So often people think “branding” means creating a name, logo or tagline. All the outside stuff. A few recognize that great brands actually start inside. Starbucks revolutionized coffee in the…
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Strange as it may sound, branding is vastly more important in the nonprofit sector than in the for-profit world. How can this be — isn’t the for-profit world where cutthroat…
A global pandemic hits, forcing the economy into a deep recession. Time to increase your marketing budget. What, am I crazy? Isn’t a recessionary period time to slash your expenses,…
Neuroscience shows that our brains encode emotions more strongly and durably than any other information. We forget facts and figures. We lose historical dates and misremember chronologies. Algebraic formulas and…
What business are you in? Accounting, technology, insurance, banking, real estate, healthcare, consulting? I encourage you to get out of it. Today. Don’t change jobs. Don’t sell your business. Just…
We often think of brands as the emotional connection between customers and the products or companies those brands represent. Certainly brands elicit emotions. They spur affinity, love, revulsion, contentment. One…
The year 2016 is here and with it all the excitement of turning a new page on the calendar. What page might the brand leader turn? I’m not thinking about…
All I really need to know about branding I learned in a cup of coffee. In the beginning, coffee arrived on our shores in unwieldy, roughly marked burlap sacks stacked…
A powerful and competitive brand is not something you solely advertise or design. It’s everything you are and do. This means that “branding” is leadership, not marketing. Consider this: if…
Every time I visit the wine country of California I am awestruck by so many things. The miles and miles of vineyards undulating over the Sonoma and Napa valleys. The…
Your brand is not real. That is, it does not exist as a tangible, concrete element. Your brand is not your logo. It is not your product. It is not…
When a word means something different to every person who uses it, the word essentially means nothing at all. That’s the plight of “brand” and “branding” these days. Hillary Clinton…
Trend spotters note a new economy in the making: the “purpose economy.” They argue that just as the industrial economy supplanted the agrarian economy and then was itself supplanted by…
Arkansas once went by the slogan, “the land of opportunity.” Now, it may need to reconsider resurrecting that title due to tremendous startup activity spreading across the state. Here are…
A recent lawsuit between a couple of global companies underscores the imperative of having strong trademark protection for your brand name and logo. It also illustrates the slippery slope of…