Never a Lack of Ideas

Best Brands in the Land Happy Halloween! In what will hopefully become an annual tradition, I present to you my list of the top ten brands in the United States. To create this list, I relied heavily upon my opinion of the general perception of each brand versus its competitors, and how much of a premium the brand can charge because of that perception. I didn't get hung up on revenue data or market share numbers — I just went with what I see and hear every day and threw in my own opinion from a marketer's point of view. Here's my list, starting with the best brand in the land: Victoria's Secret — The brand became a household name by charging a premium for products that very few people see when worn; and then turned that brand equity into a complete line of clothing. Google — Do you use any other search engine? I'll bet you've even used the word "Google" as a verb. Apple — The iPod, iTunes, and iPhone have defined their categories. Facebook — The d...

Lost in Translation William Shatner now stars in a comedy series on CBS that has been adapted from a Twitter feed called Sh*t My Dad Says . I've been a fan of Justin Halpern, the Twitter account's author, for a while, and I'm happy that he's been able to profit from his feed. However, I worry about the success of the show since the success of Halpern's Twitter posts comes because they pack a lot of comedy in just 140 characters. I have not seen the television show, but I worry that stretching a bunch of 140-character one-liners into a 30-minute series is doomed to fail from the beginning. But maybe there's an alternative way to translate the Sh*t My Dad Says Twitter account to television without losing its punch of comedy: Pardon the Interruption What if CBS took the top 150 posts from Halpern's dad and made them into ten-second spots that aired in between each commercial during prime time for one day of the week throughout the whole fall season....