I was right in the middle of writing a blog entry on how the well-documented trust problems of the Facebook brand have left a gaping strategic hole that could have allowed Google+ to topple the social media giant. But then Google+ messed up in a big way. They no longer can claim trustworthiness and may [...]
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 [...]
Mintel, a global market intelligence company, recently released a study touting growing consumer acceptance of generic, private label, and retailer brands. Yet what people say does not always affect what people do.
The Mintel headline claims “Private label gets a quality reputation, causing consumers to change their buying habits.” The truth is that behavior lags far [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
ZD Net is reporting today that China has censored some 60 thousand Websites (really thought it would be more) and over 350 million pages and is “proud of it”. MerriamAssociates.com is honored to be one of them.
The head of the State Council Information Office, Wang Chen says there is no stopping its campaign against offensive [...]
Three years ago, Christmas shoppers were rocked by recalls of some of kids’ most beloved toys from most trusted brands. We talked to consumers back then, but wondered, What is the long-term impact of those recalls on consumer opinion, brands, and “made in China?” Merriam Associates went out Christmas Eve to put that question to [...]
Politico reports that Nancy Pelosi wants to fix her personal brand and has asked Steven Spielberg to help her out. Companies often think they can fix their brands by tinkering at with their image—a new logo, a name change, a new statement of purpose. The problem is that brand isn’t something so superficial as image. [...]
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