resources

A brand as business brief on the two aspects of culture brand builders need to think about: organizational culture and consumer culture.

The newest generation of food trucks should serve as a blueprint to quick-serve marketers on how they can attract customers.

Toyota was caught sacrificing quality for quantity, and its troubles should be a warning sign to quick serves looking to grow.

In this brief, I explain why success might actually hinder organizations and how you can avoid “success syndrome.”

Social media and analytics are important tools for marketers, but they’re no substitute for big ideas.

Targeting a specific consumer can help a brand streamline its product offerings, marketing efforts, and operations.

Fitness clubs must adopt a more consumer-centric approach in order to tap into a bigger growth market.

Giveaways and discounted prices are not necessarily the right promotions to build your brand for the long term.

This brief features insights on optimizing the customer experience at retail and restaurants — “the brand promise:reality gap” and “six best practices at retail.”

Providing social media guidelines to your employees is a defensive tactic that will help you protect your brand while brand guidelines — your offense— will help you promote it.

The role of the chief marketing officer goes beyond simply advertising the brand.

New technologies like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, social networking, augmented reality, tagging, wikis, social indexing, etc. can play as much of a role in operationalizing a brand as they do in expressing it.

Three recommendations for retailers that will produce positive results not only in 2010 but for many years to come.

By linking price to key brand differentiators, Sonic and other companies can present a value equation that makes saving money part of a remarkable brand experience.

Even the most robust social media guidelines are written and used primarily as Defense. The intent is to protect the company and its brand name. Companies should use Brand Guidelines to play Offense too.

Four specific actions you can take now to speed your recovery, based on the R.I.C.E. injury treatment method.

This brief includes resources to help you prepare for success in the new year: an advance copy of an article of mine, “Strategies for a Faster, Stronger, Better Recovery;” and a recommendation to read “The Shift: The Transformation of Today’s Marketers into Tomorrow’s Growth Leaders” — an inspirational manifesto for marketers as we seek to make a real difference and move our businesses forward in 2010.

Arby’s, the venerable roast beef fast food chain, seems to lack a distinctive, compelling platform for its brand.

How fitness clubs can stand out and get prospects to choose them.

Differentiation is the key to success in today’s resource-constrained, highly competitive business environment — here are 3 ways to differentiate your business.

Why branding may be dead, but brands can—and must be—stronger than ever.

It’s time to hit the reset button. Business leaders need a new management strategy and fresh ideas. This brand as business brief presents an article about the ultimate business reset button — the brand as business management approach — as well as new insights and provocative perspectives on brands from my favorite brand books, blogs, articles, and podcasts.

Sexually-themed advertising has been popping up among quite a few QSR chains these days, but a lot can go wrong with such an approach.

Recommendation for closing the gap between the aspirational vision in your advertising and the actual customer experience at your restaurant.

Instead of tinkering with tactics that generate limited impact, here are three recommendations for a full-in retail revival.

Fast food restaurants should also be on the lookout for opportunities to rise above the fray, dominate their challengers, and solidify a sustainable victory.

A brand’s name is perhaps its most prominent element and a good one can fuel all aspects of the brand’s development. This brief includes an article about how to select a brand name, as well as 5 “notes to self” about brand names.

Limited by resource constraints, many companies are re-thinking their brand portfolios – which brands should we grow and which ones should we drop? how can we get more leverage out of the brands we keep? should we develop or acquire new brands? Included in this brief is a piece on best practices in brand extensions which MediaPost asked me to pen.

The best way to increase the power of your brand is to improve your company’s fundamentals. Five effective, yet thrifty, ways to build your brand in a tough economy.

What Domino’s and other brands under stress can do to revive and thrive, post catastrophe.

Three suggestions for how to mitigate the risks involved in using social media for consumer input.

Close the gap between what you say and what you do in order to leverage the full value of your brand.

A summary of a presentation describing how companies have transformed brand-building from a costly, discrete, and subjective activity into the most integral way of managing and growing their business. The presentation introduces the “brand as business” management approach, employing a brand perspective and brand-based tools throughout everything your company does.

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Brandchannel.com asked me to write “How Strong Is Your Brand” to expound on the assessment by the same name which I developed last fall. It shows that the ways to strengthen your brand depend less on how much (or little) marketing money you have these days.

The current demise of many retailers has been mostly their own doing. Many, it seems, have tossed aside the fundamentals of running a retail business in favor of gimmicks and promotions.

Starbucks continues to struggle and many in the quick-serve restaurant (QSR) business may be quietly celebrating the problems of the former industry darling — but Starbucks benefits the QSR category in ways that cut to the core of business.

Successful Promotions, the bi-monthly journal from the Advertising Specialty Institute, asked me to comment on the new promotional campaign from BMW motorcycles. Here’s a 10-step plan to rev up their results.

Companies struggle to assess, motivate, and coach remote salespeople. I explained how to engage a remote sales force with your brand during a webcast at Sales and Marketing Management’s Virtual Trade Show on October 2, 2008.

a critique of Lucky Jeans’ “Lucky Few” campaign, breaking down the misfires and missed opportunities of this unfortunate effort

A summary of a presentation describing how new Internet-based technologies can help operationalize your brand — through Internet technology-enabled brand strategies that optimize brands externally as well as internal brand alignment and integration efforts made possible by new technologies.

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Today’s economy requires companies to ensure they have strong brands. Here’s my top 10 list of criteria for evaluating brand strength.

A credible and compelling brand extension is driven by a deep brand identity – an identity whose associations are profound and multi-layered.

an appraisal of Wal-Mart’s Green campaign, including lessons for all marketers seeking to be a part of the green movement in a meaningful and authentic way

Marketers must understand and navigate through the numerous and widely-differing health and wellness mindsets among consumers.

The same strategy, medium, and message that motivate employees do not necessarily motivate customers — and vice versa.

A challenge to the running industry to rethink what business they’re really in and where new growth is going to come from.

An instructive assessment of Under Armour’s Super Bowl spot – one based on the strategy behind the execution.

In a world where everyone competes to be the biggest, smallest, coolest, thinnest, most advanced, technology marketers are struggling with differentiation.

Welcome to brand as business briefs, a resource for learning how companies can operationalize their brands in order to grow their businesses. I’ve developed and/or edited the content exclusively for folks I’ve had the honor of knowing and working with.

New Year’s resolutions for brands — the goals are simple: spend more time with family (prioritize brand relationships), eat right (focus on internal integration and alignment), and exercise (execute your brand).

Suggestions for how companies can take their brand engagement efforts to the next level by re-directing the technology, innovation, and fresh thinking currently applied to marketing communications.

Recommendations for marketers to consider when turning to the public for their next TV commercial.

A perspective on how to apply and activate your brand’s core values to seize new opportunities and achieve business growth.

Companies seeking to maximize the full impact of their brand often turn first to the “usual suspects” – name, logo, advertising, or PR. Leaders should instead first look to operationalize their brand – translating brand values and attributes into actions, decisions, and changed behavior throughout the organization.

A point of view about why the latest marketing trend — soliciting advertising from consumers — is a lazy and irresponsible approach to branding.

A presentation describing examples of companies which are successfully crossing the chasm between brand strategy and brand execution.

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An article describing the types of players CMO’s need on their teams to produce winning results in today’s marketing environment.

A presentation to AD:TECH digital marketing conference about how technology enables marketers to execute their brand strategies.

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Insights and ideas about brand extensions that brand managers can learn from entertainment “brands” like CSI and James Bond.

A timely piece for 2005, “the year of the merger”

A presentation to the American Marketing Association about achieving one common understanding of Brand Sony

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