Commentary: The Tricky Business of Branding

Patagonia Clothing

Brand development has become a major focus for firms hoping to find or maintain success in advanced markets. According to Steve Forbes, “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.” And he certainly is right.

A brand not only serves to identify firms and what they offer, it also conveys a company’s positioning strategy and value proposition. Promotional elements such as logos, names, symbols, and colors, are commonly leveraged for branding purposes but a brand can also be reinforced through pricing and distribution systems. For instance, if a company wants their product to be viewed as the best of the best, then they wouldn’t want it to be found on the shelves at a discount store. This is why Burberry has been known to burn excess inventory and perhaps it is also why premium brands will leverage opportunities to recycle their products.

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Natural Gas Industry Wants to ‘Break the Poverty Cycle’

Natural Gas Plant

The natural gas industry plans to push for more support of a federal program to cover energy costs for low-income families in 2024 while talking up safety and reliability.

“We need to break the poverty cycle by working together,” Jerry Norcia, chairman of the board of the American Gas Association, said in a press call on Monday. “Government, nonprofits and corporations can remove the barriers that prevent access to a prosperous future.”

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Commentary: Dual Enrollment Is a Homeschool Resource

Mom and daughter learning

This year marks the completion of high school for two of my children. Navigating the high school years has been both exciting and challenging. By the time our children had reached high school age, two things were apparent. First, homeschooling had allowed my kids to find and pursue their special interests—ones that had future career potential.

Second, while mastery of most subjects had been relatively easy, math and science were a bit more difficult. Despite overall higher testing outcomes within the homeschool community, there is a documented math gap for many homeschoolers. In other words, most homeschoolers score slightly lower than their non-homeschooled peers in math and science. (This is understandable, of course: I don’t know many mothers qualified to teach high-level math or science, and most of us don’t want our kitchens being turned into chemistry labs.)

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Inflationary Woes: More Chain Stores Closed in 2023, Continuing into 2024

Macy's Store

More chain stores closed in 2023 as a result of high inflationary costs, with the trend continuing in 2024 led by the iconic department store, Macy’s.

In 2023, retail stores, pharmaceutical and fast-food chains continued a trend of previous years: declaring bankruptcy and closing their doors or shutting down some locations to cut costs, citing inflation, higher costs, and profit losses.

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Continued Inflation Tops List of Worries for Democrats, Republicans

Grocery Shopping

A new poll shows that Democrats and Republicans are concerned more about inflation than other potential crises, but voters from the two parties don’t see eye to eye on other concerns, including the potential of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil or potential chaos after the 2024 election.

The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll conducted in conjunction with Noble Predictive Insights found that Republicans (45%) were more concerned about inflation than Democrats (32%). Concerns that inflation could continue and further drive up prices were highest for voters with children under 18 (47%) and those 45 to 54 years old (47%).

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‘Absolutely Ridiculous’: Trump Vows to Appeal Defamation Trial Verdict

Former President Donald Trump on Friday posted on Truth Social that he would appeal the verdict against him in a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

A Manhattan jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages Friday after he criticized her during a May 2023 town hall on CNN after he was found liable for defamation and sexual battery in a separate trial. In response to the verdict, Trump vowed to appeal the jury’s decision.

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Trump Leading Biden by More than He Ever Has Before

Trump Biden

Former President Donald Trump is currently polling better against President Joe Biden than he has at anytime in the last two presidential election cycles as the two men head toward a likely rematch in November.

Trump is ahead of Biden by 3.8 points in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average, which is his largest lead this cycle against the president. The lead is also far above Trump’s record for the last two cycles, where he never led Biden in the RCP average and was only ahead of Hillary Clinton during two separate periods in 2016.

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Liberal Activists Reveal Their Biggest Fear About a Trump 2024 Victory

Trump Speaking

Should former President Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election, liberal activists fear difficulty raising funds to support their operations, according to a report by Politico.

Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, having won the first two primary contests of Iowa and New Hampshire, and is currently ahead of President Joe Biden, the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, in polls of battleground states. Should Trump become the 47th president of the United States in 2025, activists express the fear that they will lose donations amid dissatisfaction with politics from their supporters, Politico’s Michael Schaffer reported.

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Commentary: The Left’s Ridiculous Disinformation on Tainted Zuck Bucks

Zuck Bucks

Anyone who’s followed the Mark Zuckerberg “Zuck bucks” story since 2020 has witnessed some spectacular acrobatics from the left.

First, it was denial that a partisan billionaire was trying to privatize the election in swing states. Then, when Democrats unseated President Trump, NPR and others praised Zuck bucks for “saving” the election. When the 2022 midterms came, the cry was for more private funding to “rehabilitate” democracy. Now the media’s latest stop: gaslighting the public into believing any criticism of leftist “dark money” is just conservative propaganda, rather than one of the worst election innovations of our time.

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Corporate Media in Crisis as Outlets Grapple with Biden’s Economy

Joe Biden

Numerous legacy media outlets are struggling with challenges posed by President Joe Biden’s economy and resorting to drastic measures, Axios reported on Friday.

Close to a dozen of these outlets are firing workers, dealing with employee strikes or looking to sell, according to Axios. The Federal Reserve’s imposition of high interest rates to bring down inflation is hindering their ability to accumulate more debt, complicating their efforts to extend the timeline for resolving their financial difficulties.

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