Reading Time: 3 minutesAs John Hagel has observed, the middle market is dying as market dynamics radicalise. At one end, the sectors that are scaling continue to expand footprint and influence; at the other, the long tail stretches further as the market fragments into more and more bit players fighting for a percentum of market share. This dissolution […]
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Perspectives
Brand resurrection. Reviving a dying brand
Reading Time: 3 minutesI admit it – I called them for dead. I thought Blackberry were gone. I think a lot of us did. But if this article in AdAge is more than just hype on the part of the company and its ad agency, perhaps that call was premature. I am still cautious about whether Blackberry are […]
Keeping your brand successful
Reading Time: 4 minutesWell, the IPO for Fitbit got off to a flying start, but will it last? Can the company continue to grow at anything like the rate it has? Here’s the good news. This certainly looks like a market on the march. According to the Guardian, 16 million fitness trackers were sold globally last year, with […]
Updated post: Refreshing your brand promise
Reading Time: < 1 minuteUpdated (alright,completely rewrote) one of my older posts today about the need for brand managers to think about at least refreshing their brand promise if they haven’t got sign off to do a complete repositioning. It seems a practical solution to me in the light of the pressure so many face to keep their brands […]
4 reasons to change your brand outside-in
Reading Time: 3 minutesOutside-in change is prompted by shifts beyond the immediate control of the brand. Those prompts could be competitive, reputational or sectoral. They could manifest in symptoms as varied as a drop in credibility, a slump in market share or a shift in profitability within a sector as a whole. Whatever the signal, these declines prompt […]
Rebranding: 10 reasons why rebrands fail
Reading Time: 5 minutesAs this article in Entrepreneur reminds us, plenty of brands try to re-set the market’s understanding of their brand and are well and truly spanked for doing so. If rebranding is the hot topic of conversation at your place right now, here’s 10 reasons to leave things as they are:
Brands and history
Reading Time: 3 minutesEveryone loves a good story, and the critical strength of heritage brands is that they have such stories in abundance. Little wonder then that as American consumer confidence starts to look up, the brands that remind consumers of what they have, where they are and where they’ve come from are doing well. It’s a timely […]
Building compassionate brands
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn a recent address at Cannes, Monica Lewinsky made a plea for brands to play a more direct role in building a compassionate society: one where the power of social media to generate shame and humiliation (and gain money by doing so) was eschewed in favour of an environment that collectively supported and inspired individuals […]
The airbrushed brand is dying
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe aspiration drive that has dominated how marketers think and what they strive to achieve in building a brand’s mythology is increasingly being seen by consumers as unattainable and fake. Buyers are drawing a line under what they perceive to be airbrushed brands. And the push-back is manifest in everything from the acceptance of imperfect […]
Brand participation: Not everyone is in the market at once
Reading Time: 4 minutesIt’s tempting to think of consumers in binary terms in relation to the brands you are responsible for: in, or out; buying, or not buying; loyal, or not loyal. But for many brands, the status of an individual can be more complex. At any given point in time, people can take on other roles in […]
20 reasons people hate brands
Reading Time: < 1 minuteWhen I ask people “Which brands do you hate, and why?”, the names and the reasons for disliking said brand come back thick and fast:
Changing brand economics
Reading Time: 4 minutesConsciously or not, many brands are now running a freemium model. They are giving away a lot more than they used to, particularly across social media, just to keep up with the changing competitive landscape. And they are hoping to recoup on that significant content investment when consumers do buy. So has any of this […]