WARC, 6 December 2011
NEW YORK: Coca-Cola, Intel and Tumblr are among the brand
owners that have effectively combined creativity with disruptive approaches to
business, a study has argued.
In a new report, Fast Company, the business and technology
title, identified what it viewed as leading examples of companies which have
found innovative solutions to different problems.
Among this group was Coca-Cola, the soft drinks firm, which
faces the need to combine considerable brand equity built up by its
long-standing values with the need to attract young consumers.
"Spencerian script. Red, white, dynamic colors. Those
are things that have not changed and will not change," said Wendy Clark,
senior vice president, marketing at Coca-Cola.
"So how do my team and I make a brand that's looked the
same for 100-plus years seem relevant to the new generations of global teens?
By building authentic, meaningful campaigns around their passion points."
Clark cited a campaign for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, using a
global message but local ideas, as showing this concept in action. (To see more
on Coca-Cola's strategy in this area, click here.)
Some shoppers have also recently complained about a
redesigned Coke can linked to an effort to save polar bears, showing the
balance is a fine one.
On the other hand, Intel, the technology group, was praised
for its Classmate PC, which showed "creativity can survive
compromise". Based on research in Indian schools, the initial thought was
to offer a bespoke tablet PC, but the end product ended up being very
different.
"Our boss said it needed to have a keyboard. We said
that would defeat the purpose; scripts in India don't use keyboards very
easily. He said it needed to look like the other things we make. So we ...
said, 'Well, if it's not going to sell in India, let's sell it to the rest of
the world.' And we did," said Tony Salvador, an ethnographic researcher at
Intel.
Dyson, based in the UK, was praised for having a
"freethinking" approach, shown by its range of innovative bagless
vacuum cleaners, bladeless fans and pioneering heaters and hand-dryers.
"I love this idea of wrong thinking – of encouraging
people who have ideas to go see if they work and not dismissing them just
because they sound like the wrong solution," said James Dyson, its CEO.
Tumblr, the blogging service, received plaudits for engaging
category influencers, by initially targeting people using
"tumblelogs", or pages drawing together a diverse range of
interesting content, usually in a highly unstructured way."
"When we released our platform, we took it straight to
the tumblelogging community," said David Karp, CEO of Tumblr. "They
were thrilled. And because they really understood what Tumblr was about, they
set a great example for new users. That helped us get a lot of early
traction."
Data sourced from Fast Company; additional content by Warc
staff
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