Justin Bieber in Brand Endorsement Trouble?

Justin Bieber has become the latest celebrity brand spokesman to find himself in brand trouble. Advertising Age wrings its hands at the damage his prank could do to his power as a celebrity endorser for brands such as Best Buy, Proactiv, and Google Chrome.

We’ve covered celebrity brand woes and the impact of personal scandals on [...]

News Corp. Brand Will Survive News of the World's Demise

Will the News of the World fiasco hurt the News Corp. brand? I doubt it, for the same reasons that brands like Martha Stewart and Michael Vick have bounced back.

While the hacking has slowed down the business side of News Corp., most notably in its bid for BSkyB, and criminal charges for top execs [...]

American Express Open Article on Personal Branding

The American Express Open Forum publishes advice articles for small business leaders. Today’s featured article, which quotes Merriam Associates, is about personal branding–how you can create a recognizable persona for yourself and your company. A personal brand has always been helpful for advertising, recognition, and networking. The growth of social media makes thinking deliberately about [...]

How Half Naked Congressman Saves Gawker Brand

Gawker.com fans were in full rebellion. Some threatened to never visit the site again. The Twittering class hated Gawker’s redesign launched February 7th. On February 9th, that all changed. Gawker.com broke the story of the “classy” Congressman showing off his flabby torso and traffic boomed.

Consumers pretty much always hate change–witness the initial flack when the [...]

AEG, Farmers Insurance Buys Corporate Naming Rights for Non-Existent Stadium

Sports Business Daily reports that Los Angeles has got a corporate name for a stadium that hasn’t been built (it doesn’t even have permits or an architect) and has no NFL team. AEG, owner of Farmers Insurance, just paid $600 million for a 30 year lease on naming this non-existent thing.  Farmers Field is being [...]

Johnson & Johnson Brand Value in Free-Fall

UPDATE: The company has posted a 12 percent decline in profit and a 5.5 percent decline in sales for the fourth quarter 2010.

The December, 2010 recall of Rolaids is more than a new cause for heartburn at Johnson & Johnson. Coming on the heels of a year of unprecedented recalls, this latest problem could tip [...]

Facebook Connect's Brand Trust Disconnect

More and more Web sites are offering the “Connect with Facebook” option.

It appears Facebook Connect is succeeding where others have failed (most notably Microsoft’s Passport product). They are becoming the default internet ID card, saving users from having to create user names and passwords for every site they interact with.

Facebook Connect’s success is partly due [...]

Steve Jobs and Apple's Future Brand Value

How much of the Apple brand equity is Steve Jobs? Is the brand at risk with Jobs’ new medical leave? When a major brand is closely tied to a single person (think of Yves St. Laurent, Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump), brand value can rise and fall on the fortunes and failures of that person.

Steve Jobs [...]

Brand Message Gap in Blogs and Social Media

Burson-Marsteller released a study that claims 76% of blogs were off message. They analyzed more than 150 messages sent out by companies listed  in the Financial Times Global 100 and discovered a large gap between the official brand messages and how they were reflected on blogs, in tweets, and on other social media posts.

The brand [...]

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 [...]