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Brand power comes from keeping – not only making – promises.  And to keep your brand promises, your brand and culture must be aligned and integrated.   In other words, brand-building requires brand-culture fusion. But a recent HBR article by Roger L. Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management, and a couple of LinkedIn […]

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Your core values can’t simply be words on your website or on a poster in your office; they must be used.  Learn how Amazon uses its core values in my new post on LinkedIn:  Do You Use Your Core Values Or Just Talk About Them? related: Do Your Core Values Have Teeth? Fusion: How Integrating […]

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The principles in my book, What Great Brands Do:  The Seven Brand-Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest can be applied to employees, employee experience, and employee engagement. For example, in WGBD, I explain that Great Brands Avoid Selling Products.  Instead of simply focusing on selling products or services to customers, great brands […]

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It’s one thing to know there is a link between culture and performance – it’s another to prove it, much less to quantify and track it. In my new article on LinkedIn, Link Culture to Performance Through Metrics, I share about a report that provides tools and frameworks for culture measurement.  Enjoy! related: Assess Brand-Culture […]

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Social media influencers and AI platforms are changing the way we connect with customers; they are also changing the way we use brands. Today brands are not only marketing outputs and strategic inputs. They are – or at least they should be – cultural cornerstones. Here is why. related: Prepare Your Culture for a Recession […]

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How do you build a great brand?  Ever since I wrote the book What Great Brands Do, I’ve been on a quest to discover and share answers to this question.  While all seven brand-building principles that I introduced in the book still are important and relevant today, the one that has risen to the top […]

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Now is the time to prepare your business for the recession.  In addition to the typical strategies of cost-cutting and cash flow management, add culture-building.  A healthy, effective, and resilient company culture can help you not just survive, but actually thrive during an economic downturn. In my new Smartbrief on Leadership video, I explain how […]

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I’m not a designer so I don’t have any expertise on this, but from the perspective of brand leadership. infusing your office design with your brand seems an effective way to turn your office into a magnet, inspiration, and guide for employees.  Plus, when I reached out to my go-to expert on all things office […]

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The age-old question – which is more important, customers OR employees – is a misguided, and potentially dangerous one.  As a business leader, you shouldn’t prioritize one group over another. Instead, you should link employees and customers. One way to connect employees and customers is to use cultural tenets that are relevant and important to […]

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently referred to Meta employees in a new way:  Metamates.  Is this a good idea?  Should you use a coined name to refer to your employees? The poll I fielded on LinkedIn yielded a definitive answer: It depends.  28% supported the practice of made-up names for employees; 32% voted against it; […]