When selling a commodity, whether it be insurance, lumber, or apples, branding strategy is more important then ever. Most times, when consumers are making a commodity-based purchase, they are looking at price, convenience, and not much else. How do you shine above the overcrowded marketplace of businesses willing to undercut you to gain a customer? [...]
The recession has been bad for just about everyone. For some it has meant slowing sales and for others it has meant an end to a business. As the economy moves forward and we recover, how do we do business in a new and different marketplace?
For those businesses that have weathered the storm, there is [...]
Complicated brands often need to be architected to be understood. If an organization has more than one brand or one brand with several sub-brands, they must be organized in a way that each portion of the brand maintains scalability, yet remain associated with the parent brand. There are three prevalent ways to structure a brand’s [...]
In today’s society, we are bombarded with messages. Some are invited, messages we want to/have to read or watch, but the majority are unsolicited, forced upon us around invited messages.
Nobody wants to read long copy. Especially in a marketing piece.
Since most people receive more than 2,000 unsolicited messages a day, sending a brief message as [...]
A Web site’s keyword strategy is an important part of the organization’s overall branding strategy. Most companies work extremely hard to articulate their branding strategy and their position within their marketplace and carefully extend that work throughout their marketing collateral and Web site content.
However, the portion of a Web site seen by web users is [...]
A brand is more than just logo and corporate stationary. It is intertwined within the entire organization—from how employees answer the phone to how the stationary is designed to the style and tone of the emails that are sent. An organization’s long-term business plan is no exception—the backbone of the plan should include the plans [...]
General Motors needs to focus as much on repositioning their brand as they need to rescue themselves from bankruptcy. GM has become a company of disparate brands. The apparent rationale behind the brand structure appears to be an attempt to cover all possible markets. This please all mentality has resulted in General Motors failing to [...]
The World Wide Web has changed the way we do business. Only 20 years ago, few could have envisioned this technology would have such an impact on the way businesses communicate with each other, their customers, their investors, and their vendors. Most organizations now have a Web site and if they don’t, they are considering [...]
Rebranding. Today I read of a firm completing their rebranding. Did the firm actually rebrand or did they hire a graphic designer to change the logo and graphic styling? The look is not the brand. A brand is an organization’s promise to its marketplace. Did this company completely transform their business when developing a new [...]
When it comes to branding, often the message and the delivery get confused. The message is singular—the brand’s unique selling proposition. In other words, what the brand has to offer its marketplace and how it differs from the competition. The delivery is multi-fold. A combination of where, when, why and to whom the message is [...]