I like sharing both English AND culture with you guys.  That’s what the 232 brand is all about.  It’s impossible to learn English properly without learning tons of new culture as well.

I just watched the “Super Bowl” today.  The super bowl is a very famous sporting match.  It’s the final game of NFL football.

This is a very different game than what most of the world calls “football”.  We call the game that is played at the world cup “soccer”.  We call “American football” just “football”.

Soccer isn’t so popular in America and Canada (probably because we suck at it).  So when we’re talking to each other about football, we’re talking about a different game.  And the most important game of the year is the “Super Bowl”.

This is a MAJOR sporting event on TV because about 100 million people in the US watch it on TV.  That is about 30% of the whole country.  More Americans watch the Super Bowl more than anything else on TV.  This means that advertisers LOVE this opportunity to make TV commercials.  Every year, companies pay a fortune (lot’s of money) for one 30 second commercial.   This year, one 30 second commercial cost about $4 000 000 USD

These Super Bowl commercials get talked about a lot.  It’s the best way to make many people think of your brand all at one time.  Now with the internet, Super Bowl commercials are even more important, because people watch them both on TV and then on Youtube and other video sharing sites.  They share the commercials on Facebook etc.  Blogs write about them.  Even I’m giving free advertising to these companies right now!

These are NOT just regular commercials.  The companies spend a lot of time and money designing these special commercials.  They are supposed to make people think positively about your brand.  They are supposed to make people talk about your brand.  They Can’t be boring.  Boring is a bigger fail than stupid or weird.

I want to talk about 3 commercials I saw today and show them to you.  I’d love to hear your comments below.  Which ones, if any, did you like?  Why did you like them?  Why did you not like them?

1st commercial:  Blackberry

I wanted to start off by talking about Blackberry, Canada’s most famous technology company.  Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, I don’t know.  Anyway, Blackberry is trying to get back in the smart phone game after totally sucking compared with Android, Samsung, and Apple.  They are starting to sell their new Blackberry 10.  It is by far the best phone the company has ever made.  This could save the company if people like and buy the phone.   I’m curious to hear what you guys think of the brand image of Blackberry in your country.

The commercial tried to be clever and basically say the Blackberry 10 can do so many things, therefore it would be easier to show you the things the new Blackberry CAN’T do.  It’s supposed to get people thinking and talking about the new phone.  Was this a good idea?  Here it is:

2nd commercial:  Doritos

This one is a cute of from Doritos.  They are trying to show the relationship and a guy with his pet goat.  The goat loves to eat Doritos.  What do you think about this one?  (By the way, It’s a joke.  Americans don’t really have pet goats!)

3rd commercial:  GoDaddy

This is a commercial from GoDaddy.  This is a website company.  The commercial takes a big risk and wants people talking about the commercial.  Some people think it’s terrible, some people think it’s awesome.  It depends on your taste.  Certainly people ARE talking about it.  Do you think it’s too much?  Was it a good idea or a bad move?  I’d love to hear your thoughts guys!!!!!

Add and I started this China232 project about 5/6 years ago and have learned so much since then. We made so many marketing mistakes and have tried to learn from them.

Before we started this, we read a ton of stuff about how to do marketing, but at the end of the day, we really had no idea of what really works and what really doesn’t. Marketing is much more of an art than it is a science. It’s really hard to know what to do until you try it and learn from your experiences.

Some of you may already know that I’ve started writing my own personal blog about what I’ve found out about marketing. I’m using my own name, Andrew Best, to market myself as an expert or a “guru”. It’s kind of funny to actually do that, but I truly believe I’ve learned enough from my mistakes over the years to actually put myself in that category. You can read along and let me know what you think.

A lot of this stuff on my marketing blog is a combination of the hundreds of books I’ve read over the years and also what I’ve learned making China232.

Looking forward to your thoughts as always.

The ability to design cool brands and logos is always something I’ve had great respect for, partly because I’m just terrible at it.

Art is one of those skills where you either have it, or you don’t. Unfortunately I don’t so I’ve gotta get help from somewhere because I realize it’s such an important part of any business. I was looking around for the best brand and logo designer and I found Son Duong.

In English there is a saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” but in my opinion, sometimes beautiful work is pretty obvious when you see it. Check out Son’s design work. It’s really unique and obviously awesome. I’ve got less than 0.1% of his artistic talent and I’m really hoping Add and I can get him to help with the logo for the 232.

If you go to his website above, you’ll get to see a wide range of what he does. I’m super impressed and I wanted to share his work with you guys. If your company needs a new brand image or logo, he’s the guy for sure. Just contact him at sonofagunart.com

I’m sure he’ll deliver something pretty sweet. He’s able to do all kinds of different things with images so it could be a real “one stop shop” if you are lucky enough to get him to work for you.

I’d love to hear your comments about his work. I think it looks wicked!