30 Posts Found

Identity is an increasingly central driver of consumer purchases, even as diversity suffers backlash in some parts of the world. Here’s how brands can get it right.

Content: Article | Authors: David Dubois, Kanayo Ogodazi, Rachel Eva Lim | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Reducing investments in brand marketing during downturns backfires in many ways. Such budget cuts are sound bites that may play well on earnings calls, but their effectiveness is dubious at best—and destructive at worst. CMOs and CFOs should instead see times of economic uncertainty as a marketing and sales opportunity to double down on the right customers, gain share, enhance the value of their customer … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alex Almeida, Chris Murphy, David Ratajczak, Emily Kruger, Leonardo Fascione, Mario Simon | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Brand marketing is an easy target when CMOs face pressure to shrink budgets in times of uncertainty. CMOs often struggle to resist such cuts because most companies lack an unequivocal answer to this long-lingering question: Can brand-marketing spending be dialed down as needed to shore up financials, or is it an essential, always-on investment that must be safeguarded to avoid devastating long-term impacts on the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Alex Almeida, Chris Murphy, David Ratajczak, Emily Kruger, Leonardo Fascione, Mario Simon | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

An analysis of over 1,000 case studies from around the world of successful brand building has found that there are 26 different “approaches” to telling a brand story, each representing a different but proven opportunity to positioning your brand and telling your brand story. Each approach can be summarized by a key question (or set of questions), which I share below.

Content: Article | Author: Ulli Appelbaum | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

In recent years, it’s become fashionable for marketers to describe themselves as “storytellers” for their brand. But many brand narratives are deadly dull. That’s because they lack the one element that every good writer uses: conflict.

Content: Article | Author: Andy Nairn | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

A vital tool that will help you define the very essence of your brand.

Content: Article | Author: Patrick ‘Mad’ Mork | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Every branding process will automatically have two parts: The internal, employee-facing component, and the external, public or customer-facing component. Both need to be taken into account throughout planning and execution. They are two sides of the same coin, and while they require different approaches, they’ll intimately impact one another’s success — and it’s a delicate balance.

Content: Quotation | Author: Josh Reeves | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

To a large extent, brand is built on consistently setting and meeting a defined set of expectations. Make sure everyone on your team is setting and meeting the same ones. And make it easy for them to be successful, by providing the right assets and guidelines a simple cut and paste away.

Content: Quotation | Author: Leslie Ziegler | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

When Leslie Ziegler joined the founding team of Rock Health in 2010, she had an enormous task ahead of her: make the intimidating world of institutional health care approachable for startup founders. No matter what the firm did next, its brand was going to have to do this heavy lifting, and as a veteran art director with the likes of McCann Erickson and DDB, this … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Leslie Ziegler | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Brand, Entrepreneurship, Marketing / Sales

Stanford professor Glenn R. Carroll discusses his decades of research into the origins, advantages, perils, and future of “authentic” branding.

Content: Article | Author: Glenn R. Carroll | Source: Stanford University | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Since leaving YouTube in 2009, Julie Supan has become one of the most sought-after branding experts in Silicon Valley, helping companies like Dropbox, Airbnb and Thumbtack craft their positioning prior to launch. Her first step? Identifying their target user—the high-expectation customer. In this exclusive interview, she explains who that is, how to find them, and why every startup needs to ditch generic platitudes and start … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Julie Supan | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Is this the end of brands? Of course not. Brands still play some important roles that are not likely to go away. And in categories where prestige, status, and emotional links to brands matter a great deal, the rate of change is likely to be slow. So luxury brands are on safer ground. Yet in domains where objective, specification-based quality is important—and can be assessed … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Emanuel Rosen, Itamar Simonson | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Brand is a three-legged stool: It is conveyed visually, verbally, and experientially. “Visually” is the easy part: your logo, your colors, your design, your packaging. “Verbally” is how you talk, what you say, and which messages you convey. For example, do you lead with price, or do you lead with value? Does your company speak in conservative, authoritarian tones, or are you more playful and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Maria Ross | Source: MarketingProfs | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

Brand managers entered the social media landscape with the same approach they used for television and radio advertising. With both of those media, we have an understood contract with consumers: In order for you to get free programming, you agree to be interrupted by commercial messages. Social media did not have that contract, so that when customers were interrupted by brands in social media, it … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jill Avery | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

When it comes to human capital, it’s perplexing that companies will use far less sophisticated methods for selecting employees than they do for almost anything else. Companies will spend fortunes on facilities, technologies, and advertising, but they often have no idea what kind of employee is best able to deliver the brand promise.

Content: Quotation | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Brand, Human Resources

In practice, competitive brands are mostly very similar. Michael Porter’s “sustainable competitive advantage” suffers from two disadvantages: Competitive advantages seldom exist; and if they do, they are rarely sustainable.

Almost any difference between brands that makes a difference in sales gets copied very quickly. “The trends in our technology lead to competing products being more and more the same,” the famed advertising guru James Webb Young … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew Ehrenberg | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Brand, Competition, Marketing / Sales

The concept behind any dialogue has to be focused on increasing the consumer’s sense of comfort or value. If you offer incentives on brands people don’t accept or know, you aren’t offering anything. But if your offer underscores a key value of your proposed relationship, an incentive can work wonders.

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Brand, Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

Purpose brands create enormous opportunities for differentiation, premium pricing and growth. But reckless management can erode the equity of these brands. There are only two ways to extend brands without destroying them: Marketers can apply the brand to different products that address the same job. Or they can apply the brand to endorse the quality of products that do other jobs and create new purpose … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, Taddy Hall | Source: Wall Street Journal | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

A brand is a storehouse of trust. That matters more and more as choices multiply. People want to simplify their lives.

Content: Quotation | Author: Niall Ferguson | Source: The Economist | Subject: Brand

As they move from merely validating products to encapsulating whole lifestyles, brands are evolving a growing social dimension. In the developed world, they are seen by some to have expanded into the vacuum left by the decline of organized religion. But this has made brands—and the multinationals that are increasingly identified with them—not more powerful, but more vulnerable. Consumers will tolerate a lousy product for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: The Economist | Subject: Brand