N.B. I don’t own the rights to the images on my blogs and website. Howerver, due to the Fair Use act, I have taken these from the Bing online images on Google.
A Branding Perspective: Why Corporations Oppose Voter Suppression
The rising tide of corporate resistance to new voting suppression laws is gaining momentum every day. The possible ramifications of this opposition are wide and deep. Conservatives urge business to stay out of politics, even though many enjoy receiving corporate contributions. Their rationale is a baseless argument that such modifications are essential for eliminating voter fraud, which has been totally disproven. On the other hand, many view these new voter restrictions as an alarming threat to our democracy, similar to the January 6...
read moreChaos And Challenges For Repositioning The Maine Democratic Party
The Democratic campaign in Maine to replace Senator Susan Collins next November is a mess. Starting with a strong anti-Trump movement, rising criticism of the overall political system and even the Democratic party establishment, came an extraordinary selection of an oysterman, Graham Platner, as the new Senate candidate for the Democratic party in 2025. Rise and Fall of Graham Platner People in Maine are unique – extremely independent, very passionate, and proud of their folksy values and traditions. The process for choosing Platner was...
read moreWhy A Liberal Arts Education Will Be Important For Tomorrow’s A.I. World
To be successful in brand marketing, one must excel at understanding the customer’s mindset, values and behavior, ideally identifying new insights that will lead to creative ideas to enrich a promise or competitive edge. These skills of creative thinking and emotional intelligence are essential for truly understanding human nature but aren’t provided by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). Preparing for A.I. No doubt, A.I. will vastly improve the speed and efficiency of most human tasks; it will revolutionize how we work and especially help solve...
read moreContrasting Brands: King Charles And “King Donald”
A good brand should ideally reflect a persona with certain values, style, authenticity, and a genuine proposition that people can identify with. Ultimately people will hopefully bond with that brand personality. But creating and communicating such an appealing brand is not easy. Sometimes it helps to directly compare your brand to a competitive brand to highlight your relevant differences and strengths. These principles are meaningful not just for a commercial product or service, but also for positioning a brand for people, companies,...
read moreTrump Brand: Shrewd Marketing Or Narcissistic Overreach?
Many people believe Donald Trump is brilliant at branding, since his name is on such a vast variety of products, services and even public institutions. A brand name is considered the “face of the brand”, and ideally it must imply a promise of benefits that will ultimately lead to a favorable relationship with an audience. Brand image and personality are also critical since the emotional connotations of the name should match what customers want and expect. In general, there are several approaches to creating good brand names. The...
read moreThe Talarico Brand: Targeting An Emerging “Silent Majority”
Branding is strategic, so a basic promise should stay focused on the distinct desires of a target audience. However, market dynamics often require brands to tweak their promise or competitive edge to address changing attitudes and values of their customers. These principles are especially relevant in today’s chaotic world of politics, characterized by extremism, divisiveness, hateful speech and even violence. Fringe activists from both the Republicans and Democrats are guilty of vitriolic rhetoric and misinformation to castigate their...
read moreMinneapolis-Olympics: Re-Discovering Key Brand Values
In today’s chaotic and divisive world, it can be difficult to identify many new happenings that make us feel encouraged and optimistic. Two events that are currently dominating our news are the I.C.E. driven protests in Minneapolis and inspiring heroics at the Olympics in Italy. The juxtaposition of these disparate experiences reveals some heartwarming values, however, that most people genuinely crave. And these values are also critical for successfully positioning and marketing a brand. The Power of Emotions Neuroscientists have proven...
read moreHow Politics Are Now Undermining Environmental Car Brands
A fundamental challenge for the development of a strong brand positioning is to create a distinctive “reason for being” that is highly relevant to target customers and different from competition. In 2001 Toyota introduced the market’s first gas-electric hybrid, Prius, and it quickly became the global leader in green cars. Its core “reason for being” was the environmental benefit of “saving the planet”. In comparison to gas driven cars, driving a Prius would also cost much less and would make Toyota more competitive around the world. The...
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Deviating From Core Brand Promises Can Be Risky – In Business & Politics Successful branding requires extensive research, creativity and credibility. It is strategic, so the goal is to develop a relevant promise and image that will captivate an audience, and over time establish a trusting relationship with the brand’s customers (or voters). However, when a brand changes course and leaves its original message and values, it risks a significant decline in popularity, including political brands (i.e. Biden and Trump). Business...
read moreHow Ken Burns’ “American Revolution” Undermines The Trump Brand
On Sunday, November 16, the latest Ken Burns documentary, “The American Revolution” will premiere on PBS. After 9 years in production, Burns considers this his most consequential public-spirited program ever. It’s vision of America is an ongoing moral experiment, defined by Enlightenment ideas and values that inspired the Revolution: reason, civic duty, truth and shared humanity. These ideals contrast with the Trump brand values of dominance, loyalty to the leader and his view of democracy as transactional and populist. For Trump, power...
read moreHow The Dutch Shaped New York City’s Unique Brand
This year is New York City’s 400th birthday. However, there will be no big celebration as promised by Mayor Eric Adams earlier in the year, due to all the controversies leading to his departure as a candidate for mayor, plus the endless chaos from Trumpism. Furthermore, New Yorkers are not as wistful about their history, compared to other cities like Boston. Instead, most attention has been focused on the mayor’s race between the 34-year-old Islamic outlier, Zohran Mamdani (originally from Uganda), and the older (67), establishment candidate,...
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