Reading Time: 5 minutes By Mark Di Somma Many of us who started in advertising did so I imagine because we saw an ad or a series of commercials that made us dream of creating something that good, something that a whole culture talked about. Recently, the people at Hubspot reached back, took five of the great campaigns and […]
Tag: branding
The speed of criticism
Reading Time: < 1 minute 1. No scandal is as bad (or as good) as you think it is. 2. Criticism travels faster than attention. In this digital age, it’s as fast as light. 3. Scandal travels even faster than criticism. 4. Fallout makes the best news. It balloons scandal into incident. 5. If you handle anything perishable, you must […]
When brands attack: 12 reasons to confront a competitor
Reading Time: 5 minutes As in most things in life, there’s a time to hold your ground when you’re a brand, a time to step back and reassess, and there are times when you should look to front-foot your position. Those calls should be based on pragmatism not impulse, because the resources required to up your game can be […]
Not for what? Why the NGO sector needs to rethink its branding
Reading Time: 2 minutes No sector in its right mind should define itself by what it’s not. So why do non-government organisations (NGOs) and not-for-profits (NFPs) do exactly that: define themselves so proudly by what doesn’t get done rather than what they do? No is not a brand. Car manufacturers aren’t in the non-bike business. Food manufacturers aren’t in […]
Brands in a no-attention economy
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’ve said for some time that brands seem to be taking more and more of their prompts from the fashion industry – in how they act and how they think. Not surprising, given that the upgrade economy now demands that brands refresh and update their products with increasing frequency. Indeed as Matt Baxter-Reynolds points out […]
How would you like your brand story to end?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Bill Taylor has said that if your customers can live without you, eventually they will. Conversely, I’m fascinated by how so many industries will stick to business-as-usual for as long as they can before they have to change. In each case, the rules of supply and demand will at some point over-ride the sentiment of […]
Telling the short (brand) story
Reading Time: < 1 minute Everyone has a story to tell. Not everyone feels they have the time to listen. Which is why brands need to become adept at the short story form. Increasingly, the messages that pass between brands and their customers will need to be articulated in 140 characters, 6 seconds, a shot, an update … But brevity […]
Brands and Beliefs: A (Short) Virtual Coffee™ with Tom Asacker
Reading Time: 2 minutes I was first introduced to Tom a number of years ago when he and I were on the same contributor panel and I’ve always been taken by four qualities that come out time and again in his work: his call-it-the-way-it-is approach; his extraordinary ability to condense whole systems to meme-length summaries; his relentless search for […]
When other brands attack: 5 reasons to defend yourself
Reading Time: 4 minutes Is there any reason why you wouldn’t defend yourself in the face of an attack on your market share or reputation? None that I can think of off-hand. Because to do so is to simply hand hard-earned loyalty and turnover to someone else on a plate. Nevertheless, faced with a concerted effort to take market […]
Outperforming as a brand: making the right investment in disruption
Reading Time: 3 minutes Everybody professes an interest in growing. Everyone wants to outperform the market. Yet the challenges to do so are for the most part under-estimated and the appetite required to resource adequately in order to decisively disrupt is generally lacking. An interview with Stephen Hall and Conor Kehoe, two McKinsey directors, on why companies are reluctant […]
The brands that dare: gamechangers
Reading Time: 5 minutes Some brands seem to rule the world. They’re big, powerful, profitable and widely adored. They talk and the world listens. They are the game-makers. They made the game and they continue to run it. Their playbook seems to pretty much decide the rules for most. But not everyone aspires to that level of success and […]
9 ways to stage a brand resurgence
Reading Time: 5 minutes Commoditisation is a fact of market. I always remember that great observation by VJ Govindarajan that “Strategy starts dying the moment it is created”. It dies because its (potential) effectiveness dies and with that, its relative value. That idea, transposed to brand is, in reality, what commoditisation is: the (slow) death of relevant value. However, […]