Lady GaGa's Brand Success: What's the Secret?

It's no secret that Lady GaGa's a brand success story.

She's winning Grammy's, selling millions of records and in the 2011 edition of the Guinness World Records is listed as the "Most searched for woman on Google". Who'd have thought?!

Why is she such a success? Have a read of this Harvard Business School study to get a feel for what she's doing right.

Inventing Product Benefits

Just a great clip I first saw on Wunderman Australia's YouTube channel. Check it out!

Be an Enabler!

Before you think I'm advising some kind of Charlie Sheen-esque transformation, hear me out!

When it comes to your brand's online relationship with customers, potential clients or even colleagues, there are two ways of going about it - one is to let the conversation flow freely, to let it happen as it happens and use it to mutual advantage. The other is to monitor it. I'm talking, of course, about comment moderation on blogs - in this day and age, more businesses are starting blogs or have had one going for some time, and the worst thing you can do to an existing blog is to moderate comments before they go live on the web. Moderating has its benefits, you can guide the conversation to help you achieve a particular end or weed out spam, but the reality of it is that you're taking away one of the greatest assets of engaging on the web - everyone has a voice and they can use it when they want and how they want.

If something is abusive or irrelevant spam, sure go ahead and delete it, but before you go making comment moderation your default position, think again and become an engagement enabler!

What Would J Do: A Lesson in Collaboration from the US Giant!

I've spent the past few days catching up on PR Warrior Trevor Young's second blog, Sweat Equity Biz which you MUST check out. His post on Jay-Z and Frank Sinatra and brand collaboration raised some great examples of how Jay-Z came to be the phenomena that he is - he's managed to tread the line between mind-blowing commercial success by selling a gazillion CDs and maintaining artistic credibility really well.

Brand collaboration is great for a number of reasons as Trevor pointed out and in the lifestyle sector, no-one does it better than US retailer J Crew. Whilst their menswear line sales have gone through the roof, thanks largely to Frank Muytjens who turned around GAP and is doing the same thing at J Crew, what's really helping their brand equity is their 'In Good Company' collection.

It opens them up the brand to niche markets and it sells consumers the old adage of letting people do what they do best. Alden make their shoes, Warehouse do their denim, Mister Freedom style peacoats, Barbour make their jackets, Levis Vintage do trucker jackets.. The list is endless! The best thing is that it makes your brand's credibility go through the roof.

J Crew started out making 'basics' and as their brand has grown, sure, their range has diversified but by teaming up with some of the "best of the best" it's given them the sort of 'cred' that a basics brand just can't get overnight when it wants to start doing shell cordovan leather boots. Going to the experts over at Alden just makes sense, and it's a lot easier to sell. I wonder when collaborations from bigger Australian labels will really take off?

Admittedly, I just wrote about Alden for J Crew so I could show off my new boots. Hmm..

Viral Facebook Apps Can Be a Real Turn Off for Good Business

Happy New Year. And all that.

I read this over at allfacebook.com and it got me thinking about the direction that viral apps are taking. It turns out one of the newer apps scumbags are using to get a hold of personal information relies on the vanity of self-conscious Gen Y-ers. In short, you install the app and it tells you how many people view your Facebook profile. I've seen it clog up my friends list on the 'book with a lot of people touting how many people are viewing their online profiles. Problem is, the numbers aren't true and you're susceptible to them getting all your personal information. On the one hand, I've got to give it to the developers, it's the perfect cover for getting information - but Facebook really ought to be doing something about it.

I don't say that because it's going to damage Facebook. For every five people that leave Facebook because they decide they're sick of privacy-related issues, seven more join it. There is no stopping it - but it could be damaging for other businesses in the long run. Though we're certainly more prone to sharing information and collaborating more than ever before as Rachel Botsman argues, after a while, if we're being duped like this our defences are going to rise. As ordinary businesses strive more and more to "harness the power of online", if we're being f--ked around with, in time we'll just make it harder on legitimate businesses whose messages could actually benefit us.

Not that it matters, really, 'cause I've had 2,938,018 profile views. In the last second. Malware FTW!