The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair basically a chore. Buy mother a book dad a new tie my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

There's an adage that is an apt description of the new dynamic at work between brands and consumers connected through social media: People support what they help to build. But now that many brands are launching community-driven cause marketing campaigns the challenge becomes what to do next?

Positioning the brand and regaining trust are all smart things for us to do and those are the litmus tests for any decisions we make.

I think you can expect Sony in the case of PSP specifically to deliver a technology that is going to reinvent and change handheld entertainment and take it to a brand new level.

In fact I argue that the future of advertising whatever the technology will be to associate each brand with one word. This is one word equity. It's the modern equivalent of having the best site on the high street except the location is in the mind.

I'm committed to increasing long-term value for shareholders and am confident we will continue to do so through the successful execution of our core strategic priorities: the creation of high quality branded content and experiences the use of technology and creating growth in numerous and exciting international markets.

Technology will definitely solve all our problems but in the process it will create brand new ones. But that's O.K. because the most you can expect from life is to get to solve better and better problems.

The keys to brand success are self-definition transparency authenticity and accountability.

My greatest strength is common sense. I'm really a standard brand - like Campbell's tomato soup or Baker's chocolate.

My brand is a demography-breaker. It speaks to all homemakers and women from all walks of life and all across society.

Too many younger artists critics and curators are fetishizing the sixties transforming the period into a deformed cult a fantasy religion a hip brand and a crippling disease.

Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.

But I think there was a sense amongst the House Republicans especially that we didn't just want to be opposed to Bill Clinton that we wanted to tell the country what we were for and to brand ourselves in a more positive manner.

More brands are waking up to their social responsibility and doing good work through cause marketing campaigns. Yet too many still go about it the wrong way. I mean 'wrong' in two senses. Firstly they are marketing ineffectively and secondly as a consequence their positive social impact is not maximized.

When a positive exchange between a brand and customers becomes quantifiable metrics it encourages brand to provide better service customer service to do a better job and consumers to actively show their gratitude.

I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.

We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other.