This video looks at BK through another lens. It compares the compensation culture at BK with that at its part-owners, Goldman Sachs. A good reminder of the shadow side of brands.

Hat tip: Daily Kos.

Brandjacking Burger King on Twitter - Lessons Learned @theBKlounge

This is Luke's synopsis, which I can't beat:

punter goes on twitter, claims to be Burger King, follows and extends BK's brand ethos, sells about a million burgers, sends CEASE AND DESIST to another BK impersonator, is left alone/ tacitly suppported by BK, and hailed as one of the best official corporate uses of social media by mainstream press!

This Slate video captures it all rather well.

I thought the generic political ads were funny - they're almost a parody, they're that close to the "real thing".

A few minutes browsing the ads at SpotRunner is a weird experience, I'm not sure if it's funny or grim. Are ads now this cheap? Or were they always this empty?

Hap tip: Andrew Sullivan.

(Warning: Not Work Safe!)

I used this in my first post on a new collaborative blog: Marketing 2.0. In it I wonder, if instead of promoting a rebrand of marketing, we actually embrace its demise...

I just did one of those online, multiple choice surveys. This one happened to be for United Airlines' frequent flyer programme, specifically the membership pack they sent me.

It was the usual strange experience of trying to convey the reality of my feelings about an organisation through a janet-and-john filter.

So for instance, I'm asked if I've "received", "received and read" or just "read" various items in a mailshot. I'm wondering how they think I'd read something I haven't received. Also, one of the items is the frequent-flyer card. Have I read it? Err... what do you mean by "read"? I might have checked my name was spelt right, but is there something I might have missed?

Then I have to rate the "usefulness" of the items in the mailer. So how useful is the card? Well, in one sense it's useless except as a symbol of my vaguely elite status. But am I rating the card itself or the demi-monde of privilege it signifies?

I could go on but it's Sunday and I already lost one precious hour to the clock change, and I bet you know exactly what I'm talking about with these surveys anyway.

So if leaders are often leveraging blancmange, these surveys are trying to sieve it. I don't know what would happen if you sieved the pictured blancmange but I'm sure it would be less pretty.

The biggest issue for me is Zopa has not yet been tested in anger. We haven’t yet seen how individual borrowers will behave in a peer-to-peer system if money really becomes tight. With some economists predicting a 1980s-style recession in every way except the shoulder pads, that’s a very real risk.

Monevator also suggests it may be time for another Zopa podcast...

He talks about a spatula game. He noticed that if a mother placed a spatula near the child, and waited, it was very likely the child would become curious about this new object and play with it. If, however, the mother tried to get the child to play with the spatula, the child was likely either to reluctantly play along, developing a passive kind of engagement. Alternatively, the child would react against this intrusion and become healthily defensive.

There's all sorts of implications for those into psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, but I was thinking more mundanely about marketing. Especially as I stood on my cold doorstep while some unfortunate representative of Southern Electricity tried to lead me on an elaborate dance to do with changing my phone company.

For myself, I'd like to experiment a lot more with the careful placing of spatulas than shoving them in people's faces and expecting them to play. Oh, and noticing more of the pleasant spatulas placed in my path and spending less time grappling with those of the spatula-shoving school.

This comes via Jason Gardner, blogging with refreshing honesty from within Lloyds TSB. I like the idea of a banker who does thought experiments like this one:

As a thought exercise, I've been wondering if it is possible, these days, to do without a bank at all and still have a relatively normal life. And by normal, I don't mean keeping cash under the mattress. I'm talking about a proper banking relationship, but without the bank account.

For me, there's a message linking both: can we get away from putting our faith in magic feathers and soothsayers? I think if we do, we could move to much less grandiose but fertile territory.

I just want to add a caveat before we all get carried away, and talk about Dumbo.

In the film, Dumbo stops believing he can fly, but his only friend, Timothy Mouse, improvises to rescue him. Timothy plucks a feather from his hat and persuades Dumbo that with this magic feather , his powers will be restored. It works a charm, and Dumbo soars to glory. Later on, there's a turning point where Dumbo has to fly without the feather.

So the feather is not really magic, it just catalyses the magic. It might be convenient at times to put your faith in the feather but the deeper truth is more exciting.

So don't let all the talk about social objects make you think that marketing is all about the props. The props are great if they spark relationships, and they may look important as markers of relationships... but they're not the real magic.