It features an ill-tempered celebrity chef and a protagonist called Bob! Check it out!

That is not all, we are also opening up the doors for Brand Regard sign-ups. No more mucking about with Beta invites. Step right in and give it a whirl. In other words. We are no longer in Beta.

The funding means that we can now expand, hire developers and kick off our marketing efforts for real.

Help us spread the word. Try Brand Regard and by all  means, share it with fellow marketeers!

Early on in the book there is a list of rules about how to build a brand that caught my eye:

1. Develop a strategy that is clear and easy to understand.
2. Create a simple brand architecture that links the different things you do in a way that makes sense to your consumers.
3. Develop a distinctive brand identity that you can protect by law
4. Make sure you have a consistent and iconic customer experience across your products, the places in which you sell them and the people that work for you.
5. Set up dedicated brand management and measurement structures and processes
6. Don’t f*** (sorry, mess) with the logo.

I took a good look at this list and realized that it sums up the branding work we have been doing for our product Brand Regard.

Notice how I made nr. 5 bold? Brand Regard actually helps you follow this rule. Brand Regard is a user-friendly, cost effective brand asset management solution that helps organizations make sure their employees use the most up-to-date logo and other marketing related assets so their brand stays consistent and on message.

Check out the video that shows Brand Regard in action, and solves a common branding problem:

Microsoft’s Scott Dodds explains the advantages and opportunities the cloud provides for tech firms and their clients (Microsoft is the main Tech Track sponsor):

[Outsourcing to the cloud] allows organisations of all sizes to to improve their business productivity without the need to maintain complex IT infrastructure of their own. It also allows them to expand their IT systems quickly as the business grows.

According to the research firm Tech Market View, British firms are expected to double spending on cloud services to £1.2 billion by 2012. Gartner estimates that during the same period 20% of the Fortune 1000 companies “will have scrapped their own IT equipment entirely – and by 2014 the cloud computing sector will be worth several billion pounds”.

At Transmit HQ we’ve been working hard on creating the landing page for Brand Regard (formerly known as Brand Capital – we changed the name) in preparation for opening the service up for the public. We’re happy to announce that the new page is now ready! Check it out at www.brandregard.com.

We’ve also added some information about the product’s main features, our team and our partner program.

Brand Regard is currently in closed beta and will launch in a few weeks time. If you can’t wait until then, join our mailing list and we’ll send you an invite.

We also just launched the Brand Regard blog, where this post was originally published.

Regardless of the ad’s success, marketing tracking agency WARC reports that sales of the specific product the Old Spice Man is holding are down by 7%. Some agree and explain, others refute.

One thing worth looking at, apart from the sales data, is how many people have been searching for “old spice” and how the campaign impacted the search volume. Below is the timeline of how often people have been searching for “old spice” in Google (from Google trends).

Notice how the campaign only hit the viral sweet-spot in July. According to BrandWeek, the 7% figure is for 52 weeks ending in June the 13th 2010. The viral effect only takes off in July, which isn’t included in the data.

The campaign’s impact on search volume from February to June might not be reflected in sales, but the jury is still out on the impact of the viral aspect, which only just took off.

For now it’s only a tiny gap for a handful of Alpha testers with whom we plan to iron out the major bugs and nuances before migrating to Beta phase. Still a massive effort and a great milestone.

In this release we have put all our time and focus into the signup, upload and sharing features. It should only take a few minutes to create and configure your brand toolkit online and start sharing with employees and agencies alike.

We’re gathering feedback using Get Satisfaction and already have this wonderful praise in from the rock star CEO of Clara.

Great Tool!

This is an awesome Web App – I look forward to using it with my Team

Gunnar Holmsteinn CEO Clara

If you are interested in participating in the early testing, please sign up now as we’ll be extending the invitations during the next couple of weeks.

Although most locals agree that in the long run the eruption will be good for the tourist industry, there is concern about the short term effect. The fear is that people might be afraid that their visit to the country could be disrupted by the ash.

On the campaign’s site right now there’s a video with Viggo Mortensen singing the country’s praises. The site will  launch officially in a few days and then other celebrity videos will be added. Whether the campaign has enough creative sparkle to get the message across is still up for debate. While the volcano is in full swing people might simply not want to risk being stuck for days on an island against their will (kind of like the plot in Lost). What is your opinion? Is this money well spent?

Last night I started reading a book that a fellow entrepreneur lent to me called “Founders at work” it is about founders of startups such as 37 signals, Hotmail and many more. The first chapter is about how PayPal became successful and eventually was acquired by eBay for 1.5 billion dollars. The initial idea was making a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company (whatever that is). But soon after they got investment from Nokia Ventures, they changed their business model completely. Max Levchin PayPal’s co-founder claims that the main reason the investor didn’t freak out was because they belived in the team and saw that it was obvious that they were able to adapt to different circumstances.

What I take from the PayPal story is that innovation isn’t only one idea that you develop and hope that will become a success. It is series of innovative ideas that might sculpt your idea into a successful business. So even if our business looks solid according to the plan, I am keeping the option open that in the near future we might change it completely.

I quit my job at Oracle in 1999 because I couldn’t stop thinking about a simple question: “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com?”

More than a decade after Benioff asked himself this question, it is still timely. Why is so much enterprise software ugly and difficult to use?

Benioff had a point and Salesforce.com has been a firebrand for Software as a Service since 1999 – and still is.

Benioff’s phrase sounds like a mission statement for Brand Capital: Software that makes Brand Asset Management as easy and painless to use as Amazon.com.