brand framing
442 posts
Selling The Benefits
Tell stories, don’t write descriptions. Speak to hearts, not minds. Paint a picture of the effect. Tap into the senses. Illustrate the impact. Describe the joy, the relief, the pleasure. Give people a reason to care. Show them how you’re different. Then let them know why it matters. Image by Cliff R
Create What People Want
When Ken and Nick lamented the passing of old-style pastrami and then decided to do something about it, they probably had a hunch that there were people who felt just like they did. Once they set to work tasting and testing and re-inventing the ultimate American comfort food they knew they were onto
Why Startups Stall
It’s easy to start something today. Now that the gatekeepers are leaving their gates and the barrier to entry is lower than ever, anyone with an idea and an Internet connection can start a business. You don’t need a big staff on payroll or a factory to get the work done. So more people are…
Why The Price Doesn’t Always Matter
At the start of the last school year as I stood in a queue I overheard a mother asking an assistant if the $200 calculator she was holding would be coming down in price. The assistant replied that this had been the price for a while, pointing out that the calculator was only required for…
Marketing Is All About Values
In 1997 Steve Jobs was unhappy about how much Apple was spending on marketing and about the message the company was communicating. He realised that in an increasingly noisy world the chances for any company to be remembered were diminishing and that Apple needed to get really clear about what it was
Don’t Worry So Much About Awareness
Just the thought of the kind of marketing dollars the big brands will have invested in advertising for the Olympics is enough to make my eyes water. The result, millions of dollars worth of beautifully shot, feel good commercials that probably won’t sell many more phone plans or gold cards. Awarenes
How To Attract More Of The Right Customers
How can you attract more of the customers you want to work with? Easy. Tell people who you want to work with. Tell them with your pricing and your website copy. Talk about your values. Frame your scarcity. Don’t be afraid to spell it out. When Tiffany & Co (who position themselves as the world’s…
We Don’t Have To
We arrived at the restaurant right on time, because we knew they needed the table by 7pm for the next booking. The waitress forgot to smile as we pushed open the door, where the sign still read ‘closed’. “We’ll be open in three minutes!” she barked. Oh. The smile never made an appearance. But that’s
The Story Makes The Product Better
For three decades, 10% of the population of the tiny Welsh town, Cardigan, made jeans. 35,000 pairs every week. Then one day the factory died, and the jean artisans could no longer practice their art. They simply had no way to do the thing they did well, until Hiut Denim was founded. Now the company
Understanding The Problem To Solve
There are a million and one web hosting services on the market. It’s hardly a niche. The market is so saturated, why would you consider launching yet another one? That’s exactly what my friend Kelly did. Her hosting business doesn’t stand out by competing on spec, or uptime. Kelly differentiates by
What Does The Competition Do?
I was consulting with two financial planners this week. We were discussing what made them different, when they told me this story about working with one of their clients. Jonathan was offered $9 million for his house, which had amazing, never to be replaced views out over the river. He was in a quan
Why Are People Ignoring You?
It’s been a while since I bought a nice glossy magazine. I usually enjoy flicking through one at my favourite cafe. I’m not sure why I was so surprised to get 32 pages into the latest edition of Vogue and still be on the adverts. The entire magazine was 208 pages, 100 of those pages…
Worldviews And The Story Of Bottled Water
Do you remember the first time you saw bottled water for sale? For me it was back in the late 80’s when I was on holiday in Greece, where the tap water wasn’t safe to drink. And then in the 90’s suddenly there it was. A trickle that turned into a deluge, supported by a…
Attention Is Not The Problem
You’ve may have access to a hundred and one new channels that allow you to broadcast a message, but there are only a handful of ways to get attention for your idea. 1. Advertising The old and expensive way to buy attention. You might be able to buy eyeballs, but you can’t guarantee you’re changing…
Are You Measuring What Matters?
The cafe owner thinks that what’s most important is getting customers seated and served quickly. Because she believes her customers simply value tidy lines and orders pushed through, she creates standards and KPIs. She measures things that enable her staff to tick boxes and make them look hunted. Th
The Difference Between Traffic And Visitors
When you optimise your website for “traffic” are you doing your best work? Working out how to get “traffic” to find you is a tactic, that anyone with better technical support than you can win at. Giving “visitors” a reason to stay, means having a strategy for creating great content that can’t be eas
Being The Best
When I was a kid growing up in Dublin we always sat on the top deck of the bus on a Saturday evening coming home from a day in the city. As we passed Christchurch Cathedral we pressed our noses to the window and looked out at the long queue which snaked half way down…
The Art Of Giving People What They Really Want
The group fitness instructor at our local gym is exceptionally good at giving people what they really want. During a tough early morning Pump® session he doesn’t talk about resting heart rate or thermogenisis. Duane punctuates those last thirty seconds of effort by telling us that this is how we’ll
How Coffee Became As Seductive As Diamonds
I have no idea how this happened, but twenty five years ago when my husband and I were choosing my engagement ring on student budgets, I found myself inside a tiny strategically lit room with a £20,000 ring on my finger. £20,000 was enough to buy a house in Dublin in those days. Fast forward…
Well-Designed Moments Build Brands
That moment when the airline tells you that lost luggage is just a fact of life, or the sales assistant can’t exchange a faulty shirt on the spot because of company policy is a crack in the foundation of the brand. In that moment you begin to disconnect and feel like you don’t belong. Every…
