The top 12 Beg to Differ posts of all time

A greatest hits compilation of the top dozen Beg to Differ posts with the most reactions, shares, and responses – so far.

1. In which Pizza Hut drops the pizza; hears from Jabba’s lawyers.

Rebranding blunders: The pizza hit the fan in June 2009 when Pizza Hut began the roll-out of an abbreviated version of its brand: “The Hut”. We Beg to Differ, of course, but we also wondered what Jabba and the pan-galactic Hutt Cartel might think of brand misappropriation…

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

2. Starbucks pairs beer and bands with baristas. Is that smart?

Consumer branding: We drink a lot of coffee at Beg to Differ, so it comes up a lot. In July, rumours reached us that Big Coffee poster child Starbucks was experimenting with 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.

3. NOMO: 25 of the world’s most painful, hilarious acronyms

Acronyms & abbreviations: In July, we broached the topic of abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms, or “NOMO-nyms” as we call the lot of them. This post by our Brandvelope colleague 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.

4. Tag lines: 25 of the most empty, meaningless lines

Taglines & positioning: This one by Brandvelope colleague Lauren Hughes still gets a lot of hits, because a) it’s really funny, and b) seeing this list makes almost everyone who reads it think about their own tag line – and realize just how empty most of them are…

Other posts on tags & positioning: tag lines have to help humans; 13 more meaningless tag lines; that guy in the kilt

5. 10 brand strategy lessons from The Princess Bride

Branding lessons: this was our first viral “mini-hit” and still has more Re-Tweets on Twitter than any other post. Why? Well because it’s based on one of the greatest movies of all time of course…

More humourous lessons: 5 more from Princess Bride; modest proposal for GM; protect your crown jewels; skateboards & stripping poles

6. The New Coke disaster still bubbles 25 years later

Consumer branding: this is a reflection on what we can all learn from the New Coke debacle in the mid-eighties, and the monumental arrogance behind Coke’s faulty assumption that they owned their brand…

More on consumer branding: weird breakfast brands; Crunchberries; Nutella; Trident loses intensity.

7. How Steve Jobs taught me about being human

Humanity in branding: this theme has been picking up steam in the last couple of months. But this post reflects on the ways Steve Jobs, with all his flaws and quirks, has still brought humanity and emotion to branding…

More on the human side of brands: Be human in 5 easy steps; “Personal Branding” an oxymoron?; Branding is about cowboys, not cows

8. Dear Intel: my breakup letter to the Intel Inside brand

Clarity in technology brands: Brandvelope spends a lot of time dealing with technology branding issues. But this post became our biggest hit ever for a surprising reason: thousands of Intel employees sent it to each other, and dozens of current and former employees let us know we were right on the money with our critique…

Thoughts on tech branding: more on brand architecture & Intel; Geek-speak and Google; Google assimilates Microsoft.

9. What if restaurants charged like ad agencies?

The branding business: we haven’t have a lot of posts about this topic area… yet. But we felt we needed to respond to a viral video which lampooned clients for not “getting” the value of the work creative agencies do. After all, it takes two to tango – or quibble over a giant invoice.

More on the biz: when branding, look outside

10. KFC client case study: How to name a chicken sandwich

Brand naming case study: When KFC launched a new chicken sandwich with a name developed by Brandvelope, we took the opportunity to toot our own horn a bit and talk about the process of naming a brand. And the results: our biggest single day tally of visitors as branders came by for a taste of what we do.

More on names:Sorry Shakespeare: names matter; brandscape – a chicken or egg?

11. American Airlines vs. Mr. X

“Whole brand” thinking: This short post on the failure of a giant corporation to understand effective customer engagement in the social media era marked the first time a SlideShare deck of ours reached 2000 hits – and climbing…

More on this:Toronto Web site fail; Human in five steps; the perils of too much choice; one immutable law

12. Green Eggs & Twitter Spam

Social media: Big re-tweet favourite with more than 100 RTs to date. Basically, we wondered a) what @SamEyeEm would be like on Twitter, and b) what Dr. Seuss might think about the new “re-tweet” feature on Twitter…

More on this topic: Twiterloo; branding explained in Twitterese; “Social Media” needs a new name.