Bendix is one of the great technology and defense brands of the 20th century, though most adults will also remember it for the attention the company during the merger mania of the early 1980s. However, the company was known by the general public as an innovator, as it licensed its name to a partly owned [...]

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The 1970s cassette brands Memorex and TDK are back as electronics brands. Business Week reports that the brands have been revived by Imation (IMN), which itself was a spin-off of 3M. For the revival, Imation hired Ziba Design of Portland, Ore., to create electronics relating to audio products. The company sells Memorex-branded iPod accessories, digital [...]

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In the afternoon, on walks in Sarasota, I often see remnants of the old GTE, or General Telephone and Electronics. The name and logo appears on manhole covers, telephone pole signs and on junction boxes on houses. It keeps advertising GTE, and will keep doing so for the next 100 or so years. There is [...]

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Yearning for the simplicity of a spreadsheet that just does the basics? Think VisiCalc. Before VisiCalc, MBAs couldn’t come up with crazy financial models. People couldn’t balance their checkbooks at home. Instead, people just had to balance that checkbook on the back of their monthly bank statement. And investment bankers had to add up figures [...]

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A few years ago, the Westinghouse brand was almost dead, a result of the breakup of what was one of the nation’s great industrial treasures. The company, known for its Group W radio, Westinghouse signaling equipment, Westinghouse appliances and Westinghouse nuclear program, was dismantled. I loved Westinghouse, especially late at night, listening to KDKA and [...]

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Everyone seems to be using Twitter to help build their brands. And while it is no substitute for a major ad campaign, it costs nothing, except for staff time. Think of it as your own little wire service or ticker tape. Below, an excerpt from the new book Twitter Power by Joel Comm and Ken [...]

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LAKE BUENA VISTA – The new media landscape is a “vacuum that represents enormous opportunity.” So says Michael Mendenhall, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) . Mendenhall, speaking Monday, Feb. 23 at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Meeting entitled Ecosystem 2.0: Brands Battle Back, said the definition of who [...]

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Why can’t eBay see the obvious? On a radio interview a few weeks ago I heard Sherwood Schwartz, executive producer of Gilligan’s Island, say that he felt that it was entirely rational that the Professor, genius that he was, could never figure a way off the island, when all he had to do was nail [...]

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