What makes a brand a bland is duality: claiming simultaneously to be unique in product, groundbreaking in purpose, and singular in delivery, while slavishly obeying an identikit formula of business model, look and feel, and tone of voice.

If you thought humans deserved at least seven hours
free from marketing’s grasp, think again. How a new
 breed of brands is selling sleep to the exhausted.

By swapping golden-age advertising humor for “brandter” — bantz, LoLz and trash talk — companies risk alienating
the consumers they hope to attract.

From bacon-scented dental floss and KFC firelogs to Hummer perfume and aroma-enhanced VR porn companies are

doubling down on the sweet smell of excess.

In an age of technoscience rationality, brands are relying
ever more heavily on the attractive power of animals.

“Dr. No” is a simple movie shot on a poverty-stricken budget, starring a relative unknown, based on the sixth book in a series and released 60 years ago to a mixed critical response.

So … how did it create one of the most valuable
 and venerated brand franchises in history?

Alcohol brands are thinking outside the bottle
to fuel and gratify a new drinking culture.

Hardened doors, bulletproof backpacks, classroom panic rooms — how companies are filling the school safety void of gun control.

From sneakers and supermarkets to pop stars and politicians, billion-dollar brands are subverting professional polish
to claim a fake authenticity.

Millennials are saving golf by rebranding it.

Branding wealth management for the averagely affluent

(… your robo-advisor won’t see you now).

From Ukraine to Auschwitz, a single letter can damn or defy.

Is the metaverse a truly novel terra nova — or just the latest way for companies to pervade every click and pixel of your online presence under the guise of gamified immersion?

What the ugly Christmas jumper tells us about

the avalanche of modern merch marketing.

Brand partnerships used to be sparing, targeted — special, even. But as subcultures flourish, no new collaboration is too zany.

Branding the billion-dollar “dark stores” of “quick-commerce”.

Can the increasingly sophisticated gimmicks of “brandlonging” turn fickle consumers into faithful members?

Given the scope of their ambitions and our dependence on them, behemoth brands should be treated, and held to account,
for what they really are: commercial superpowers.

Meta’s Mediocrity Is the Message. Avoiding catastrophe was the bar for Facebook’s rebranding, and Mark Zuckerberg cleared it.

From Nike and Apple to Target and MasterCard,

today’s wordless silhouette brands are tapping into

a wider trend of universal symbolic communication.

What to do when haters come gunning for your brand

Why more and more brands are elbowing their way into your ears

A guide to fostering more fruitful collaborations between corporate canines and creative cats.

What every company can learn from the humor and humanization of hidden gems.

A small vanguard of companies are harnessing transparency

and personalization to integrate themselves into our lives.

While blands seduce millennials with an ever-receding mirage of self-actualization, adorkables double down on Gen Z’s internal conflict between self-consciousness and self-promotion.

“So-called invisibility against submarine attack is not only impossible, but dangerous, and consequently if a vessel can be seen at all, it does not matter how visible she is, providing her course remains a matter of question for the attacker.”

In his 1974 spy classic, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” John le Carré wrote: “Haydon also took it for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nation’s political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.” What, then, are we to make of agencies like the CIA rebranding?

The response of some of the world’s biggest brands to the shocking killing of George Floyd suggests that the corporate social media crisis playbook has yet to be written.

The power of user indulgence lies in its recognition of our whims, weaknesses and inherent contradictions. Indulgent design allows products and services to dovetail with life as it is actually lived which, in turn, enables brands to form genuine and lasting customer connections.

The deadliest pandemic of the digital age has supercharged

the rise of the dashboard, and illuminated the promise and

 peril of “dashboard thinking.”

Nostalgia aside, however, the improbable longevity of “Keep Calm and Carry On” owes much to the poster’s messaging clarity and design elegance — two attributes glaringly absent from the current government’s Covid-19 communications.

The tattered catalog of Trump brand flops, scandals and failures is almost comically absurd: Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage, Trump University, Trump Ice, Trump Model Management, Trump Vitamins, Trump Shuttle, Trump: The Game … to name but a few. Now to this list comes “Trump: The Presidency” — a four-year farrago of graft and malice that ended, all too predictably, in insurrection, impeachment and ignominy.