Toyota’s ‘Ice Bucket’ Branding; Dealing with Fake PR; Predicting User Behavior

ICE BUCKET BRANDING

With the ALS Ice Bucket challenge going viral throughout the United States, auto lenders and other companies have figured out how to not only support awareness for ALS, but increase your brand awareness too. Look at Toyota Financial Services’s video below. Notice the branding. Each ice-bucket-challenge participant is wearing the same TFS shirt — and going through the experience together. Even the buckets have TFS branding. Sure, supporting a cure for ALS is great. But getting branding benefit out of it, while bonding with your colleagues, is greater. Watch the video below.

BOGUS PR

So far in 2014, there have already been a few major news stories where people fell for pranksters falsely identifying themselves as a press spokesperson. It may seem funny, until you realize that these stories are actually quite serious. Between the falsehoods surrounding the Asiana Airlines accident, the Napa Valley earthquake, and the Malaysian Airlines crash, these bogus statements greatly effected the story. CrisisBlogger details steps you can take to prevent this from happening to your business, and they are worth a read.

I KNOW YOU: TIPS FOR USING CUSTOMER DATA

Tracking customers may seem a little sketchy, but the data that vendors and merchants can acquire can be valuable. Not only can the data help companies figure out the interests of their customers, but it can also help figure out user behavior. For auto lenders, we see the application with dealers. Lenders can use this data and information so they can advise dealerships on how they can be better equipped to sell and finance more cars. Harvard Business Review outlines the potential of using customer data to figure out user behavior.