Monday morning in Boston. I hardly had time to brush away the blues when I read about the Disney buyout of Marvel Entertainment for $4billion. Heck, that’s 0.5% of the $800B stimulus package. But, I digress. This tie-up is one of the largest corporate deals this summer and signals the coming-of-age of Marvel’s entertainment business. Originally, a comic book company, Marvel declared bankruptcy in the mid- nineties as it faced a slump in comic book sales.

Interestingly, this deal is a merger of two companies with similar business models. Both companies commercialize the popularity of their characters who are very popular in a variety of customer segments. They promote these characters on a variety of media platforms as well as through third-party licensing deals all around the world. » Read more: Some thoughts on the Disney-Marvel Deal

What the heck happened here?

John Mackey,  the very web marketing savvy and highly opinionated CEO of Whole Foods pens this article in the Well street journal where he decries the Obama government’s “socialist” health-care reform and speaks strongly in favor of health services provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. Point made.

Here’s the problem. Whole Foods’ customer base didn’t think so. » Read more: The Whole Foods CEO Heath Care Incident

Having engaged in a brand audit exercise for Fujitsu in India many years ago, I recall the exercise that Coopers and Lybrand had run for us. It was a tremendous learning experience and my first exposure to the complex and exciting world of branding. While searching for online branding models on Google, I came across this mindmap which was created by Martin Jelsema a branding specialist. I’m enclosing the same with this entry. » Read more: Brand Audits – A diagrammatic depiction