Marketing & Brand
Brands, reputation, advertising, and telling the world what you stand for.
There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.
SourceAs quoted in "The Education of President Obama" by Peter Baker in The New York Times Magazine (12 October 2010) · via Wikiquote
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
SourceAs quoted in Corporate Survival · via Wikiquote
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.
Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.
The future of advertising is the Internet.
Driving up the value of the advertising is a big commitment for Microsoft.
Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
Helping doing business easier, we choose the name Alibaba because it is a global company. It is founded in China, but it was created for the world.
When I was starting out, I thought about how the Internet is global and that we should have a global name, a name that's interesting. At that time, the best name was Yahoo! Suddenly I thought, 'Alibaba is a good name.'
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
I'm skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.
There are some teams and logos you see, no matter where you are in the world, and you know exactly who they are and what they mean.
You've got to be very cognizant of the correlation between social media links and business because they don't always correlate as highly as people would like.
Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They're keeping up with their friends and family, but they're also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They're connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It's almost a disadvantage if you're not on it now.
Advertising works most effectively when it's in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook - they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing - so there's really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.
You get a reputation for stability if you are stable for years.
In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically. More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.
A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers. I think it's the most ridiculous concept.
I actually do think you're seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that's a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what's going on with them.
Facebook is inherently viral. There are lots of sites that include a contact importer, and for lots of them it doesn't really make sense. For Facebook it fits so well. It wasn't until a few years in that we started building some tools that made it easier to import friends to the site. That was a huge thing that spiked growth.
We help Chinese companies grow their customers abroad. They use Facebook ads to find more customers. For example, Lenovo used Facebook ads to sell its new phone. In China, I also see economic growth. We admire it.
In general, we're a social network. I prefer that because I think it is focused on the people part of it - as opposed to some people call it social media, which I think focuses more on the content.
I think you can fairly say I spawned or laid an egg that has turned into a lifestyle industry.
When you write a book, you're an expert, and people look at you in a different way.
All you have in business is your reputation - so it's very important that you keep your word.
The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records.
I don't think so, in that Virgin is already a global brand. Brands like Amazon have had to spend hundreds of millions of pounds you know, building their brands, whereas Virgin is already well-known around the world.
Be willing to use yourself to get out there and put the company on the market. If you have to make a fool of yourself, make a fool of yourself, but make sure that you end up on the front pages, not the back pages. In time, it's possible that your company will stand out from the crowd, and you'll be successful.
When we launched a new company, I reviewed the ads and marketing materials and asked those presenting the campaign to read everything aloud to test the phrasing and concept. If I could grasp it quickly, then it passed with muster. We would get our message across only if it was understandable at first glance.
I suppose Virgin is an unusual brand in that I suspect we're the only 'way of life' brand in the world. We're one of maybe the top 30 best known brands in the world, yet if you look at the other 29, they all specialize in one area. Whether it's Google, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, etc., they all generally specialize in one area.
Xbox is one of the most revered, loved brands in games.
Windows is the best place; it's the home for the very best Microsoft experiences.
What matters is 'Have you done a better job of making our experiences feel like home on Windows?' That's our real goal, and that's what we're going to stay focused on.
I feel as a brand I'm here to be around for a long time.
Recently partnered with Express Men as a brand ambassador, so my closet is full of the new fashion trends and styles that keep me fresh for games.
Hopefully I won't be the last big splash at Under Armour.
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.
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