08.30
[A version of this post was first published on FutureBrand's FBlog.]
FutureBrand Singapore is a regional hub, meaning we service clients not only domestically but also in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. That means a fair bit of travel for most of us, although sadly it’s all too often the kind of travel that involves less time site-seeing, meeting people and getting to know local cultures and more time on planes and in airports. (And in cities like Jakarta, Manila and Bangkok, a lot of time on the ground is spent in traffic.) But even with all the running around, there’s still plenty to see, do and photograph. Here are ten photos from around Southeast Asia—mostly shot from my phone, while on the go—all demonstrating some aspect of brand strategy. Check out the slideshow first and then read more about each photo/idea below.
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03.14
It’s been two weeks since I moved from Shanghai to Singapore to join FutureBrand, but I still have one last post in my “top brand stories from China” series. Previously, I posted five of 2010’s top brand stories in China, a recap of something I wrote for last December’s issue of Labbrand’s LABReport. This final post looks at the overarching trends and “brands to watch” related to each of the five stories. Each story demonstrated a broader trend that will continue in the near and long term.
To read the original five stories, click the links below:
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02.17
I recently attended a meeting in Singapore as preparation for a new role (!) I’ll be stepping into with FutureBrand later this month. As pre-work, all attendees were invited to write a quick “five things you need to know about,” in the style of Campaign Asia-Pacific’s regular column of the same name. Limiting it to five things and 300 words made it an interesting exercise in self-censorship. Here’s what I wrote:
Naming is a process. Generating product names is a creative exercise, but there is an accepted process for finding strong, available product names, and there are people who make a decent living doing nothing but making up names.
Sleep on it. There’s a very long list of brand names that sound fine now but must have sounded crazy once: Snickers, Macintosh, Virgin, Google, Gap, etc. Names that seem strange, ridiculous, or even offensive at first can be the best candidates, so you should always take a few days to reflect on the options.
Context matters. We often evaluate name candidates in isolation, but they’ll rarely be experienced that way.
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01.13
1. It’s different.
You’d think this kind of knee-jerk reaction would be limited to amateurs, but even Laura Ries writes, “when it comes to branding, the best kind of change is usually no change at all.” Really? Companies change, market conditions change, competition changes, consumers and their preferences change. The world changes. But logos shouldn’t?
2. They got rid of “Starbucks.”
CoreBrand contends that “dropping the Starbucks name from their logo will only serve to confuse consumers who are not as familiar with the company” (posted on Branding Strategy Insider). Seriously? Starbucks has 16,000 stores. Nike, Apple, McDonald’s and others have dropped their names, and seem to be ok.
Besides, this will aid the company’s global expansion efforts by focusing on a universal design rather than a language-specific name. “Starbucks,” or a localized name like “星巴克,” can still be printed nearby, like on the opposite side of the cup.
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03.15
I’ve been doing some competitive research lately, and for once it’s not for a client. It’s for my own company (the one that now employs me), which means I’m examining brand consulting firms and other shops that do basically what we do but maybe call it something different. (Which, by the way, is a plague in this industry—an industry that demands its clients communicate clearly, and yet insists on using nebulous terms interchangeably and coming up with proprietary “processes” that are little more than trademarked names for the same thing all their competitors do. But we can talk about that some other time.)
I looked at fourteen companies in total, including Landor, Interbrand, Futurebrand, The Brand Union, Lippincott, Wolff Olins, Prophet, Siegel+Gale, Added Value, BrandLogic, and four smaller, Asia-based agencies. I chose these firms based on
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