Graphic designer and artist Ben Luckinbill, son of Lucie Arnaz and actor Laurence Luckinbill, has posted a devastating critique of the current cultural obsession with brands, metrics, likes and conversion on his blog. Simply titled “I Am Not a Brand,” the post, also in audio, appears on his blog Ben Luckinblog. It asks the question [...]

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NEW YORK- The trend of vintage and classic brands continues unabated; consumers seem to have a large appetite for older, vintage brand names and classic brand images such as Throwback Pepsi, seen at right. We talked about the trend with Cheryl Swanson, Principal of the Manhattan-based branding firm Toniq LLC. Swanson has worked to revive [...]

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In recent weeks, I have had a number of business people contacting me to help them find old brands to revive. They are looking for help to find brands that still have the cachet that might be able to be brought back, often working off the 100 Brands to Bring Back list that BrandlandUSA has [...]

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L’Oreal recently announced a new addition to their roster of celebrity spokespeople, signing actress Julianna Margulies as a new ambassador and celebrity face for the brand. Ms. Margulies currently stars in the critically acclaimed TV series “The Good Wife,” for which she won a Golden Globe and SAG award for her portrayal of a loyal [...]

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Your name has been your name for as long as you’ve known you. At least that’s the case for most of us.between the ages of four and seven months, the neurons involved in name recognition kicked in, and you learned to recognize your own name. And so you learned the word or words that represent [...]

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The employment picture is a fright, no matter how nicely the people at Bureau of Labor Statistics spin it. In the last year, my adopted home state of Florida lost nearly one million jobs, and we won’t get them back for years, even if the recession fades. The question I have been pondering is what [...]

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Brand managers and marketers like to think they do it all. But the reality is that adept brand manager of a legacy brand sees forces out there, and takes advantage of the goodwill. It is not always necessary to create demand; instead the best practice for an older product is to see what consumers are [...]

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INGLEWOOD, Calif. – As the new 2010 Health Care Bill has been introduced and passed, medical professionals in addition to the general public have all said in unison – “ok, now what?” Many unanswered questions remain. People are still trying to understand the most important thing of all – how the healthcare bill affects them [...]

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NEW YORK – We noticed something interesting in how Estée Lauder manages its brands. The mention came in a press release where Coach (NYSE: COH) and Estée Lauder (NYSE: EL) decided to market a new fragrance for the department store market. What was fascinating is that Estee Lauder operates its smaller brands as part of [...]

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The late landscape architect Charles Gillette had a trademark in his garden designs. Gillette, so focused on symmetrical designs and order, was not afraid to leave something wild or out-of-sync in his landscape. If he was landscaping a property, and there was a native cedar tree stuck in an odd location, he would sometimes leave [...]

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