Brandjack News

News and commentary around the concept of brandjacking

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  • Can Galliano ever rebuild his brand?

    By Quentin Langley While trying to limit this blog to the specifics of the current case, some comment on general principles seems relevant. It would be unfortunate if people who do awful things never got a second chance. With the exception of criminals sentenced either to death or life imprisonment, even criminals are released from…

  • Brandjack vlog: #china, #democracywall, #nivea, #recivilize

    By Quentin Langley

  • Digi-book review: DARK ORIGINS

    By Quentin Langley This is the first book review on Brandjack News, and the book is not about PR, crisis management or social media. It is a thriller from the creator of CSI. What is intriguing about this is its interactive nature. I didn't read it on either my Kindle or my Sony e-reader, though…

  • Democracy Wall lives again

    By Quentin Langley Democracy Wall was a remarkable experiment in China's political history. As the Maoists were pushed aside reformers around Deng Xiaoping allowed not just economic reform, but also political liberalisation. People began to post their views on a wall. That was in 1978. In 1979 there was a political crackdown. And so it…

  • Was Nivea’s “recivilize” ad – racist?

    By Quentin Langley   Nivea spent a fortune developing an ad contest only to see it condemned as racist almost immediately it was launched. I think we can rule out the possibility that they did this deliberately for the publicity. But who came up with the idea of an advert which seems to Black people…

  • Dr Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917-2008): Liberator of Millions

    By Quentin Langley Today, let us take time to remember Arthur C Clarke: author, educator, inventor of the communications satellite. Today, Muammar Gaddafi is running for his life and his sons are under arrest, because of Arthur C Clarke. Today, not one dictator anywhere in the world can be confident he will die in his…

  • Criminals may have to stop using smartphones #ukriots

    By Quentin Langley With Twitter and facial recognition software being used to identify people who have been filmed engaging in looting and arson (the so-called #ukriots), the obvious follow up would be to use FourSquare, Facebook Places or Google+ to find where those people are. Does anyone know if this has happened yet? Far from…

  • First thing we do, let’s kill this Facebook thing

    By Quentin Langley Dick the Butcher from Shakespeare's Henry VI had a plan: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". Superficially attractive as this sounds, there has never been a free country which was not governed by the rule of law. "The first thing we do, let's shut down social media" has…

  • Facebook founder and the “kill what you eat” controversy

    By Quentin Langley Mark Zuckerberg – the founder of Facebook, and a multi-billionaire who is irritatingly twenty years younger than I am – is at the heart of a contoversy surrounding his policy of deciding to only eat animals he has personally killed. Some people are disconcerted by this, and interpret it as a statement…

  • Greenpeace ramps up the Ken vs Barbie pressure on Mattel

    By Quentin Langley After five days of silence, Ken is tweeting his anger at Barbie again. Even the tweet from 04 August was a thank you to Leonardo DiCaprio for supporting the campaign. (Is Leo going to play Ken in the movie, I wonder). Suddenly, both the Ken and Barbie accounts are active again. I…