The world’s biggest branding crisis isn’t accounting scandals, poor customer service, or ugly logos—it’s executives’ paralyzing fear that they’re going to do something wrong. Imagine that you’ve just been chosen as the new CEO for a Fortune 500 company. The numbers you see each morning are comparabl…
Misconceptions about the purpose of a corporate identity system often cause companies to limp along with a sub-standard business image. Find out how you can avoid these common mistakes in your own organization. (Update: Many thanks to Antonio Mariscal, who took the time to translate [a Spanish versi…
Compelling stock photos, catchy slogans, and memorable marketing copy have just a fraction of the branding power of a single human being. Think of all the great ad campaigns you’ve seen in your lifetime. Now think of all the great people you’ve known. Family. Friends. Teachers. Classmates. Coworkers…
Having recently been consulted for a corporate naming project, I thought I’d post my personal guidelines on how to dodge the most common naming landmines. Over the years, I’ve put together a mental checklist that I’ve used when working on naming projects, and this seemed like a good time to put the …
The LA Times is feeling the effects of the population’s media consumption moving away from print, but their $10 million solution leaves much to be desired. Large companies tend to get so wrapped up in their own momentum that they fail to notice that the rest of the world has changed direction. The m…
XHTML, CSS, DOM, XML, XSLT, XMLHttpRequest, and JavaScript were just programmers’ techno-babble…until they were collectively christened “Ajax.” On February 18, 2005, Jesse James Garrett (founder of [Adaptive Path](https://web.archive.org/web/20060328061204/http://www.adaptivepath.com/), wrote a brie…
[Eris Free](https://web.archive.org/web/20060328061101/http://erisfree.com/updates/79/branding-blogging-and-business-oh-my), [Paul Scrivens](https://web.archive.org/web/20060328061101/http://9rules.com/whitespace/web_business/money_integrity.php), and [Molly Holzschlag](https://web.archive.org/web/2…
There’s no shortage of advice available regarding the best ways to generate buzz for your hot and exciting new product, but what are you supposed to do if your product isn’t really buzzworthy? Let’s say you’ve made a new line of those plastic clips that you put on a bag of potato chips to keep them …
The recent “I’d Hit It” ad campaign from McDonald’s illustrates the perils of trying to tap into hip subcultures from the outside. Andrew Teman of “World Champion” [originally pointed out the ad](https://web.archive.org/web/20060328061049/http://andrewteman.typepad.com/worldchamp/2005/01/mcdonalds_w…