The brand is not a common request at restaurants and bars, and with this new ad initiative the company hopes to boost awareness about the large variety of drinks that can be mixed with the liqueur.

The new-look incorporates classic Parisian images in a playful way, and they’re hoping this translates well in their digital advertising.

Along with boosting it’s online presence to catch up with competitor’s, Grand Marnier has launched iPhone applications that allow users to mix drinks as well as send e-cards to friends.  New banner ads are sure to fill the sides of social networking sites like Facebook, as the company also refreshes their brand page.

The new visuals are a big shift from their last campaign, which featured images of joyous people reflected in Grand Marnier bottles.

Stay tuned in 2010 as the company plans to boost their social media presence.

Whether you love them or hate them, Microsoft’s Office suite is still the industry leader for office solutions.  Sure Open Office is a nice alternative, and Apple’s iWork will start to gain more momentum down the road, but the majority of word processing, presentations and spreadsheets are made with Office.  And Microsoft knows it.

Now they’re revving their engines with a Mission Impossible, 24-like, marketing promotion for the release of the new Office 2010.  Check out the “movie” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawhjxLS2I

At first glance, this video looks like just another fun dance party spontaneously forming at a music festival.  But look closer, specifically at the 55 second mark.  That’s when the third guy joins the group with some extra enthusiasm.  He is the key.  We need more people like him in team building, because before him there was simply a leader and a mimicker.  But the third guy is the one who made the dance a movement.

What about guy number forty? Sorry, he’s just a part of the mob.  But his participation is still seen by other friends who soon join the fun.  The key to building meaningful platforms and events is seen here: initiating things as the leader can be scary, but once you have a group around you who believe, you’re ready to turn that into something special.

Whether it’s getting your boss’ approval or even customer service representatives not understanding the frustration consumers experience because of design flaws, why not visually demonstrate your comments and concerns so the message is understood in a new way?

Powerpoint was invented for this precise function, but we all know the stigma attached to it nowadays.

Enter YouTube and the alike.

Take it to the streets!  Video testimonials can be extremely effective in getting a point across to executives trapped in boardrooms or engineers tied too closely to their pet projects.

Whether you’re interviewing your customers on the street or accepting online submissions, ask questions that will provide useful feedback for your team.  Ji Lee at Google beautifully illustrates this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

Invest a couple hours and suddenly your customers will become a real part of the development process, giving hints about what should be considered in future stages.

Either way, I vote yes to ScarJo as the new face of the company, but with the expectation that she does more wind-blown dress shots with some modern flair.

Enter the movies.  Hollywood’s been trying for nearly fifty years to popularize 3D movies, and only as of the last couple years has it started to catch on.  But nothing earth shattering, more-so young kids packing the theaters for the latest animated film.  So why are all movies not yet offered in 3D?  A big problem is the glasses.

Viewers don’t demand all 3D movies all the time, because the glasses aren’t exactly anything to get excited about.  They look awful, they’re heavy, and they can become a distraction.

So what’s the solution?  Better options (See below for samples).  There is a great niche to take advantage of here.  Start offering more stylish and comfortable glasses directly in the theaters.  The same way pizza and t-shirts can now be purchased.  You’re guaranteed to have happier viewers demanding more enhanced screenings.  Did I mention the potential revenue boost?

(Just remember to take them off when you get outside, we don’t want you walking into any poles).

Essentially, they want to be the next Google.  Anyone see the problem yet?  Bing can’t be the next Google.  And Microsoft can spend as much money as it wants on marketing, but there’s already a ‘next’ Google.  It’s called Google.  And they’re about to release the new Google Wave which will transform the way communication and collaboration happens online for everyone very soon.

Preview Google Wave here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

Here’s the thing, users don’t see Google as broken, they like it’s combination of simplicity and power.  Microsoft spending millions trying to persuade us that it is, is money poorly invested.

For all the great things Microsoft does, they need to re-evaluate how Bing’s entrance can be made easier when coming onto the scene.  It’s important to be the ‘other’, the new option that isn’t trying to be the next Google.  Direct comparisons can be lethal, and even if Microsoft does add features that prove to be popular amongst users, Google will surely implement and leapfrog those exact features.

With millions, you can build or even buy (re: Microsoft’s failed attempt to buy Yahoo!) something that people will find worthwhile every day.  Something that can gain popularity without the need for a lot of screaming.  Something that has potential to change the game.

You’re in luck.

If you want your interactions to flourish, offer something worthwhile. It’s not just about technology, or expensive marketing, or even brute force.  It’s about humanizing your business.

In a world with so many commodities and services, it’s no wonder consumers often need consultation before finally figuring out their actual needs.  So when they do, they are going to want something that’s dependable, that’s irreplaceable.  If everything’s interchangeable these days, make sure you’re not.  And you can start, by humanizing every customer interaction.  A good relationship, is not interchangeable.

Why is it that so many businesses push themselves away from facing their customers?  It seems counterproductive.  Why not feed off of their positive enthusiasm, and heighten it?  Business life becomes better and more profitable when you take the time to learn about each of your customers personally, and then use simple systems to leverage that knowledge into stronger business relationships.

If you’re still wondering why this is so important, let’s get right to the point. Eventually, there will be more and more competition for you, and there will always be someone with a bigger, better, flashier solution. This makes commoditization the primary threat to a business in today’s economy.  So now that you know that, what do you do?  Make the effort to connect with each customer as best you can.  Find out their personal interests, allergies, favourite foods and colours, all with simple forms of technology, or even a notepad.  Systematically use moments with your customers to build your brand and your bankbook.

If you’re still not getting any ideas, just think about one of the classic case studies with the Ritz-Carlton who transformed customer service, which has since been adopted by the likes of Lexus and so forth.  And the beauty of it is, it can be adopted by any industry.  What can be adopted?  The human touch of course.

Build systems that can be easily accessed and tracked for each customer preference.  What you track will vary depending on your industry, but the general premise is collect the data that’s going to help people become happier, and essentially, make you more profitable.

Also, let me be clear about one thing: the customer is always right!  This will definitely annoy some companies to hear.  Even when the customer’s not right, just remember to step back and see the big picture.  Listen to their insight and see how it fits your vision.  And let’s face it, if Porsche implemented every customer suggestion they’d have bigger trunks and look like VW’s.  So the goal is balance in relation to your brand.

No one wants to be embarrassed or hear how they messed up, especially when they are paying you for something.  So the easiest way to keep the awkwardness at bay, is to stay positive first and foremost, and than with a smile on your face let them know YOU are sorry about any inconvenience, provide a solution, and let them know how long before everything is on track.  Seems pretty normal if you ask me.

With so many companies lessening their eco-footprint and saving money by relying more on their online presence, this is even more important.  You need to go out of your way to prove there is a real person behind the vastness of your website.  You need to reply to all inquiries in a timely fashion.  You need to reach out so you become trustworthy beyond your talents.  Why not start a blog while you’re at it! Customers can surely interact with you there.

At the end of the day, words have immense power.  Choose them wisely.  Create a branding document with examples of how customers should be greeted.  For example, I would much rather hear: “My Pleasure” than “No Worries”, as it sounds more professional.  Or, “Our records show a balance of…” instead of “You owe…” Humanize things.  Make people remember you for more than a tagline or company name.

It’s important to remember everyone wants to be taken care of in a nice timely manner.  So when there’s occasions this does not happen, ensure that they receive adequate attention, because it’s the thing they will expect, and it’s very inexpensive to do.

Success is TRYING to please everyone all the time.  Not pleasing everyone all the time.  In the real world, not everyone will be as happy as the next.  But as long as you stay positive and try, that’s what will develop into your company’s core mindset.  Shape your environment proactively with positivity.

“Big promises”: treating people with respect, improving self-esteem, delivering results, contacting as often as you say you will but not more, including side effects in your planning, delivering joy, meeting specifications, being on time, connecting people to one another, delivering consistency, offering value and on and on.

Did I mention the importance of letting people know you “care”? The stories involved in your promises really do matter. That’s often what people are buying. The story. The word of mouth Jenny down the street was talking to you about last week.

This is the first place that the equation breaks down. Marketers often make big promises that appear to be unrealistic or are delivered in ways that don’t match the worldview of the prospect. Marketers get carried away with themselves and focused on their greatness and forget to tell a story that people enjoy believing. Or better yet, want to believe.

And sometimes, they make promises that are too small to get our attention. Boring promises are hardly worth making.

“Over-delivering” means doing more than you said you would, which is the secret to word of mouth.

Has anyone else jumped on the Tumi Luggage bandwagon yet? For those who don’t know, Tumi has a promotion happening where you buy some nylon luggage and they’ll plant some trees. What exactly they plant, isn’t exactly made clear though. Is it a tree? A bush? And how many? It’s entirely possible that Tumi’s campaign is nothing short of generous, but as a consumer, it’s awfully difficult to tell.

The easiest marketing promise to make is to say you’ll do something GREEN if people consume what you sell. That you’ll support a green cause now that you’ve finally decided to believe this thing called global warming. But here’s the thing, no one is in charge of checking out your story, and my guess is that 95% of the time, it leads to a net negative -more landfill, more carbon, more waste outweighing the actual benefits from the green element.

Consumers aren’t stupid (we’re dumb sometimes, but not stupid.) So, when the backlash hits, when every single brand has used up some green angle, then what?

Here’s what’s missing: a number. When you buy a refrigerator, there’s a big yellow sticker with a number about relative energy consumption. Now, we could argue all day long about how to figure out the right number (should the number on the fridge include data about the amount of energy needed to make the fridge in the first place?) but an imperfect number sure seems better than no number at all.

Everything is number based, it’s just how accurate those numbers are. If I take the train or subway half of the week instead of driving, how much money do I save on gas as opposed to money spent on transit? If I leave all of my old lightbulbs until they burn out, will I save money on purchasing something better that last’s longer. It’s funny how short sighted people can be sometimes. But that’s where it’s important to voice your positive outlook about why things are good for you and those around you.

The power of a number is the effect we saw when they put a number on restaurants (I think in New York this is governed by the Zagat Report) and especially with gas mileage (governed by the EPA). People notice a number, and they work to improve it. If every car sold had a real-time gas consumption meter on the dashboard and the rear window, things would change very fast. The only change from the status quo would be the story (communicating impact) but once again, MARKETING the story is our biggest challenge right now. Once we communicate the most efficient path, I think we’ll be delighted at how many people take it. Right now, marketers are doing a lousy job of that, delving into short-term, often selfish come-ons. That’s not going to last and it’s not going to scale.

Marketers who truly care about the green thing should be scrambling right now to find a number or an organization that can defend the green brand. If not, it’s going to be worthless and a great opportunity for improvement is going to be lost, because eventually, consumers will revert to bad habits, because WE can’t convey things in the proper humanized way through our marketing.

The key is build-up.  Before you become that bestseller with worldwide recognition and endorsements from popular figures like Oprah, you first need to develop a movement or following.  Make yourself accessible and connect with people on a deeper level.

So using our metaphor, if you line up all the dominos one by one in an order that acknowledges all of the steps needed, you will have more energy to keep the dominoes tumbling.  This is of course what we call momentum.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it?  Now look around at all the businesses in your area ignoring these basics.

Brands are continually getting stuck.  This happens, because they fall into a cycle that empowers a feeling of entitlement, and before they know it they’re stuck circling an important domino without realizing they never built the path to get to it.  Often, companies in this situation try to “launch” a product before a major competitor like Google.  And than when that fails to garner the necessary impact, they aim for endorsements and look for bloggers to spread the word.

Stop trying to be Coca-Cola from day 1.  You are not.  If you think you are, you will be frustrated very fast.  Take the time to enjoy the growth and build up your brand by connecting with people.  One way of accomplishing this is by focusing on smaller dominoes instead.  Once you’ve toppled those over several times, you create noise, and word of mouth starts to kick-in.  Momentum needs something worthwhile to talk about, and if you can create a humanized sense of inevitability, you’re bound to see positive results.

On the flip side, why do people get upset? People get upset, when there’s a deviation from how they EXPECT things to be, not how things actually happen in the real world. Aspects of idealistic thinking simply cannot be achieved if realism is never accepted. Let’s expand – Think about how you feel when you ‘expect’ to be able to drive down the highway without any one cutting you off, and than (because this is the real world) you encounter people who continue to dart their cars infront of you. Now, do you allow yourself to get overly frustrated, because what YOU expected to happen, was not complied with? Or do you finally accept things for how they actually happen in the moment and learn a better way to deal with it? We encounter this back and forth way of thinking every day of our lives’ to some degree, in various contexts, but it’s how we move forward that defines the strength inside us.

By not fully reflecting on how society functions, and what ’should’ be generally accepted as “normal” in your and most peoples lives’, you don’t allow your own happiness to expand into levels it instinctively yearns for. By not reflecting on how life is experienced, you set yourself up for disappointment, because you’ve failed to find the balance between idealism and realism; between accepted societal norms, and your beliefs. This balance is ever changing, just as a pendulum swings back and forth, so to does the need to make decisions based on how life works, today. Not how it worked thirty years ago, not how it will work twenty years from now. Believe in yourself and those who have proven that they accept who you truly are as they help support you through your journey, and believe in your ability to adapt your thinking based on what’s happening in your life in relation to the cores of your beliefs.

In limiting yourself in the present, you are hindering your future self. You need to live your life with more of your own input in order to have a healthier mind, body, and soul – not purely someone else’s way. Remove the ego when you are dealing with situations at work, or with your parents, or even in your relationship, and realize that you can not only balance everything, but help all those interactions in your life become even more beneficial for your increase in happiness. So make real happiness a priority in your life, if for nothing else, than to learn about yourself, which in turn will help you develop more authentic relationships around you.

We are independent balls of energy radiating on different levels of strength, emotion, and more. The more easily you can turn perceived negative situations into positive ones, the more your positive energy will be felt by those around you. This could take minutes, or this could take many months for those around you to self-reflect on. But the fallout of your positive energy will eventually help others come back to a healthier state of thinking and put an end to unnecessary cyclical patterns of thought and behaviour. Acceptance of yourself AND of others, takes time, so during that time, why waste energy on the negative when the positive provides your life with many more benefits now. Being happy is always easier than the tole it takes on your psyche to stay frustrated, so try to just, “don’t worry, be happy”, as easy as that sounds, because in the end things will be able to more easily work themselves out for the best if you make positivity and happiness a priority in your life while you are swimming through the proverbial waters of uneasiness.

Never forget the things and people that make your life so great… Never forget the qualities already inside you that make you so amazing, and that make you, YOU.

They include:
1. The “Demo”
(visual demonstration of the product’s capability – many cooking and cleaning products do this)
2. Showing the Problem
(making it clear that living with low quality products/service is unacceptable in the consumers life – Phone companies do this by showing they have more clarity to help improve the quality of your life)
3. Symbolizing the Problem
(symbols & metaphors combined with exaggerated graphics outline the problem – Cold & Flu medicines use this)
4. Symbolizing the Benefits
(symbols & metaphors outline the primary and secondary benefits of the product/service – All companies do this in some fashion, for example, Metamucil does this by showing digestive regularity)
5. Comparison
(pointing out how one product is superior to others – cola’s/soft drinks often do this)
6. Exemplary Story
(narration of a story unveils a products benefits – Volkswagen does this with their car accident commercials that show two people talking in a car that gets smashed into)
7. Benefit Causes Story
(similar to exemplary story, but the story comes from the results of using the product and has more of a direct connection – Axe uses this all the time)
8. Testimonial
(usually involves friendly or “real” people presenting their positive experiences with the product – ProActiv Solution and UPS use this)
9. Ongoing Characters & Celebrities
(recurring icons increase memory recall and brand recognition – Geico and Energizer use this well)
10. Associated User Imagery
(showcases the demographic you want to associate with your product – Nike is famous for this)
11. Unique Personality Property
(tries to make the product/service more personal by emphasizing country of origin or its history – Beer and car companies do this frequently)
12. Parody or Borrowed Formats
(spoof advertisements of events or movies trigger other memories in the brain – this is seen in all sectors, but especially with the food and music industry)

Additional Thoughts:
I personally have always questioned why there are so many independent categorizations, as there is overlap in many of them, so it would make more sense to simplify, and create subcategorizations. But, as long as the basic ideas are still conveyed, the “list” still does it’s job by providing advertisers with ways of formulating ideas (while still providing education for consumers).