Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

A brand that takes years to build can melt down overnight.  Consider Merrill-Lynch, as painful as that might be right now.  Or Bank of America, for that matter.  The list is as long as it infamous.  The academics are weighing in on all of this at the present moment.  After the fact, of course, but that’s the way of academia.  “Bullish on America” sounds today like the most hollow tagline since Sun’s “We’re the dot in dot-com”, circa Y2K.  But, again, hindsight is always crystal clear.  As for financial brands still standing, Charles Schwab, as usual, is headed in the right direction with its customer-sentiment campaign, but creative execution is ham-handed and clumsy, as usual.  Talk to Chuck?  Where’s he been the past few years?  Not talking to Brooksley Born, apparently.  But neither was Alan Greenspan.