Insights | A look inside the collective mind of the Brand Culture team

Shared Purpose – Uniting Brand and Culture to Drive Business Performance

Expanding the Concept of Value For too long, the “business-as-usual” approach to generating revenue and achieving growth has disengaged customers and employees, bred mistrust and damaged reputations by substituting relentless pursuit of profits for vision and frequently foregoing mission entirely. Business literature and practices favoring “efficiency” typically address only a particular business need, such as […]

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Brand Strategy

Kiwis, Sheep and Ferns: A Pastiche of National Clichés Battle to Become New Zealand’s Flag 2.0

There’s an emerging trend to replace Procrustean national symbols with more sparkly versions of the same by means of a popular vote. Switzerland recently sent its national anthem packing, perhaps with similar motivations to a recent petition to change the US National Anthem to Uptown Funk. In the realm visual symbols, put a design to […]

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Brand Strategy

We Aren’t the Only One’s Calling BS on Jargon

Could we be at a BS tipping point? If Xerox’s new marketing campaign is any indication, we might just be. In the ads, a businessman is overwhelmed by a flurry of marketing jargon thrown at him from all directions while Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talking At Me plays in the background. The payoff? There is a […]

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Brand Strategy, Identity Design

Logo Madness: Plagiarism, Personality and Simplicity

The past fortnight has brought some boffo changes to the world of global logos and corporate identity systems. First, the 2020 Olympic committee decided to jettison their fairly distinctive logo for, well not being distinctive enough and subject to accusations of plagiarism. Then there were the rebranding efforts of two of the largest and most […]

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Brand Strategy

Starting With a Laugh: Marketing Innovation Through Comedy

After the ubiquitous celebrity spokesperson, comedy is likely the most common trope in advertising. And why not? It grabs your attention, makes you remember things and provides a chuckle in the process. Who hasn’t repeated “Where’s the beef,” at least once in his or her life? But many marketers fail to leverage comedy as a […]

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Brand Strategy, Digital Media

Virtual Reality is a Real Marketing Opportunity

The marketing focus du jour may be on all things mobile, but the future may well be virtual. While once consigned to hardcore geeks and cheesy films like The Lawnmower Man, virtual reality has now become a legitimate hot topic. In addition to giant leaps of technological power, major companies are making significant investments in […]

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Brand Strategy, Identity Design

Robots will take over design—just not good design

The robots are coming! The robots are coming! At least that has been the mood around BrandCulture lately. We have a client who has made it their mission to battle the coming robo-workforce invasion that threatens to take everyone’s jobs. Aiding them in this fight has us thinking about our own jobs, though. In particular, […]

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Brand Strategy, Identity Design

Making Sense of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Logo

The revealing of an Olympic logo is always a mixture of excitement and disappointment. The same was true with the Tokyo 2020 logo on July 24th. Some people loved it. Some people hated it. And some even said it was plagiarized. Olympic logos are fairly peculiar branding efforts. It will be seen by billions of […]

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Brand Strategy

“F Fox News” is a Republican Presidential Debate Branding Fail

As responsible citizens, we are big fans of the 2016 US Presidential race. From the logos to the messaging, to watching each campaign’s brand develop, compete and sometimes explode, it’s all very exciting. So naturally we were among the 15 million that tuned into the biggest event of the campaign yet, the first Republican debate. […]

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Brand Strategy

Calling B.S. Part 4: Storytelling

Once upon a time, people worked in a wide variety of noble occupations. Recently, however, lots of folks across all different sorts of professions have come to insist their work as fiduciaries, architects, roller coaster designers, contractors, doctors and marketers can be subsumed under a single meta-description: “storyteller.” Under this banner, architects are storytellers who simply […]

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