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.

Glenn Beck's Brand of Politics at the Restore Honor Rally

Merriam Associates doesn’t often cover politics, but when we found ourselves in Washington DC during the Glenn Beck Restore Honor rally, we couldn’t resist asking participants why they came, what they stand for and what they hope will happen next. We discovered the “Glenn Beck brand” of politics is different than portrayed and is broader [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Unintentionally Funny Brand Names: BARF Pet Food

If you have a pet, you’ve surely dealt with your share of barf. In light of that, would you eagerly feed your dog or cat BARF brand pet food?

Believe it or not, the company BARF World has made a business selling raw BARF to pet owners across the country. I’ve scoured the BARF site and [...]