To change your strategy – your what – you need to change your how – your culture. And you need to change your culture first – because your culture is what will ensure your organization is able to execute on your strategy. In my new Brand+Culture Series post on LinkedIn, I show how to use […]
FUSION
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 […]
What Whole Brands Do
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 […]
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 […]
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; […]
Start 2022 With a Reality Check
How aligned and integrated are your external brand identity and internal organizational culture? Does your organization have the right core values that it needs to cultivate your desired culture and achieve your brand vision? How big is the gap between your existing brand identity and the one you aspire to? In what specific ways are […]
As you think about the coming year, I’m guessing are you don’t want another only OK, keep-our-heads-above-water, just-grateful-to-still-be-around year – you want 2022 to be a year of greatness! To help you turn your hopes and dreams for the new year into reality, I’ve just published “2022 Great Business Action Plan” – a piece that […]
The problem at Amazon is not simply that its culture has gone awry; more importantly, it has become disconnected from the company’s brand. Amazon’s brand has always been grounded in its aspiration of becoming “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.” And its leaders have used the organization’s core values, “Leadership Principles”, to guide the company in service […]
In a previous post, I introduced the nine brand types that all brands fall into. I explained that in my years of experience working on a broad range of brands, I found that, although no two brands share the exact same brand identity, there are really only nine general brand types. This post is about […]
If you want to know which comes first, employees or customers, Donna Morris will answer “both.” As the EVP of Customer and Employee Experience at Adobe Systems, Morris spearheads efforts to attract, engage, and develop employees and customers. Moreover, these efforts are well-integrated and aligned. In a recent interview, Morris outlined for me some of the primary ways she fuses […]