brand strategy
1,082 posts
Everything To Everyone
While I was consulting with a client last week we got talking about people who had built powerful personal brands and the reasons for their success. When we stopped at one in particular, her reaction was immediate. “I don’t like him.” she said, as her nose wrinkled. Of course, she has never met this
The First Rule Of Increasing Brand Awareness
Sustainable growth is the goal of every business and conventional wisdom tells us that in order to grow we need to command more attention. Ironically, when we begin thinking about how to increase brand awareness we often shift our gaze internally. We work on differentiating from our competitors. We
The Simplest Way To Improve Your Sales Copy
I was at the local garden centre on Sunday. There amongst the shrubs, trellis fencing and climbing plants was a comfortable-looking, but otherwise, unremarkable garden chair with wooden arms. Unremarkable that is until you read the description on the flip side of the $300 price tag. “Meet the Gin &
Are Your Marketing Goals Aligned With Customer Objectives?
As marketers, we often skip the important step of assessing our marketing goals against customer objectives. As a consequence, we fall in love with our message and forget to question what it is the customer needs to know or wants to hear. It’s not hard to check if this is true of your company—simply
The Difference Between Saying You Care And Caring
I’m not sure when we became defensive about customer care became. I suspect it might have been when we began to put more distance between the customer and us. In the days when there was a cash register that rang with ‘real money’, when we sold eye-to-eye and transacted hand-to-hand, instead of digit
The 12-Word Strategic Plan
Have you ever found it difficult to plan, communicate or execute on a project, idea or strategy? This 12-word framework will help you to get clear on where you’re headed and why—enabling you to lead yourself or your team and achieve your objectives. It works for projects big and small, both personal
How We Drive Change
When we want to improve our diet we monitor what we eat and how much we exercise. When we want to change a toddler’s behaviour we look for opportunities to praise the good, instead of constantly shouting down the bad. We measure and reward the behaviour we want. In organisations, the things we measu
A Reason To Come
“Hey! Are you after some lunch?” asked the young woman on the pavement waving flyers during the 1 pm rush. She gestured to a place on the side street as she tried to lure people down it with the promise of a discount. Most diners who eat at a restaurant down a side street go…
The Value Story
During Tulip Mania, the new merchant class who wanted their gardens to reflect their newfound success, is said to have traded acres of land for a single flower bulb. The scarcer the bulbs became, the more valuable they were perceived to be. As a commodity, the tulip’s inherent value was derived from
How Will You Win?
All success at some level is about winning. Not necessarily coming first, but certainly reaching some kind of goal or destination. The truth is that most of us are terrible at articulating exactly what the plan to get there is. The ability to do this is probably the single most important competitive
The 4 New Stages Of Customer Engagement
The commercial reality for any business is that sales keep the lights on. We’re still following rules that were proposed in the late 1800s by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in order to do that. “The mission of an advertisement is to sell goods. To do this, it must attract attention, of course; but attracting
Consumers Don’t Just Want Better Products, They Want Better Narratives
Sixty years ago, when the world was smaller, people wanted to pay once for something and for the thing to last. We transitioned to an era where we no longer knew as much about the provenance of a product. That fact changed our perception and expectations of quality. We were a little more forgiving a
Evaluating Opportunities
Opportunities are presented to us every day. It’s not always easy to discern which ones are worth taking and which ones to pass on. What questions do you ask yourself before you decide which to pursue or pass up? 10 Questions For Evaluating Opportunities 1. Why are we considering this opportunity? 2
The 12-Word Business Plan
Have you ever struggled to illustrate or articulate how your business or idea creates value? This 12-word framework is the simplest way to do it. Take a look at how we could map Blue Apron’s business plan using the 12-word framework. Blue Apron’s 12-Word Business Plan OPPORTUNITY People want to eat
What Is A Strategy?
In business, we use words that are designed to help us to better understand, articulate and achieve our objectives. Often those same words end up doing exactly the opposite. ‘Strategy’ is one of those words that can tie us up in knots if we allow it to. Imagine you’re on a riverbank. The place you…
A Question Of Tactics
When marketers had no choice but to pay thousands of dollars each year for print, TV or other forms of conventional advertising they had to discern which media to invest in and why. The good ones had a strategy. The rest dabbled. In a digital world though, it seems like every day there’s another opp
Marketing Inversion
When Amazon.com was still in its infancy, Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO had this to say; “In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.” Shouting brought us Pop Tarts, Alka Seltzer…
Owning The Story
The little deli around the corner just started opening an hour earlier on weekday mornings. Of course, it makes sense for a business located in a walkable neighbourhood to serve commuters who will grab a coffee on the way to work and maybe even buy a sandwich for lunch later in the day. The last…
Why How Matters
How you design the product changes how it feels to use it. How you train your staff changes how the customer is treated. How you answer an email changes how the recipient responds. How much of yourself you bring to work changes how you perform. In a world where more people understand the impact of…
Becoming Indispensable
Every business wants to be indispensable to its customers. Every brand aspires to be the one people turn to without question. Indispensability is the holy grail of customer loyalty, just as fine summers are the secret longing of the Scottish. When we lived in Scotland it felt like it rained every da
