Lights, Cameras, Jobs!

Jobless Make TV Ads Pitching Themselves For Work – AP via Yahoo!News

Reading this, a few thoughts came to me:

• Marketing Communications is perennial. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
• In this day and age, personal branding has never been so important. Truly before its time: Tom Peter’s “The Brand Called You“. What’s your personal brand?
• Times are really quite tough. What do we need to do to survive, or even thrive, in such times?

Full article after the jump.

Obsessive Branding Disorder (Fast Company)

Here’s an interesting article about what Branding has become. Welcome to the “dark side”?

Obsessive Branding Disorder via FastCompany

Make Your Brand Pop (BusinessWeek)

A good collection of case studies about four companies that built their brands.

Make Your Brand Pop via BusinessWeek

The Power of Positioning

Here’s a good primer on the importance of Positioning… and also a brief primer on how to do it.

The Power of Positioning via BusinessWeek

A Practical Guide To Branding (BusinessWeek)

Here’s a good primer on what it means to do “branding”.

A Practical Guide To Branding via BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek’s 10 Commandments of Web Design 2008

Great stuff to think about when designing websites.

The 10 Commandments of Web Design via BusinessWeek.com

Brands Don’t Need A Language

“Brands don’t need a language… they need a connection.” – This was inspired by a quotation I recently read.

Strong Names Beat The Market

Great article from the Financial Times about the powers and importance of Branding, especially in light of the worry over an impending market slowdown

Market Trends: Strong Names Beat The Market (via FT.com)

The question, though, is whether companies will have the courage, commitment and discipline to stick to their brand strategies – or will they just slash the communications budgets as they used to when things get tough?

Strong brands help lift share prices

Strong brands help lift share prices; Finding is evident in sectors with high levels of public awareness, such as property: Study

COMPANIES with strong brands not only reap benefits among customers but also perform better on the stock market, according to a ground-breaking study.

Those best able to reap the rewards of branding appeared to be sectors with a high level of public awareness or customer contact – property, retail, food and beverage and environment.

Stuff on Naming

In the course of doing Brand Consulting work for clients, I’m usually asked to come up with “brand names” – which is often not as easy as it looks.

Here are a few great resources to look at:

• Company Naming Changes 2006 report by Strategic Name Development
• What’s my name, #$%&*? by Half Again
• The Name Game and A Study of the Pros and Cons of Company Names by Guy Kawasaki

And two tools that might come in handy:

1. Naming Tools by The Word Lab
2. MoreWords Search