Commentary

Dilemmas of branding

You may have seen the zippo app on the iPhone, which uses a video app to make an iPhone look like a Zippo lighter. Unsurprisingly, this app was a brand campaign sponsored by… Zippo! However this never occurred to moderator Michael Burke, founder and president of Appsavvy, and probably many other people who downloaded the app, just thinking it was “just made by some guy” with a weird enthusiasm for fire and stylish lighters. Most marketers would agree a piece of branding content is highly successful if the consumer doesn’t know it’s sponsored, embracing it with natural enthusiasm like other entertainment content. But what if they don’t even draw the connection with the brand, in this case Zippo? If their cognitive process halts after “oh cool, a stylish lighter,” is it still successful? Will it lead to sales lift for Zippo through diffuse lust for nifty lighters? Maybe in conjunction with other media that are designed to tap into the underlying lighter lust at a cognitive level? Another dilemma from the mysterious realm of branding psychology.
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