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15 Must-Read Branding Stories of 2009

2009_calendar_augustLast week, I published a list of 20 must-read branding articles of 2009, and this week, I’m taking that recap a step further by offering my list of 15 must-read branding stories of 2009.

Below are links to 15 stories about well-known brands that got us thinking in 2009.  These stories might have surprised us, validated our existing opinions, or even established the first steps in defining new branding trends that will carry into 2010 and beyond.  Others are just plain entertaining or fun!

As you read through the 15 must-read branding stories that I’ve written about here on Corporate Eye throughout 2009, consider how the questions elicited, debates opened, and lessons learned can affect your own brand strategy for 2010.

15 Must-Read Branding Stories of 2009:

  1. Microsoft was the Most Talked About Brand in 2009
  2. Obama and the Revitalization of Brand U.S.A.
  3. Continental Airlines Teams up with Winstar Interactive to Display Third-Party Ads on Continental.com
  4. Nissan – A Lesson in Creating a Brand Image, Message and Promise
  5. MySpace Repositions – Goodbye Friends, Hello Bands
  6. Twitter’s Trademark Stance
  7. International Trademarking Problems for Apple’s iPhone
  8. Microsoft Redemption Comes in the Form of New Bing Ads
  9. Penske Rescues Saturn from GM
  10. Oprah Winfrey Extends Brand to Her OWN Television Network
  11. Wikipedia Kills MSN Encarta
  12. Anheuser-Busch Loses Trademark Battle and Budweiser Brand Name in EU
  13. Miller Introduces the 1-Second Ad
  14. Exposed – Belkin Pays for Positive Customer Reviews
  15. Cause Marketing Boosts Brand Marketing on Facebook for Kraft

Image: Flickr

Most Relevant Brand Identity Work of the Decade

I love the Brand New blog for its insightful critique of brand identity work.  If you love branding and haven’t checked that blog out yet, then I highly recommend that you visit.  This week, Armin from the Brand New blog published a recap of the most relevant identity work of the decade.  It includes commentary about some of the most interesting identity work unveiled during each year of the first decade of the 21st century.

Here are a few of my favorites:

cingular logo

Cingular — 2000

I miss this logo.  I loved how it was cleverly used in a variety of way to give the brand a personality.

obama_logo

Obama — 2007

The Barack Obama campaign identity was brilliantly put together by Sender LLC and will undoubtedly become the standard for future political campaign branding efforts.  You can read more about the Obama brand strategy here.

walmart_logo

Walmart — 2008

I’m still not in love with the little yellow burst, but I think Walmart has integrated it into its identity well.  The best part of the new Walmart identity, which was unveiled in 2008, is the omission of the dreaded hyphen that used to plague the Walmart name.  I was thrilled to see that hyphen go!

tropicana_packaging

Tropicana — 2008

Sometimes ‘relevant’ can be negative, and Tropicana’s brand identity faux pas brought us exactly that in 2009.  The lesson to learn from the Tropicana packaging mistake is this — don’t fix it if it’s not broken and do NOT replace a solid identity with a Plain Jane, generic package design.

Be sure to check out the entire decade identity recap on the Brand New blog.  What brand identity stories of the past decade resonated with you? What are the most important lessons you learned from other identity work during the past ten years? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

CSR through the Eyes of Indigenous People

As the economic and social certainties of yester-century fade before our eyes and a new form of business starts to shape itself around ideas of responsibility and sustainability, a few countries come to the fore as nexuses of change happening right before our eyes(*).

One of those places is Colombia.

For many years—decades—Colombia was a hotbed of insurgency and insurrection.  Competing factions of communist rebels and wealthy drugs cartels sprang up across the country and kept the state in a permanent state of chaos.  Sometimes the two forms of insurrection were confused, at other times it appeared outside governments funded the drugs cartels to keep the communist rebels at bay.

Life in Colombia has become, in comparison, a little easier over the past few years.  Increased aid from the US and EU has led to a steadily diminishing drugs presence in the country and the Marxist rebels are a spent force with little popular support.

In the meantime the country’s President is on an increasingly successful charm offensive on the international stage, wooing international business to his shores and managing to get the US to ratify an outstanding free trade agreement between the two countries.

CSR is starting to creep up the country’s agenda.

[Read more…] about CSR through the Eyes of Indigenous People

Three golden rules of employee engagement

One of my great interests is how western capitalism (as focused through broad based consumerism) impacts those cultures and economies which don’t necessarily share such values.

This inevitably ends up as being a discussion about human and indigenous rights.  How the Bushmen are pushed off their mineral rich land, for instance, or how Apple’s i- revolution appears to have been underpinned by regular suicides.

I firmly believe that if western consumers knew of such tragedies they would think again about buying the goods they take for granted.  Who wants to know that their mobile phone has perpetuated civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or that the cheap fashion they just bought may have just condemned another child to starvation?

There are many NGOs out there who seek to remedy this deplorable situation, and one of those who have my profound respect is Impactt.

Impactt are currently celebrating 15 years since their foundation.  As part of this they’ve released a report, entitled “Finding the Sweet Spot: Smarter Ethical Trade That Delivers More For All”, and will be hosting their first ever conference on the same subject in May. [Read more…] about Three golden rules of employee engagement

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 4: Share Price Charts

Last week we focused on immediate share price information and today we will be looking at stock charts. At its very basic, a stock chart should clearly convey the price history of a stock over a defined period of time. So at a minimum, a line chart over the past year with a clearly defined axis showing the price is what investors can expect. Most companies also include a volume chart below the share price. Scottish and Southern Energy has a nice example of this simple approach and I’ve reproduced it below.

Scottish & Southern stock chart
Click image to enlarge

You will note that the charting page for Scottish and Southern Energy also includes a selection tool that allows investors to select the time period that they wish to view, ranging from intraday to five years in length.

This is the next iteration of choice for price charts and very helpful for someone thinking about purchasing the stock.

Taking it one step further, some companies also allow user selected dates to define the beginning and end of the chart. This makes sense for people who already own the stock as chances are most investors did not buy the stock on the one, two or five year anniversary of their looking at the chart.

A good example of this capability is the chart of Friends Provident Group, reproduced below, where I’ve arbitrarily chosen to look at the share price performance since the beginning of the year 2000.

Friends Provident stock chartA close inspection of the chart will also show that investors have the capability to chart against other companies (in this case, up to eight pre-selected companies), indexes and sectors.

As an investor, this is useful, because you always want to know “Compared to what?” however, it probably comes under the “Nice to have“ category as opposed to essential information.

Finally, a feature I really like, but which I don’t see that often, is illustrated on the chart from ENI. (If you really want to see a well-executed investor site, visit ENI’s site www.eni.it.)

eni stock price chart
Click image to enlarge

They have overlain their interactive chart with indicators of the release of corporate information. For example, by scrolling over April 24, 2009, you are able to see that the rise in their stock price coincided with the release of ENI’s first quarter 2009 results.

I find this particularly helpful when I look at a large rise or fall on a stock price chart as it often helps me understand what may have been causing the movement.

In this series:
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