Luxury brands are about elite access. In consumer goods, that's elite cost. In education, it's elite criteria for admission. Minerva is maintaining those high standards, but not artificially limiting the number of people who can meet it... This really may be redefining education.

All the skateboarding brands that I was into had graphic T-shirts. In the '90s, there were different styles that went along with the different influences in skateboarding, whether that be hip-hop or rock and roll and grunge. And that's what I was into, so I was following all that.

Actually - and ironically - people aren't really interested in a new brand form or flavor as much as they are interested in how a brand can change, impact, or improve their lives. They want brands around them that make them feel special and provide some social cache or confidence.

All economically well-off nations have used what has been dubbed 'cheque-book diplomacy,' and China does so, too. Apart from funding government-to-government lending, China has also been able to create global companies and global brands that have contributed to Chinese soft power.

The reach of Coke and McDonald's is undeniable, and I'm thrilled these iconic brands are joining forces to inspire local communities through messages of peace and motivation in unique ways. It's an added bonus that they are using the lyrics to 'Rise Up' as a part of those messages.

We all have personal brands and most of us have already left a digital footprint, whether we like it or not. Proper social media use highlights your strengths that may not shine through in an interview or application and gives the world a broader view of who you are. Use it wisely.

I realized how far-reaching the effect of hip hop was when I walked by a jewelry store named Bling in a small, rural town in France. Hip hop has made a huge impact on urban culture. Yet many brands still don't speak to young people in a tone and manner that's representative of them.

As a person in the industry, as well as a makeup lover, a lot of times we see brands pressured to do things because of the status quo instead of being genuine and wanting to create and be inclusive. I wouldn't throw the name universal onto my color corrector if it wasn't really that.

Our brands - Nike, Converse, Jordan Brand and Hurley - are loved by customers all over the world. But we never take that for granted; we know that every day we have to earn their trust - by serving them completely and adding real value to their lives through products and experiences.

Linguistics is a good way of defining the culture of a brand. The vocabulary used by sports and lifestyle brands - running, fitness, training, motorsports - is all about functionality, whereas the vocabulary of the luxury business - handbags, ready-to-wear - is all about the product.

Collaboration among individuals, brands, and industries will only continue to accelerate as technology facilitates and enables greater connection in real time from anywhere in the world. It's why we're experiencing such an unprecedented pace of innovation in every aspect of our lives.

I am not only an athlete and sports entertainer, but also have a huge passion for fitness, beauty and fashion, so I am open to many different types of brands. When it comes to brands approaching me, I just need them to be very specific, to the point of what they want and need from me.

At URBN, we see ourselves as customer specialists, a collection of brands, each one specializing in one particular customer group, a particular lifestyle or a life stage. We offer her things she wants in environments that inspire her. We talk to her and listen to her ideas and opinions.

Vivametrica isn't the only company vying for control of the fitness data space. There is considerable power in becoming the default standard-setter for health metrics. Any company that becomes the go-to data analysis group for brands like Fitbit and Jawbone stands to make a lot of money.

I want to evolve each season. I never want to be one of those brands where people know what they're going to see. I always want an element of surprise. One thing I never want to do is copy what anybody else is doing. I have a signature, and it's very important to me to stay true to that.

I've never been comfortable being a pawn. I work with brands where I feel like I can have my say and companies that I'm proud to be in a relationship with. Partnerships take a lot of time. If I am going to put my name and my face and my energy behind something, I want it to be authentic.

As brands become larger, the need to reach greater numbers of customers makes them less edgy and dilutes their unique positioning as they try to please everyone. It is therefore not surprising to find such brands go into a few years of decline before they are able to reinvent themselves.

We always talk about how you have to build a brand from the inside out, not the outside in. Brands are not wrappers. Brands are based on the values of the founders, and then they spread to the people who work for the company, and then that psychological contract is spread to the customer.

The Priceline Group is a truly globally-scaled digital e-commerce Fortune 500 company operating world-class brands. I look forward to contributing to the Group by identifying new opportunities and operating synergies that enhance its already strong track record as a global digital pioneer.

Brands like Starbucks came along and talked about their brand as itself being a community, the idea that Starbucks is what they like to call a 'third place,' which is not their idea; it's the idea of basic citizenry needing a place that is not work, that is not home, where citizens gather.

As a public figure, I'm always interested in being part of brands that I actually enjoy. So, I would never do something with somebody I don't believe in, a product I don't believe in. There are so many products out there that I love that I'd chomp at the bit to be a part of their campaign.

They already know all about brands... but what 16- and 17-year-olds won't necessarily have is experience of the world of work. The more that businesses get involved with schools, the better, because businesses sometimes complain that students don't have what they require to succeed in work.

Often, I feel like a cheap imitation aesthetically looks better to me than the real, out-of-reach thing. It's amazing that brands create a whole illusion of exclusivity and luxury, and then you can go get the $5 version of a $30,000 thing and feel the same way but have a cool little secret.

We want to help U.S. entrepreneurs, small business owners, and brands and companies of all sizes sell their goods to the growing Chinese consumer class. Chinese consumers will get to buy the American products they want. This, in turn, will help create American jobs and increase U.S. exports.

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?

I've seen a lot of brands fail because they went, 'Hey, look, we're from New York, and that's what we're all about.' But wherever you go, people are proud of where they are. So even though we're from New York, what we do is a mindset: it's got to work in Japan, in Los Angeles, London, wherever.

Who I was was not acceptable to black L.A. youth: the way I spoke and my sense of humor. Everybody else had relaxers and pressed hair. I wore my hair in an Afro puff. Nappy. The way I dressed. It was all about name brands at the time in L.A. I had no idea. All those things, I failed miserably at.

I've always believed about brands and media that the mistake sometimes that's made is to think you're just going to take what you've been doing and kind of re-purpose it into the new platform. I don't think that ever works because consumers look for different experiences in different media formats.

Designers still won't dress me, and if they do, they will send a dress that doesn't fit me because it's the only sample that they have in their office that we can get to in time, and then it's hard because I don't want to support certain brands that I don't feel like are diverse in their messaging.

I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I'm not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.

I guess I always had made some assumptions about what it would be like to work in a tech company, and some were right, and some were wrong. I had a lot of, looking back on it, now naive ideas about how companies build their brands, and a lot of those notions I ended up realizing were kind of wrong.

If you are going to do something, you have to do it for yourself, and that's what I try to do. I try to be authentic and try to be original, so that's what I try to be. A lot of people try to build big brands but have received bad advice, and they don't try to be authentic and real with themselves.

The biggest thing that I've appreciated is that a lot of brands have stepped up and sent me stuff. As a professional runner, for many years I've been given Nike clothes. It's been kind of cool and fun to try something new and to do something that I haven't done in six years - train in non-Nike gear.

When I'm dealing with Britney Spears and Katy Perry, these massive brands, like, really, very Coca-Cola, you know what I mean? There are certain kinds of standards. There are risks you can take, and there's risks that you don't. And I think I'm interested in taking a little more risk in my own music.

I hope to show people everywhere that you can be unapologetically you and still succeed. I also hope that by using more diverse models, brands can see that there is power in diversity, and not shy away from doing something new for fear of failure. The effects are bigger than just the fashion industry.

I do a lot of collaborations and productions, whether it's Switch or Steve Aoki or No ID or Will Smith or No Doubt - I always like to collaborate and be a quality control person for the people 'cause I have my own taste in music and bring that to other peoples' brands and help them learn a little bit.

I have an office full of product from brands trying to be in videos and an inbox full of songs from artists, but at the end of the day if the artist doesn't support the brand or it doesn't make sense for the song, then it will never work. What we do is try to pair them up so that both sides are happy.

The advent of Google+ and the emergence of the personalized web means this is more true than ever. Brands, and their advertising partners, must wake up to this challenge and define themselves with clarity, consistency and authenticity. Otherwise they just might find themselves shouting in a ghost town.

My smile has been my ticket to the world. Smiling releases the same feel-good hormones you get jogging. Caring for your lips and gums is important. I brush my teeth morning and night, alternating toothpaste brands. In addition to flossing, I use a Water Pik to massage my gums and remove food particles.

Perhaps the most effective way to describe the approach a brand must take is to think of themselves as social cartographers. By that I mean that brands must simultaneously inspire, engage and maintain a series of conversations taking place within certain cultural landscape specific to their business goal.

China is a country, still, of great contrast. While hundreds of millions of people are part of the middle class and yearn for things made in America - American brands, movies, music - there are other hundreds of millions of people throughout China who are living on the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day.

I've been lucky enough with my NBA money to make some investments in some pretty cool things, whether it be partnering up with Ben Sturner and the Leverage Agency; being involved in an analytics company called Simatree; or creating a production company and working with brands and creating content in house.

On Amazon, you find retailers that want Amazon to do part of their services. Those, you don't find to the same degree on Google Shopping. On Google Shopping, you find sort of the bigger brands, those who want to have the customer relationship themselves - the data, the payment details, the search patterns.

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.

I buy a lot of fashion, and I wear many different brands. Even though I'm not so conceptual in my style, I probably buy the most from Junya Watanabe. It's always so spot on and of-the-moment although it's also so sophisticated and conceptual. I also love Marco de Vincenzo, Azzedine Alaia, and Yohji Yamamoto.

Everything you do on Facebook will affect what comes in your view in the future. If you like crappy things that you don't care about, you'll see more crappy brands that you don't care about in the future, and it might even affect your experiences when you walk into bars, churches, schools, shopping malls, etc.

Companies and their brands need to reach out and speak directly to consumers, to honor their values, and to form meaningful relationships with them. They must become architects of community, consistently demonstrating the values that their customer community expects in exchange for their loyalty and purchases.

I have tremendous brand experience. What I do a lot for Disney is manage the great brands of this company, whether it's Disney, ESPN, ABC, Pixar, Marvel, 'Star Wars.' And I'm very engaged in technology and its impact on the consumer, either what experience you deliver for them or how to market and sell to them.

I run all the brands like cousins. You want your cousins to do well, but you want to do better. All of our brands want to win, but we certainly want to fight fair and coordinate as much as we can behind the scenes. But to the consumer, we want to offer the broadest, most competitive set of products that we can.

The biggest thing I'm seeing - and I have to be careful what I say here - is that people are tired of the old guard and the familiar brands. They're looking for more individuality and creativity, and that's coming out of this whole new wave of younger brands: Thom Browne, Michael Bastian, Robert Geller, myself.

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