An Update on UNT's Green Branding

After a very successful Spring semester, my Brand Management students delivered 11 reports on how to make UNT go green. Three teams were asked to build a "super report" that was delivered and presented to UNT's administrators. The "Pathways to Green" proposal was very well recevied and had a huge impact at many levels. The document has been used by the Sustainability Council as support for the development of their own sustainability proposal. And after many iterations, Alyssa Ferrer's logo was adopted as the official brand image for the movement. I am currently working with Audhesh Paswan on a paper in which we explore what is it that people understand as being green. I'll keep you updated.

Obama the Brand

Many of you have asked me if I consider Obama to be a brand. As some of you know, I have been working on the topic of political candidates as brands for some time now. Traditional political marketing has argued that the political parties are the brands while the candidates are only the products. I completely disagree, and believe that candidates have become the brands while their parties have become an important brand association. I did some research back in Mexico before the 2006 elections and analyzed the brand image for the 3 presidential candidates that were running for office. My research concluded that candidates are in fact viewed as brands and that the image of the candidate is an important component of the voter's decision. I have written a paper that is currently under review, so please keep your fingers crossed so it gets accepted.

Al Ries, published a very interesting article about Obama the brand and the reasons for his success. If you haven't read it, I think it's worth it.

http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=132237

UNT's Green Branding

Exciting news... what started as a "what if" thought last fall while taking a shower at the gym, is becoming a reality. Back then I thought: why is it that UNT isn't exploiting the green that it bleeds in order to become the first large university in Texas to become sustainable? After talking about this with some colleagues and Brian Weinberg, the creator of so many good things, my day dreaming might be a little bit closer to becoming real. I have been invited by President Bataille to be part of the University's Sustainability Council. There seems to be many people at UNT who know what is necessary to make the university become green. I've been given the honor to help from the marketing and branding side of this effort.

In case you haven't heard... this is what we've started to do:

http://www.coba.unt.edu/news/view.php?/2008/01/25/unt-going-green-environmentally

Finally getting started

After months of thinking about it, I've finally found time to start filling this up and sharing my branding ideas. So what's up right now? Actually, maybe too many things. The UNT going green branding project is starting to create a buzz, branding and immigration issues might become a new focus of my research, with some luck the design research cluster at UNT will come to life, and of course, my usual branding and CSR projects are on a roll. And what about analyzing the potential impact that branded gasoline (Shell, Exxon, Valero, etc...) could have over Mexican consumers?

So yes, I'm busy... very busy.

I promise to make at least one posting a week. And to get things started, how about thinking about innovation? If you're interested, follow this link:

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/flatmm/hbrextras/200712/coyne/index.html