Brand Mix

The data have spoken. Midweek recaps are preferred so midweek (or Thursday, actually) it is. Here's my roundup of recent noteworthy events and posts:

1) Breakaway Brands from 2009: Special K, Hallmark, PayPal among the winners: DailyFinance
Difficult to see what Special K, Hallmark and PayPal have in common but they've all made the top 10 in this year's Breakaway Brands list. This list is developed by Landor using the BrandAsset Valuator (BAV) brand database with those making the list showing sustained increases in brand strength over a three-year period.

2) Twitter backlash foretold: Reuters Blog
Death, taxes and the once hot eventually becoming not. The certainty of Twitter going out of fashion is being foretold by Gartner Inc in its 2009 “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.” Other technologies about to hit the downslope from the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" include cloud computing, e-books (such as from Amazon and Sony) and internet TV (for example, Hulu). Twitter is ahead of them, moving into the "trough of disillusionment" if you believe this fancy chart.

3) Walk: Johnnie Walker (via Thought Gadgets)
In the spirit (ha!) of earlier, great work by Hovis, Johnnie Walker celebrates its history with this video, remarkable for its single uninterrupted take featuring Robert Carlyle (of Trainspotting fame):



4) Back-To-School Basics (Part 2): The Keyhole
Summer's almost over and back-to-school sales reports are coming in. Robert Passikoff has a nice summary here of winners and losers. Not surprisingly, retailers selling cheap essentials have done fine (Walmart +10%) whereas those selling higher-priced non-essentials have suffered (Best Buy -5%). Despite the recession, online continues to grow.

5) Health care napkin #3: the plans: Digital Roam
Dan Roam turns his visualization talents to illustrating health care issues on the back of his famous napkins. (You can download the whole sequence here on SlideShare.) Meanwhile Jon Stewart hosted a debate on death panels, John Baldoni offered advice about speaking to an unruly crowd and Ben Kunz provided perspective in the battle for the middle (independents) .

6) Cash For Jabs: Dim Bulb
Let's stay with health for the last entry. How about being paid to get a flu shot? Taking a short break from branding bashing, Jonathan Salem Baskin says if the government is prepared to give out $4,500 in its cash-for-clunkers program, why shouldn't it pay people to get a flu shot? It would be a good thing for the country so why not?

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More pontification also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).