From What Great Brands Do: All the little things you do — or fail to do — for your customers in person will out-communicate the big things you clam through mass media. This is a good reminder in this season of big budget advertising campaigns. According to a recent study from Nielsen, last year’s fourth-quarter represented […]
When is customer loyalty not really loyalty? When customers face high switching costs when they try to stop doing business with a company. When customers continuing buying only because of low prices and special promotions. When customers can’t find a company’s contact information or come across other roadblocks when they try to cancel a subscription. And when […]
Pivoting can be a start-up’s smartest move or the last nail in its coffin. For every Twitter (which started as a podcast subscription network before its founders realized that iTunes would quickly overtake them, so they turned their attention to microblogging), there’s a Color (a photo-sharing cellphone application whose founders tried unsuccessfully to pivot into […]
Only 6% of surveyed companies are doing what great brands do. This and other results were gleaned from participation in the brand assessment that I recently invited my blog readers and newsletter community to take. […]
From What Great Brands Do: To be great, you need to say no. I thought of this insight when I read a recent Businessweek article by Lindsay Rupp, “J. Crew CEO Drexler Says Retailer Will Sit Out Athletic Trend.” J. Crew Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mickey Drexler is quoted as explaining the decision, “Where we thought […]
From What Great Brands Do: Unless and until your culture is expressed clearly through your customer experience, you have nothing worth communicating. In light of recent high-profile brand logo changes — Southwest Airlines, Hershey, and WWE — it seems a good reminder that great brands build their brands by cultivating a strong brand-led culture inside their organizations — […]
From What Great Brands Do: Asking “What business are we really in?” drives the development of innovations that break boundaries while maintaining critical emotional ties to consumers. For example, the folks at Uber bill the company as a “transportation network” and they talk about evolving the way people move. The company mission: Transportation as reliable […]
Want to know if you’re building your brand the way great brands do? Take this 10-question brand assessment. […]
– the book: Aaker on Branding: 20 Principles That Drive Success – the brain: One of the definitive voices on branding, David Aaker. Dave has published more than 100 articles and 15 books on branding, brand strategy, and brand management, including Managing Brand Equity and Building Strong Brands, two texts that have served as my […]
From What Great Brands Do: If you don’t develop greatness among your employees, your employees are unlikely to deliver greatness to customers. Learn more in The Secret Sauce of Employee Recruiting and Engagement, a three-part post I wrote for The Keva Dine Agency, a leading recruitment and placement agency for the creative industries. Part One: By knowing […]