I read a great post today on Branding Strategy Insider by Jack Trout where he discusses the branding lessons we should learn from General Motors.  Jack makes some great analogies about the mistakes GM made with over-extending its brand where he refers to other brands such as Coca-Cola and Dell. 

Last week, I published a post called Top 5 Risks of Brand Extensions.  The number one risk on the list was: too many brand extensions can dilute your brand overall.  Also this week, Mark Ritson published a post on Branding Strategy Insider that provides a great example of that risk.
In his post, Big Mac or Coke: Who’s Got It Right?, Mark presents two different branding strategies being used by McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) and Coke (NYSE: KO).  While McDonald’s is dropping businesses and brands to focus more heavily on their core McDonald’s brand, Coke is doing just the opposite.  Coke is in …read more