Corporate Responsibility

Brand Strategy, Brands, Corporate Responsibility, Trends

Aligning Philanthropy with Business and Brand Strategy

No corporate web presence would be complete without a section devoted to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The world, of course, has no shortage of challenges. Happily, there are corporate eleemosynary outlets of almost infinite variety ranging from the currently fashionable like sustainability to the consistently intractable like disease and poverty. Often CSR simply involves giving […]

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Advertising, Brand Strategy, Brands, Corporate Responsibility, Culture, Promotion, Retail, Trends

Branding a Blatantly Bad Deal: Dollar Loan Center

When we set fingers to keyboard to excoriate First PREMIER Bank Platinum Mastercard for exorbitant fees and a 79.9% APR, we hoped it represented a low watermark for awful consumer credit offers. Unfortunately, we discovered a new ignominious winner: a 196.96% APR from Dollar Loan Center and <a title="Dollar Loan Center" href="http://www.don

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Brands, Corporate Responsibility, Naming, Product Positioning

Blackwater’s Brand Challenge Runs Deeper than a Name Change

If you read the paper, watch the news, or even scan the first few headlines on your iGoogle page's RSS feeds, you've heard of Blackwater; and you likely first came to know the firm amidst a firestorm of controversy surrounding its activities in Iraq. Sorry - you actually would have heard of Blackwater Worldwide - the organization "re-branded" to that new name in 2007, after 10 years as Blackwater USA. On Val

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Brands, Corporate Responsibility, Product Positioning

In search of a brand: Zipcar’s dilemma

There are a few meta-brands that can be many things to many people (Coca Cola and McDonalds, for example), but the vast majority of brands can’t, and too many die trying. We submit that this is a lesson that every organization needs to learn, including a company we’re keeping an eye on: Zipcar. In today’s economically uncertain, environmentally conscious times, Zipcar is a company whose time may have arrived. For $50 a year, you

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Brands, Corporate Responsibility, Design

Is this ‘True’ Corporate Responsibility, Nike?

Nike’s (NYSE: NKE) 2008 “Be True” campaign, showcasing local designers with an urban aesthetic is a new take on the brand’s “Dunk” campaign – part of Nike’s effort to lure and retain an audience that demands increasing authenticity from the brands with which it chooses to truck. The Be True campaign’s informal design grid and individualized graphic narratives create a pastiche that feels original and spot-on for t

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