size as a competitive advantage

Establishing competitive advantage is one of the basic tenets of business strategy.  Companies must establish a way of standing out from competitive offerings and being perceived as different and better from those offerings. One business aspect that I believe is underutilized as a lever for competitive advantage is business size and scale. (more…)

Posted on October 29th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under business, marketing | 0 Comments | Comments RSS

missing the brand boat

Listen to this post as a podcast:

 

Right-click here to download the podcast

Posted on October 28th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under podcast only | 0 Comments | Comments RSS

the business reset button

Last month I asked you to vote to get my manifesto, “Reset:  Re-Ignite Your Business with the Power of Your Brand,” published on ChangeThis.  I really appreciate all of your votes which ended getting my paper to one of the top spots on the list — but apparently others garnered more and so they took a pass.  So…I’m publishing it here instead.  And, I’m also posting some bonus content. (more…)

Posted on October 26th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under brand delivery, business, leadership | 2 Comments | Comments RSS

brand documentaries

Today I’d like to do a little experiment.  I have an idea for a new brand tool but my thoughts aren’t fully fleshed out.  So I thought I’d use this blogpost as a way of reaching out to like-minded folks who might be interested in refining and fleshing out the idea.  The following post outlines my idea as well as questions and points for feedback.  I hope you will be eager to participate and actually read this as invitation to collaborate on something that could be quite exciting.

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Posted on October 22nd, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under brand tools, innovation | 7 Comments | Comments RSS

a leap of faith

Steve McKee has started a great project, Find Your Nerve, “a grassroots effort to help get the economy moving again.”  Each business day of the fourth quarter features a post from someone about jumpstarting the recovery.  Today was my day:  please check out “A Leap of Faith.”

Also I thought you might want to see a video taken during my leap of faith:

Fiji and NZ 2005 - 140

click on the image to view movie

Posted on October 19th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under brand fun, business, leadership | 0 Comments | Comments RSS

a cmo’s dream team

Last week’s Ad Age featured an article called “Why It’s Time to Do Away With the Brand Manager.” The piece, and the Forrester research report which inspired it, argues for “changing the name ‘brand manager‘ to ‘brand advocate,’ and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age.” It reminded me of an article I wrote several years ago.

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Posted on October 19th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under business, leadership, marketing | 2 Comments | Comments RSS

the twitimpact phenomenon on brand at light speed

The following is a guest post from Dan Phillips, the co-founder of Skybend, a design and brand company focused on helping businesses navigate the gauntlet of electronic media. A classically trained artist turned graphics designer turned entrepreneur, Dan brings his unique perspective to branding efforts for businesses around the country. Contact Dan through his website at http://skybend.com or on Twitter via @ruqus.

Today I heard a story about the immediate impact of Twitter, or Twitimpact (that’s right you read it here first, Twitimpact). HLG_Twitter_FiredThe story goes like this: (more…)

Posted on October 14th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under brand communication, brand perceptions, brand touchpoints | 2 Comments | Comments RSS

stuff that matters

This is a continuation of the debrief from the Brand Managecamp conference.  In my last post, I relayed insights about Innovation from the “elite conference on branding” that I attended in Las Vegas last week.   Today I’m covering the 2 remaining themes that arose – both fall under the category of “stuff that matters”:  Substance (meaning, mission, authenticity, integrity) and Results (ROI, accountability, behavior, reality).

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Posted on October 12th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under brand equity, brand value, business, marketing, trends | 3 Comments | Comments RSS

fresh thinking from brand managecamp

Earlier this week I attended one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to – Brand Managecamp.brandmanagecamp Billed as the “elite conference on branding,” and featuring some heavy hitting speakers like guru Guy Kawasaki and marketing professor/legend Phil Kotler, I had quite high expectations going into it – and they definitely were met.  Len Herstein and his team did a fantastic job of assembling the perfect mix of speakers and topics to educate, inspire, and in some cases, provoke the assembly of high caliber attendees.

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Posted on October 8th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under business, innovation, marketing | 2 Comments | Comments RSS

best global brands do’s and don’ts

Now that everyone has had a chance to digest BusinessWeek/Interbrand’s Best Global Brands report, I thought I’d offer some suggestions for how to use the results. best global brands There’s a risk that if someone doesn’t know what brand valuation really means or what it’s useful for, the conclusions and implications drawn from the report could be off.

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Posted on October 5th, 2009 by denise lee yohn and filed under best brands lists, brand value, marketing | 0 Comments | Comments RSS