brand-as-business bit: last week Best Buy‘s new CEO Hubert Joly met with analysts and journalists to share his plan to turnaround the struggling electronics chain (you can check out a debrief of his presentation from Businessweek). His plan features several smart moves — the highlights: expanding Best Buy’s private-label business, which includes the Insignia and Rocketfish brands […]
IBM
Explicit Assumptions
brand-as-business bit: Peter Sheahan, CEO of Change Labs, gave a provocative keynote address at the recent Consumer Electronics Association’s Industry Forum. One of his points was that companies miss out on critical opportunities or they’re blindsided by disruption because they don’t explicitly identify the assumptions they make in their planning process. Strategic decision-making relies on […]
brand-as-business bit: Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM from 2002-2012, stepped down from his post on Sunday. I’ve been an admirer for years. The New York Times ran a great piece about Palmisano’s impact on the venerable company, including increasing its stock market value to $217BB, making it more nimble and innovative, and focusing its thinking […]
Earlier this week, I spoke on “Gaining the Competitive Edge: How Companies Drive Business Growth by Operationalizing Their Brands without Huge Marketing Budgets” at the Marketing Forum. The workshop outlined the “brand-as-business” management approach — that is, the deliberate and systematic management of the business around the brand — thinking of the brand as the […]