The article is written by Sherwood MacVeigh, Director, Senior Brand Strategist Hyperquake

My relationship with my eye cream is over.

I loved my eye cream; I used it faithfully for years, every morning and night. But those days are history; I am breaking up with my brand. To paraphrase a country superstar’s current hit song, my brand and I “are never, ever getting back together.” Why?  This brand just isn’t working for me anymore. I’ve changed; it hasn’t.

From persuasion to platform, from positioning to purpose, from consistency to experimentation, from control to liberation and from ownership to ‘boundarylessness’ — these are the crucial shifts in branding theory spotted over the 20-year career by Robert Jones, head of new thinking at a brand and innovation firm Wolff Olins and visiting professor at UEA, published in the current issue of the Journal of Brand Management.

This month sees the two biggest Russian financial companies — VTB Group and BinBank — to launch their new retail banking brands on the local market. While VTB’s Leto Bank is seen as a future leader of the mass retail lending with a developed chain of offices, Elixir has recently started operating in Moscow and St Petersburg as a virtual financial branch issuing credit cards for individuals online.

Why should aspirational products be the only ones that are well branded when actually these untouchable items say far more about our chosen lifestyle than any other?

It’s that time of year again. Time for the Christmas List. Or, lists plural, to be precise. As the battle of the brands hots up for Christmas 2012, we are inundated with lists of the best food choices, the best price deals, the top ten toys…

Article by Sylvie Saunders, Head of Words Pearlfisher

From energy brands to home furnishings, the pros and cons of renaming is something of a hot topic in the brand industry. With a recent influx of self-explanatory, simple naming, we could start seeing a backlash if brand stretch isn’t considered and built into the name from the start. A great name needs to have the courage of its convictions and if brands aren’t buying into their own monikers, what hope for consumer buy in?