Emotions Rule the Roost

The power of any brand is, simply, how your association with it makes you feel. You might say you have rational reasons for choosing one brand over another, but even these reasons translate into emotional preference. They simply help us rationalize emotional choices to ourselves and, just as important, to others. We often hate to […]

The Big F Word: F-E-E-L

Next time you go to a supermarket to do your regular shopping, watch people get lost to the world as they slowly fill their baskets. Their minds are in a whirl doing a million conscious and unconscious calculations per second. It’s easy to imagine this because you do it, too. That little voice in your […]

The Brand is Not Part of the Business; It IS the Business

People don’t invest a lot of time on details. They sort out the promise a brand makes and the meaning it evokes. That’s it. That’s all you get, nothing more, and nothing less. They create a short, simple mental model of how your brand enhances their own identities. To them, the brand they have in […]

Higher-Purpose Branding

IBM is an example of a company with integrity and authenticity, and as the best business leaders know, these are the two words that most draw any of us to a great brand. IBM’s mission is to show us how technology can improve the world. British retailer Marks & Spencer promotes more than the goods […]

Doing Well By Doing Good

An effective brand’s most important reason for being comes in the articulation of its purpose or mission. A mission is no longer an exclusively internal consideration to be shared among the brand’s personnel. It is not something you write casually and pin on the boardroom wall for occasional reference. If it is to be pinned […]

The Time & Place for Brands

Even with the plethora of media choices available and finest analytics to measure media effectiveness, brands are still stuck with how to make themselves welcome in people’s lives. In order to do that, we have to think more about how people actually live their lives.

Brand Building Resolutions for 2014

Brand Building Resolutions for 2014:

  • Spend some quality time with your customers. Look beyond the obvious; strive to understand not only what they’re doing but why they’re doing it.

What to Expect in Marketing in 2014

Although Big Data tells us what is happening, it rarely tells us why. Too much reliance on the rational brain can lead to 'data, data everywhere and not a thought to think.' In 2014, marketers will stop drowning in data and starving for insights–and uncover those insights that can only be found in peeling back customers' deep emotional layers.