Is this a trend: replacing or supplementing time-honored brand names with short, clever nicknames? Seems several high-profile companies are doing it, and I’m not sure why. Do they think a nickname will make them more “folksy”, more informal, more “with-it”? Or is it a deliberate attempt to rebrand? Whatever the case, I don’t believe it’s [...]

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I’ll celebrate my 70th birthday in about a month. Some say I’m probably getting old. But like many a brand, I’ll keep re-inventing myself (at least that’s the plan ;-)). But the real subject of this entry is about brand longevity. They can live on well past the end of their life cycles. They can [...]

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There’s a source of much knowledge about branding trends and principals available to all. It’s called www.brandchannel.com. It’s a service of Interbrand, a well-known and well-respected branding consultancy for major global branders. But they have established this resource which is a forum and sounding board for any and all people interested in branding. In fact, [...]

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Using numbers in names can be powerful. In describing the next iteration of an existing product, using a number after the product’s original name both ties the brand into the heritage of the past success the product enjoyed, and provides a springboard for the advanced product. Since the old and new do not sit side-by-side [...]

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It’s almost eerie. I seem to be guided, book by book, conversation by conversation, to a new way of thinking about a subject I thought I had down pat. The subject, of course, is branding. And the issue is, who owns the brand? Every entrepreneur I know will think emphatically that they own the brand. They may have [...]

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Hi. I’m Martin Jelsema, founder of the branding consultancy called Signature Strategies. I’ve been blogging on communal sites for over a year now, and thought it was time to have my own, focused blog about my main passion – branding. That’s about all I’ve thought about – outside of family activities – for the past [...]

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