Last week, Palm released the much-anticipated Pre. Hailed as the iPhone killer, the Pre is loaded with features that further push the limits of the smartphone category. Today, Apple is anticipated to release a new iPhone 3G with bumped hardware specs and new software to directly compete with the Pre. Two smartphones with near-identical hardware [...]

Right across the street from Starbucks, and about 500 metres from the 1st Bridgehead in the Westboro area of Ottawa (and a short walk from my house), my favourite coffee brand has opened a shiny new 10th location. And boy am I excited.   Two days before they opened, I managed to get a tour from store manager Mia [...]

First, though, let us take a moment to grieve for the famed Crunchberry, recently determined to be not real fruit.  Gasp! A California woman recently filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court that she had been purchasing ”Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries” for the past four years in the belief that she was eating real, live [...]

Dennis discusses the human roots of Branding: the need to make sense of our surroundings by naming, organizing and telling stories about the things we encounter. This is a theme I come back to over and over in all my work: the need to understand branding in the context of human values and human needs. [...]

So with all the kerfuffle around the GM bankruptcy (and the gajillions of dollars we’ll all be shelling out to save its butt from the fire), the one thing that gets forgotten as always is the brand strategy angle: 60-90 days from now, GM will be re-emerging from bankruptcy under a new coporate banner. Now, [...]

Trident “Less Intense” – both a sign of changing times and a spectacular positioning error.