by Marc H. Rudov | July 10, 2011 | Article
You’re an energetic sales rep, armed with product training and imbued with HQ’s brand du jour, sitting before your prospect. When asked to explain your company’s value proposition (brand), you reflexively blurt out the slogan affixed to your...
by Marc H. Rudov | June 22, 2011 | Article
We are constantly bombarded with billboards, commercials, and homepages that convey no or negative value and are, therefore, colossal branding failures. Few branding efforts fare worse than those of GEICO. Atrocious. Really. But, here’s one in contention:...
by Marc H. Rudov | June 7, 2011 | Article
On June 6, 2011, Steve Jobs, emerging briefly from his medical leave, made a rare branding blunder in a product announcement: incorporating “cloud” in its name. Jobs heralded Apple’s free iCloud service, which allows users to store remotely their...
by Marc H. Rudov | January 6, 2011 | Article
By now, I’m sure you’ve seen Microsoft’s series of “to the cloud” commercials. These spots, as demonstrated in the clip below, make two fundamental branding errors: 1) selling “the cloud,” yet another generic, nebulous form of...
by Marc H. Rudov | July 26, 2010 | Article
The other day, I caught a rerun of the iconic 1987 hit Wall Street, starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen. Always one to glean a fresh insight with every repeat of a great movie, I found in this screening a branding gem. Bud Fox (Sheen), a trader in a brokerage...
