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A few weeks ago, we commented on the potentially effective funny name Bimbo. Grupo Bimbo, owner of the Bimbo line of baked goods, announced November 9 it is acquiring the entire bakery division from the venerable Sara Lee Corporation. The acquisition gives the Bimbo brand a formidable stable of leading and respectable brands. That said, …
Levia® launched a crowdsourcing video contest in September with much fanfare only to watch the entire effort fizzle. Called “Lights, Camera, Healing,” the program asked people to create and submit original videos extolling the virtues of the “healing power of light.” The Crowdsourcing idea famously worked for Doritos® in creating memorable (and cheap!) Super Bowl …
Crowdsourcing without a Crowd: Levia’s Failed Attempt Read More »
With the midterm election results in, Brand Obama faces big challenges. We talked to Barry Silverman who defined what made the brand a success in 2008. On Election Day morning, we had breakfast and talked about what to do to fix the brand in the run-up to 2012 (plus some thinking about Brand Hillary). <object …
A brand name that is remembered is a brand name that wins in the marketplace—and possibly the polling place. The candidate brand matter. 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 …
Mr. Smith Doesn’t Go to Washington? Predicting Which Candidate Brand Wins Read More »
Merriam Associates doesn’t often cover politics, but since we visited the Glenn Beck Restore Honor Rally, we couldn’t miss the John Stewart Restore Sanity Rally. What we saw was a crowd that was every bit as white, every bit as political and festive, and every bit as polite. We asked participants why they came, what …
Jon Stewart Restore Sanity Rally–Participants Talk Read More »
Nestle has announced the creation two new organizations: Nestle Health Science S.A. and the Nestle Institute of Health Science. Nestle says their purpose will be finding “cost effective ways to prevent and treat acute and chronic diseases in the 21st century.” Their idea of finding “a new opportunity between food and pharma” may sound good, …
Nestle Seeking “Opportunity Between Food and Pharma” Read More »
Two ad campaigns, one from Conagra’s Chef Boyardee and one from Tyson, are particularly heinous in light of newly released statistics on diabetes. One celebrates kids complaining about vegetables and other nutritious foods they hate. The ad pushes pushes fried chicken nuggets from Tyson as an ideal alternative: The other features some moms punishing another …
Yes, sort of. The old-fashioned document you faxed to a bunch of editors and reporters is dead. The more recent idea of a “social media press release” is also dead—it did more for the PR agency that invented it than it did for people seeking coverage. Yet that doesn’t mean that an evolved press release …
The Ralph Lauren brand performs a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, it represents $3000 dresses. On the other, it is stacks of merchandise piled high on sale at Macy’s. Revenue from Ralph Lauren stores ($2.3 billion) is about equal to revenue from wholesale sales to other retailers ($2.5 billion). Yet the company stores …