Reading Time: 4 minutes At a recent presentation, I introduced the concept of the “goodness movement”. I defined this as a global wish for social wellness that is driving corporate social responsibility today: a recognition by brands that those that are seen to do good perform better; and a response to a wish by consumers to make a difference. […]
Tag: leadership
The ironies of quantifying market demand
Reading Time: 3 minutes Anyone proposing something new in an organisation is likely to be hit by four questions that represent two contradictory lines of enquiry. They serve perhaps to highlight the ironies of trying to quantify demand. On the one hand: The search for precedent Question 1: Who else has done this? Wrong answer: If the real answer […]
How do people want to spend time with brands (and what are brands doing about it)?
Reading Time: 4 minutes We’ve just had Guy Fawkes here in New Zealand. In Wellington, there was a big fireworks display in the harbour as there is every year. It got me thinking about what brands consumers go crackers over, why and is that changing? Recently, the research firm APCO Insight released its list of the top 100 most […]
Do we need to rethink how brands use IP?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Provocative question: Why do IP law firms generally have such ugly identities? I suspect it’s because most of them are about protection rather than attraction. And it’s interesting isn’t it that, for two parties that should work closely together, brand and IP strategists tend to remain curiously separated.
Define your terms of brand, then your terms of business
Reading Time: < 1 minute So many companies build their brand around their business. They establish the tangible assets and processes and look to extrapolate the intangible value of that as brands for their buyers. They transit in other words from the physical to the emotive.
Rising above the noise
Reading Time: < 1 minute It’s hard to develop a brand. It takes enormous effort, huge willpower, confidence, resources, patience and a thick skin. You’ll face doubt, distractions and problems. It’s gruelling …. But none of that is the toughest bit. Far from it. The most intimidating aspect is actually building a brand that consciously and clearly stands apart from […]
Brand strategy: the visible and the invisible
Reading Time: < 1 minute Tactics are like torchlight. You switch them on, they show you a way forward, you act on them there and then. They’re logical, reactive, contemporary. Your customers and your competitors probably see and react to them in exactly the same light. Great strategy is like starlight. What you’re seeing coming out of a company now […]
The Rule of Three: why profitable brands are usually very big or very small
Reading Time: 3 minutes This article from some time back by Jagdish Sheth and Rajendra Sisodia sheds fascinating light on the business case not just for expanding brands but also shrinking them as well. According to the authors’ “Rule of Three”, the quest for scale is quite literally a race first for dominance and then for survival. But if […]
Getting singular: building an effectively focused brand
Reading Time: 4 minutes The fracas over at Pepsico as to whether the company should continue to operate a diversified platform or free the snacks division to pursue its goals independently is a reminder of the ongoing debate over diversification vs focus.
From CMO to CEO: the next era of brand leadership?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) haven’t had it this good for some time. As Jack Trout observed the average tenure not so long ago stood at less than two years. Now it’s close to double that. The reasons why things got so bad, according to Trout, could be attributed to both internal and external forces. Internally, […]
Brand signals or brand noise? Being heard. Staying heard.
Reading Time: 3 minutes In economics, signalling focuses on the ability of one party to effectively convey information about itself to another party. That was relatively easy pre-Internet. Brands simply pushed claims into the marketplace through a range of set-play media actions and waited for consumers to react. The ability of a signal to reach an audience rested almost […]
Planning to expand your brand? 7 things to consider
Reading Time: 5 minutes As marketing teams finalise plans for the year ahead, the logistics of making growth happen should be strongly influencing the targets you set. Most of us would agree there are four ways to strategise for growth: increase the share you hold in the markets you are strong in; develop new products for those markets; extend […]