Reading Time: 3 minutes 1. Language is one of the most important definers of any brand. The language you choose, the language you don’t choose and the language you choose to replace are a reflection, and in some senses a definition, of your priorities. 2. Language underpins perspective: it not only reveals how an organisation feels about a matter, […]
Category: Archive
CSR has failed. Now what?
Reading Time: 4 minutes That’s the question being asked by Wayne Visser in this thoughtful and searching paper that raises significant concerns about how companies pursue responsible ideas. But, alongside those areas that he has identified as needing to be addressed, Visser proposes his vision of CSR 2.0. I was keen to explore what some of the ideas mooted […]
Talking a culture through change
Reading Time: 2 minutes Change programs are so often about actions. So much so in fact that the dialogue that surrounds and informs those changes can be dismissed as “just talk”. Time and time again, in working on transformation projects, I have faced an uphill battle in trying to persuade decision makers to give their proposed changes the air-time […]
Whose buying – and whose purchasing?
Reading Time: 2 minutes At first the question appears nonsensical. But only if you assume that buying and purchasing are synonyms. Most financial systems treat them as exactly that because, from their perspective, the result is the same. Income. But there is a difference – and being able to define and quantify that difference is important. Semantics doesn’t just […]
My creative gallery on Behance – a start
Reading Time: < 1 minute After much encouragement (and no small amount of help) from my friend Di, I’ve finally published a profile on Behance that shows work I’ve done as a writer. Nine projects are showcased so far. I’ll add more as and when. If you have a moment, please take a look. Anything I can help with, please let […]
The global challenge of doing business openly
Reading Time: 4 minutes Congratulations to All Good Organics, the first New Zealand company to make the prestigious Ethisphere Institute’s World’s Most Ethical (WME) companies list. All Good may be tiny but this ranking puts them in some great company – one of just 145 companies, chosen from more than 5000 entries. Judge for yourself. In the light of […]
The future myth
Reading Time: 2 minutes Transformation isn’t about plotting a meeting point for your brand with the predicted future. It’s not about getting to where the puck will be, to paraphrase Wayne Gretsky. Because depending on the arrival of the next big thing or that breaking wave, that hot new trend, the long-awaited demographic or anything else for that matter […]
How do you prevent your corporate culture from stalling?
Reading Time: 5 minutes There is plenty of discussion, quite rightly, about the fact that people are overworked, that they are under ridiculous pressure, that they feel undervalued and unmotivated – but a couple of conversations this week have got me wondering whether the opposite, an unpressured culture, whilst not as destructive, may nevertheless be undesirable, albeit for different […]
Which story will they tell? 9 possibilities for pitch stories
Reading Time: 4 minutes As I explained in this post, the purpose of a pitch is not to sell what you do. It’s to explain in the clearest terms why someone should look forward to doing business with you. And while you’re explaining your story, you can bet that every other participant in the pitch will be telling theirs. […]
Brands as operating systems
Reading Time: 2 minutes In this post, Nigel Hollis explores a fundamental misalignment. Brand owners tend to view customer experiences in isolation, by channel, whereas customers of course view and grade their experiences cumulatively. Tom Asacker captures why customers think this way. A brand, he says, is “one, interdependent system of behavior”. The problem is that in too many […]
Where do you stand on fair pricing? A conversation starter
Reading Time: 3 minutes Buyers have convinced themselves that they are entitled to deprive brands and shopkeepers of a degree of the asking price profit in the hunt for a bargain – yet in almost the same breath, they’ll tell you that businesses need to be responsible and to behave ethically and that they shouldn’t take shortcuts that compromise […]
Don’t plan to be a start-up. Plan to be an upstart.
Reading Time: 2 minutes By Mark Di Somma You should never start a business unless you are deliberately planning for others in the industry to be dismayed, surprised, outraged or alarmed by what you are doing. “Start-up” has become a synonym for starting-out. It implies not just being at the beginning, but needing to catch up to someone more […]