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In this edition of AlphaWatch, it appears another major brand owner is flirting with truncation and wants to be g too (of course, not to be confused with G2 or even G for that matter), despite the fact that the products associated with each brand might be considered complementary (assuming you’re looking to break a sweat):

So, guess who appears to be working on developing their own family or series of lil’ g marks (of course, not to be confused with another’s G Series)? Visual answer below the jump:Continue Reading GeeWhiz: Another Edition of Trademark AlphaWatch

I’m not talking about brands that say one thing and do another. I’m not talking about brands that don’t live up to their promise. I’m literally talking about brands with two faces. One face may be confident, complicated, technical, professional, and/or formal. Let’s call him, Stephen. The other face might be friendly, simple, approachable, engaging, and/or informal…

Trademark lawyers need to face the facts. Despite decades of ardent counseling to the contrary, business executives and marketers are not only testing the waters with the treatment of their most valuable brands as verbs, in some cases, they are diving in head first, committing substantial resources and effort toward the clearly stated goal of "verbing up" and having their brands used as…

—Jack Cuffari, Jack Cuffari Consulting and Brand Smacks Blog

I know – a catchy title for a blog, eh? It’s actually the title of a treatise by Erasmus of Rotterdam, and no, he wasn’t the Wharton grad behind the recent boom in Netherlands-based financing. Sounds like it can’t possibly have anything to do with business, after all business doesn’t appreciate folly, which by definition is:

1 : lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight
2 a : criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct b obsolete : evil, wickedness; especially : lewd behavior
3 : a foolish act or idea
4 : an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking

From the Middle English folie, from Anglo-French, from fol fool.

If I was indeed praising folly, definitions 1, 3 and 4 would be red flags for those readers who come to this esteemed blog seeking tips that will ultimately make them more successful business people. Right? Isn’t that your goal, at least from 9 to 5 or whatever workaday parameters your particular career may dictate? Because if it isn’t business information-driven, it’s entertainment or some esoteric thing, and dude, there are only so many hours in a day.

Well, as Einstein said, you have all the time that there is. But then again, he never read Drucker. And what I intend to discuss, or at least rant about, is not truly folly. It may very well be treated as folly by many in the business and attendant financial communities, but it’s not truly folly. Its value may often be neglected by the majority of marketers (although never the big dogs), but it is not actually folly per se.

It is the acknowledgement that between the light-speed rapidity of technological advancement and the analytical, logic-driven business school culture of the Information Age, an unhealthy and profoundly limiting paradigm has now become dangerously obsolete, but is still being worshipped: I call it the Left Brain Only model.

In the Left Brain Only business world, all that matters are analytics, number crunching, logic systems and hard data.Continue Reading In Praise of Folly: Rantings of a Right Brain Activist

by Mark Prus of NameFlashSM

Some of my name development clients are fans of long, keyword-rich names. Obviously the appeal of a search engine spotting your website is driving this approach.

Some of my naming clients are fans of short names that can be easily shared on Twitter.

Which approach is better?

I will…

Putting aside the questions of whether Tiger Woods needed to or should have made a public apology, the timing of it, and even the content of it, now that Brand Tiger made the decision to do so and did so last Friday, I’m interested more with how Tiger conveyed it and the likely impact it will have on…

Brands communicate with the world through a series of message delivery systems such as broadcast advertising, web sites, company representatives and product interaction. These systems utilize brand signals to communicate. While these signals commonly take the form of brand names and logos, they can also extend into sight, sound, touch, taste, smell or even action…

Tiger Woods drives by Allison.jpg

The impact of the Tiger Woods scandal in branding can be viewed from two different perspectives. The first perspective comes from the point of view of the companies that paid Woods to endorse their products. The second perspective is how the personal brand of Tiger Woods will be impacted as the smoke clears from this series of events.

Two professors in University of California-Davis’ Economics Department attempted to measure the impact from the first perspective. They claimed that shareholders in publicly traded companies that Woods endorsed lost $5-12 billion in the weeks that followed the car accident in Florida that set off the scandal. They undoubtedly have an interesting perspective, but there are limiting factors in their research. However, an undisputable fact of the Tiger Woods scandal is that it put a lot of brand management teams in a very delicate situation. Brand managers at firms where Woods served as an endorser had to consider how their brands would be perceived by their target consumers if they were to continue the relationship. It is not an enviable position. 

When a brand chooses to link arms with a celebrity endorser, it must consider which celebrities will be effective endorsers. It is essential to select celebrities that will positively contribute to revenue growth and profitability. I believe that a celebrity endorser is most effective when the target consumer perceives them as attractive or desirable in some fashion and the product is related to the expertise of the celebrity. For example, Michael Jordan was an effective endorser of both Nike and Gatorade because of his status as an elite athlete and the fact that both brands are related to athletic performance. Gisele Bundchen is an effective endorser for Dolce & Gabbana fragrances because scent is an important aspect of appearance and she is the embodiment of phenomenal appearance. She would be far less effective as a celebrity endorser for the Toyota Camry. With regards to Tiger Woods, he is most effective in endorsing Nike Golf products and any other golf related brands. His effect is diminished for brands like Gillette and AT&T.Continue Reading The Roar of Tiger Woods in Branding