Branding « Merriam Associates, Inc. Brand Strategies

Merriam Associates specializes in branding that gets results. Everything we do systematically generates leads, closes sales, boosts profits, and builds a solid reputation for your company and your products or services. Our background combines the rigor of global Fortune 500 companies with the tenacity of successful entrepreneurs.

Unintentionally Funny Brand Names: Putzmeister

Putzmeister might be a great brand in Germany, but here in America, we tend to associate it with a vulgar and funny Yiddish word. As Merriam’s Guide to Naming warns, brand names can’t always travel.

Congratulations to Geomentum

Merriam Associate’s client Geomentum is in the news with a new president, Lisa Bradner. Read about the new appointment here.

Merriam Associates created the Geomentum name a year ago when Interpublic consolidated several large local media-buying and marketing services units including newspaper buying agency NSA Media, Wahlstrom, a specialist in Yellow Pages and local search, [...]

Breaking the Motorola Brand

Splitting up Motorola

Splitting Motorola into two companies should have been a great branding opportunity—a chance to create two distinctive, focused, world leading brand names. Unfortunately, the brains behind the Motorola branding missed the opportunity. Trying to spread the Motorola brand equity across two companies destroys the brand for both.

Breaking up the company makes [...]

Lisa Merriam NPR Interview on BP

Lisa Merriam interviewed on NPR about the fate of the BP brand

Scott Neuman of NPR asked me about the possible boycotts of BP. I explained that brand is not a driver for people buying gas. Location is most important. People will literally not drive across a median to reach a gas station on the [...]

Boring Green Logo Redesigns Are a Color Cliche

Green–it’s the new blue. As an overused boring corporate color, blue is losing ground to green. Corporations everywhere have been jumping on the “green” bandwagon, whether they are hotels that wash towels less frequently, moving companies that reuse boxes, or retailers that recycle plastic bags. The green washing trend is even spreading corporate [...]

Toyota Brand Still Strong Despite Recalls

How are the recalls and bad headlines affecting the Toyota brand? In Context Opinion hit the parking lot to talk to everyday drivers to find out if the brand is in trouble.

What we heard is that people still value the brand—some passionately. While some people are concerned about the way Toyota initially handled the recall [...]

Renaming a Political Maneuver

Brand names aim to be true and motivating. Not so the doublespeak of political brands. Case in point: Reconciliation is now Simple Majority.

Obama and the U.S. Pentagon in the Naming Business: Renaming Operation Iraqi Freedom

When we think of brand names, we most often think of companies and products—but the U.S. military is also in the business of branding. The Pentagon has just announced “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is being renamed “Operation New Dawn”. The Obama administration states the new name will take effect starting September 1st to coincide with the [...]

Renaming Proxios: CEO Talks About the Process

Fast growing, innovative companies can sometimes outgrow their brands.

“Our name became constraining,” said Frank Butler, CEO of Proxios, a fast-growing company using cloud computing technology to create affordable and reliable alternatives to traditional in-house information technology and phone systems. “Our old name Super-Server did not have broad appeal and it was dated.”

Merriam Associates gave this [...]