The whole concept of "branding" is a vacuous hustle, the majority of the time. You can spend outrageous amounts of money "improving" your "brand" with only vague ideas and doublespeak. Nowhere is this more evident than in "rebranding" and logo redesign and shit like that, that could be accomplished by one guy with a…
Every year "brand consultancy" (the fake industry to get into, btw) Interbrand puts out a numerical ranking of the world's "best" brands. They have a long bit in the press release about their methodology, but I always assume they just count up the Google hits for "(Brand) sucks." The new list is out, and it seems to…
Sure, the internet is great, but you never know when some disgruntled person will go out and register a domain name that has to do with you. So 35% of companies "own the domain name for their brand followed by the word 'sucks.'" As well they should! Some companies are more thorough than others. Xerox has…
You thought that Rafael Nadal's pensive, shirtless pose on the back cover of New York magazine last week was just one more coup by the mag's upscale media trendsetters? Think again! Nadal himself-or, more accurately, his corporate overseer Nike-is in the midst of remaking his entire image, shifting it from that of a…
The sad television image: while single people run around coupling with any and all sweaty bodies in their path, married people are sick of each other and never have sex. Not tonight, honey! The happier truth: in real life married people actually do have sex! Or so we hear. This disconnect is a matter of concern to…
I don't claim to be an expert on hair, or sexiness, but I'd be willing to wager that far fewer people have heard of "Sexy Hair Concepts LLC" than have heard of Victoria's Secret. Nevertheless, Sexy Hair Concepts somehow managed to persuade a Trademark Board that "consumers were likely to confuse the lingerie giant's…
BrandTags.net is a website with a deceptively simple idea: it shows you a brand's logo, and you enter the first word that comes to mind. Then it combines all the thousands of responses into a tag cloud, showing the overall consumer perception of each brand. Smart! So what great truths do these responses show,…
Hannah Montana, the kids' show starring exploited teenager (or, alternately, picture-posing strumpet) Miley Cyrus, ran its first new episode in two months last Sunday. And the ratings were down 24%! Could this be the end for our hero—done in by Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fair, and a child-unfriendly wave of bad…
You'd think at some point, in a creative review meeting, some advertising exec would stand up and say, "Maybe the 9-11 picture's not such a good idea." Such a simple sentence. But no! The latest example of incorporating a nationally traumatic terrorist mass murder into an ad: this spot for SABC Radio [via AdScam],…
What is the single most repellent image that humans can conjure up? Apparently, it's scorpions. Trendhunter has a list of the Top 50 "Shockvertisements" in recent history—ads that stirred up a controversy. The most common thread, obviously, is sex; but three different campaigns on the list chose to shock people by…
Back in the 1930s and 40s, Kellogg's cereal was a steamroller. It didn't have all types of boutique designer cereals to compete against, so you were damn well going to eat it. And Kellogg's wasn't shy in positioning itself. It's not just something you consume; its products will cure constipation, calm your nerves,…
San Francisco-based advertising guru Hal Riney died this week at the age of 75. He masterminded a ton of corporate ad campaigns, but he'll go down in the history books as the man whose ads helped re-elect Ronald Reagan in 1984 [NYT]. His masterpiece for Reagan was "It's Morning Again In America," a minute-long spot…
Remember that whole "Campaign For Real Beauty" by Dove that was all about showing that real, non-model women can be pretty too? Well, they're moving on from all that. They have a new, more fitting face now: beautiful, famous, shapely singer Alicia Keys. Screw you, real women! Dove is sponsoring a new "micro-series"…
When iPods first came out, you obviously had to replace the headphones so no one would think you were showing off that you had an iPod. But then everyone started doing that, so you went back to the white headphones to prove that you couldn't give a fuck if people knew what kind of mp3 player you had. Plus, you weren't…
Softcore porn king and "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis was set free today after spending the past year in a Nevada jail. He pleaded no contest to charges of filming naked underage girls, and was let off with time served . Who is he turning to to rehabilitate his shattered image during this critical period?…
Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone Group, SVP of the Illuminati, and chief party coordinator for the Rich Powerbrokers' Society, is really just a regular guy. He dragged Times reporter Michael J. de la Merced along on a totally spontaneous tour of the Sacred Heart School in the Bronx, which Schwarzman gives…
Oscar Batori is the 21 year-old "image director" (*snort*) on the Meatpacking district club circuit profiled by the Times yesterday. His job, apparently, is to go to clubs, convince other rich, good looking people to go to clubs, and wear extremely expensive clothing. A $1,500 Gucci overcoat! A $1,000 Prada coat! He…
Before Hillary Clinton showed us that she really does wear her heart on her sleeve (and it's a ladylike sleeve!) she backed out of a Vogue photo shoot because she was afraid of looking too feminine. Editor Anna Wintour was irked. But the Democratic candidate is featured in a February issue of Harper's Bazaar, along…
