Welcome to the World of Brands: 2009

Saturday, September 26, 2009

15 seconds of Bliss...

I am just crazzy about the music in this particular Ad.. Everything is perfect.. From the Guitar Riff to the ammmazing vocals from Sona Mohapatra.. Not to mention the beatiful model too. hehe..

Enjoy...

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Songs in Advertisements

Advertising and Music have always had a very strong association since almost ever. Its hard to imagine some of the most popular ads of all time, whether indian or international without a catchy jingle or soundtrack. Well, was just thinking about incorporating full fledged songs in advertisements rather than a jingle per se and found out that internationally although the trend is still very acceptable. In India it is just catching up now only. Just thought of sharing a couple of ads that i like (Honeslty, more than the ads i like the songs more and THUS the ads ;-D ) Do let me know of any more in case you are aware of.

Limca: May be its just my ignorance but i could only remember the Limca Ad with a full song used. Infact it has taken one step further to actually make the full music video and released on various music channels, which i think was a fabulous idea. It offer an amazing and immediate recall for the brand whenever the song is playing on music stations or channels. I think this is one opportunity which hasnt been explored much.

Bajaj Allianz: Also, worth mentioning is the Bajaj Allianz, wherein (although i am not sure if its a full fledged song or just an extended jingle but i would use 'song' herein) the song i think strikes an amazing chord. I am sure most of you would remember the song if not the brand. If extended further and made in a full fledged music video i am sure it can do wonders for the brand and break the usual 'scare' clutter for insurance companies.

Motorola: Ammmazing song. Its caled 'A Song about ping pong' by Operating Please. I just love how the collage of pictures is used along with the song beats to come out with a fabulous advertisement. Just Fab..

Puma: Yes. The song is indeed much more famous that the advertisement itself but amazing nonetheless. Its Paulo Nutini's "New Shoes"

And Last but not the least.

Rediff.com : I just find the whole concept too cute and obviously the song works for me even better. (Though i am not sure if its only an Indian Ad per se or an international version is also available) "Your love is lifting me higher" -Jackie Wilson

PS: I am a sucker for good music especially in advertisements. Do add in case you know of any!!

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Vodafone's Busy Caller Tune Advertisement: Ammazing.. Simple but yet delivers so well..

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Apple Vs Blackberry

Ammazing.. just Ammazing.. This is marketing rivalry at its best. I am not talking about the Indian version of Pepsi vs Coke or Thums up using cheap body doubles of Salman, Hrithik or Akshay a few years back. I am talking top class creativity.

No words required. No explanations. No gyan on 'creativity' or 'strategic marketing'. Just watch the two videos. I love'em. So will you.

Blackberry Takes a shot at Apple..

And Apple hits back

Go on. Keep Raising the Bar.. I likes..

Cadbury's Dairy Milk : Behan hoti to aisa na karti!!!

Yesterday i just heard a couple of new radio spots by Cadbury's and couldnt stop writing. All of us are already aware of the strategy to link chocolates to celebration and festivities. How cadbury's is trying to replace sweets with chocolates and according to me, it was a super strategy. 'Kuch Meetha ho jaye' was amongst some of the most memorable campaigns in the past 5 years and then came 'pappu'. Amazing idea. Brilliant Execution.

And then came the 'Pehli tareekh' series, which according to me was Pathetic in terms of ideation. But yes, if you go deeper you might find that may be the brief is more to do with 'clutter breaking' execution rather than ideation. So that 'brand talk' begins and thats why the picturization also has been kept a bit tacky.

Well. The post is not about the 'pay day' campaign. Its about the jingle related to the 'raksha bandhan' campaign. There are two spots which i faintly remember. The idea is very simple Sisters love brothers more than brothers love each other!!! So, This Raksha Bandhan gift something special to your sister, and that something special would obviously be the Cadbury's Dairy Milk Rakshabandhan pack. Simple but damn effective.

First one talks about the younger brother telling his elder brother's girlfriend that all the past 7 girlfriends liked the same thing in his brother. and the jingle something like "Raghu kul reet sada chali aayi.. Bade bhai ki girlfriend patayi" And then the voiceover: "Tch Tch.. Behan hoti to aisa nahi karti" Stressing on the point that sisters love brothers more and brothers are chaalu and sisters are sweet!!! As i said.. Simple Idea, but delivers so damn well..

The second one is on the same lines. This time the elder one says something mean to his already crying younger brother like "Tu to mandir ki seedhiyon par Polythene mein mila tha..." The younger one cries even louder. Similar Jingle. And the same voiceover.

I wish i could put in the Spots here but couldnt find the jingles anywhere. So to get the 'feel' of the spot, you need to tune into your radio and wish that it comes on air!!!

I think they are following a very careful and thought of 'two pronged' strategy. On one hand they are trying to break the clutter and be in the eye of the consumer through 'pehli tareekh' and still not losing out on the main idea of replacement of sweets with chocolates like these two jingles. For me although the pehli tareekh ones dont go down too well neither in the concept nor in the execution, but i guess the idea is to be tacky and just get noticed. But the jingles strike a very emotional chord with me, there is a sweet smile as soon as the jingle finishes and you suddenly think about your sister and the sweet things she did or does for you. I am definitely gonna buy her a box this raksha bandhan. Nice.. Very Nice..

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Deodorant Advertising and 'The Rakhi Sawant Effect'

Was just flipping through channels sometime back and noticed a few advertisements predominantly in the Male Deodorant segment having already present high recall brand like Axe and the newly launched brands like WildStone, Fuel and Denver.

Couldn't help but notice that the whole category is just working on the 'Attract women' platform. No matter how stupid it may sound, in India, Deodorant as a category anyways doesn't sell as much depending on how it 'smells' but how it 'attracts'.Axe has done wonders internationally on the same positioning and the easiest way to replicate the same model is to 'lift' the positioning bit too. Nothing wrong with that. But i have a problem with the execution of the positioning. There is a difference between being naughty using verbal undertones and just being plain sleazy

Fuel : Ignite the Fire!!!

A Desert, Guy at a petrol pump, Sprays Fuel Deodorant, a HOT girl comes near, Smells the guy, and opens her shirt to flaunt her cleavage and bra, pulls the guy towards her!!!

Denver: Ride your luck!!

A Desert, Two guys walking (One Hunk, the other ' boy next door' types), A HOT girl driving a bike, The boy next door sprays, the girl moves towards the pillion position in the 'Sleaziest manner possible'!!!!

Wild Stone: Wild by Nature!!

Well. ALL have either seen or heard about the Ad. And may be THATs the idea as well. Just start a word of mouth and increase brand recall. Girl smells the deodorant off her brother in law, is attracted towards him, pretends to have sprained her leg and makes him pick her up and in the last shot its established that the guy is actually married to her sister!!! Now can you get ANY cheaper than this?? I guess not..

I think this sort of an advertising can be termed as 'The Rakhi Sawant Effect'. I thoroughly understand that this sort of sleazy advertising could actually be a strategy to generate some cheap publicity and word of mouth, in order to increase brand recall, much like Ms Sawant who would go to any limits just to be in the public eye. The 'Rakhi ka Swayamwar' however stupid it may sound, but the bottom line is people are watching it and the TRPs will prove this point pretty soon. Same is the case with these advertisements, the idea is just to generate Top of Mind recall and nothing else.

With Hundreds of brands available in the marketplace and add to that a low involvement purchase behavior, it becomes imperative for the brand to be able to stand out on the shelf and if the consumer can atleast RECOGNIZE the brand on the shelf. The probability of the purchase getting through increases manifold.

Logical : Yes. Strategy: May be. Execution : No.

I believe that the same recall could have been provided by the agency through slightly more 'Creative' and less 'sleazy' campaigns. But, as they say sometimes, the end justifies the means and ANY publicity is Good Publicity!!!

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Google

Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View, California. As of March 31, 2009, the company has 20,164 full-time employees.

History

Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. The initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising US$1.67 billion, implying a value for the entire corporation of US$23 billion.

Google began in January 1996, as a research project by Larry Page, who was soon joined by Sergey Brin, when they were both Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California.They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.

Name Origin

The name "Google" originated from a common misspelling of the word "googol", which refers to 10^100, the number represented by a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb "google", was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

Corporate Culture and Philosophy

Google is known for its informal corporate culture, of which its playful variations on its own corporate logo are an indicator. In 2007 and 2008, Fortune Magazine placed Google at the top of its list of the hundred best places to work. Google's corporate philosophy embodies such casual principles as "you can make money without doing evil," "you can be serious without a suit," and "work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun.

Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". The unofficial company slogan, coined by former employee and Gmail's first engineer Paul Buchheit, is "Don't be evil". Criticism of Google includes concerns regarding the privacy of personal information, copyright, and censorship.

Innovation Time Off

As a motivation technique (usually called Innovation Time Off), all Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, stated that her analysis showed that 50% of the new product launches originated from the 20% time

Source: Wikipedia

For Further Information visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

Disney

The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS), often simply known as Disney, is the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world,[3] known for its family-friendly products. Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Disney as an animation studio, it has become one of the biggest Hollywood studios, and owner and licensor of eleven theme parks and several television networks, including ABC and ESPN. Disney's corporate headquarters and primary production facilities are located at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. The company has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since May 6, 1991. Mickey Mouse serves as the official mascot of The Walt Disney Company.

The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923, and found much success under Walt Disney's leadership through his death in 1966. Walt Disney signed a contract with M.J. Winkler to produce a series of Alice Comedies, beginning the Disney company under its original name Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, with brothers Walt and Roy Disney, as equal partners

Divisions of the Walt Disney Company

* The Walt Disney Company
* Walt Disney Pictures, the film banner
* Touchstone Pictures, Disney's film banner for more mature films
* Walt Disney Animation Studios, the main animation studio (formerly known as Walt Disney Feature Animation)
* Disney Channel is a cable TV network
* Walt Disney Theatrical, the stageplay and musical production arm
* Walt Disney Television, a United States-based television production company
* Walt Disney Television Animation, a television studio dedicated to animation
* Walt Disney Parks and Resorts manages and builds the Disney theme parks and vacation resorts
* Disney Interactive Studios publishes Disney video games and interactive entertainment
* Capital Disney, Disney radio station in the United Kingdom

Mickey Mouse is a comic animal cartoon character who has become an icon for The Walt Disney Company. Mickey Mouse was created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks and voiced by Walt Disney. Mickey was created as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier cartoon character created by the Disney studio for Charles Mintz of Universal Studios. The Walt Disney Company celebrates his birth as November 18, 1928 upon the release of Steamboat Willie. The anthropomorphic mouse has evolved from being simply a character in animated cartoons and comic strips to become one of the most recognizable symbols in the world. Mickey is currently the main character in the Disney Channel's Playhouse Disney series "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse."

Source: Wikipedia

For Further Information visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney

McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation (NYSE: MCD) is the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving nearly 47 million customers daily. McDonald's restaurants are found in 119 countries and territories around the world and serve nearly 47 million customers each day. McDonald's operates over 31,000 restaurants worldwide, employing more than 1.5 million people.

McDonald's primarily sells hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken products, french fries, breakfast items, soft drinks, milkshakes, and desserts. More recently, it has begun to offer salads, wraps and fruit. Many McDonald's restaurants have included a playground for children and advertising geared toward children, and some have been redesigned in a more 'natural' style, with a particular emphasis on comfort: introducing lounge areas and fireplaces, and eliminating hard plastic chairs and tables.

The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California. Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 established the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant. The original mascot of McDonald's was a man with a chef's hat on top of a hamburger shaped head whose name was "Speedee." Speedee was eventually replaced with Ronald McDonald in 1963.

Business Model

McDonald's Corporation earns revenue as an investor in properties, a franchiser of restaurants, and an operator of restaurants. Approximately 15% of McDonald's restaurants are owned and operated by McDonald's Corporation directly. The remainder are operated by others through a variety of franchise agreements and joint ventures. The McDonald's Corporation's business model is slightly different from that of most other fast-food chains. In addition to ordinary franchise fees and marketing fees, which are calculated as a percentage of sales, McDonald's may also collect rent, which may also be calculated on the basis of sales. As a condition of many franchise agreements, which vary by contract, age, country, and location, the Corporation may own or lease the properties on which McDonald's franchises are located. In most, if not all cases, the franchisee does not own the location of its restaurants.

McDonaldization

McDonald's has become emblematic of globalization, sometimes referred to as the "McDonaldization" of society. The Economist magazine uses the "Big Mac Index": the comparison of a Big Mac's cost in various world currencies can be used to informally judge these currencies' purchasing power parity. Scandinavian countries lead the Big Mac Index with four of the five most expensive Big Mac's. Norway has the most expensive Big Mac in the world as of July 2008, whilst the cheapest country is Malaysia.

The brand is known informally as "Mickey D's" (in the US and Canada), "Macky D's" (in the UK and Ireland), "Mäkkäri" (in Finland), "McDo" (in France, Quebec, the Philippines and the Kansai region of Japan), "Maccer's" (in Ireland), "Macarrannis" (in Mexico), "Maccas" (in New Zealand and Australia), "McD's" (in New Zealand), "Donken" (in Sweden), "de Mac" (in the Netherlands), Mäkkes (in Germany), "Mac" (in Brazil), "Makku" (in most of Japan; "Makudo" in the Kansai region); "Mek" (in Serbia), "Mekáč" (in the Czech republic), "Mak-Dak" (in the Russia), Mac (in Portugal) and "MacDon's' (in Canada).

Source: Wikipedia

For Further information visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mcdonalds

INTEL

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) (SEHK: 4335) is the world's largest semiconductor company and the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in many personal computers. Founded in 1968 as Integrated Electronics Corporation and based in Santa Clara, California, USA, Intel also makes motherboard chipsets, network cards and ICs, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors, and other devices related to communications and computing.

Intel was founded in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore (a chemist and physicist) and Robert Noyce (a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit) when they left Fairchild Semiconductor. Intel's fourth employee was Andy Grove (a chemical engineer), who ran the company through much of the 1980s and the high-growth 1990s.

At its founding, Intel was distinguished simply by its ability to make semiconductors, and its primary product were static random access memory (SRAM) chips. However, increased competition from Japanese semiconductor manufacturers had by 1983 dramatically reduced the profitability of this market, and the sudden success of the IBM personal computer convinced then-CEO Grove to shift the company's focus to microprocessors and to change fundamental aspects of that business model. By the end of the 1980s this decision had proven successful, and Intel embarked on a 10-year period of unprecedented growth as the primary (and most profitable) hardware supplier to the PC industry.

Origin of the Name

At its founding, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce wanted to name their new company "Moore Noyce". This name, however, sounded remarkably similar to "more noise" — an ill-suited name for an electronics company, since noise is typically associated with bad interference. They then used the name NM Electronics for almost a year, before deciding to call their company

INTegrated ELectronics or "Intel" for short. However, Intel was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to buy the rights for that name at the beginning. The nickname Chipzilla was coined by journalist and industry analyst Terry Shannon and published in Shannon Knows DEC, where it was picked up and amplified by The Register

The Intel Logos:

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Source : Wikipedia.org

For Further information visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel

TOYOTA

Toyota Motor Corporation is a multinational corporation headquartered in Japan, and is currently the world's largest automaker.Toyota employs approximately 316,000 people worldwide.

Toyota started in 1933 as a division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works devoted to the production of automobiles under the direction of the founder's son, Kiichiro Toyoda. Its first vehicles were the A1 passenger car and the G1 in 1935. Toyota Motor Co. was established as an independent and separate company in 1937

In 1934, while still a department of Toyota Industries, it created its first product Type A engine and in 1936 its first passenger car the Toyota AA. The company was eventually founded by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1937 as a spinoff from his father's company Toyota Industries to create automobiles. Toyota also owns and operates Lexus and Scion brands and has a majority shareholding stake in Daihatsu and Hino Motors, and minority shareholdings in Fuji Heavy Industries, Isuzu Motors, and Yamaha Motors. The company includes 522 subsidiaries.

Toyota is headquartered in Toyota City and Nagoya (both in Aichi), and in Tokyo. In addition to manufacturing automobiles, Toyota provides financial services through its division Toyota Financial Services and also builds robots. Toyota Industries and Finance divisions form the bulk of the Toyota Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the world.

Name

Vehicles were originally sold under the name "Toyoda" , from the family name of the company's founder, Kiichiro Toyoda. In September 1936, the company ran a public competition to design a new logo. Out of 27,000 entries the winning entry was the three Japanese katakana letters for "Toyoda" in a circle. But Risaburo Toyoda, who had married into the family and was not born with that name, preferred "Toyota" because it took eight brush strokes (a fortuitous number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off two ticks at the end) and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one (voiced consonant is considered "murky" or "muddy" sound compared to the voiceless consonant, which is "clear"). Since "Toyoda" literally means "fertile rice paddies", changing the name also helped to distance the company from associations with old fashioned farming. The newly formed word was trademarked and the company was registered in August 1937 as the "Toyota Motor Company"

Source: Wikipedia

For Further information visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota

NOKIA

Nokia Corporation (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈnɔkiɑ]) (OMX: NOK1V, NYSE: NOK, FWB: NOA3) is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki. Nokia is engaged in the manufacturing of mobile devices and in converging Internet and communications industries, with 128,445 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and global annual revenue of EUR 50.7 billion and operating profit of 5.0 billion as of 2008.It is the world's largest manufacturer of mobile telephones: its global device market share was about 37% in Q1 2009, down from 39% in Q1 2008 and unchanged from Q4 2008.

Nokia's history starts in 1865 when mining engineer Fredrik Idestam established a groundwood pulp mill on the banks of the Tammerkoski rapids in the town of Tampere, in southwestern Finland, and started manufacturing paper. In 1868, Idestam built a second mill near the town of Nokia, fifteen kilometres west of Tampere by the Nokianvirta river, which had better resources for hydropower production.[26] In 1871, Idestam, with the help of his close friend statesman Leo Mechelin, renamed and transformed his firm into a share company, thereby founding the Nokia Company, the name it is still known by today.

Nokia Company logo. Founded in Tampere in 1865, incorporated in Nokia in 1871.

The brand logo of Finnish Rubber Works, founded in Helsinki in 1898.
Logo from 1965–1966.

The Nokia Corporation "arrows" logo, used before the "Connecting People" logo.

Nokia introduced its "Connecting People" advertising slogan, coined by Ove Strandberg.This earlier version of the slogan used Times Roman SC (Small Caps) font.

Nokia's current logo with the redesigned "Connecting People" slogan. This slogan uses Nokia's proprietary 'Nokia' font.

Nokia Siemens Networks logo. Founded in 2007.

Navteq logo. Founded in 1985, acquired by Nokia in 2007.

The Nokia brand, valued at $35.9 billion, is listed as the fifth most valuable global brand in Interbrand/Businessweek's Best Global Brands list of 2008 (first non-US company).It is the number one brand in Asia (as of 2007)and Europe (as of 2008), the 42nd most admirable company worldwide in Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies list of 2009 (third in Network Communications, seventh non-US company), and the world's 88th largest company as measured by revenue in Fortune Global 500 list of 2008, up from 119th the previous year.

Source: Wikipedia

For futher information visit : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia

GE

The General Electric Company, or GE (NYSE: GE) is a multinational American technology and services conglomerate incorporated in the State of New York. In terms of market capitalization, G.E. is the world's second largest company.

In 1876, Thomas Alva Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Out of the laboratory came arguably the most famous invention of all—a practical incandescent electric lamp. By 1890, Edison had organized his various businesses into the Edison General Electric Company. In 1879, Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston formed the rival Thomson-Houston Electric Company. It merged with various companies and was later led by Charles A. Coffin, a former shoe manufacturer from Lynn, Massachusetts. Mergers with competitors and the patent rights owned by each company made them dominant in the electrical industry.

In 1892, these two major companies combined, in a merger arranged by financier J. P. Morgan, to form the General Electric Company, with its headquarters in Schenectady, New York. In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly-formed Dow Jones Industrial Average and still remains after 110 years.General Electric was one of the eight major computer companies through most of the 1960s - with IBM, the largest, called "Snow White" followed by the "Seven Dwarfs": Burroughs, NCR, Control Data Corporation, Honeywell, RCA, UNIVAC and GE.

Brand GE

General Electric has one of the most valuable corporate brands in the world. CEO Jeffrey Immelt had the new brand commissioned in 2004, after he took the reins as chairman, to unify the diversified businesses of GE. The brand included a change of the corporate color palette, small modifications to the GE Logo, a new customized font (GE Inspira), and a new slogan, "imagination at work" replacing the longtime slogan "we bring good things to life". The new brand requires many headlines to be lowercased and adds visual "white space" to documents and advertising to promote an open and approachable company. The new brand was designed by Wolff Olins and is used extensively on GE's marketing, literature and website.

GE is an enormous multinational conglomerate headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut. Its New York headquarters are based in 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Rockefeller Center, known as the GE Building for the prominent GE logo on the roof. Through its RCA subsidiary it has been associated with the Center since its construction in the 1930s.

The company describes itself as composed of a number of primary business units or "businesses." Each "business" is itself a vast enterprise, many of which would, even as a standalone company, rank in the Fortune 500. The list of GE businesses varies over time as the result of acquisitions, divestitures and reorganizations. General Electric's tax return is the largest return filed in the United States, approximately 24,000 pages when printed out. Electronically, the files were 237 megabytes.

Source: Wikipedia

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric

Microsoft

The History of Microsoft began on April 4, 1975, when it was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque. Its first popular product was DOS - an operating system first released in the early 1980s. January 1, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Bill Gates called the creators of the new microcomputer, MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), offering to demonstrate an implementation of the BASIC programming language for the system. Gates had neither an interpreter nor an Altair system, yet in the eight weeks before the demo he and Allen developed the interpreter. The interpreter worked at the demo and MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC. Gates left Harvard University, moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where MITS was located, and founded Microsoft there. The name Microsoft, without the hyphen, was first used in a letter from Gates to Allen on November 29, 1975, and on November 26, 1976 the name became a registered trademark.

The first operating system the company publicly released was a variant of Unix in 1980. Acquired from AT&T through a distribution license, Microsoft dubbed it Xenix, and hired Santa Cruz Operation in order to port/adapt the operating system to several platforms. This Unix variant would become home to the first version of Microsoft's word processor, Microsoft Word. Originally titled "Multi-Tool Word", Microsoft Word became notable for its concept of "What You See Is What You Get", or WYSIWYG. By 1993, Windows had become the most widely used GUI operating system in the world. Fortune Magazine named Microsoft as the "1993 Most Innovative Company Operating in the U.S.

The image : Microsoft staff photo from December 7, 1978. From left to right:
Top: Steve Wood, Bob Wallace, Jim Lane.
Middle: Bob O'Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin.
Bottom: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen.

Source: wikipedia

For more information Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation (known as IBM or "Big Blue"; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company which became IBM was founded in 1888 as Herman Hollerith and the Tabulating Machine Company. It was incorporated as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR) on June 15, 1911, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1916. IBM adopted its current name in 1924, where it became a Fortune 500 company.

Known through most of its recent history as the world's largest computer company, as of 2006, IBM has since fallen to second behind Hewlett-Packard in total revenue (but not profit). With over 350,000 employees worldwide, IBM is the largest information technology employer in the world. IBM holds more patents than any other technology company.IBM has engineers and consultants in over 170 countries and IBM Research has eight laboratories worldwide. IBM employees have earned five Nobel Prizes, five Turing Awards, five National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science. As a chip maker, IBM is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders. IBM's PC division was bought by Chinese company Lenovo on May 1, 2005.

Big Blue is a nickname for IBM; several theories exist regarding its origin. One theory, substantiated by people who worked for IBM at the time, is that IBM field reps coined the term in the 1960s, referring to the color of the mainframes IBM installed in the 1960s and early 1970s. "All blue" was a term used to describe a loyal IBM customer, and business writers later picked up the term. Another theory suggests that Big Blue simply refers to the Company's logo. A third theory suggests that Big Blue refers to a former company dress code that required many IBM employees to wear blue suits.

IBM Logos :

The logo that was used from 1924 to 1946. The logo is in a form intended to suggest a globe, girdled by the word "International"

The logo that was used from 1947 to 1956. The familiar "globe" was replaced with the simple letters "IBM" in a typeface called "Beton Bold."

The logo that was used from 1956 to 1972. IBM said that the letters took on a more solid, grounded and balanced appearance

The striped logo was first used in 1967, and fully replaced the solid logo by 1972. The horizontal stripes suggesting "speed and dynamism."This logo (in two versions, 8-bar and 13-bar), as well as the previous one, were designed by graphic designer Paul Rand.

Source: Wikipedia
For further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM

Coca Cola

Coca Cola (also known as Coke, a name that was trademarked by The Coca-Cola Company after it was discovered many people called it by that particular name) is a cola (a type of carbonated soft drink) sold in stores, restaurants and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO), which is often referred to as simply Coca-Cola or Coke. Coke is one of the world's most recognizable and widely sold commercial brands.

The first recipe Coca-Cola was invented in Atlanta, Georgia, by John S. Pemberton, originally as a cocawine called Pemberton's French Wine Coca in 1885. The beverage was named Coca-Cola because, originally, the stimulant mixed in the beverage was coca leaves from South America. In addition, the drink was flavored using kola (Cola) nuts, the beverage's source of caffeine.The exact formula of Coca-Cola is a famous trade secret. The original copy of the formula is held in SunTrust Bank's main vault in Atlanta.

The famous Coca-Cola logotype was created by John Pemberton's bookkeeper, Frank Mason Robinson, in 1885.[22] It was Robinson who came up with the name, and he also chose the logo’s distinctive cursive script. The typeface used, known as Spencerian script, was developed in the mid 19th century and was the dominant form of formal handwriting in the United States during that period.

The equally famous Coca-Cola bottle, called the "contour bottle" within the company, but known to some as the "hobble skirt" bottle, was created in 1915 by a Swedish former glassblower, Alexander Samuelson, who had emigrated to the U.S. in the 1880s. One alternative depiction has Raymond Loewy as the inventor of the unique design, but although Loewy did serve as a designer of Coke cans and bottles in later years, he was in the French Army in the year the bottle was invented and did not migrate to the United States until 1919. Others have attributed inspiration for the design not to the cacao pod, but to a Victorian hooped dress.

The Brand is So huge that it is not possible to write even 1000th of its history in this blog. For further reading on Coca Cola. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_Cola

Source : Wikipedia

Top 10 Brands : 2008

What better way to Startoff than by having a look at the top 10 Brands in the world by Businessweek in association with Interbrand. Most of us have already seen the list but still for those who havent. Here it goes.

The Interbrand method for valuing brands is a formula that examines brands through the lens of financial strength, importance in driving consumer selection, and the likelihood of ongoing branded revenue. The method evaluates brands much like analysts would value any other asset (on the basis of how much they're likely to earn in the future) There are three core components to their proprietary method:

1. Financial Analysis : Forecasting the current and future revenue specifically attributable to the branded products.

2. Role of Brand Analysis: A measure of how the brand influences customer demand at the point of purchase is applied to the economic earnings to arrive at Branded Earnings.

3. Brand Strength Score : This is a benchmark of the brand's ability to secure ongoing customer demand (loyalty, repurchase and retention) and thus sustain future earnings, translating branded earnings into net present value.

Brand value is calculated as the net present value of the earnings the brand is expected to generate and secure in the future. All brands were then subject to the following criteria that narrowed candidates significantly:

There must be substantial publicly available financial data
The brand must have at least one-third of revenues outside of its country-of-origin
The brand must be a market-facing brand
The Economic Value Added (EVA) must be positive
The brand must not have a purely B2B single audience with no wider public profile and awareness

The Top 10 list remains more or less unchanged, except Google making an entry in the top 10 jumping 10 places from 20th last year.

2008 Brand Value ($m)