The University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux are back! For now, anyway — although UND was just snubbed over the name, so watch this space.

The Grand Forks-based school has been embroiled for decades in a tug of war over its moniker and logo, which features a Native American warrior wearing a feather headdress.

Traditionalists have fought to keep it while those who believe it is offensive to Native Americans have long argued it needs to be retired in favor of something more politically correct.

UND officially dropped the divisive nickname in late 2011 but it was resurrected this month after local residents collected 17,000 signatures seeking to put the issue to a state-wide vote. As part of the process, a law requiring the school to reinstate the nickname went back into effect. Continue reading...

It was as if the longest match in the history of tennis came down from the heavens for the makers of Aleve.

And it’s not much of a stretch to imagine American John Isner or France’s Nicolas Mahut – the two combatants in the more than 11-hour match played over three days at Wimbledon – endorsing the naproxen sodium tablets in the coming days and weeks.

After all, their first-round match was effectively an Aleve commercial, the way rugby games played in the rain evoke Tide and other laundry detergents.

Just days after the pair finished their gruelling affair – Isner prevailed, winning the fifth set 70 games to 68 – Aleve took out a full-page ad on page 2 in the sports section of Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper.Continue reading...

With baseball fans still reeling from the perfect-game-that-wasn’t last week, one company that jumped into the fray hit a branding grand slam.

General Motors presented Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga with a 2010 Corvette convertible last Thursday after an umpire’s error on what would have been a perfect game (and the 27th consecutive out) against the Cleveland Indians.

The presentation, which took place at the ballpark on Friday, came amid widespread cries for the implementation of widespread instant replay in baseball. The game adopted instant replay for home runs a couple of years ago.Continue reading...

The magazine industry is tough. But The Beaver, the 90-year-old history magazine based in Winnipeg, Canada, has had a particularly difficult journey.

The last issue of The Beaver, Canada’s second-oldest magazine, hits newsstands this week. The next one will be rebranded Canada’s History, in response to the venerable title’s inadvertent sexual connotation causing it to get snagged in spam filters and preventing the magazine from reaching a new generation of online readers.

The magazine was launched in 1920 to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada’s oldest corporation, which built up its business on the backs of the fur trade.Continue reading...

They were just two press releases, but they spoke volumes about the brands of two banks on both sides of the border: BMO Bank of Montreal, Canada’s fourth largest bank, reported earnings of $647 million Canadian ($1.11 per share), Tuesday morning, beating the Street’s expectations.

Just a couple of hours earlier, BMO announced it had purchased the North American Diners Club business from Citigroup for a purchase price so “insignificant” that it was not disclosed.

But it was meaningful enough to BMO: the deal more than doubles its corporate credit card business, adding $7.8 billion in US dollars in annual transactions, and net receivables of nearly $1 billion. Diners Club carries also a certain amount of cachet, since it was the first charge card to hit the US market in 1950.

The Diners Club deal, however, is a microcosm of the banking situation on both sides of the 49th parallel.Continue reading...

Bob Marley could never have dreamed that his song, “Get Up, Stand Up” would one day befit the global trademark wars being waged by his family.

The call-to-arms anthem from the Wailers’ 1973 Burnin’ album implored the downtrodden to “stand up for your rights,” but it also describes what his heirs, including children Ziggy, Stephen, Damian, Cedella and Sharon, all musicians, and Rohan, a former star linebacker for the University of Miami, are doing to protect their father’s image, legacy and brand.

Nearly thirty years after his death from cancer, Marley’s international presence is as strong as ever. It’s particularly powerful in his home country of Jamaica where visitors can’t walk past a market without seeing row upon row of t-shirts, posters and trinkets bearing his picture or hearing his iconic music playing on sound systems or sometimes from just a single speaker perched on a window ledge.

But the problem is there are too many people involved with the brand. Without proper oversight, it will become even more diluted than it is today.Continue reading...

Kellogg’s has harnessed a groundbreaking laser technology that enables it to burn its iconic logo on to individual corn flakes. Cattle farmers in the Old West would no doubt be proud.

By inserting a certain number of branded flakes – sorry, Corn Flakes – into each box (they’re slightly darker but taste the same), the company claims it can guarantee the cereal’s origins, and solidify its claims that it doesn’t produce cereals for any other manufacturer.

In the dog-eat-dog world of cereal, where products contain many of the same ingredients and the barriers to entry are relatively low, branding is king.Continue reading...

Has Canwest Global Communication’s brand been dealt a death blow? Canada’s biggest media company, owner of Global Television and a chain of big-city daily newspapers plus The National Post, received court approval today for a bankruptcy restructuring.

The move comes after months of missed interest payments on its crippling debt load. But while the restructuring might be enough to save the company – or, more likely, parts of it – it could be too late to save the brand.

While Canwest continues to operate under Canada's federal bankruptcy protection law, the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, and pledges to continue business as usual, it may not be status quo to consumers and, perhaps more importantly, for advertisers.Continue reading...