A lot has been made about the idea of expanding the NCAA men's basketball tournament over the past few weeks.  The proposal will supposedly expand the number of teams from 65 to 96 and add an extra week to the tournament with the top 32 teams receiving a bye.
   
    The spark for this controversy comes from the NCAA's ability to opt-out of their contract with CBS after this season and give the television rights to the highest bidder. 
   
    The NCAA men's basketball tournament is arguably the best brand of sporting tournaments in the country and is no doubt the most popular tournament in college sports (since football doesn't have one). If the NCAA decides to move forward with this expansion, it is hard to say what impact it would have on the brand. 
   ...read the rest of this post»

When I set up my profile on brainwoo.com, one of the questions that we had to answer was, "What is the most interesting thing that I have learned lately?"

Day to day we learn a lot of things; some we remember and some we don't. One thing that stuck with me in late 2009 was hearing that Frito Lay's Sun Chips brand was on the forefront of introducing a fully compostable bag. It seems that nowadays many companies try to proclaim some type of "green" message, but what companies really follow through with their initiatives? Frito Lay's Sun Chips has made it their quest to prove that they are truly following through with their claims about being green. They developed and designed a product that has a 360-degree life cycle....read the rest of this post»

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss!

Writer, illustrator, educator,….marketer? Dr. Seuss – a.k.a. Theodor Seuss Geisel, actually started his career as an advertising illustrator. Check out some of his work below. Look familiar?

Geisel’s story is an interesting one. He was a lifetime proponent of reading, and the positive effects it could have on children. In fact, his most famous book, The Cat in the Hat, was the result of a challenge to give children something interesting to read....read the rest of this post»

In our office, hockey is a topic of discussion about as often as ice fishing.  Probably less.  Even though Memphis has a minor league hockey team, seldom does the subject come up. But today, hockey, along with the closing ceremony at the Olympics, was just about all anyone could talk about.  Most likely, this was pretty much the case in offices and coffee shops everywhere in the country.   ...read the rest of this post»

The other day, several brainwooers participated in a webinar that discussed insights into the growing Baby Boomer generation and the best ways to reach them. The webinar was based on the book Turning Silver into Gold: How to Profit in the New Boomer Marketplace by Dr. Mary S. Furlong.

There were several interesting facts that marketers seem to overlook when trying to reach this market. With a little more understanding of this audience, marketers should be able to creatively reach them where they already are.

Interesting facts that I learned about the Baby Boomer generation:...read the rest of this post»

• They make up between 38 percent - 40 percent of Internet users.

After months of hype surrounding the new Domino's pizza recipe, we decided that we needed to test it ourselves and see how it stacked up against the competition. If you want to learn more about the new marketing campaign done by Domino's to promote the new recipe, feel free to check out these older blog posts "A Recipe for Disaster" or "Follow Up: A Recipe for Disaster."...read the rest of this post»

You’ve heard it. You’ve probably even said it: “Can’t you just Photoshop it?” Maybe that’s the benchmark for the success of a product––when your product name becomes a widely used and accepted verb.

February 18 marked the 20th anniversary of Adobe Photoshop. When Thomas and John Knoll developed their pixel-imaging program in the late eighties, I doubt they had any idea of the global impact of their efforts and that they would still be on the cutting-edge 20 years later. ...read the rest of this post»