denise lee yohn: brand as business bites™ / trends

Right before the holidays, MarketingSherpa released its “2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report.”  The report indicated that “improving brand or product reputation” and “increasing brand or product awareness” did not rank highly in the list of social media objectives targeted and measured by U.S. marketers.  This confirms my own findings that companies are overlooking the importance of using social media tools for strategic, proactive brand-building. (more…)

Happy New Year! I hope you had a great holiday and you are as excited as I am about kicking off 2010!

After the long hard haul of 2009, I’m eager to see business get off to a fresh start this year. It’s impossible to know exactly what the New Year will bring, but I’m confident more attention will be paid to brands and brand-building.  That’s because there are at least three key areas that I see brands having an immediate and significant impact in: (more…)

As 2009 draws to a close, I thought I’d take a quick look back at significant developments of the past year.  And what a year it’s been, hasn’t it?!

Last January, I don’t think any of us could have predicted how bad things would get (the economic downtown, collapse of the automotive industry, Adam Lambert’s American Music Awards performance – to name a few of the year’s downers) – nor what the bright spots would end up being (Twitter adoption, explosion of iPhone Apps, and Glee – some of my picks for highlights!)

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This week’s BusinessWeek features two stories back-to-back that together make an important point for all businesses trying to navigate today’s recessionary times. First is a piece on Target’s apparent move down market, “Look Who’s Stalking Wal-Mart.”  It outlines several moves by Target that seem to be taken from Wal-Mart’s playbook. Then there’s the article, “Why Old Navy May Still Be at Sea,” relaying the cheap-chic retailer’s struggles and successes over the past few years. (more…)

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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A few weeks ago, in response to some inquiries by colleagues and friends, I wrote about personal branding.

As a reminder, I suggested (more…)

I noticed an interesting juxtaposition of taglines the other day — actually it was during the Super Bowl, but don’t worry, this isn’t yet another piece about Super Bowl ads (I’ve already said my peace, as I hope everyone else has.) (more…)

Personal branding seems to have re-emerged as a hot topic.  The concept introduced by Tom Peters over 10 years ago is now back on everyone’s radar screens (more…)

Before we quickly toss aside 2008 with the carelessness due a former lover, I thought it might be enlightening to look back on the predictions that were made at this time last year — (more…)

Michael Tchong — officially a “trend analyst” and author of ubercool, unofficially a really cool, smart, friendly guy — entertained and educated those of us (more…)