to determine how and when to invest in brand stocks: 1) identifying the industry and company specific conditions necessary for brand success; and 2) understanding the brand lifecycle and key entry and exit points from a shareholder perspective.

“We believe a strong brand is one of the most powerful and sustainable advantages a company can have, but one that is often ignored by the financial markets,” said Omar Saad, director at Credit Suisse. “We believe brand stocks will continue to outperform the market, and our proprietary framework analyzes brand lifecycles to determine how and when to invest in brands for optimal returns.”

Key Findings From “Great Brands of Tomorrow.”
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The travails of Tiger’s have created a firestorm with revelations and reports of the world’s Number 1 golfer clocking up more birdies off the course than on!  A peculiar mix of voyeuristic glee and disappointment abounds as the ultimate, squeaky clean role model and robo-golfer stumbles and his private peccadillo’s are put on public display.

With today’s instant 24/7 news cycle where nothing is off the record, Tiger’s personal life has exploded across news channels and the Internet. The man who has always been in  total control on the golf course has become living proof that the traditional corporate branding illusions of control are dead and everything is up for public consumption.

What are the branding lessons to be learned from Tiger’s precipitous fall from grace?  Will it make him more human and by implication more relatable and marketable or will it tarnish his billion dollar brand forever? Read the rest of this entry »

Trendwatching.com, a fantastic resource for spotting emerging trends around the world, recently released their “10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010” which highlights just how the recession is changing behaviour and consumption patterns. You can read all about it in greater detail right here. We have included a brief summary of the Top 10 trends below:

1) Business as Unusual – Forget the recession: the societal changes that will dominate 2010 were set in motion way before we temporarily stared into the abyss.

2) Urbany – Urban culture is the culture. Extreme urbanization, in 2010, 2011, 2012 and far beyond will lead to more sophisticated and demanding consumers around the world.

3) Real-Time Reviews – Whatever it is you’re selling or launching in 2010, it will be reviewed ‘en masse’, live, 24/7.

4) (F)Luxury – Closely tied to what constitutes status (which is becoming more fragmented), luxury will be whatever consumers want it to be over the next 12 months.

5) Mass Mingling – Online lifestyles are fueling and encouraging ‘real world’ meet-ups like there’s no tomorrow, shattering all cliches and predictions about a desk-bound, virtual, isolated future.

6) Eco-Easy – To really reach some meaningful sustainability goals in 2010, corporations and governments will have to forcefully make it ‘easy’ for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives.

7) Tracking & Alerting – Tracking and alerting are the new search, and 2010 will see countless new INFOLUST services that will help consumers expand their web of control.

8 ) Embedded Generosity – Next year, generosity as a trend will adapt to the zeitgeist, leading to more pragmatic and collaborative donation services for consumers. More »

9) Profile Myning – With hundreds of millions of consumers now nurturing some sort of online profile, 2010 will be a good year to introduce some services to help them make the most of it (financially), from intention-based models to digital afterlife services.

10) Maturialism – 2010 will be even more opinionated, risqué, outspoken, if not ‘raw’ than 2009; you can thank the anything-goes online world for that. Will your brand be as daring?