Marketing Category

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Sports Fan… Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Versus… Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Few know about the small sports network, which I appreciate for bringing me Ivy League football. Where else could I catch the Harvard-Cornell game in L.A.? Since Versus wants more than us middle-aged marketing geeks, they’re trying to generate awareness by asking for more than a show of hands. They’re literally asking people to “Show Me Your V.” Really.Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Still Looking For His Lost Shaker Of Salt… Want to see a brand done right — and gone wild? Go to a Jimmy Buffett concert, but don’t bother with the music performance.Read More

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango LLC Nice work, WVU! And I’m not just talking about your football team.Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Branding Purist… Seeing iPhones sold at Walmart is like seeing Wolfgang Puck dishes at IHOP (not likely) or Rachael Ray pimping Dunkin Donuts (oh yes she did). Have you ever seen a bigger mismatch in marketing? What’s next, an Apple logo on a NASCAR vehicle? Or even worse, an Apple at— What? You want to know what’s the big deal?Read More

While it's easy to blame the economy for business struggles, times like these also present a ripe opportunity for struggling businesses to reassess what they're doing. One classic perspective on reassessing a struggling business -- or an entire industry -- is "Marketing Myopia" by the late great marketing guru Ted Levitt...Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Member of a Few Segments… A few years ago, my wife and I strolled into Forth & Towne, a new fashion chain from Gap Inc. targeting women over age 35. It was solemn and dignified with muted lights and muted music — and muted people. While other stores in the mall percolated with excited shoppers (this was 2006), the spanking new Forth & Towne saw its handful of customers browsing quietly, as if they were preparing to pay respects to anRead More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Misses Flip-Phones… Now here’s a site that takes borrowed interest to a new extreme. The Pomegranate Phone is an all-in-one device that makes the iPhone look like a hockey puck. It’s good for everything but use as a floor wax or dessert topping: web surfing, MP3 player, video projector, voice translator… Cool, right? Then, of course, there’s the built-in coffee maker, harmonica, and a shaver for eliminating those pesky five o’clock shadows… Yeah, it’s not a real phone. ButRead More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Has Weathered Some Economic Downturns; photo by Chris Sabor on Unsplash… Tough times like these separate the plucky from the certifiably pluckless. Plucky companies see economic turmoil as a ripe opportunity to crush weaker competitors. The pluckless see a shrinking economy and resort to shrinkage themselves: they reduce their services and their advertising till they’re but a shriveled husk of what they once were…Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Guy Who Really Does Like Ads… As this economy continues to just lie there, unmoving and unappetizing as cold turkey giblets, some businesses are trying to save money by re-airing their old holiday commercials. After all, those ads cost a lot to produce, so why not wring the last morsel of value from them?Read More

by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Proud Obama Supporter… One of marketing’s primary responsibilities is to make your brand stand out from the competition — ideally in a good way. So even though I’m a marketer who supports Obama, I’ve hesitated to write about Obamarketing, because every other marketer with a blog (99.9% of all marketers) has already done so. Back in mid-October, Advertising Age crowned Obama “Marketer of the Year” based on a survey of its readers — which would have looked awfully silly had heRead More