How far would you campaign for “real beauty?”

All around the United States, it’s school picture time. A friend of mine uploaded this to Facebook and commented that her school is offering to retouch photos for $10. In my school district, the option only costs $5. We applaud marketers – Dove, Nike – for promoting the use of more “realistic” models in advertising. …

Trend School – Austin, Nov 3

Archrival – our compadres who got the world searching for Red Bull Stashes, mess with high speed cameras, and have Honey Badger on their after-hours answering machine – are partnering with experts from the Intelligence Group to bring Trend School to Austin on November 3rd. If you need to keep up with the latest in …

Forward With Ford

I spent a couple of days last week with Ford in Dearborn as part of an event for the social press/media called Forward With Ford. In hindsight, it’s difficult to imagine another company that could pull off what Ford did. For starters, the automotive industry occupies a spot within the American psyche. Ford products are …

A little too familiar?

Do these gates look familiar? They’re the entrance to a popular store you’ve see in almost every suburban shopping mall, just a bit different in this particular outlet. Destinations have changed. The proliferation of global brands make this difference ironically apparent, making foreign cities both comfortingly familiar and unfortunately similar. Almost everywhere you go, you can have …

Pricing the emperor’s new clothes

In the aftermath of the holiday gifting season, here’s some insight into the effect of pricing on brand.  The bottom line isn’t good.  Jonathan Salem Baskin illuminates the illogic of sales over at Dim Bulb. If losing brand equity through consumer training isn’t bad enough, The Boston Globe offers evidence that only 5 of 52 …