Reading Time: 4 minutes Right now, many social brands offer a free ride in exchange for data that they hope will be valuable to their marketers and others.
Tag: trends
The brands that dare: gamechangers
Reading Time: 5 minutes Some brands seem to rule the world. They’re big, powerful, profitable and widely adored. They talk and the world listens. They are the game-makers. They made the game and they continue to run it. Their playbook seems to pretty much decide the rules for most. But not everyone aspires to that level of success and […]
Increasing your difference by opinion
Reading Time: 3 minutes The opinionated consumer is on the rise. Brad Tuttle cites numerous examples of boycotting, protesting, petitioning and venting in this recent article in Time. Encouraged by the galvinising effects of social media and mass action against brands that they perceive to have done wrong, people everywhere it seems are pointing the finger and calling upon […]
6 influencers of brand prosperity
Reading Time: 7 minutes There’s an increasing temptation to see technology as the harbinger of hope and hazard. Every day, the trendy press and commentators on social media carry reports of the next “it” technology together with their recommendations on what every business needs to be doing to ride the wave. Many of these wunder-techs seem to live a […]
Business models as tensions
Reading Time: < 1 minute Jez Frampton once summarised great retailing as the perfect mix of finance, space and brand. I find that such an excellent crystallisation of the inherent tensions in that sector – the need to pack enough of the right branded product into an environment displacing the right number of square feet to deliver customers a great […]
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 […]
Big brand dynamics: the rise of the super-platforms
Reading Time: 4 minutes Some thoughtful work by John Hagel in this article in which he suggests that economies are increasingly divided by two dynamics – those sectors that are scaling, and those that are shattering. As those dynamics become more radical, the pressures they exert on businesses are also becoming more extreme.
From CMO to CEO: the next era of brand leadership?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) haven’t had it this good for some time. As Jack Trout observed the average tenure not so long ago stood at less than two years. Now it’s close to double that. The reasons why things got so bad, according to Trout, could be attributed to both internal and external forces. Internally, […]
The battle between ideas and access
Reading Time: 3 minutes At one level Taylor Swift’s split with Spotify is the story of ongoing upheavals in the music industry and one artist’s approach to contain the impact. At another, it is symptomatic of a struggle for the relationship with the end customer that is going on across much of B2C.
Hooked on Brands: A (Short) Virtual Coffee™ with Nir Eyal
Reading Time: 4 minutes Nir Eyal spent years in the video gaming and advertising industries. I first became aware of his work through his articles (his work can be found in Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic and TechCrunch) and his blog. In the book “Hooked” he promulgates a process that he says successful brands can embed in their products […]
Why consumer brands are increasingly personal (and what that means for you)
Reading Time: 2 minutes This is the year of wearables it seems. Morgan Stanley are predicting shipments will top 70 million this year and grow to 248 million by 2017. But the thought that wearables themselves will feature in consumer and business spending across areas ranging from fashion and fitness, healthcare and insurance also points to escalation of another […]