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About Branding

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Every day, at varying times with varying degrees of friendliness, someone in a blue uniform comes into our office to deliver a stack of papers, which we invariably put directly into the recycling bin. When I’m trying to forget how wasteful this whole system is, I pretend like I am feeding a hungry recycling bin…

We’re all driving the same car. Sort of.

  It takes a great deal of effort to design and build a car. The Japanese get it done in about three years and the Americans in seven. So one way manufacturers reduce the amount of labor is by selling the same car twice, albeit slightly altered. This practice is called “badge engineering” and no,…

Sara Lee wants more meat

Sara Lee is trading in her bag of flour for a bottle of barbecue sauce. The company — once known for its homely breads and microwaveable cheesecakes — announced today that it is changing its name to Hillshire Brands Co., part of a larger move toward its Hillshire Farms brand of hotdogs, sausages and packaged…

Corn syrup tries to get sweet with the FDA

The FDA’s mighty gavel has swung, and manufacturers of corn-based sweeteners are left with a bitter taste in their mouths. The health agency has officially denied a petition by the Corn Refiner’s Association that sought to change the name of high fructose corn syrup — that controversial sweet stuff used in everything from soda and…

What Haitian bus drivers can teach us about branding

Buying stuff just ain’t what it used to be. More than ever, personality and genuineness feel like secondary values, and that influences the quality of the things we have to buy. Whatever is left of a beautiful idea once it emerges from the mass-marketing wringer is often a mere shell of its original self. Real art,…

Pedicures and PUNishment

There’s a scourge coursing through our nation’s beauty parlors. Like an infectious Jehri curl, the trend has spread its tackiness to the windows and neon signs of salons everywhere, trying to sell us cheap nail care with a cheeky attitude: Curl Up & Dye. Hairchitecture. Shear Hostility. Bangs For The Memories. Hand Job. Yes, the…

California — cool since 1510

As far as state names go, California is the black sheep of America. Rather than some stale, obligatory honor to a founding father, a lazy attempt to replicate somewhere in England or a halfhearted remembrance of a decimated Indian nation, “California” is a dream. It represents not what was found or what died here, but…

Glory Holes, and other terrible names to give your donut shop

Bad names are everywhere. From the corner store to the corner office, people find themselves giving terrible names to the things they love, and no one seems to be able to stop them from doing it. Well, um, stop it. We’re tired of seeing neat things with lame names. That’s why we’ve set up an…

9 Hilarious Amazon Product Reviews

Product reviews: They can be an endorsement of something extra special, or they can offer an entertaining way to rubberneck at the carnage along the highway of online shopping. The standard application of the product review is pretty self-evident. It’s the medium by which you can rave about a favorite new juice processor or rant…

Startups: If we only had a brand

When you’re out to change the world, things are happening fast. Between raising money, finding good people, building a product, and dodging bullets, there’s not a lot of time to think about branding. By the time you finish reading this, you will start making the time. Because how well you tell your story in a…

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