Favourite branding posts of 2009: June & July

3- part series of “greatest hits” from Beg to Differ.

Beg to Differ has been going in a serious way for 6 months now. And in that short time, pilule we’ve gone from just a few hits a day to our peak last month of over 5, symptoms 000 unique visitors. So we owe a huge shout out to all who have helped make this project a success: thank you for your links, cheap your comments, and your ReTweets on Twitter.

But with so many new readers joining us, most have missed some great posts from the early days.  So we thought we’d collect our favourite posts for you – beginning with a few we loved from June and July 2009.

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1. Pizza Hut drops the pizza… again

June 19, 2009

Rebranding blunders: The pizza hit the fan in June when Pizza Hut began the roll-out of a new abbreviated version of its brand: “The Hut”.  We, of course, Begged to Differ, but we also wondered what Jabba and the pan-galactic Hutt Cartel might think of all this…

Other posts on this topic: Radio Shack as “The Shack” and SciFi becomes SyFy.

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2. I’m so mad at Switzerland!

June 29, 2009

Place branding: this theme has been buzzing for a while, and the Swiss have come up a few times, as has the Interbrand Top 100 global brands. The sub-text has always been toward the brand of my own big place, Canada. And you’ll hear more about my thoughts on that in the near future.

More on the theme: Swiss SecretsLethal generosity in WelliWest; and Highlights from 2009 Interbrand Global Brands

Sign in front of shop

3.Starbucks: beer, bands, & baristas

July 20, 2009

Coffee-shops: Sad to say, we drink a lot of coffee at Beg to Differ, so it comes up a lot. In July, rumours reached Beg to Differ that Big Coffee poster child Starbucks  Inc. was going to be experimenting with launching an “unbranded” line of alcohol-serving coffeehouses.

More on coffeeLessons from Ottawa’s BridgeheadTim Hortons returns home; and Starbucks VIA and brand civil war.

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4.NOMO: The 25 worst acronyms in the world

July 31, 2009

Acronyms & abbreviations: In July, we broached the topic of abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms, or “NOMOnyms” as we call the lot of them. This post by Lauren Hughes was pretty funny stuff, but the point comes across clearly.

Other posts on abbreviated names: government acronyms (NOMO!)abbreviation hurts brand equity; and Dragon’s Den & EDC.

More in this series:

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