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…
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…
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…
Why “do branding?” Because branding works. As I outline in my book, the largest, most successful companies deploy millions of dollars and their armies of marketing MBAs to design, deploy…
Rick Warren made huge waves a few years back with his book on the purpose-driven life. Stephen Covey demonstrated decades ago that highly successful people organize their lives around principles…
Okay, the headline is a bit inflammatory to get your attention. But the truth is just as shocking. Adobe’s survey of experienced U.S. marketing professionals actually says: “most marketers say about themselves: we don’t know what we’re doing.”
As you’re probably aware, our firm’s mantra and guiding philosophy is “Live Your Brand.” That statement derives from the idea that awesome brands — the ones that people fall in…
A 128-year-old family business might not seem the most likely poster child for Internet savvy. But that was just the story for our client Tipton & Hurst when Google recently…
Wow. A survey released barely more than a week ago by Adobe underscores why so many marketing pros — whether inside agencies, for-profits or non-profits — are feeling so unmoored…