Nike retail chief Jeanne Jackson sees big global growth in small local stores. An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners.

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Digital media's upside outweighs any downside for brand identities. Featuring: Jane Boulware of Microsoft, Lakish Hatalkar of Novartis, Carole Walker of Mars Chocolate and Mitch Blum of Marketing Drive. (pdf) or (text)

Injecting digital into your brand's DNA. By Michael Dennelly. (pdf) or (text)

Authenticity and relevance make the difference for the world's strongest brands. By Will Minton.
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General Mills creates a "we" brand, one box top at a time.  By Dori Molitor. (pdf) or (text)

The digital path to engage, educate, excite and evangelize. By Shari Brickin. (pdf) or (text)

Mashup offers new brand opportunities in China.
By Michael Ip.  (pdf) or (text)

Three principles of smart planning can protect brand identity.  By Jayne Eastman. (pdf) or (text)

Mass Customization offers irresistible opportunities to re-think brand identity. By Beth Ann Kaminkow. (pdf) or (text)

Project Impact does not appear to be the "win" that Walmart expected.  By Chris Hoyt. (pdf) or (text)

The Hub's second annual survey on brand identity reveals big gaps between strong brands. (pdf) or (text)

A culture that cares is a cause worth considering. By Tim Manners. (pdf) or (text)

Superdry, Da Bakery and Tomorrow Shoes.
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The entire Jul/Aug'10 issue of The Hub (44 pages), centered on brand identity, including an interview with Jeanne Jackson of Nike and 13 other articles. (download pdf)

Three years ago, on the cover of our July issue — always our “brand identity” issue — we featured BP. We would laugh about the irony if the reality weren’t so tragic.

An oil company bent on projecting a “green” image certainly made for a good story at the time. It’s hard to resist the allure of such a narrative when success might make a real difference in the world.

Clearly that will never happen when the storyline is just a tactical cause-marketing come-on that nobody believes is for real. For a brand to re-badge itself as completely as BP apparently had once hoped requires a profound cultural shift that evidently never happened there.

For me, the memorable thing about our BP story was the way Ann Hand, then its marketing chief, framed it. Ann clearly was proud of Helios House, which was BP’s “sustainable” gas station. But her main focus was less on “green marketing” than on creating a better customer experience.

“It just felt like it was a worthy cause to try to get after the guest experience rather than just accepting the self-fulfilling prophecy that buying gas is a bad customer experience,” she said.

Had BP succeeded in this modest goal, it wouldn’t have prevented the oil spill. But we can still give Ann Hand credit for recognizing that improving a brand’s identity can be as simple as making something as mundane as filling your gas tank more pleasant. That doesn’t help the planet right now, but it’s a cause worth considering.

Tim Manners, editor

It's like the Pepsi Challenge for the digital generation, says CMO Jill Beraud.  An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners.

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Retailers and brands must work together for the shopper’s greater good. By Beth Ann Kaminkow. (pdf) or (text)

Optimism is the pulse of the next Pepsi generation. By Dori Molitor.  (pdf) or (text)