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.
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.
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 Secrets; Lethal generosity in WelliWest; and Highlights from 2009 Interbrand Global Brands
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 coffee: Lessons from Ottawa’s Bridgehead; Tim Hortons returns home; and Starbucks VIA and brand civil war.
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:
- Tuesday: Beg to Differ highlights from June & July
- Wednesday: Beg to Differ highlights from August & September.
- Thursday: Beg to Differ highlights from October & November (this post).
Oh, and if you haven’t already, please sign up for e-mail updates (on the right) or our RSS feed, so you can get 2-3 fresh posts a week.
Congratulations, great collection of posts. I’m a new subscriber and enjoying your blog. Have also added you to my own blogroll.
Thanks Andy, and likewise – your blog is great. Bookmark for future convo: I’d love to pick your brain about the crowd-sourced logo contest for Australia.