Or, join my colleagues in London at the Marketing Leadership Forum EMEA on May 21-22 to learn more about creating brand advantage with perpetually connected customers.
The not so secret to gaining brand advantage is to be the first-to-do-it right and to keep it right by way of innovation and continuous assessment of what consumers find meaningfully different.
This latest purchase is expected to clear regulatory hurdles, following another announcement from Hertz this morning that it will sell its budget brand, Advantage, to Franchise Services of North America and Macquarie Capital.
FORBES: Juice For Rental Car Rat Race: Hertz Finally Buys Dollar Thrifty
Creativity, when it involves the production of something both novel and useful, is a key factor in giving a company or, in my world, a brand, the competitive advantage.
FORBES: What Does Creativity Look Like in Branding These Days? Three Marketing Pros Weigh In.
Two Pioneer-brand players and one Elite-brand unit take full advantage of HDMI 1.3a output capabilities along with unique feature sets that give consumers a choice for interactive home theater source needs.
ENGADGET: Pioneer intros BDP-120 / BDP-320 / Elite BDP-23FD Blu-ray players
Producers ranging from respected Finger Lakes (New York) Riesling producer Dr. Konstantin Frank Wines to Italy's Ca' Montini, with its popular Luna di Luna brand, have taken advantage of translucent blue and opaque red bottles to differentiate themselves.
As a result, the competitive advantage a brand might have gained by pioneering a presence on Facebook is likely to fade away as the majority of lifestyle brands follow this lead and establish their presence on Facebook as well.
As it seeks to make these transformations, Giordano has an advantage: wide brand recognition.
Often a slight, doable acceleration in a calendar can shake up the competitive landscape for a brand and spell an unforeseen advantage.
"Having Nike players wearing our product on the pitch on football's biggest stage is a huge advantage for our brand, " says Derek Kent, U.S. media relations director.
That's a huge opportunity waiting to be seized, but it's not going to sit there forever -- the TiVo brand might give you an advantage to start, but unless you make some serious moves, next-gen devices like the EchoStar SlingLoaded T2200S are going to snatch it out from under you.
Another competitive advantage is the strong brand name, which Zipcar has developed through unique advertising campaigns.
At their greatest moments, it was the passion of the brand that secured their true strategic advantage.
As a publicly traded pure play in residential security, ADT has an advantage in its recognizable brand, its dominant share and cash-flow-rich economics similar to those of cable television.
FORBES: Why Spinoff Stocks Are Sizzling (And Should Stay Hot)
Whereas Yahoo has some attitude, and obvious advantage of being THE Net brand name, Lycos so far seems reluctant to spread its message.
CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia | Asia Buzz: Let the Best Portal Win
The ability to identify that one terrific, specific thing that consumers want and need that sets a brand apart still remains an unequivocal branding advantage.
For marketers, my take away about Quora is this: The advantage today when building a brand is one must really understand all aspects of the social-business-marketing-movement.
Apple Computer is one company taking advantage of the consumer appetite for brand-name electronics.
Analysts are mostly convinced, Netflix holds an early market advantage that may set it up for brand-name recognition for at least the next decade.
The real question is: has the hype that Facebook garnered and took advantage of in the IPO tarnished the Facebook brand, slowed its momentum, and put it in a reactive rather than proactive position?
FORBES: Hype Kills: Will Facebook's Troubled IPO Hurt The Brand?
Among other things, the turn of events has removed a huge competitive advantage for Ford at just the time the brand could use one, in view of its struggles to continue to grow and hold on to hard-won market share.
FORBES: Ford Is Cut Up By Cutting Edge Of Car-Infotainment Technology
Mercedes-Benz executives, dealers and others are busy this week attempting to take maximum advantage of the other significant part of their brand-building opportunity connected to the Super Bowl: having their name on the Mercedes-Benz Superdome that will be hosting the game on Sunday.
FORBES: Mercedes-Benz Sees Big, And Easy, Branding in New Orleans
But what advantage will they have when TV budgets no longer control brand building?
FORBES: Remember when almost everyone read a daily newspaper?
"It's important to take advantage of their downtime and let them promote their own brand, " says Ms. Fedro, director of entertainment relations and marketing for Tout.
These strong numbers, coupled with the firmly entrenched brand recognition that SIRI developed, has it well positioned to take advantage of the financial recovery, especially if the auto industry sees an increase in sales.
FORBES: Stock of the Week: Howard Stern, Oprah, Beating Drum For Sirius
In the month, Mercedes-Benz extended its neck-and-neck lead over the BMW brand for year-to-date sales through July into a significant advantage of nearly 4, 000 units.
FORBES: Intrigue Builds As BMW, Benz Conduct Re-Match In America
Each product in the XPS portfolio is tailored for very specific customer needs, and the new products unveiled today are designed to take advantage of emerging software and technology, with the same XPS brand attributes that customers expect from Dell.
ENGADGET: Dell announces XPS 10 Windows 8 hybrid, XPS Duo 12 convertible (update: hands-on)
People also could sign up through Facebook, taking advantage of another community engine and also creating direct links between the brand and its potential customers.
FORBES: The Super Bowl ad show: Was the return on investment worth it?
This means that it is a sustainable source of competitive advantage: The company can continue churning new products under the same brand for years to come, even if the company founders, management, and key employees leave the company.
FORBES: One Question To Ask Before You Invest in Brand Name Companies
应用推荐