Anyway, Rafat says:
"Alright, so this is my Monday riff: I'm sick of Reuters complaining about diluting its brand. Well, you are a news agency: that much was decided 150 years ago, and last I checked, agencies, by definition, live by brand dilution. We call it syndication... "
Apparently Reuter's branding "mumbo-jumbo" is coming from Niall FitzGerald, the chairman of Reuters. Rafat quotes him as saying: "The first thing we are currently doing is to define what the brand is because it hasn't been the subject of what I would call a disciplined brand exercise. What exactly does Reuters represent and who are the people to whom it has meaning?" he says.
An example of what's got Rafat's dander up is on this Reuters page, which has two textual-like banners proclaiming:
1. "You are now on Reuters.com: the source of professional-grade information. Investing. Business. News."
and
2. "Reuters.com - No Spin. No Agenda. Just the Facts. As they happen."
It occured to me that Reuters is trying to brand its data, a la Tom Curley's speech last year. Curley is from Associated Press, a competitor of Reuters. It's a new Web 2.0 world of free-flowing syndication and "atoms" (to paraphrase Curley) and both companies are trying to keep their brand to the fore in this world of hyper-syndication. Now granted, Reuters branding attempts as outlined above are rather clumsy. They're taking what Curley said - e.g. "The Associated Press, in this context, might end up "branding" facts such as sports polls or rankings, not just stories and photos" - a bit too literally. Reuters, to keep Rafat's blood pressure in check, please try and be a bit more subtle in your branding :-)
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