STRONGBRANDS    Professor Tim Calkins, Kellogg School of Management

Home rental giant Homeaway recently began charging a new fee to travelers. This has caused an uproar in the rental world. Despite the initial adverse reaction, the fee is a smart idea. Homeaway is the largest home rental website in the world. It owns a range of sites including VRBO.com, homeaway.com, and vacationrentals.com. Collectively, there […]

Last October Playboy announced a dramatic and surprising change – the brand would no longer publish pictures of nude women. It was a shocking announcement. Playboy, after all, was a pioneer among adult magazines. When Hugh Hefner launched the magazine in 1953, its defining characteristic was racy photography. Many people wondered where Playboy was heading with […]

Chobani is out this week with some bold new advertising. My assessment: this is a risky strategy. The new campaign from Chobani takes aim at yogurt giants Yoplait and Dannon, attacking their ingredients. Here are some highlights from the full-page newspaper ads Chobani ran yesterday: Look, there’s potassium sorbate as a preservative in Yoplait Greek 100. Potassium sorbate? Really? That stuff is […]

The new year will bring challenges and opportunities for brands around the world. Here are five brands that will be particularly interesting to watch. Chipotle Things are not going well for this high-flying restaurant chain. After a stunning run, the brand is facing significant safety issues, its healthy image battered by a series of outbreaks. Customers […]

Last year, I identified five brands to watch in 2015. With the year winding down, this seems like a reasonable time to check in on them. I’ll post a list of brands to watch in 2016 on January 1. Lufthansa Lufthansa began 2015 facing some significant competitive challenges. The company needed to respond to the growth of both […]

It has been a rough couple months for Tesla. Elon Musk’s acclaimed firm reduced its 2015 sales forecast in August, announcing that it wouldn’t hit its production target of 55,000 cars, and earlier this week Consumer Reports pulled its recommendation of the Tesla Model S. The company’s stock now trades at about $210 per share, […]

Every once in a while a marketing team creates a piece of advertising that really stands out. They get it right. There is a benefit, the branding is strong and the piece breaks through the clutter. This week Emirates released a new spot that delivers. Take a look: What works here? In my view, pretty […]

Nike this week reported some tremendous financial results. The stock is up almost 9% today. The company’s market capitalization is close to $100 billion. The remarkable thing about Nike is that the company continues to do well by remaining consistent with its core brand promise. Nike isn’t inventing new categories. It isn’t launching a ton […]

Yesterday while reading the Wall Street Journal online, I was asked a rather significant question: Am I a good father? That got me thinking. I aspire to be a good father to my three children. I try to be a good example. I help with homework, praise and encourage each kid, and help put food […]

It has been a long time since I put the phrases “Burger King” and “marketing excellence” together in the same sentence. For many years, Burger King has been struggling to come up with something notable to say. The brand’s marketing campaigns in recent years included an odd subservient chicken and a creepy King character. The […]

I am just back from a trip to France with my family. It was a lovely expedition. One highlight was trying Airbnb for the first time; I used the website to book two different stays.  So how did it go? Perfect. The first property was an old farm-house in the French countryside. Our hosts were a charming […]

Several weeks ago, I received an invitation in my mailbox. It arrived in a black, sleek envelope with the Porsche logo on it. I was intrigued. Inside was an invitation to spend a few hours driving various Porsche models and learning about the brand, and I jumped at the opportunity. The Porsche World Roadshow took […]