Doin' the Fandango: Beaker is one of the characters kids no longer recognize
The video
I just came across this new video from Muppet studios (tip of the hat to Wired Magazine) and I laughed and laughed and laughed. And that was just the opening. Then I ran to show it to my wife, and we laughed and laughed and laughed. Now it’s your turn. Just make sure you watch it to the end.
But just to make me feel better, just think about how awesome and relevant the Muppets brand manages to stay through the generations – and maybe share some Muppets inspired branding thoughts in the comments section.
Part 3 of our series on our favourite posts of 2009″
October and November held a few more pleasant surprises for us here at Beg to Differ – from our Chicken Sandwich series to our first Slideshare cross-over hit, cure to a Seussian Twitter phenomena, viagra we continue to be surprised by the enthuisiastic response of our readers – but almosrt never in ways we expect.
The branding business: we haven’t have a lot of posts about this topic area… yet. But we felt we needed to respond to a viral video which lampooned clients for not “getting” the value of the work creative agencies do. After all, it takes two to tango – or quibble over a giant invoice.
Brand naming: When KFC launched a new chicken sandwich with a name developed by Brandvelope, we took the opportunity to toot our own horn a bit and talk about the process of naming a brand. And the results: our biggest single day tally of visitors as branders came by for a taste of what we do.
“Whole brand” thinking: This short post on the failure of a giant corporation to understand effective customer engagement in the social media era marked the first time a SlideShare deck of ours reached 2000 hits – and climbing (in response to a tip from Alison Gresik).
Social media: Funny to talk about this one as a greatest hit – because we wrote it in the middle of the current “faves” series – and it’s really still going with more than 100 RTs to date. Basically, we wondered a) what @SamEyeEm would be like on Twitter, and b) what Dr. Seuss might think about the new “ReTweet” feature on Twitter.
Beg to Differ is going to take a quick break from our greatest hits series today to reflect on a profound thought. We all love Dr. Seuss and Green Eggs and Ham right? Myself, this I’ve read the story to my kids fifty kajillion times. Which got me thinking. Sam I Am is a humourous little fella – in a book….
@SamEyeEm shows off some new features of the interface. But is he perhaps already of the rails and heading for a fall? Read on.
But would you follow @SamEyeEm on Twitter?
@SamEyeEm!
@SamEyeEm!
I will not follow @SamEyeEm!
Would you become my Twitter friend?
I won’t become your Twitter friend!
To Follow you I don’t intend!
I would not sir if you ReTweet.
You might just be a spamming cheat
I won’t become your Twitter friend!
I will not follow @SamEyeEm!
Would you post to my #hashtag?
(I will not block or flame or flag.)
I will not post to your #hashtag.
I won’t debate or wank or brag.
I would not sir if you ReTweet.
Or DM me, or kiss my feet,
I won’t become your Twitter friend!
I will not follow @SamEyeEm!
But if I link out to your blog?
Or tag a TwitPic of your dog?
Not for my blog.
Don’t perv my dog!
Won’t use your tag.
That’s not my bag.
I would not sir if you R-T.
Or even if you Follow me
I won’t become your Twitter friend!
I will not follow @SamEyeEm!
Would you? Could you? If I list?z
I’ll add you twice, oh I insist!
Look buddy, now I’m getting pi….
You may follow. You will see.
When Demi Moore, she follows me!
I would not, could not for Celebs.
I will not for your convo threads.
I will not join your Mafia clan
I do not want your virus spam
I do not want to stay up late
To learn about what you just ate.
I would not sir if you ReTweet
My best words you would just delete.
I won’t become your Twitter friend!
I will not follow @SamEyeEm!
Reply! Reply!Reply! Reply!
Oh could you, would you just reply?
No! No reply! No props! No links!
You cannot spell! Your grammar stinks!
Your thoughts are often just bizarre
You have a dorky avatar.
You tweet ten thousand times a day –
With never anything to say!
I would not sir if you ReTweet
I would not for the sake of Pete!
I won’t become your Twitter friend!
I will not follow @SamEyeEm!
Say! Will this do?Will you if I find for you
A hundred thousand followers too?
But only seven follow you!
Would you, could you, on TweetDeck?
I would not, could not, on TweetDeck.
Nor will I with another tech.
I won’t on Facebook find your face.
Nor FriendFeed, LinkedIn, or MySpace.
Not in my Outlook e-mail box.
And not with Chrome or FireFox.
Not even Wikipedia
I’m anti-Social Media!
You will not follow me at all?
Now we’ve breached the firewall!
Could you, would you, for free stuff?
No swag could ever be enough!
Would you, could you, if they placed“
ReTweet” on Twitter’s Interface?
Apologies to Dr. Seuss for butchering his rhyme. But please buy the original, and read it to a kid.
Excuse me?
But when you clicked it you would find
These Tweets came out all deaf and blind
With no real chance to edit them
Then would you follow @SamEyeEm?
Um… no…
Where are you going with this?
No room for context, irony Or “Laugh-Out-Louds” oh you will see
How clean the new ReTweets can be.
And you don’t have to follow me.
Sorry?
The best part of this brand new model:
If just one friend ReTweets my twaddle,
Ta da! I’m there within your stream!
No, no, what is this evil dream?!?!?
So now it’s neither here nor there Don’t follow me, I just don’t care.
I may be the biggest Twitterbator…
But I’ll still CU-L8r G8r
LOL. LMAO. ROFL.
The end… or is it?
If you hate the new ReTweet feature on Twitter as much as we do, please read more in our Twiterloo post from last week to see what you can do about it.
Fight the DUM-RT!
(our term for the new “feature”)
Long live SMA-RT!
(the classic RT that works – rhymes with “party”, for your own poems.)
In which the world actually seems to start listening…
These were heady and humbling months for Beg to Differ and included three of our most popular posts (below) – including 25 meaningless tag lines (first post to clear 100 views a day – which seemed like a big deal to us), healing the Princess Bride post (shameless “link bait”? Perhaps… but it cleared 1000 views over a week.) , information pills and of course the break-up letter to Intel (which peaked at 620 views / day with more than 3250 unique visitors to date).
But though the stats are fun to throw around, price more importantly, the conversation got deeper, and we started hearing from Fortune 500 branders and important thinkers in various fields. And we started to feel like this project could actually make a Differ… ence.
Taglines & positioning: This one by Lauren Hughes still gets a lot of hits, because a) it’s really funny, and b) seeing this list makes almost everyone who reads it think about their own tag line – and realize just how empty most of them are.
August 24, 2009 Branding lessons: this was our first viral “mini-hit” and still has more Re-Tweets on Twitter than any other post. Why? Well because it’s based on one of the greatest movies of all time of course.
Consumer branding: this is a reflection by Dennis Van Staalduinen on what he – and all of us – can learn from the New Coke debacle in the mid-eighties, and the monumental arrogance behind Coke’s faulty assumption that they owned their brand…
Humanity in branding: this theme has been picking up steam in the last couple of months, and you can expect to hear much more on it in the future. But this post reflects on all the ways Steve Jobs brings humanity and emotion to branding. More on the human side of brands:be human in 5 easy steps; “Personal Branding” an oxymoron?; branding is about cowboys, not cows
Clarity in technology brands: Based in Ottawa, Brandvelope spends a lot of time dealing with technology branding issues. But this post became our biggest hit ever for a surprising reason: because thousands of Intel employees sent it to each other, and dozens of current and former employees let us know we were right on the money with our critique.
3- part series of “greatest hits” from Beg to Differ.
Beg to Differ has been going in a serious way for 6 months now. And in that short time, pilule we’ve gone from just a few hits a day to our peak last month of over 5, symptoms 000 unique visitors. So we owe a huge shout out to all who have helped make this project a success: thank you for your links, cheap your comments, and your ReTweets on Twitter.
But with so many new readers joining us, most have missed some great posts from the early days. So we thought we’d collect our favourite posts for you – beginning with a few we loved from June and July 2009.
Rebranding blunders: The pizza hit the fan in June when Pizza Hut began the roll-out of a new abbreviated version of its brand: “The Hut”. We, of course, Begged to Differ, but we also wondered what Jabba and the pan-galactic Hutt Cartel might think of all this…
Place branding: this theme has been buzzing for a while, and the Swiss have come up a few times, as has the Interbrand Top 100 global brands. The sub-text has always been toward the brand of my own big place, Canada. And you’ll hear more about my thoughts on that in the near future.
Coffee-shops: Sad to say, we drink a lot of coffee at Beg to Differ, so it comes up a lot. In July, rumours reached Beg to Differ that Big Coffee poster child Starbucks Inc. was going to be experimenting with launching an “unbranded” line of alcohol-serving coffeehouses.
Acronyms & abbreviations: In July, we broached the topic of abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms, or “NOMOnyms” as we call the lot of them. This post by Lauren Hughes was pretty funny stuff, but the point comes across clearly.
![goat2[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.begtodiffer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/goat21.jpg?resize=300%2C150&ssl=1 "goat2[1]")
![goat2[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.begtodiffer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/goat21.jpg?resize=600%2C300&ssl=1 "goat2[1]")
@SamEyeEm!
![Jabba-Reacts-med2[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.begtodiffer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Jabba-Reacts-med21.jpg?resize=300%2C150&ssl=1 "Jabba-Reacts-med2[1]")
![090701_russianigeria[1]](https://i0.wp.com/www.begtodiffer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/090701_russianigeria1.jpg?resize=300%2C150&ssl=1 "090701_russianigeria[1]")