Confession time: I am a voracious reader. I love books that challenge us to think, explore, and expand. One of the best books I have read, and one that every business executive, marketer, brander, student, and, frankly, everyone must read is Jay Samit’s “Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the
Interbrand, a leading brand consulting agency, has released its latest annual report of the world’s most valuable brands. As a sign of our times, the top 6 winners are tech companies. Not surprisingly, for the third consecutive year, Apple took the top spot with Google in second. Apple’s value skyrocketed 43% over last year and
Not to be undone by other celebrity online retail stores, Stephen Colbert has announced his own new online brand, Covetton House. Actually, the brand is a satire of the celebrity online retail world, most of which has been a total failure. Colbert calls the Covetton House a “personal curateable lifestyle brand” which blends “classic Southern
Copyright owners and online media services have been at odds about the responsibility (or lack of responsibility) the services like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and others have when people post/upload without permission copyrighted content owned by the copyright owners. The compromise (developed earlier for earlier online publishers, like AOL, MySpace, and the like and made part
One of the ongoing challenges for brands is dealing with negative commentary. If you’ve watched Jon Stewart’s comedic assault on Arby’s over the years, you’ve had to wonder how Arby’s has taken it; after all, many of the viewer’s of Stewart’s The Daily Show have embraced it as their primary source of news and could
There are many ways to describe what makes a great brand. Being a sailor, I often think in terms of sailing imagery. In that context, imagine the marketplace as a dense fog, filled with names, logos, messages, information, content, and massive overload. A deep, dense, grey fog, where nothing is delineated clearly, and everything blends
During my early professional years, a major studio retained me to police counterfeit merchandise featuring IP from its mega-hit space themed film and television series. Research showed that most of illicit merchandise, much of it hand-made, was created, and traded, by fans of the property, often at conventions where stars of the show made appearances
One of my favorite sources of information regarding the relationship between social media and branding is Digiday (Digiday.com). In a recent post with the title “Millennial media-consumption habits explained, in 5 charts,” the author presented a summary of findings from two recent studies, comScore, Noise|The Intelligence Group’s Cassandra Report and nScreenMedia’s report “What Millennials Want from TV,”
I’ve always been fascinated by the disconnect experienced by so many branding professionals and legal professionals over the term “trademark.” Many branders and marketers believe that trademark is a verb, as in “can you trademark ….” Many legal professionals believe that a brand is no different than a strictly legal thing. So here’s some clarity: a
Twitter and Isobar UK have published a new research study that examines “unconscious cues” that drive brand perception on Twitter. Given the growing importance of Twitter to brand marketers, this study needs to be read by all brand marketers. The study created fictional brands to test factors that matter when consumers look at your brand