Ultimately, brand protection is all about vigilance. By regularly monitoring the use of brands online, organizations can ensure prior infractions don't recur and can rapidly identify when new incidents arise. In a world where an organization's brand can represent half, or more, of the company's equity, it's an investment of time and resources that's well made. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

What goes unnoticed by many can be an keen advantage for the few. By taking steps to not only build a personal brand but also seek new ways to circulate your name, you will be more successful. Here are three easy (and easily overlooked) things you can do to juice up your personal branding. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

There's so much that business can learn from showbiz: Not to step onto the stage with a lousy script. How to give a blockbuster performance. How to get your face in the newspaper without robbing a bank. But, before you can even think about how to develop box-office appeal for your business, you gotta know what part you're playing. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

As a marketing professional, do you proclaim your offerings to be real or authentic? If so, you may find your customers calling them (and you) fake. So stop it: Don't just say you're real; be real. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

So many brands and companies are constantly reinvigorating their businesses and positioning them for growth. There is a constant need to innovate, reinvigorate, update, recalibrate, or just simply fend off the competition in an effort to better explain "why buy me." To move forward, companies and brands need to first take a look at their current brand positioning. But for a moment, even a brief moment, it would make sense to go back to the brand drawing board to answer the question, Just what is brand positioning anyway? [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

There is a new wave of branding that aims to occupy every minute of the customer's day with an unbroken theme of branded experience rather than the momentary brand rush of purchase. Experiential brand building is taking on new and all-encompassing dimensions. IKEA, for example, is no longer just a flat-pack-furniture and homewares store. It's a construction company that builds IKEA houses, based on the IKEA promise of easy living and affordable design. Welcome to the world of living branding—a new breed of 24/7 brands that are likely to occupy more and more of our lives, from our waking moments to when we retire to bed. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Naming. Doesn't matter what you're naming—your product, your business, your Web site or heck, even your child, your choice is important. Here are a flock of—actually, 18—ideas, strategies, and tools to make your name discovery a little easier. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

In Part One and Part Two of this series, the author discussed using "voice of the customer" (VOC) in defining innovative core products and services. The focus was on breakthroughs in the basic product, on hitting the home runs. Here, we take a different perspective—using innovation to acquire and retain customers once the core product or service is defined. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

The better you are at involving your customers in the philosophy of your brand, the better they'll understand why you're special. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Today many companies and brands are engaging in "Partnership Marketing," "Marketing Alliances," "Strategic Partnerships," and even "Partnership Brand Marketing" programs. But often they boil down to just promotions, perhaps maybe even on a larger scale. But the true success of partnership brand marketing lies in its power to open up new and alternative channels of distribution for both the companies and the brands involved. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Leading consumer-products companies are looking to rebrand, repackage and relaunch... often too frequently. Sometimes, the effort is merely putting a bandage on a deeper sore. It's far less painful to assess lagging sales in a superficial manner than it is to dig deeper into company practices, customer-service issues, and the actual product mix being offered—not to mention how customers are experiencing the brand and whether that brand is delivering on its promises. In fact, companies that really want to dig for the truth ought to seek answers to these questions... . [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

How come some brands are great, while others manage to be just good? Is there a trick up the sleeves of those great brands—a trick that good, sustainable brands can adopt to become equally well-known? The answer is yes. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Does sex sell? You bet it does. But there's another essential element that goes hand-in-hand with sex. And that's controversy. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

An increasingly competitive job market in recent years has led to the birth of the idea of "personal branding," as jobseekers look for ways to stand out to potential employers. One of the leaders of this burgeoning space is William Arruda, coauthor of the bestseller Career Distinction. Arruda's philosophy centers on identifying and communicating the unique value you can bring to an employer. If done correctly, your reputation and credibility will help you stand out from the crowd, and create an environment in which job opportunities come to you. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Last month, Kwik-E-Mart's opened around the country. You know, the one from the imaginary world of The Simpsons? What's more, the Geico Cavemen have their own sitcom, and fictitious TV-character blogs like Monk's are things that real viewers can comment on. You don't have to be a Twitter-head or a Second-Lifer to see the melding of your real and virtual experiences into one. What's this mean for marketers? [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Does the hype of the iPhone equal runaway success? Is the game already won? Or will there be an equal and opposite reaction when possibility and excitement about the future gives way to reality, and inevitable issues arise with service, availability, bugs in functionality and unfulfilled expectations? [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Housing booms, dot-coms, high-tech, bio-med, religious fervor, Republican or Democrat regimes, peace-war—all of it... all the best (and worst) bubbles have, or will, pop on their way back to the center. In terms of the "Greening of America," we are currently on the thesis end of the pendulum, with a fair amount more left to go to reach the apex. And then the backward slope begins. The bubble pops at the top. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Some 80% of available jobs are never advertised, and over half of all employees obtain their jobs through networking. The most important component of a successful job search is your network, consisting of friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances, teachers, and coworkers. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

How rare is it to see a senior marketer from any professional service firm—even one as prominent as BearingPoint—leading a series of cutting-edge conversations that do not appear to be directed at just his internal colleagues? We checked in with Paul Dunay and learned the extent to which he has intentionally begun to "do things differently" and how positively it has benefited BearingPoint. Here is his story. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

In the old days, marketers could use hype and exaggeration to get noticed and people would simply accept it. Not anymore. Today, if you want consumers to pay attention, you had better be truthful. And if you want them to fondly remember your brand, you'd better be emotional. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Professional success today requires that you change the way you think about your career—by treating career management as an ongoing activity. Creating your personal brand helps you do so—with the ultimate goal of distinguishing yourself. But before you start working on building your brand, you need to adopt a new mindset—the "Career Distinction" mindset. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

If you are flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo, you can learn how to say "how are you" in Japanese. The lesson is provided as part of the JAL in-flight entertainment in four language categories: numbers, dates, words, and dialogue. Other airlines also offer interactive audiovisual language programs, including Virgin Atlantic, Air France, and Singapore Airlines. It's all part of the trend toward brand engagement, one of the two great trends reshaping branding today and tossing such tired, 30-year-old theories like "positioning" to the dustbin of marketing history. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Marketing within social networks and Virtual Worlds is becoming a viable means for reaching and influencing the attitudes and behavior of consumers in ways that was never before believed possible. In fact, marketers who have dabbled in Virtual Worlds recognize the enormous potential of the medium... but have ventured only far enough to reveal the tip of the iceberg. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

Target as a retail operation has the perfect name. The retailer defined its target and hit the bullseye. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

As marketers, we often spend considerable time on developing creative logos and brand identities for our companies or organizations. We may ensure our Web site is well designed and easy to navigate, and our marketing collateral is top-notch. We may have sales manuals and charts or graphs to measure our ROI. We may conduct customer satisfaction surveys to see whether our products or services do what we say they will. But, it's also important not to overlook your physical space and the people who occupy it. The way your office looks, the way your staff conducts themselves and how they appear are important components of your brand. Every touchpoint counts, especially those detailed here. [Read the full story] Marketing Articles: Brand Management

For personalized gifts retailer Personal Solutions, matching up complementary items for a monthly catalog was one thing. Manually serving up suitable recommendations and keeping up with seasonal inventories for real time online sales without an automated process was another.[Read the full story]
Marketing Case Studies: Brand Management

Marketing executive and consultant Lewis Green wanted to re-establish his company in January 2004 after moving across the country. With no professional network in place, he figured the best way to promote his business would be a blog. His first attempt failed. But not his second.[Read the full story]
Marketing Case Studies: Brand Management

Atlanta management consultant Brent Leary launched a radio show in 2006 to help small and mid-sized businesses understand technology. It proved so popular that he evolved the show into a series of online podcasts, bringing new business and (ultimately) new revenue to his 15-year-old consulting business.[Read the full story]
Marketing Case Studies: Brand Management

Office supply chain OfficeMax also sells digital cameras and other products popular as holiday gifts—but its customers didn't think of it as a holiday-shopping destination. What's more, it was often confused with its chief rival. A wildly popularly web-based viral marketing campaign helped OfficeMax distinguish itself and encourage shoppers. [Read the full story]
Marketing Case Studies: Brand Management

Spot-on positioning leads to names that attract customers and taglines that sing. Get your small business on the track to marketing success. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Brand Management

This comprehensive, step-by-step how-to guide will help you assess the position in the market of your product or firm, by identifying the product's Strengths and Weaknesses, by considering the potential Opportunities the product has in the marketingplace, and by assessing the potential Threats posed by either the competition or the marketplace. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Brand Management

Great product, great sales team, great marketing collateral - now what? People to sell to, of course. Put your lead generation tactics under the microscope with this enlightening how-to guide. Get more and better qualified leads, faster today. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Brand Management

Direct marketing is one of the fastest changing disciplines within marketing today. What worked 10 years ago, isn't working today. Heck, what worked last week sometimes doesn't even work today, so keep your skills sharp with his How-To guide, focusing on the B2B market. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Brand Management

This guide will give you a mini-seminar on the art and the science of forecasting. Learn the four different ways to create forecasting models and choose the ones that best suit your needs. Then follow these easy-to-follow steps to creating a model where you too can predict the future. [Download] Marketing Downloads: Brand Management

Everybody's doing it, but you've held back. Frankly, you're afraid you just don't have enough to say to do a company blog. Congratulations! You've taken the first step toward forming a blog that's worth reading. According to Paul Boutin, "Internet 2008 [is] full of wannabe Thought Leaders."... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Brand Management

In a recent post at his blog, Seth Godin explains how you can use a blogger's sensibility to improve your other writing—from ad copy to thank-you notes. But the post also serves up some solid ideas for improving your blog itself. Here are a few of... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Brand Management

If you've embraced Web 2.0, you're probably using Twitter, a networking service that broadcasts messages of up to 140 characters through a variety of channels. As with any new form of communication, the rules of etiquette and usage are still evolving. And blogger Tangerine Toad has... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Brand Management

"Case Studies are the marketing version of Aesop's Fables," says Drew McLellan. "Stories told to make a point or teach a lesson that demonstrates the value of your product or service." Here are his  tips for writing winning case studies: Structure your case study like a... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Brand Management

When it came time to promote Personality Not Included, Rohit Bhargava had the clever idea of inviting fellow bloggers to send him five questions about the new book. Apparently they liked getting an exclusive interview—at least 55 bloggers took him up on the offer. Some... [Read the full story]
Marketing Quick Read: Brand Management