In pre-recession days, branding was a big deal for technology companies. Splashy, lavish marketing campaigns were used to tout a tech brand's key attributes and get consumers to take notice. Those days are gone, but now H-P (Hewlett-Packard) is bringing back the glitz with a new eight-week, $40 million ad campaign – its first in more than five years.

The new branding campaign, "Let's Do Amazing," breaks this weekend and will run on high-profile television shows, such as the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament on CBS. The ads sport a slick dimensionalized version of H-P's staid logo, and the campaign has a hip, humorous tone.Continue reading...

If you tuned into the 82nd Annual Academy Awards this past weekend, besides seeing Alec and Steve, Sandra and Jeff, and James and Kathryn, you also saw Apple’s first commercial for the iPad. It’s very possible Apple fanboys were more excited for the ad than many award-winners were for their respective Oscars. And now that we've had a few days for the commercial to settle in, it's time to gauge its effectiveness.

At first glance, the commercial appeared flawless. It was a classic Apple ad that perfectly illustrated the exciting and sexy features of their much-hyped, state-of-the-art product. However, beneath the spectacle of the actual device was the curious reality that the iPad was sitting on a person’s lap the entire time. Yes, we all saw how amazing the various functions were – but isn’t the iPad supposed to be a sleek, portable device? If that’s the case, the iPad in the commercial came across as a little, well... big.Continue reading...

Facebook has been a staple in social networking since it’s debut in September 2006, and because of its reign, it generates upwards of $300 million in revenue per year. Due to its ever-increasing popularity and value, its move to Wall Street appears to just be a stones-throw away.

Surprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg, the Founder and CEO of Facebook, doesn’t see a marriage anytime soon.

"We're going to go public eventually, because that's the contract that we have with our investors and our employees," said Zuckerberg. "We are definitely in no rush."Continue reading...

Luxury and fashion brands that want to survive now and into the future are anxious to reach consumers between the ages of 18 and 28, commonly referred to as Millennials. What they recognize, however, is the "in-your-face 20th-century approach" just doesn't work with this audience; instead, Millennials want to be "entertained and informed" through increasingly sophisticated technology.

According to a report on Millennials by the Pew Research Center, 75 percent of this youthful audience engages in social networking. This "makes them very savvy consumers," says Robert Polet, president and chief executive of the luxury brand Gucci. "We are embracing different ways of creating dialogue through social media. Some of our brands have launched Facebook and Twitter pages and iPhone applications."Continue reading...

Verizon is handing its users something they’d never expect from a phone company – free telephone service. No, it’s not just one of those catch-filled ploys to get people to switch over or buy a phone – though it might help – but instead, they’ve partnered with Skype, the notoriously free computer phone service.

Skype, the formerly Swedish-based company that was founded in 2003, is a computer software application that enables users to make phone calls over the Internet. The application is free just as long as users call computer-to-computer – however, if one were to call a cell phone or landline, there would be varying, yet still reasonable, fees. eBay purchased the booming startup in 2005 for $2.6 billion, and has propelled its user-ship to over 520 million worldwide.Continue reading...

Publishers are wary about Amazon’s $9.99 price point for Kindle e-books, and wonder how the inventive brand plans to profit from such a pricing model – and who stands to benefit in the long run.

Before Kindle, Amazon never belonged in the gadget business. It sold gadgets, but that was distribution. It also sold music – both physical and digital – but it never went up against the iPod (Microsoft’s lamentable Zune being enough already).

Eventually, Amazon launched the Kindle because its brand is synonymous with books and because nobody else was doing it – there was an opportunity to open up an ancillary market. The decision heralded a bold move for Amazon, of course, with no guarantees. Yet innovation is part of Amazon’s brand, and risk-adverse publishers that stand to gain immeasurably from such pioneering should look at their own efforts to do so much as develop a Blackberry app before complaining about Amazon’s tactics.Continue reading...

Now that the histrionics surrounding the debut of Apple's iPad have fizzled into a rational, and often uninspired, discussion of the device’s actual merits and shortcomings, Apple is left with the iReality of the iPad. Reviews are mixed, but the brand is being proactive about taking the lead regarding the public conversation.

In what may be construed as an attempt to reignite buzz about the iPad – which will be available in April – Apple is planning to sell US television shows for $1 on its newest device. That is half of the current iTunes price, according to Financial Times. Not all of the television networks – some of which continue to remain steeped the paradigms of yesteryear – are happy about the move; however, at this point it remains unclear how many shows will actually be available.Continue reading...

A widely held perception of Sony is that this once-great technology brand is simply old-world and can't keep up with the likes of Apple. But the company's latest e-reader, the Reader Daily Edition, is meant to dispel that notion. BusinessWeek reports the new product "reaffirms that the parade hasn't completely left Sony behind, even in an Apple iPad world."

The new Reader Daily Edition is pretty slick for two reasons: First, It's Sony's inaugural wireless e-reader device, connected via AT&T's 3G network. Previous Sony readers required connection through a computer. Second, major newspapers such as the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal (both part of Rupert Murdock's News Corp.) will sell electronic subscriptions that are designed especially for the Reader Daily Edition.Continue reading...

With all the buzz about today's youthful brands, it's nice to see Ralph Lauren, a forty-year-old brand, figure out how to appeal to a contemporary audience. One of the best ways to do that is reach the audience where they live – on their phones.

Clothing retailer Ralph Lauren has just been named "2009 Mobile Marketer of the Year" by Mobile Marketer because of the company's breakthrough, innovative use of mobile advertising and marketing.

Ralph Lauren's "Rugby" brand mobile application has been touted as a "first of its kind," allowing consumers to essentially create their own Rugby gear via the iPhone and iPod. A buyer chooses a particular shirt or jacket style and then customizes it with a wide variety of patches. The buyer can share and order the customized product within the application.Continue reading...

Advances in digital technology and related platforms typically involve music, movies, film, and other categories associated with media and information. But GE and Philips envision an entirely different future for the digital revolution: the $100 billion light bulb industry.

That vision is centered on energy efficiency, and both brands plan to abandon the traditional bulb for LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs, a comparatively cheaper light-emitting source that utilizes the same technology as computer chips.Continue reading...

Put down that Nintendo DS and pick up your sneakers. That’s right -- your new Adidas sneakers. Log into adidas.com, hold your sneaker up to your webcam and a code implanted in the tongue of the shoe will enable a virtual 3-D world that can be navigated using the sneaker itself.

Three games are being developed for an upcoming line of five men’s sneakers by xForm. One will be a skateboard game (the sneaker is the controller that navigates through virtual city alleys); the others are a Star Wars-like game, and a music-based game. The shoes with augmented reality codes will be priced between $65 and $95 and will be available in February.

“The foundation of augmented reality lies in adding a layer to the real world,” says Chris Barbour, head of digital marketing for Adidas Originals. “We have taken a real world item and added a fantastic virtual world on top of that."Continue reading...

Apple and HarperCollins Publishers are in talks to create electronic books specific to Apple's new tablet device. The partnership would give Amazon.com Inc. its first taste of competition.

Unlike Amazon's Kindle e-books, the Apple tablet e-books will have added multimedia features. This will allow for HarperCollins to set higher prices than the standard $9.99 that Kindle charges for best-selling e-books. Apple will receive a percentage of sales earned.

In the past month, Kindle's low $9.99 price point has put pressure on the already struggling book publishing industry. In order to improve the sales of their more expensive hardcover books, some leading publishing houses, including HarperCollins, have postponed the release of bestselling hardcover e-books for several months.Continue reading...

The Droid has been hankering for a fight with the iPhone for some time, but with this latest ad the smartphone gives itself a black eye.

Verizon’s ad, titled “Pretty,” says that the iPhone is a “digitally clueless beauty pageant queen” and a “Princess,” where the Droid is a phone that “does” things like “rip through the web like a circular saw through a ripe banana.”

However, with its pretty vs. practical posturing, the Droid admits that when it comes to the looks department, it’s, well, a little rough around the edges. Or rather, dull. Boring. A big black square. The Droid asks consumers to choose between style and performance, which might cause some consumers to think, “Why can’t I have both?”Continue reading...

It's pretty clear that people care more about their appearance than ever before. All sorts of companies are making bank in an attempt to help.

The purse-portable Nintendo DS recently introduced a new fashion-based game called Style Savvy that even had Rachel Zoe's fingers moving at its launch party in LA. The game allows players to take on the role of a clothing boutique owner, managing everything from customer questions to budget and inventory.Continue reading...

Mulberry bags are expensive, and Apple computers are expensive, so it shouldn't be surprising that a collaboration between the two brands wouldn't exactly be easy on your wallet. Still, for an accessory to be as expensive as its contents seems a bit steep.

To be clear: the line runs from $250 for iPod cases to $1195 for a patent laptop bag. Both companies have continually drawn a lot of flak for being too pricey. Personally, I'm getting acid reflux just thinking about the fact that a MacBook costs less than such a bag. How could that possibly be appealing to consumers?Continue reading...