Reading Time: 4 minutes As we start another year with all the usual wishes to do better, it’s sobering to review how your intentions from this time last year panned out. What didn’t happen, and what do those disappointments tell you about your brand and the state of your brand heading into 2016?
Tag: competitiveness
Podcast w/ Nick Westergaard at Brand Driven Digital
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Is your brand running out of ideas?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Brands 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?
An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Disruption
Reading Time: < 1 minute In my latest article for Entrepreneur, I challenge entrepreneurs to articulate what they intend to disrupt. As per the article, “if you are not entering a sector to turn it upside down, then chances are you are dooming yourself to being just another participant”. Hope you like. If you do, please share.
The harsh realities of distinctualising your brand
Reading Time: 5 minutes Our gut instinct as marketers is to go with what is working, because everything in the corporate rewards system is geared towards that: lack of risk appetite; the quest for short term results; even performance incentives. The irony for brands of course is that the more you go with what works for others, the less […]
The search for simplicity. It’s complicated.
Reading Time: 4 minutes The hardest thing you can do as an owner I believe is to insist on building a powerfully simple brand. It’s hard because single-mindedness is difficult in a world where the consideration set is huge and where others will quickly seek to engage you in a relentlessly upgraded features war.
The key to taking charge is staying true to how you started
Reading Time: 3 minutes Christopher Zook’s article on why companies with strong founders are more innovative, generate a greater number of patents, and more valuable patents at that, and are proactive in investing in and adapting their business model is a reminder to all of the very human qualities required to keep a company (and its brands) growing.
Do consumers love your brand or value it?
Reading Time: 5 minutes It’s increasingly easy to be a brand that people talk about in glowing terms, part of a sector that appears to be booming, and yet on a downward slide financially. It’s a sign perhaps of just how much we now focus on (the wrong) numbers at the expense of understanding true value.
Contrasting brand different with brand difference
Reading Time: 4 minutes Differentiation is acknowledged by most as the goal that every marketer should be seeking. But the enthusiasm for the pursuit masks a common misunderstanding – in the context of brand strategy, different and difference are not one and the same.
Five signs your brand is fading
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s not always easy to spot that your brand is falling out of favour with consumers, especially if, on the face of it, things look healthy.
When should brands choose to challenge?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Is there ever a right time to get on the front foot and challenge your competitors by name?
Speaking in Wellington this week
Reading Time: < 1 minute As some of you know, I’m working with Pete Canalichio on a new book about how brands can rethink their growth strategies. Together we’ve been studying how and where many of the world’s most successful brands partner up to reach consumers, how they grow engagement with their brands by expanding their market sector reach, and […]