01.04
The fourth-quarter issue of Labbrand’s LABReport contains an article on the top five brand stories in China for 2010. I’ll post them here individually over the next month or so, but if you’d like to read them all right away, including our point of view on the underlying trends involved, please follow the link above (and subscribe to receive LABReport for free, while you’re at it!). This article was written and researched with help from Kevin Gentle and the rest of the Labbrand team; thanks for your help, everyone!
I’d love to hear feedback on what stories we missed, where you agree or disagree, etc. Here’s the section on Li-Ning:
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07.02
Heard about it on NPR and then On the Button: pork wants a shiny new tagline. Without further ado, some (mostly joke) ideas.
Pork:
- Brought to you by the makers of bacon
- Carnitas? More like carneato!
- Don’t hog the pork
- Don’t stick your snout up at it
- Favorite of the Chinese, your soon-to-be overlords
- Finally, something that doesn’t taste like chicken
- Got a beef with beef? Think chicken’s for chickens? Try pork.
- If you’re not eating pork, the terrorists have already won
- It’s actually red meat. Gotcha!
- It’s cracklin’!
- It’s in the can
- It’s got chops
- It’s time for America to bring home the bacon
- It’s what pork rinds are made of
- Jews can’t eat it. Muslims can’t eat it. Someone’s gotta!
- Makin’ bacon
- Now available in smoked flavor
- Oink it up!
- Pig out
- Probably an ingredient in SPAM
- Red, white and true
- So sweet. And yet so sour.
- Solving the mystery in “mystery meat”
- Swine and dine yourself (Wine and swine yourself?)
- Ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres (Pulp Fiction reference)
- That ain’t kosher
- That’ll do
- The red, white and good-to-chew meat
- This little piggy is delicious
- What’s one less pig?
- What’s the matter? Chicken?
- You can’t spell “spork” without pork
Got ideas?
[Thanks to Mom for originally pointing out this story.]
06.15
Just something that’s been on my mind lately. Thought I’d throw together a mock menu. Click for a full-size version. If you open this restaurant, please get in touch.
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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10.15
I was happy to see a recent post by Siegel+Gale’s David Srere entitled “It’s Time to Bury Mission and Vision.” I agree with his initial points—vision and mission statements are almost always convoluted and trite, and are largely unknown to the employees they’re supposed to inspire or direct. I love Srere’s word, “bloated.” And I dare you to explain the difference between a vision statement and a mission statement and then support your assertion with real examples. Go ahead. Try it.
But I’m worried that his post doesn’t go far enough in explaining his proposed solution—the so-called “Purpose” (why is it capitalized?). Unlike a mission statement,
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09.18
I’ve had the pleasure of representing the firm I work for at a couple of conferences and networking events lately, and explaining who we are and what we do. Because I’ve been one of the few branding/marketing/communications people at these events, that’s often meant explaining what brand strategy is. As much as the average professional claims to have a grasp of brand strategy concepts, there’s still a tendency to assume all we do is come up with pretty logos and snappy taglines.
There’ll never be a lack of ways to explain branding and brand strategy (as evidenced by all the books on the topic, for example), but I do think it’s a good exercise to think about the best way to communicate its value and relevance to different audiences in different circumstances. So here’s more or less the story I’ve been telling over the past few days. I like that it’s pretty succinct (at least compared to my typical verbosity), avoids branding jargon, and gets away from specific tactics. Curious what you think about it.
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