We’ve compiled a list of the 25 worst acronyms, and yesterday we showed you that tag lines need to help people. We’ve also covered more municipal tag lines and other local examples. But now, here’s a list of 25 useless tag lines from brands that should know better. 25 useless taglines Note: most of these [...]

When I was in Korea a few years back, I was struck that even in cities where very few people spoke English, “upscale” stores always had an English tagline under an English name. But the words didn’t seem to matter: most were incomprehensible, vague, or with uninteded double entendres (as below). Weirdly, these businesses seemed to have taglines simply for the sake of filling [...]

After our criticism of Toronto’s Web site, and some garbage-scented barbs thrown their way in last week’s Brand Jam, it looks like Tourism Toronto has decided to approach the end of the garbage strike with their tongues firmly in their cheeks and their noses in the air. The just-announced tag for a late summer advertising campaign – [...]

Differentiation is good. Very very good. I made the point in my post about the Ottawa Shawarma scene that in a crowded, undifferentiated marketplace, finding a catchy gimmick is a great way to get people to remember you. This unfortunately is the other side of the “personal branding” coin. Yes, I noticed it. Yes, I [...]

A recent Twitter friend of mine, David Olinger, who is the Manager of Marketing and Communications at the small Alberta City of Grande Prairie (population 50,000) has just announced the winning bidder for a branding project for Grande Prairie: a company from Seattle that specializes in tourism destination branding Great Destination Strategies . Was there [...]

Okay, confession time. As an emerging Twitter devotee, (@denvan) I’ve been “drinking the Kool-Aid” of the Twitter brand for too long to really be objective about their brand strategy. I’m a tribe member now, and I’ve learned the buzzwords, tools, and idiosyncrasies of this social media monster. But as a brand strategy geek, I also [...]