I’m often critical of Canada’s efforts at country branding, but in this case one of our national flag-bearing agencies nailed it. Totally. The trickiest thing about truly great logo design is not to have your symbol say a lot. That’s easy, just layer element upon element upon element like the Canadian Olympic Committee’s logo (at [...]

This photo made me laugh and laugh and laugh, then think about branding, then spare a thought for the poor Libyan people who have had to live under this guy, then laugh some more. One of these kids is not like the others Looking at this photo, and a hilarious set of Ghadafi’s crazy get-ups collected [...]

Dumb question: what’s better for your brand? Buying a Super Bowl ad or investing in social media? Believe it or not, that was the essential question asked on Friday in AdAge’s CMO blog by academic marketing heavyweights Tim Calkins and Derek Rucker. Read it here: Will Social Media Slay the Super Bowl? Beg to Differ would [...]

Branding is about calling attention to the important stuff. The old expression “can’t see the forest for the trees”, describes a handicap many of us suffer in business – and life: we often focus so hard on tiny details we miss the bigger picture. But what about when you can’t even see the forest because [...]

Important note: the words above are BAD, and we don’t approve of any words ever being used to slur or demean human beings. Seriously, it was even painful for me to write them in the headline - particularly since I am neither gay, black or Jewish (hence the quotation marks). But this week, three news stories, and three web [...]

This brand is all about change – the good kind (Also posted at the United Way Ottawa blog) Over the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time telling United Way Ottawa what they’re doing wrong – not because I’m mean, or a hater, but because they asked me to as an advisor helping them [...]