Category — Brand Identity

Navigating the sustainability maze of product packages. By Brad Scott. Acting “sustainably” means maintaining a balance and not depleting your available resources. In business, this often translates into balancing costs against a product’s impact on the community in which you operate. Some companies refer to this as “the triple bottom line,” which takes into account profit, people, and planet.

Another term we often hear is “cradle-to-cradle” or “closed-loop” product management, meaning that products have more than a single life or can be reborn in a new form. Nike Grind is a dazzling illustration of this concept: To date, some 25 million pairs of used athletic shoes have been collected, ground up, and turned into surfaces for playing fields …
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Burger King treats its fans to a new kind of dining experience. An exclusive Q&A interview with North American president Chuck Fallon by Tim Manners. Loyalty to Burger King might be defined as enjoying a Whopper for lunch every day. That would make Chuck Fallon a loyalist for sure, because that’s what he so often has — with cheese but no mayonnaise (yes, he has it his way).

However, for most people — anyone who, unlike Chuck, is not the company’s North American president — loyalty may not be so easily defined.

But Chuck well remembers what deep-seated loyalty feels like. He recalls that when he was eight, and growing up in Texas, his parents let him ride his bike to the neighborhood Burger King all by himself. The emotional pull of that memory endures to this day … read >>

Panera puts its bread where its mouth is. By Dori Molitor. Ever since the January issue of The Hub, in which we celebrated the arrival of the 2010s as “The We Decade,” I’ve been looking for examples of companies that demonstrate an understanding of the desire of individuals to band together and make a difference.

Our journey began in March, with J&J’s BabyCenter, which enables moms to help other moms be better moms. In May, we looked at Pepsi and its Refresh Project, which harnesses the power of online social networks to create change at a local level … read >>

Does your brand sound as good as it looks? By Lulu Raghavan. We preen in front of a mirror every morning and adjust our physical appearance, but when was the last time we checked how we sound?

The same is true of brands. Brand managers spend vast amounts of time thinking about what should be communicated through the visual identity, but typically very little time considering how the brand should sound … read >>

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)