High Altitude Marketeering

Fresh in my inbox this AM is a marketing email from Nau—or is it from Horny Toad. The lines are beginning to blur. I’ve been waiting to see signs of brand bleed as Horny Toad marketers begin to influence the Nau messaging. The new promotional email is the first hint that this is beginning to happen.

A comparison of images is instructional. First, an image from a Nau marketing email in July, 2007.

And now, an image from today’s email:

For reference, here’s an image from a Horny Toad promo email from a few months back:

The new images are world’s away from the cool, fashion influenced brand personality of the old Nau. And the copy follows suit. I won’t go into it in detail here but the old Nau voice was straightforward even to the point of being a little reserved. They were a brand about to change the world. Their brand voice communicated a respectful partnership with a like-minded customer. In terms of content, marketing messages focused more on activism than on peddling apparel. The new copy is all Horny Toad: fun loving, tongue-in-cheek and quite frank about the marketing content of the message.

I’m not passing judgment. It’s hard to tell how much traction Nau’s old brand personality, look-and-feel and copy voice was getting. The brand simply wasn’t around long enough. The question for Nau now, and for parent company Horny Toad is: how much space will there be between the Nau and Horny Toad brands? As the brands move closer together (something that the product design also hints at), Horny Toad fritters away any brand equity it acquired with the brand. If all Horny Toad wanted from the acquisition was a few more gray tops in its collection, it would have been a lot cheaper to just hide the Pantone books from its product designers.