International Branding Blog – Conneting brands to the universe
Want to inspire others to innovate? Here’s a short excerpt from my book coming in April, The Innovative Leader, on how to do it: People look to their leaders to learn what is acceptable and what is not. They also take cues from how executives spend their time. Your duty as an innovative leader is…
One of my mentors, Chuck Young, once described brand growth to me using the metaphor of how trees grow. Here’s the idea: Like trees, brands take time to grow and require key nutrients such as innovation and advertising. · For a brand to become big and strong (i.e. come to mind for many people when…
What is strategy? Strategy is Future Competitive Advantage. What will the future look like? What will people need and expect? How will demographics, technology, and other global shifts create new competitors or recharge current competitors, and how will categories blur, blend, and maybe even disappear? Amidst these new expectations and changing competitive dynamics, what advantage will…
CEOs have become adept at saying “Sorry.” Most of the time the apologies are because some untoward or unexpected event occurred, such as an E. coli outbreak or rats in the store. It is unusual for a CEO to say that the focus of the brand-business is no longer viable and therefore needs to be…
I’ve drawn a number of cartoons over the years on the evolving Chief Marketing Officer role, which is partly a proxy for the ever-changing job of marketing in general. Long gone are the days when CMOs were just in charge of “marketing comms” and marketing was dismissively described as “the coloring-in department.” Today’s Chief Marketing…
I’m appalled. A successful marketing guy asked me a question recently — a real no-brainer — which led me to believe he didn’t know the difference between marketing strategy and tactics. How can that be? He’s held several high-paying marketing positions. He has an MBA. He’s gotta know this stuff. So I started doing some…
Read More “The difference between marketing strategy and tactics.” »
You say tomato, I say tahmahto. He says branding, she says marketing. No doubt, the language of marketing and branding can be very confusing. It has been for more than 50 years… An article in the Journal of Marketing way back in 1969 cites a clear problem with the imprecise, vague and misleading language of…
Read More “Back to Basics (A working definition of Branding and Brand)” »
Today let’s focus on ingredient branding, an effective growth strategy under the right conditions. Ingredient brands are well-known brands with well-known qualities that are included as a component or feature of another brand or product to enhance perceptions and the marketability of that brand or product. The ingredient brand calls out unique features or performance…
I recently ran across this graphic (below) from a marketing person who teaches marketing people how to market themselves more effectively. This simple graphic hierarchy represents one of the most common misconceptions in marketing. It’s a trap that many business owners and CEOs fall into. If this is how you visualize the marketing landscape, I…
Recently, I took what felt like a fairly expensive Uber ride from the San Francisco airport. Ridesharing used to be far less expensive than taking a taxi, but that is not the case anymore; in many places, it’s equally expensive, if not more. However, despite the price hikes, the driver shared that he was struggling…
