Hi folks!  Trying a new feature this year — a monthly round-up of my published content.

It’s a mental buffet of ideas that may seem schizophrenic at times (I do work on fast food restaurants as well as fitness brands, after all!), but it’s all in the service of helping companies understand and apply the “brand as business” management approach.  Enjoy!

retail and restaurants:

• 12 truths to guide retailing in 2012 – a slideshow success in retail from speakers at NRF’s Retail BIG Show in 2012
• Vickie Achee on the Grand Retail Experiment at Patagonia – an interview with the head of Patagonia’s retail marketing
• Brand Experience Brief: Patagonia’s Tin Shed – photos and notes from my audit of the new concept
• Killing Retail Giants – guest post by Stephen Denny, author of Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry.
• New Retail Opportunities – my post on Stephen Denny’s blog
• Picking a Marketing Firm for Your Company – advice from my QSR Magazine column
• J C Penney to Revise Pricing Methods and Limit Promotions – quote in New York Times article
• Is J C Penney Stuck with Stores? — the thoughts behind my NY Times quote
• How Wendy’s Found Itself, Slipped Past BK Into No. 2 Spot – quote in Advertising Age

digital health and fitness:

• Digital Health and Fitness at CES 2012 – video recap of highlights from CES
• Will 2012 Be Like 1984? – a bit inspired by the 3D TV hullabaloo at CES
• Digital Device Manifesto – a call to arms to get and keep the industry’s focus on the user
• Crossing the Health & Fitness Tech Chasm – article published by CE Vision magazine
• Fitness Technology: It’s Not Just Entertainment – a write-up on the panel I moderated at CES’s Fitness Tech Summit

other brand-building topics:

• Brands to Watch in 2012 – my prediction of brands that will make headlines this year
• Brands to Watch – a brand as business brief (e-newsletter) highlighting another brand to watch in 2012
• Lesson from Kodak – a bit about companies shedding their legacies and reinventing themselves
• Differentiation through Specialization – a bit about how to differentiate
• Brand-building for Small Businesses – an excerpt from the course I taught for Marketing Profs University, “Why Small Businesses Need Brands and How to Build Them”
• Learning at Lego – a bit about using anthropological research methods to understand users
• Sam Palmisano’s Legacy: Teaching a Giant to Run – a bit about Palmisano’s four question framework

brand as business bit:  Businessweek’s piece on Lego‘s attempts to crack the girl code describes how the company used anthropological research methods to understand its users:

“You could say a worn-out sneaker saved Lego. ‘We asked an 11-year-old German boy, ‘what is your favorite possession?’ And he pointed to his shoes. But it wasn’t the brand of shoe that made them special,’ says Holm, who heads up the Lego Concept Lab, its internal skunkworks. ‘When we asked him why these were so important to him, he showed us how they were worn on the side and bottom, and explained that his friends could tell from how they were worn down that he had mastered a certain style of riding, even a specific trick.’

“Lego saw it had drawn the wrong lessons from computer games. Instead of focusing on their immediacy, the company now noticed how kids responded to the scoring, ranking, and levels of play—opportunities to demonstrate mastery.”

“Encouraged by what it had learned about boys, Lego sent its team back out to scrutinize girls…Beauty, on the face of it, is an unsurprising virtue for a girl-friendly toy, but based on the ways girls played, [researcher] Groth says, it came, as ‘mastery’ had for boys, to stand for fairly specific needs: harmony (a pleasing, everything-in-its-right-place sense of order); friendlier colors; and a high level of detail.”

Designing research to include observation (in addition to asking) and examination of artifacts (like old sneakers) allows you to get beneath the surface, understand the why behind behaviors and attitudes, and uncover rich insights that enable you to really connect with people.

The development and management of a corporate brand is often a stumbling block for companies.  the same business leaders who understand the role of brand when it comes to products, grapple with applying it to the corporation.

Thankfully the brilliant international business school professors Mary Jo Hatch and Majken Schultz have provided some help. Their latest book, Taking Brand Initiative, serves as a culmination of the decade-long research and analysis they’ve conducted on corporate brands.

A particularly useful framework from the book relates to assessing the strength of a corporate brand by determining whether or not there are “Vision-Culture-Image” gaps.  They define Vision as top management’s aspirations for the company; Culture, the organization’s values, behaviors, and attitudes; and Image, the outside world’s overall impression of the company.

By identifying where gaps may lie, companies are in a better position to develop strategies that develop their corporate brands into assets for competitive advantage.  There are some other great tools and frameworks in the book as well as examples from companies like LEGO, Intel, Nissan, and Johnson & Johnson.

I hope those of you who employ a corporate brand approach in your brand portfolios find the book helpful.