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 […]
Tag: differentiation
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 […]
Brand diversification: extend with caution
Reading Time: 2 minutes In the search for more income, many brands seem keen to broaden their mandate or redefine the sector they see themselves as now being part of. But the hunt for diversified income streams comes with its own list of dangers and the most obvious caution is this: don’t lose the plot. Don’t spread your brand […]
Resisting the temptation of assumptions
Reading Time: < 1 minute “I think we can safely assume …” Actually, I doubt it. You can conveniently assume. You can quickly assume. You can naively assume. But I can’t think of any brand that can safely assume. Because to safely assume how you will continue to compete, you must depend on what you’ve known, or feel you’ve known, […]
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.
Rethinking brand growth
Reading Time: 3 minutes One of my favourite questions when a brand leader tells me how much they intend to grow over the next 12 months is to ask them how much they think the market itself will grow. In other words, how much organic growth can they expect the market to give them just for participating versus how […]
Is it time we called off the hunt for the purple cow?
Reading Time: 5 minutes For some time now, brands have pursued difference. Spurred on initially by Jack Trout, they’ve positioned, disrupted, innovated … all with that elusive goal in mind. To stand out and stand apart from their competitors. Benefits, positioning, onions, pyramids, strategies … a lot of time and energy has been focused on helping brands achieve difference. […]
Thinking beyond brand doing
Reading Time: < 1 minute No matter how successful your brand is now, it will probably die. That’s the forecast from Jim Collins in this insightful article about life and death on the Fortune 500. In it he points out that over 2000 companies have appeared on the list since its inception in 1955. But of the 500 that appeared […]
20 ways to kill dull communications
Reading Time: < 1 minute 1. Promote a refreshing viewpoint. 2. Start a different conversation. 3. Shift away from the standard imagery of the industry.
10 ways it pays to be an intermediary brand
Reading Time: 5 minutes Marketers and business writers have been talking for ages about disintermediation – cutting out the middle man – in a bid to achieve more direct and economically efficient relationships. But the battle between Hachette and Amazon reminds us there are still very powerful players mediating between customer and producer.
20 ways to kill dull products
Reading Time: < 1 minute When Nielsen analysed over 3,400 new consumer product introductions launched in the U.S. market in 2012, it found just 14 managed to generate at least $50 million in sales in their first year and sustain that momentum into their second. Out of some 17,000 new products launched since 2008, just 62 of them have had […]
Let’s sack “dumb” HR
Reading Time: 4 minutes For all the talk of the need for talent and the huge dependence on human capability to compete effectively, HR for the most part is still a dumb industry. It’s dumb not because the people responsible for it are dumb but because the processes of control and conform that worked so neatly in the factory […]