Registration has just opened for the August edition of our successful Beg to DIFFER Brand Strategy Boot Camp – brought to you by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) and Brandvelope Consulting. Register here at the OCRI Web site. This  boot camp is for all managers and executives with marketing, PR, or communication responsibility–whether in [...]

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 – [...]

This morning’s Twitter outage, is only one of the many problems facing brand Twittter. Back in June, early in my Twitter career (yes, the Twitterverse is turning quickly my friends) I blogged about this – No Twitter Brand, what are YOU doing? But now that I’ve had time to think about this some more (thanks [...]

A Twitter conversation last night instigated by Olivier Blanchard and carried on ad nauseum elsewhere, reminded me of a long-time guilty pleasure: Nutella. Just typing the word makes me salivate – and I have to restrain myself from running upstairs to slather some of that rich hazelnutty goodness on melba toast. And apparently I’m not [...]

Coffee giant tries to get mojo vibrating again Once, Starbucks was just a local coffee shop in Seattle. Then it became a mega-brand, standard-bearer for the premium coffee category worldwide. But lately, the “star” has been fading, and even the “bucks” are drying up. So now the chain will be re-launching a few of its [...]

The City of Toronto has been quietly running a campaign to re-brand Toronto.ca. The city is asking for thoughts and suggestions from Torontonians, but from what I can see, this effort has been minimal and fruitless. This ain’t the way to run a city or a Web site – or a brand. Our quibbles with [...]