Sometimes the conventional wisdom — no matter how fervently believed or widely accepted — deserves to be reconsidered in a new light. There is no shortage of perspectives on brand strategy, but when all the pundits agree, it’s time for a second opinion.
Cartagena de Indias was formally founded as a city on June 1st, 1533, but the area in and around what is now Colombia's 5th largest urban area has been inhabited since 7000 BC. 9000 years later, the City's Tourist Office and Spanish design firm CIAC have unveiled the city's new identity:
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Welcome back loyal readers. We hope you all sent 2010 out with a bang, and enjoyed a restful and restorative start to the new year. Now let's get to it, shall we? We recently saw these nicely designed pieces on climate change and it got us to thinking - will 2011 be the year it's finally possible to look 'green' without using green?
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At the risk of broadcasting old news to those of our faithful readers who are current on their cover-to-cover perusals of The Economist, we offer the story of Ford Motor Company: an organization that understands the inextricable links between culture, operations and brand.
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Yesterday Sir Richard Branson announced the launch of Virgin's new magazine Project, available only on the iPad. We think that giving it an independent brand is an instructive decision for business leaders grappling with the brand architecture issues surrounding the launch of any new product or service.
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Our man in Ireland brings back this report in our intermittent series on poor choices in typography. In a nod to the Thanksgiving holiday and an effort to dull the sting of the government's latest austerity plan, he stepped into one of his wee locals, The Old Reliable – a pub so authentic that it still smells like a roomful of lit cigarettes, nearly seven years after the last one was sm
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We suppose it’s not only a lesson from Business 101 but from Life 101: Only move on to the next step when the previous step is complete. A maxim of Aurelian sophistication it ain’t, but how many inspired ideas have you had to relegate to the cutting room floor and how much time has your organization wasted because of a failure to adhere to it? Here’s how it tends to happen: Core team in charge of solving problem defines parameters and begins work. Potential solut
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In two and a half hours, Apple promises to make an important new announcement. If the Wall Street Journal is right, Apple may be overplaying its hand. This is the home page that Apple has up until 3pm Greenwich Mean Time:
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We recently ran across a very cool shop with a very attractive range of designed goods that very much appealed to our aesthetic sensibilities but we just couldn't bring ourselves to enter because of one very silly word on their windows.
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The past few weeks have seen a firestorm of controversy surrounding the planned rebranding of Irish energy suppliers ESB and Bord Gáis, the government-established incumbents providing electricity and natural gas to the Republic.
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Our man in Europe sends this report (the first of many, we hope): at least one EU concern appears (claims?) to get the link between branding and organizational development. Take a look at this out-of-home ad for eMobile, Ireland's newest mobile provider:
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