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Insight Diving.
Wanna know what I do for a living? Have you heard of dumpster diving? (Read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.) Well, I am an insight diver. I submerge myself into the murky waters of product,...
View ArticleWhen a sale isn’t a sale.
I wrote a brief for a top 10 daily newspaper which, at its very core, contained an organizing principle that grew paper subscriptions and newsstand business. The idea was intended to grow share at the...
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A Brand Plan Example.
I often use an example of my brand planning rigor when explaining to prospects how I work and what I create. Brand plans are many things to many different people. Mine contain one claim and three...
View ArticleCoen Brothers.
A.O. Scott in his New York Times review of the new movie “Inside Llewyn Davis” today nicely captures what makes a Coen Brothers movie a Coen Brothers movie. Says Scott, they offer a “brilliant magpie’s...
View ArticleThe Power of Branding.
In Spike Jonze new film “Her” in which a man falls in love with his operating system, there is a wonderful example of the power and influence of branding. Having seen the trailer, I immediately put the...
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The Loyalty Store.
One of the 24 Questions I use in my deep dive brand planning rigor is “How much company revenue comes from existing or repeat customers?” When I compare this figure with lost customer and new customer...
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When a food writer can’t taste.
I read a headline this past weekend “When a food writer can’t taste” which got me thinking about brand strategy and marketing strategy. How does a food writer approach an assignment when s/he can’t...
View ArticleThe Pedagogy of Marketing.
One of the hardest jobs in the world, I suspect, is teaching special needs children. Spec Ed, insiders call it. I am no expert but I do know there are certain stimuli that get through to special needs...
View ArticleBrand Planks
Brand planks are business-building supports for the brand claim. (A brand strategy contains one claim, three supports.) With a brand claim in hand, in order for it to become real, remembered and...
View ArticleThe B word.
Bravery is big these days. A lot of agencies and marketers have tied their brand promises to the word, including David and Goliath and Mondelez – a couple of forerunners. And why not? Who doesn’t want...
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Diplomacy in Brand Planning.
Branding is not life or death. Unless you are talking about the life and death of products. Branding is about developing a claim and proof array that brand managers use to organize product,...
View ArticleBrand Strategy Warranty.
Brand strategies for my clients come with a lifetime warranty. That is to say, if a client takes a strategy to an agency to execute “buildables,” I am always available to provide feedback as to whether...
View ArticleWhy haven’t brand journalists caught on?
Brand journalists aren’t for every company. Certainly most small companies can’t afford them. The first brand journalist I ran into worked for JWT, a forward thinking ad agency. He worked on Microsoft...
View ArticleBrand Building.
How do you build a brand? It’s an easy question. Sadly, it has a thousand answers. Were I to ask how to build a car, the answer would be with an engine, steering, wheels, transmission, chassis, etc....
View ArticleThe Yin and Yang of Marketing.
The two fundamental components of strategic marketing are the brand plan and the marketing plan. Most companies have a marketing plan. They also have brands. Not always to they have both. The...
View ArticleSkin Deep Branding.
The problem with most brands is that they are skin deep. Products and services with derma measured only in millimeters. No depth. No real rational and emotional meaning. Why is that? Because brand...
View ArticleTangibility.
Here’s a question you might hear from a financial company in a nightly news TV ad: “What are you saving for?” More likely than not the copy will answer the question with something about hopes and...
View ArticleMr. Brand Hammer.
Yesterday I coined the term Mr. Brand Hammer – a reference to the axiom “to a hammer everything looks like a nail.” Mr. Brand Hammer (that’s me) smells a new business name. It’s a curse being Mr. Brand...
View ArticleNegative Brand Brief.
For me, part of the brand planning experience is finding love for the brand. Because ultimately that is what we are building: a facilitation for consumers to fall in love with our brands. From the...
View ArticleMeaning.
About a year ago I developed a brand strategy lite document for a local math tutor I was mentoring through the Venture Asheville Elevate program. Here are the first two slides from that presentation:...
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