Why Your Brand Needs a Positioning Roadmap

I recently helped a consumer products company position a new service that they’re creating. The goal was to launch in 6 months. While the specs had been written, the offer itself was still in development. The product roadmap post-launch...

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Is Differentiation Dead?

Wait. Hear me out. I’m not ready to call time of death on differentiation just yet, but something is going on that makes me wonder whether we need a new model for what drives value at the heart of...

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Is Your Brand Urgent Enough?

Recently, a CMO client said to me in frustration, “Our brand needs more urgency.” What she meant was she needed the brand to start working harder faster, contributing to business performance sooner. It’s no surprise that CMOs are under...

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Your Brand Isn’t a Logo. It’s a System.

I’ve been a brand consultant for 20 years now. That is a difficult job to explain to people. Usually when I say I’m a brand consultant, people will respond, “Oh, you design logos.” And although I have an MFA...

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Sustainability That Lasts

I was at a sustainability conference recently, thinking about my boots. "Business casual" is interpreted very loosely in Silicon Valley. CEOs turn up for meetings in t-shirts. Ties are donned ironically. I was wearing my Red Wing boots as...

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All Marketing is Local Marketing

Tip O'Neill, former Speaker of the House, once famously said "All politics is local." It was a lesson he learned in his first political loss: unless you connect to the needs and desires of the folks near you, you...

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Brand Experience vs. Branded Experiences

One of the reasons I named this blog "Brand Is Action" is that I believe this is how brands will be built in this next era of branding - not through image but through behavior. The experience of the...

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