In its "Customer-Made" special report, innovation Web site Trendwatching.com looks at "the phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed."

Nation's Restaurant News writer Gregg Cebrzynski submits his "Reverse Dog Years Theory" of brands, hypothesizing brands don't always act their natural age, and sometimes an adjustment is needed. One example he cites is Blimpie Subs & Salads, a 40-year old company which recently decided to reposition itself as a "contemporary deli," a move the writer attributes to a 35-year-old midlife crisis.

[via Nation's Restaurant News (free registration) and the IAB SmartBrief]

Giant Bicycle, formerly an OEM manufacturer of frames for nearly every other brand name, has gone from a virtually no-name frame producer to one of the top few brand names in cycling today.

Some of the takeaways from Giant's rise:

• Branding cannot be an "afterthought", companies intending to develop their own brands must change their company strategy first and work to improve their products on a day-by-day basis to motivate them to innovate
  
• Successful products should be combined with good marketing strategies, distribution channels and after-sales service in order to develop a dependable brand (duh...)
  
• Establishing a brand in a massive market such as China can aid your cause due to the sheer scope and size of the market
  
• Having your own distinguished brand name is a sharp weapon in the positioning of higher value-added products

[via Taipei Times]

I love these overarching research releases by Jupiter, like this: Online Branding Tactician's Guide: Optimization Becomes Critical. I don't know whether to heed the call, run and hide, or just keep trucking, because things will change...???

What the hell does this mean? How is "online branding" so different that "offline branding"?
"Online branding is an ongoing data-driven management process focused on optimization, and not merely a copy of off-line branding. Marketers that understand this quality will find the greatest return on their investment.

Having gone through a fairly intersting branding and naming brainstorm session today, I was pleasantly surprised to find this timely post from Fast Company on "The Brand Called..."

While FC said that Wordlab seems to be a silly-ish side projects undertaken by the fine folks at Igor International, a naming and branding agency based in San Francisco. The main Web site is actually quite useful -- if not more so -- than their Worldlab spoof, and they've even been kind enough to outline their naming process for others to follow.