April 6th, 2012
Children’s brands have the potential to shape children’s lifelong interests, thoughts, goals, desires, habits, and health… Driving destructive trends and bombarding children with advertisements for unhealthy products impacts their lifelong wellness and society as a whole by impacting the lifestyles, capabilities, and objectives of our future decision-makers. Children’s brands should […]
July 18th, 2012
I hate the word “branding” for 2½ reasons, all of which have everything to do with popular usage and connotative meaning…. Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/trimmer741/ 1.) When Branding is used as a verb, it typically refers to the isolated one-time or occasional applying of tactics to improve brand image. “Branding” typically […]
September 6th, 2012
Routinely we talk with unhappy heads’ of companies disappointed with their current brand development effort. They say things like “the brand house don’t seem to get us”, or “they seem pretty rigid in their process”. And the truly terrifying “they didn’t ask many questions, but now I have a new […]
October 9th, 2012
When it became clear that it was time to retire the “flashy” BlackDog website, we did what we always do around here. We started looking around, asking questions, and reading the facts and findings of the guru’s that write the research. What we gathered was informative, most of it was […]
December 20th, 2012
It’s difficult to make a difference or solve an issue when you are spreading limited resources across a long list of worthy causes. Sometimes less really is more. It should come as no surprise that “just” giving money, without thoughtful coordination, doesn’t produce significant change. Nor does it cultivate any […]
March 8th, 2013
I read an article recently that declared that it was more important to have goals than a mission. Not long after a credible source published a piece that argued that organizations were wasting time and resources on “brands” when attentions should be focused squarely and singularly on customers. Both commentaries […]
April 15th, 2013
Here’s one plan… innovate a dynamic, new service or product; one that can change staid perspectives or whole industries… and then place it in the hands of people who only know and understand how to do what has always been done… and you will get bored and lackluster results. Here’s […]
June 3rd, 2013
We’ve all bumped into Cicero’s Latin placeholder in templates, websites and other draft work pieces. It serves to give a sense of shape, text or typography without confusion “by removing the distraction of meaningful content”.(1) Unfortunately, the same is true for much of the results of “branding” projects, or “re-branding” […]