Ian was asked by Al Jazeera to comment on the impact Steve Job’s passing might have on Apple. You can find the full article here.
Read more...When it comes to brands, keeping it in the family is not always such a good idea. In this piece for Reuters in India, Wally talks about family businesses and why their brands need to find their own strength. We would love to hear your views.
Read more...In the first of a series of columns for Marketing Week, Wally questions
the logic of trying to measure what
is, ultimately, unmeasurable. Yet times are volatile for both agencies and clients. Make up your mind and join the debate.
Names matter. Strategic brand
consultancies like ours have known this for years. Wally did this with Orange in the 1990s. What we’re seeing today is a new breed of NGOs that use 21st century brand mechanisms
The new government of West Bengal has decided, in association with The Times of India, to launch a campaign to change West Bengal’s name back to Bengal. What a coincidence, because that’s exactly what the previous government,
Read more...24 hour rolling news took brand scrutiny to new levels. And, as Twitter amplifies that effect 10 fold again, public opinion can be whipped up into frenzy almost instantaneously. Not so long ago
Read more...The world’s most valuable new brand? No not a sign of a recent Saffron ‘road to Damascus’ conversion to the pseudo-science of brand valuation but an observation that through brand BRIC, Brasil’s economy
Read more...I totally love Apple products and have in the past used the Apple brand as a reference point for just about anything positive when it comes to great branding, but just recently I wonder if things are shifting? The problem is that Apple’s
Read more...I love the smell of papers. The early morning newspapers delivered to my doorstep smells of the fresh printing ink used for the past twenty years. Every new John Grisham or Dan Brown still provides the familiar escapism into the world
Read more...Part of what makes a strong brand so useful and powerful is that it describes for its staff what they could achieve. It points to the horizon and says ‘that’s where we’re going’. Rather than merely documenting where a product/service
Read more...The other day, we decided to register for a broad range of financial service products. All from major UK banks, all products that are widely available. Time to see if the much talked about ‘reforms’ that banks have supposedly undergone
Read more...My children date on Facebook. I tweet my colleagues in Sao Paulo, Istanbul or Mumbai. Our clients request Apps for the iPad and iPhone. At 49, my professional life has never been more exciting than now. Saffronites live and exchange
Read more...Today was the first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters. There is possibly no more influential a platform for ideas than Davos. It brings together the ingenuity of
Read more...Jacob Benbunan is in Shanghai for the launch of Saffron’s newest location. In cooperation with Tandem Advertising Agency, Saffron will be working throughout China and the broader region from Shanghai. Says Jacob “launching a new
Read more...If there’s one lesson to be learnt from the recent Gap logo debacle, it’s that the company doesn’t need a new identity – it needs a new vision. Apart from the debatable aesthetics of the logo (have your own version made here) it’s
Read more...Nation branding is a complicated business. With so much that contributes to a nation’s brand being so hard to manage, it makes it all the more important that what can be managed is done well. The Commonwealth Games
Read more...The Viennese love their Sacher Torte. We all love to hate Ryanair. And some of us loathe BP. What do chocolate cake, cheap flights and oil have in common? All three cases prove that brands are, in part, a set of expectations. We expect
Read more...“Art does not come to lie down in the beds that have been made for it; it runs away as soon as anyone utters its name: it likes being incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what it’s called.” Jean Dubuffet
Those who create
It is typical of Tata, India’s most illustrious and admired brand and arguably its largest company that its head office should be located in a smallish, undistinguished 1920s building down a side street in downtown Mumbai
Read more...Mario Testino, Peru’s prodigal son, returned to Lima for the re-opening of MALI, the Museum of Modern Art Lima, with his traveling exhibition ‘Portraits’ first shown in London’s National Gallery in 2002, which features
Read more...“Come back to your own island.”, announces an ad for a premium apartment. “The world connected to you on your computer.” Claims a ‘social’ networking site. How wonderful the world has become! We return not to our ‘homes’
Read more...It is time for a new financial language that the common man and even the man on Wall Street can understand and trust. Financial institutions all over the world speak in code. No one understands; even those
Read more...Gas Natural, for decades the leading Spanish player in the global gas industry, recently acquired Unión Fenosa, Spain’s third-largest power company. With this acquisition, Gas Natural merges its gas and power business
Read more...Today we announced that we are strengthening our presence in Dubai, through a strategic partnership with Madison Dubai, the independent advertising agency led by Tarek Ghannam. You might think it seems an odd time to open
Read more...Cultural organizations are increasingly becoming global brands. Some argue that this will mean an increasingly homogeneous and bland world. This is not true. The next four or five decades are going to be crucial for cultural branding.
Read more...We come across too many new brands that don’t feel right for a company we know well. This is because these brands are not authentic. They are manufactured; they have nothing to do with what the company is really about.
Read more...Ian Stephens, our principal, was recently in Germany to speak at Sun & Wind Energy’s expert forum on branding. He spoke about the urgent need for differentiation in the solar energy market.
Read more...In the first of a series of columns for Marketing Week, Wally questions
the logic of trying to measure what
is, ultimately, unmeasurable. Yet times are volatile for both agencies and clients. Make up your mind and join the debate.
I totally love Apple products and have in the past used the Apple brand as a reference point for just about anything positive when it comes to great branding, but just recently I wonder if things are shifting? The problem is that Apple’s
Read more...
