Reading Time: 3 minutesThe rules for developing and managing brands are laid out in a range of principles and frameworks developed by extraordinary marketing minds. Time and time again, we’re told brands follow these rules to achieve success. But every so often, you encounter a highly successful brand that seems to defy the theory. And there are lessons […]
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Perspectives
Why brand storytelling matters
Reading Time: 4 minutesWe really like Ed Woodcock’s description of what it takes to build a fascinating brand story. Creativity, resonance and purpose are all key attributes of successful brand storytelling strategy, he observes. Those characteristics, playing out across the economy, help explain why brand storytelling matters.
Podcast w/ Nick Westergaard at Brand Driven Digital
Reading Time: < 1 minute
Successful marketing in a world of screens
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn The Smarter Screen, Shlomo Benartzi lays out a world where we are besieged by choices; choices that, far from helping us to make better decisions, confuse us into behaving in ways that are actually less informed.
Is your advertising provocative, controversial or offensive?
Reading Time: 3 minutesAny brand manager worth their salt is looking to cultivate and manage a brand that is noticed and valued. But how far should a brand go in that quest for distinctiveness? Interestingly, the answer doesn’t just come down to taste.
Your brand must do more than chase trends
Reading Time: 3 minutesEverything your brand does happens within a context. You can’t ignore that, nor should you. But here’s the irony – if you allow that wider context to drive how you manage your brand, then you risk losing control because the course you are steering is no longer yours.
Luxury vs premium brands
Reading Time: 4 minutesHow should you think of your brand when you have a product that costs a lot to use? Is an expensive product automatically luxury? How should we draw a distinction between luxury and, say, premium?
Presentation: Many roads, one goal
Reading Time: 2 minutesMany Roads, One Goal is based on my most popular blog post ever. It’s about why it takes more than one strategy to find the best strategy and how you can develop a portfolio of strategies to overcome challenging times, implement and test them in batches, and then manage the portfolio down from many to […]
Helping new customers connect with your brand story
Reading Time: 3 minutesSuccessful brands have a story that connects them with their audience and that forms the backbone of their strategy. But if you’ve been around a while, the story that your loyal customers know is not yet shared by those who are new to the brand. Here are 4 ways to connect your longer story to […]
Is your brand running out of ideas?
Reading Time: 4 minutesBrands come alive for people when they encapsulate ideas that consumers want to have in their lives. That’s partly what makes brands distinctive and desirable. So what do you do when your core idea is no longer as attractive as it used to be?
Should there always be brand experiences?
Reading Time: 4 minutesIt seems everywhere I look in the marketing press these days, someone is advocating the need for brands to deliver experiences. But not everyone can or should deliver a formatted experience, and, equally, some brands would quickly wither if they didn’t.
Shifting your brand to the inner circle
Reading Time: 3 minutesAn observation from the Havas CES 2016 report that we will increasingly see more companies working together across widely different marketplaces is a reminder of the new bridges that brands must be looking to build going forward. Inevitably these invite new approaches.