vivid shining brands

In Ad Age today : Paul Leys, director of Ignition Factory East at Omnicom Group's OMD, said agencies and marketers alike have gotten a lot of mileage out of what's happened in the smartphone sector and believes e-reader will soon be offering up the same opportunities. "The platform is showing a lot of innovation for the print industry -- how you can read magazines and how social can be integrated," he said. "Just imagine being able to read GQ and see someone else on the other side of the country reading the same article at the same time and being able talk to them about it. Suddenly there's a different social aspect being added to e-readers. We don't know exactly what this aspect will be yet, but we are excited as there continues to be innovation in the platform." I have long believed that some sort of flexible, portable, and highly useful eReader would eventually come about, and with it a revolution in how we lived and worked. I've always ...

What to do when you've got a stinker of a brand that hasn't kept up with the times? Revamp. Rebrand. Reposition. Just Reanything, if we can get a pulse out of the damn thing! Actually, I agree with the reasoning behind AOL getting a brand revamp, as we often find that works well for our clients whose brands have fallen behind the times. But they usually have a product or service that still has relevance. Does AOL have relevance, or is it too little, too late? Also, how did they know all us Ad Men would immediately don our "Snark Hats?" From the NY Times : Whatever AOL does or does not do, Ms. Marquess said, there will be gibes from critics, whom she called “the snarkies” after the snarky comments they invariably make. “We need to give people a reason to care again” about AOL, she added, which is worth drawing swipes from the sidelines. Gabe Fried, chief executive at Streambank in Needham, Mass., a financial advisory firm focused on intellectual property asse...