brand-as-business bit:  By now you’ve probably read about Interbrand’s latest report on the Best Global Brands.  While most people were focused on the rankings, I was more interested in the piece about the valuation methodology which was buried in the report. Interbrand’s methodology is part art and part science, as evidenced by the inclusion of […]

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Whew!  What a year it’s been. Over the past year, my brain has pumped out 1778 tweets, 81 brand-as-business bites blog posts, 17 videos, 11 published articles, 11 brand-as-business brief newsletters, 10 podcast interviews, 8 QSR Magazine columns, 8 Slideshare documents, 7 speaking engagements, 3 guest blog posts, and countless random thoughts – not to […]

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Sometime in the next year or two, I predict U.S. companies will undergo a human resources crisis. As businesses stabilize and people become accustomed to a certain degree of economic uncertainty, a high level of turnover is likely to threaten companies’ recoveries. Employees who survived multiple rounds of layoffs over the last couple of years […]

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In a post earlier this week, I started to address why some companies don’t operationalize their brands.  I suggested that there are 3 kinds of business leaders who fail to leverage the full potential of their brands. […]

Brand Operationalization gap

Over coffee the other day a colleague asked me a question I actually get asked a lot:  Do you find that people “get it?”  By “it” he was referring to operationalizing the brand, the approach I teach and help my clients implement.  He asked because he’s found, as have I, that although many company leaders […]

A couple of months ago I gave a workshop on my topic “Brand-as-Business:  How Companies Drive Business Growth by Operationalizing Their Brands.”  Feedback was so positive I thought I’d get a brief video of excerpts made to share with my readers here.    Please check it out and let me know what you think (run time:  […]

fast-food

Attention:  fast food marketers – you’re wasting half of your advertising! But I’m not talking about the waste that John Wanamaker was referring to in his famous quip about not knowing which half of his advertising was being wasted.  I’m talking about the average of 48% of people who say there’s a big difference between […]

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I read with great interest an article in SmartBusiness about Red Mango and the yummy yogurt chain’s founder, president, and CEO of Red Mango, Dan Kim.  I’m fascinated by the frozen yogurt chains that have emerged on the cultural landscape in last 5 years.  Pinkberry has probably gotten the most coverage in the press, with […]

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Last week’s Ad Age featured an article called “Why It’s Time to Do Away With the Brand Manager.” The piece, and the Forrester research report which inspired it, argues for “changing the name ‘brand manager‘ to ‘brand advocate,’ and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age.” It reminded me […]