I told myself I wouldn’t get addicted to Angry Birds. But as soon as I demolished those squealing, snorting little pig targets, I knew I was hooked.

I’m not alone in my obsession; there are over 100 million users who play Angry Birds monthly. The game clearly has a loyal following, and has become a staple in American pop culture.

Rovio, the Finnish company who created the game, recently announced plans to take Angry Birds to the Chinese market. The company wants to increase brand awareness with a lofty goal – to become the first global entertainment brand with more than one billion fans.

Instead of creating new games and expanding the master brand’s umbrella, however, Rovio wants to capitalize on Angry Birds alone. Game-themed plush toys, cookbooks, and even merchandise stores are in the works.

“We are betting everything on Angry Birds,” Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka said unabashedly at the Casual Connect game show in Seattle.

Rovio is depending on Angry Birds’ unusually expedient success to carry the company far. According to the aforementioned article, Angry Birds is the third most-pirated brand in China after Disney and Hello Kitty — a remarkable feat, given the game is less than two years old. Even more astonishing is that the game has grown faster than any other technological brand in history in terms of active users, according to Rovio’s research data.

These impressive statistics, coupled with Angry Birds’ addictive and quirky brand personality, make for a promising run in China. If the game is already raking in the kind of demand seen for massive, established brands like Disney and Hello Kitty, it’s effectively conveying a brand image of desirability and high regard.

But is Rovio, as a brand, being overshadowed by the Angry Birds brand itself? The company claims it wants a billion fans as an entertainment brand — but people may only become fans of Angry Birds, and not of Rovio, its creator. It will be interesting to see if Rovio’s tactics will help the company’s brand gain prominence on its own as a gaming innovator, or if it will be always be eclipsed by the Angry Birds game.

Regardless, it’s clear that reaching a wider audience of people is vital to Rovio’s strategy.

“It’s not all about monetization now,” Vesterbacka said. “It’s about keeping the fans coming back and building the brand.”

Contributed by Allison Meeks

Google is a big part of many people’s daily Internet routines. They check their e-mails on Gmail, find directions on Google Maps, and use its namesake search engine multiple times a day.

But there is one digital arena that Google has failed to succeed in, and that is social networking. After Google’s 2010 flop with Google Buzz, it is still Facebook that dominates the scene. The social networking giant touts around 750 million active users, and is an Internet staple for many. These successes are due to Facebook’s strong brand, which conveys social connectivity that is easily accessible by anyone.

Last Tuesday Google announced its new try at social networking — the Google+ Project. The network is very similar to Facebook — users can share status updates, photos, videos and links with their friends. However, one of Google+’s most unique features is their “circles,” where users can place their friends in categories (“friends,” “family,” etc.) and decide which information they want to share with each group.

This venture shows that Google wants a social networking brand position that is distinct from Facebook. Google wants to be associated with something that more closely imitates the connections you have with peers in the real world, where there is secure and personal control over who gets to know what information.

“In real life, we have walls and windows and I can speak to you knowing who’s in the room, but in the online world… you share with the whole world,” Google product management Vice President Bradley Horowitz told the New York Times. “We have a different model.”

A problem with Google’s brand strategy, however, is the network’s striking similarity to Facebook, in content and in layout. Some users won’t want to add a new social network to their repertoire if it has the same look and feel of what they’re already using. Google, as a leading web innovator, could have brought more to the plate here.

Regardless, the launch of Google+ shows the world that Google wants to continue positioning itself as a multifaceted and technologically relevant brand. The corporation has been largely successful thus far in its developments from a simple search engine into a go-to resource for news, images, and even as the owner of Youtube. Now it’s looking for a way to maintain its image of simplified versatility, and social networking is the next frontier.

Do you think Google+ will chip away at Facebook’s hold on the social networking market?

Contributed by Allison Meeks

Places like McDonald’s and Burger King are generally considered classic fast-food giants. The die-hard Big Mac or Whopper fans will always keep them in business, but a new slew of pseudo-fast-food restaurants are giving them a run for their money – even forcing them to reconsider their branding strategies.

These days, Panera Bread has free wi-fi. Noodles and Co. has healthy pasta dishes for around $5. Even Starbucks sells prepackaged deli sandwiches alongside its specialty drinks. But food isn’t the only allure of these new fast-food restaurants: their interiors are decorated with fresh, modern art, their staffs are comprised of enthusiastic young adults, and their customers often treat the establishments more as relaxing hang-out spots than eateries.

These brands accomplish what places like McDonald’s and Burger King fall short of —associating themselves with a growing class of individuals that will pay a little more for an atmospheric, modern meal. They are able to exude sophistication that is affordable, healthy, wholesome, and accessible — and who doesn’t want to be a part of that?

Lately, the previous kings of fast-food are taking a hint from their newer competition’s branding techniques and moving away from the catch-all, fast-food brand of cheap and greasy. McDonald’s, for instance, has recently been implementing new restaurant designs with relaxing color palettes and flowing fonts, along with menu items like fruit smoothies and oatmeal. Burger King is said to be revamping its entire restaurant feel, getting rid of the king mascot as well as adding a new Asian chicken salad to their menu.

But ditching the burger brand that the two chains almost single-handedly created could be hard to do, and regular customers might not embrace the changes. These restaurants take a risky gamble on a new trend that might not outlive their own established brands.

Will McDonald’s or Burger King reach the new standard of fast-food prestige? Share your thoughts!

Contributed by Allison Meeks

It’s been almost a year since virtually every college kid wept openly at the conclusion of Toy Story 3 (myself included – I have no shame here). However, Disney doesn’t plan on letting you forget Toy Story 3 anytime soon, because the loveable gang of toys is making a comeback — on the big screen.

Disney is trying a new method of brand strategy for the Toy Story franchise. Just when people — especially children — might be forgetting about Toy Story 3 a year after its release, Disney is bringing it to the public’s attention again, in the hopes that Toy Story merchandise will enjoy an increase in sales.

Cars 2 hits theaters on June 24, and careful viewers might recognize something different about Pixar’s animated short that debuts before the feature film. Instead of being the usual random, hilarious cartoon that has no connection to the actual film’s story, movie-goers will be treated with Toy Story: Hawaiian Vacation, a short featuring several characters from Toy Story 3.

“Showing those shorts is a super-smart strategy for Disney,” former president of Nickelodeon Film & Television Entertainment and founder of Worldwide Biggies Albie Hecht said in an interview with Businessweek. “It’s a way to extend the characters and the brand without its fans waiting two or three years for a new movie.”

The Toy Story franchise has much to be profited from. In 2010, the merchandise franchise ranked fourth-largest of all of Disney’s merchandise lines, just behind Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, and the Princess doll collection. Given the comparative novelty of Toy Story alongside the decades-old frontrunners, it’s an impressive feat.

Woody and Buzz Lightyear toys will no doubt sell for a long time, but for a quick jolt of energy to the merchandise sales, the brand consultants at Disney are making the right move. They’ve identified a problem — how can we enhance the Toy Story brand to maintain merchandise sales? — and they’ve implemented a solution in a unique way that won’t be seen as an off-putting, generic commercial, but as Pixar fulfilling its animation duties. Without even realizing it, audiences of Cars 2 will endorse the Toy Story brand simply by choosing to see a film produced by the same animation studio.

But what Disney and Pixar will always have going for them is their own namesake brand. The Toy Story franchise is a compelling and heartwarming adventure, but would not have had the same lasting power if produced by a different company. Few can rival the powerful duo’s filmmaking abilities, and that’s where the true power of their branding lies.

Contributed by Allison Meeks