Brands are not things; rather brands are a representation of a highly valued idea that resides in the minds of customers and stakeholders. A brand strategy's success or failure depends on how well brand owners understand how the mind operates. Brands represent a set of unifying principles that guide an [...]
Ask any architect and they will tell you the most important aspect of design is not the structure but its foundation. If you’re going to create a brand that endures, you’ll have to build its value on a solid foundation. Of course, foundations aren’t as glamorous as the stunning [...]
What holds brands back from innovation and market leadership is the same element that holds people back: FEAR! As a species, we humans fear change. We can’t help our natural inclination for safety and security. It’s wired into the lizard brain at the base of the skull. We fear [...]
A startup business faces many difficult challenges getting off the ground. For many early stage CEO’s assessing their priorities, product development and the seed money to grow are their primary concerns. Few if any are thinking much about brand building. For startup CEOs, brand building needs to be as [...]
Naming is the most important element of a brand’s value proposition. It’s the first perception by an audience about who the brand is and what the brand represents. From day one, a brand name requires and deserves full creative consideration and legal protection. Trademarks, which are the names or [...]
Managing the translation of brand strategy to creative messaging is a delicate process of enabling the polarized thinking archetypes of the engineer, economist, and artist to form a singular voice. Seemingly the intersection of brand strategy and creative messaging is an area where many marketers struggle. Developing a brand [...]
Customers own the story of the brand now. What brands say is far less important than what brands actually do to serve the well being of the faithful. Whereas before, brand conversations were based on interruption, successful brand conversations are now participatory in ever more technology driven channels. Storytelling [...]
In many organizations faced with a brand development initiative, or rebranding, the focus and management of such efforts often reside within marketing. Brand development is not marketing. Brand development is soul work. In nearly four decades consulting on brand development initiatives for global brands to baby startups alike, we’ve [...]
