Entries from BizBox Blog on Slate tagged with 'Branding'
Starbucks's Latest Ploy
The conventional wisdom is that during down times, you discount; most recently, we noted that even so indelibly premium a brand as Vogue is in on this trend. And several months ago, we reported that Starbucks, too, had launched...
Discounting Is In "Vogue"
Not that we needed it, but here is further confirmation of what we've been saying--namely, that the basic solution to surviving hard times is discounting, discounting, and more discounting. The New York Times reports that Vogue, the Condé Nast monthly...
Starbucks and I.B.M. Help The Smaller Fish
The New York Times runs not one but two stories highlighting ways in which big and small businesses can create a symbiotic, mutually beneficial dynamic, rather than one in which they are constantly at odds. One article describes how the...
Discounting's Downside
For as long as we can remember, we've been saying that discounting is an absolutely essential part of a recession-survival strategy. Does it cut your profit margins? Sure. But profit margins aren't worth the paper you calculate them on if...
Three Steps To Specializing
Q: I run a one-man advertising agency that bears my name. I’m known as an expert in health care marketing, but I’m very nervous about the idea of branding myself as a health care shop exclusively. That category provides...
Advertising Your Religion
Q: I’m a deeply religious person. Should I be wary of broadcasting my religion when building my personal brand? A: There’s a reason for the saying, “Never talk about religion and politics.” They’re divisive subjects that get people’s passions...
Starbucks Is Your New InstaCoffee
One of the bigger pieces of business news this week is that Starbucks, which has struggled mightily over the past year as the collapsing economy had made people slightly less ready to buy $5 lattes every day, has thrown...
Can You Twitter Your Brand?
Q: With the economy as ugly as it is, I’m looking for the most cost-effective branding channels possible. Are social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter worth the time and effort? A: As with most things, it depends. Facebook,...
Calling Your Brand Your Own
Last Friday, we hosted our latest BizBooks discussion forum with Peter Montoya, author of The Brand Called You. For an hour, Peter graciously answered our and our readers' questions about how to market yourself to customers. You can--and should!--read...
How To Make Yourself A Brand
Reminder! The BizBooks discussion with Peter Montoya, author of The Brand Called You, goes down tomorrow, Friday, at 3 P.M. Eastern. In other words: it's not too late to submit a quesiton for Peter! Please do so. And tune...
The Brand Called You
By now you're probably familiar to seeing a person--an actual individual--referred to as a "brand". You first heard such a thing a decade or two ago, perhaps regarding Michael Jordan, or a movie star. And the trend has only...
This Is How You Get Good Press
You're a business that offers a tech service. You don't want to get the bad reviews that Apple gets every other day for keeping the iPhone app store more closed than most people would like. What do you do?...
facebook Pulls An Apple
We've generally focused on smartphones and applications for them as the prime ground for eager start-ups. But for a very similar platform, one should not at all ignore facebook, the massive social-networking Website. We should not ignore it because...
Is Apple Blocking Google Voice?
NOTE: GOOGLE VOICE IS NOW OBTAINABLE FROM THE IPHONE APP STORE, WHICH IS NOT REFLECTED IN THE ORIGINAL POST. THAT SAID, THE LARGER POINT, ABOUT APPLE'S SECRECY AND BIZARRE CAPRICIOUSNESS IN TERMS OF APP STORE APPROVAL, STILL VERY MUCH...
Obama the Marketer
It's been a week since Barack Obama pulled off his resounding victory. The postmortems have credited any number of factors: Obama's superior campaign; the massive warchest he amassed; the utterly debased status of the Republican brand; John McCain's selection...
Apple Lets Google Get Away With A Kill (Switch)
We've been praising Google for promising to make the application store for its new Android mobile-phone operating system--whose first active phone, the G1, drops tomorrow--as open-source as possible. This distinguishes Google and Android from its main hip smartphone rival,...
Purple Is The New Yahoo!
We have announced our skepticism of Yahoo!'s "Start Wearing Purple" campaign, chiefly on the grounds that not too many people know about the Yahoo-purple connection that exists, and apparently--allegedly--always has. We still are skeptical, by the way, but fairness...
Ya-hue
From TechCrunch comes news that Yahoo! has a new ad campaign called "Start Wearing Purple". It's all about...purple, the color of kings and queens, and, apparently, of Yahoo! too lo these many years. Not that you would know this...
In Praise of Microsoft's Zune
An article in Forbes takes the Apple triumphalist route to bash Microsoft and its Zune mp3 player. We think it misses the point of the Zune, which is, as we've written in an earlier post, precisely to be the...
You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream For...Gelato?
The New York Times reports on a newly successful class of small business: makers of gelato, that delicious, gourmet, and lower-fat alternative to ice cream honed by the Italians for years. "Gelato seems to be catching on," the Times...
The Real Secret To Apple's Success
Do check out Rohit Bhargava's post over at our Topic of the Week blog, here....
And What's The Deal With Apple?
Not one month after Microsoft debuted "The Mojave Experiment," its unique (and apparently ill-fated?) ad campaign for its Vista operating system, comes news (via Gizmodo) of the Seattle tech giant's initiating a $300 million campaign for Windows more broadly...
Microsoft's Zune, the ABiP: Anything But iPod
We wrote two days ago about the benefits of counter-branding, in which you conceptually go in the opposite direction of your industry in order to snatch up customers who are in the minority (so Universal successfully opened the musical...
Brett Favre: The Brand
Sports fans can (and have!) spent hours and hours debating whether legendary quarterback Brett Favre was correct to return to play another season at the age of 39 after months of waffling and a long, successful career. (A long-time...
Counter-branding: Go Against the Grain and Grow
We recently came across an article that reminded us of Robert Bloom's post last week on our Topic of the Week blog. Bob pointed out just how tough times are, but argued that they could nonetheless provide an advantage...
Rebranding M&Ms
Sounds like a contradiction in terms, right? If anything were ever all about branding, it would be these candies, which after all are just little pieces of chocolate without those colorful, tasteless shells with the little white m's on...
Enough About Mojave; Is Vista Entrepreneur-Friendly?
After a week of writing about The Mojave Experiment, Microsoft's bizarre, unorthodox, probably unsuccessful ad campaign, we're done. Except to link to this article about it that appeared on our sister site Slate yesterday. There: done. But what about...
Licensing Your Brand, Licensing Other Brands
Here's a cute, fun video from MSNBC on the licensing expo: It is fascinating how the handbag maker, while fully standing behind the quality of his product, nonetheless knows that he needs a more marketable brand--and that's all slapping...
Yet More On Mojave
You know an Internet meme has made it when it makes its way into print; and you know it is fully crystallized when the New York Times deems it worthy of its august pages. Please welcome Microsoft's Mojave Experiment,...
Microsoft's Unique New Ad Campaign
Microsoft has a new promotion for its much-maligned Vista operating system that could serve as an inspiration--or is it a cautionary tale?--for companies that are looking to tackle poor perceptions of their brands head-on. Vista's problems are famous...or rather, infamous....
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