Category Archives: Branding

German insurer offends Maori culture

The German insurance provider ARAG  has used the traditional Haka warrior dance of New Zealand’s Maori, fueling hefty criticism in social media. Criticism on ARAG’s YouTube channel (check the comments below the video) as well as later on on Facebook and Twitter labelled the ad as inappropriate cultural appropriation, some even claimed it to be… Read More »

Loading your Brand with Emotions & Politics – Heineken vs Pepsi

If you closely follow the advertising world you might have seen the shit-storm that overcame Pepsi earlier this month following the launch over a campaign that meant to align Pepsi with the political #resistance movement in the US. The PR disaster for Pepsi evolved out of a on only half-hearted approach to political themes – as there really… Read More »

Managing a Country Brand

My role as head of public diplomacy involves work on “country branding”  – so basically developing a country brand that enables the country’s businesses and organizations to be more successful in the international marketplace, but also projecting a more holistic national identity with cultural, business, education and many more elements. I recently came across an… Read More »

“Fighting for a Reputation”

CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with its “Marketplace” program recently had a lab analyze chicken meat and strips cooked in popular fast-food chains. Subway meat, the report indicated, showed significant amounts of non-chicken DNA, instead up to  50 percent from soy. Chicken from other fast-food chains, such as McDonald’s and Tim Hortons, did not have such high levels… Read More »

Top 100 Companies by Reputation in 2017

The Reputation Institute (RI) yesterday announced the company’s annual Global RepTrak® 100 rankings. Based on over 170,000 ratings collected in the first quarter of 2017, the survey is the largest corporate reputation study of its kind, and includes comparative ratings, trends by demographic cuts, and unique insights into which companies are best regarded by stakeholders… Read More »