In 2010, Gap decided to redesign its logo. What can brands learn from the unfortunate backfiring of this logo change?

CMO Samuel Day explains how the marketing team took a long-term view and was committed to getting things right, even when it meant not seeing a return on their efforts as quickly as they might want to.

Kraft Heinz Canada conducts an anonymous social experiment, asking people to #DrawKetchup. Interestingly, most of the participants drew a Heinz ketchup bottle.

"Ryanair’s success is remarkably simple. It understands people, and what drives their decision making, better than almost any other company on the planet."

Maybe I'm biased, but I love case studies and articles that show perfectionism actually limits the power of your brand. So embrace your flaws to maximize your brand's influence.

"We have put together this curated collection of the best, most insightful articles of 2019, that focus on mastering branding as a strategic business tool."

Finally, if you're looking for a list of great brand articles to help you think bigger and bolder when you get the year kicked off right, here's a great one.

Over at Branding Mag, there's an interesting conversation about how to create a sense of brand without a visual identity. The idea being that the experience itself is the brand. Can the experience of working somewhere be a clear brand? It's an interesting thought.

The big conversation this week (ignoring the global news stories, that is) is about Apple's new employer brand video. The animated video features about a hundred different variations of the famous Apple logo morphing from one to another while a female voiceover tells "constant beginners who sing off key" that "all are welcome." Visually, it is gorgeous (but really, Apply making an amazing commercial is no surprise). But the question is: is it effective?

The concept of "newsjacking" isn't new to my content marketing folk. It's the process of finding a timely (and aligned) way to jump on a current story in the next and ride it's coattails. Doing it right requires speed and guts (see: Oreo and Super Bowl blackout, or pretty much anything Wendy's does), which isn't easy. So here are some great examples of the best instances of newsjacking in 2019 you can learn from.

To steal a line from David C. Baker, you can't read your label if you're inside the jar. If you are trying to see and distill your own employer brand, your biggest obstacle is you (and your biases you can't see). By way of example, my colleague Dennis Billgren reminds us that you might "know" that what US tech workers want is more work-life balance and autonomy. So why does Tesla and SpaceX (notorious for NOT having those things) consistently rank at the top of most desired employers? What you think you know isn't the same as objective knowledge, especially in employer branding.

We're all so primed to being "understood," that in a lot of ways, it limits our thinking. If you care most about being understood, you end up softening or dumbing-down your strategy or idea, sometimes negating the idea altogether. So maybe being "misunderstood" is an interesting litmus test for your idea. Example: the history of Amazon, who has been misunderstood its entire corporate life.

The word "purpose" gets attached to so much of what we do, these days. Our EB should provide purpose for employees (which is crazy, as purpose comes from inside people) and that the key to successful companies is a shared sense of purpose (which is always framed in "we save the world" language rather than "we retire early" language). But as EB gets closer to corporate brand, and as corporate brand understands how to leverage the people to support the brand, the conversation around brand purpose gets louder, but mushier. Which is why I thought this article on brand purpose was a good read: it talked about how to think beyond "use some sense of purpose to get more out of your employees" blah blah, and instead use a real sense of purpose to breakthrough roadblocks and see new possibilities. (includes some nice examples)

Case study: Cisco reinvents its employer brand around the concept of trust.

Complete case study on how Mondelez built its global employer brand (video)