A New Age of Luxury Retailing: Brand Expectations

High end retail is changing. As part of a presentation to the International Retail Design Conference “A New Age of Luxury Retailing,” we talked to luxury shoppers on New York’s Madison Avenue and to former LMVH executive Philippe Soussand about brand expectations and design.

The key trends:

Luxury design and luxury products are becoming more common [...]

Naming Is Persuading: The Commercial and Political Power of Brand Names

Today’s Wall Street Journal Law Blog has an interesting article on naming laws and statutes. This is an area I have covered a time or two from a branding perspective. Naming anything is actually an act of persuasion–your name says something about your company, product or idea for a new law or policy. It’s no [...]

Brands: Fight WikiPanic By Being WikiReady

Wikipanic—it’s the new word for the latest marketing threat. What will happen to your brand if Wikileaks attacks it? As Mastercard, Paypal, Visa, and Bank of America are finding out, marketers need to be ready in advance of disaster, whether a plane crash, an oil well explosion or a wikileak/hacktivist attack. Companies can’t risk a [...]

Mr. Smith Doesn't Go to Washington? Predicting Candidate Wins by Name Alone

A brand name that is remembered is a brand name that wins in the marketplace—and possibly the polling place.

What Makes a Name Memorable?
Many factors create name that is easy to remember: great features and benefits and effective, frequent advertising chief among them. In politics, things like party, platform, personality and past performance are key [...]

Uh-Oh--Target Angers Moms with Halloween Ads

Target’s mom-bashing ad makes you wonder: Don’t advertisers test their ads before broadcasting them–even in “broadcasting” is “just” YouTube and in-store media? This ad would never have passed the mom test:

While the outcry hasn’t reached the angry Motrin Mom level, Target has still made a mistake putting down a costume made by Mom to hawk [...]

A Political Manuever by Any Other Name Would Smell as Rotten

Creating a great brand name means finding names that fit with products and that generate true and motivating associations. In politics, the opposite is more often true. Politicians of both parties seems particularly attracted to doublespeak. Take note of the new Democratic strategy of replacing the word “Reconciliation” [...]

The Untold Health Care Reform Narrative: Blame Pharma

Merriam Associates Insight On-the-Street went out to discover what people think about the debate on health care reform.  We wanted to see if there is a consensus among regular people who are not taking active part in the debate.

What we heard is rather different from what is reported on the news.  Away from the fun-house [...]

Nude Followers on Twitter

Seems hardly a day goes by without a “busty blonde” wanting to follow me on Twitter. Though social media has been the darling of marketers for  years now and its potential is obvious, the stumbling blocks remain.

Spam:
When you get past people talking about what they ate for dinner last night, too much social media content [...]