That Certain Something

A new local grocery store around the corner from us finally opened its doors last weekend. For weeks we’ve been pressing our noses to the window as the new tenants swept the floor and stocked the shelves ready for the big day. The previous grocer stocked only organic produce, operated a juice bar and sold…

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What Can You Do Now?

Julie has been running her local florist business for five years. She’s built up a reputation with the people in her suburb, who regularly pop in when they’re walking past to buy flowers and plants that brighten their homes and their lives. While new single bunch, online flower delivery services blossomed, Julie made the decision…

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Better Marketers Show And Tell

Every day, we sell ourselves in adjectives that sell us short. Leader, expert, communicator, specialist, efficient, experienced, better, faster, cheaper. We’ve forsaken the effort of showing, for the convenience of telling. There is a better way. Don’t just tell us about the features and benefits of your product. Show us how that product changed the…

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The Difference Between A Weak Brand And A Strong Brand

The biggest mistake a brand can make is to try being all things to everyone. Weak brands settle for doing what’s easy or obvious. They appeal to the market of everyone, avoid the edges and thus become interchangeable with their competitors. Strong brands know they are this and not that. They intentionally aspire to be something…

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Three Pillars Of Great Branding

There’s nothing extraordinary about the location of the vegetarian Mexican street food restaurant at the corner of a Fitzroy laneway. The tacos are good, not exceptional. The prices fair, not cheap. And yet, even on quiet Tuesday evenings, when other restaurants advertise specials to entice mid-week diners, the taco place has a steady flow of…

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How To Build A 21st Century Brand

Forty years ago a brand was an identifier. Branding was what we did to the outside of a product or service after it was conceived and created. Brands became tales woven to increase visibility and memorability using design, clever copy, print and TV advertising to make sure the product was known by the majority of…

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The Purpose Of Clever Packaging

If you love chocolate as much as I do you’ve probably heard about the Mast Brothers scandal. The artisan chocolate makers are accused of not being completely transparent about their process when they launched in 2007 and of pulling the wool over customers eyes with “clever packaging”. Transparency aside for a moment, because of course…

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The 5 Building Blocks Of A Brand

A brand used to be an identifier, over the past seventy years it’s become so much more. Seth’s 2009 definition says it best. “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” We can agree then that…

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Taking Your Place In The Difference Economy

Whole Foods launched it’s first national and TV marketing campaign in 35 years on the back of losing 30% of its value in just six months. The company has been losing market share to chains like Walmart who are now stocking once hard to find sustainable and organic produce and selling it cheaper. There are…

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Lessons In Brand Storytelling From The Airbnb Rebrand

I have to be honest, as an Airbnb evangelist and user I felt a little disappointed as I watched the company’s relaunch unfold. Of course I wasn’t viewing the whole thing through the eyes of an impartial observer. Anyone who is an early adopter of something that begins on the fringes wants that thing to…

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