Our brands are increasingly brought to life by others out of our direct control. Innocent Drinks describes its brand as composed of “thousands of nice little touches”. It can be tough to synchronize the brand so that it feels consistent at every touchpoint. Many brands create strict guidelines to keep everyone in check: a style guide, visual standards, identity manuals, [...]
I just traveled to the Middle East for the first time to lead a two-day innovation workshop in Dubai, U.A.E. I wanted to share some of the highlights. I created a lot of new material to fill a curriculum of two full days, and I’m planning more of these longer format sessions in 2013. The event was sponsored by Samsung [...]
This cartoon follows this theme of the Marketing Strategy post a couple weeks ago. Jennifer Nelson shared a comment on that post that struck a particular chord with me: “If you can’t invest the time in developing and aligning on a good brief, why should your company invest (potentially) millions of dollars in A&P to execute it?” In marketing planning, [...]
Apple and Microsoft both ousted executives in the last few weeks for abrasive management styles. Scott Forstall was Apple’s head of iOS software and Steven Sinofsky ran Windows. Both managers caused a lot of friction, but their approaches were overlooked for many years because they got results. The shakeups got me thinking about the management archetype of the “Brilliant Jerk”. [...]
A marketing campaign is only as strong as the strategy that drives it. Yet sometimes we treat marketing strategy as an afterthought. This often comes across in the creative brief process. Marketers copy and paste old creative briefs or parrot benefit statements without getting to the heart of why our brands or products are meaningfully unique. In an ad shoot, [...]
Marketers often try to tap what’s happening in the news. The reasoning is that if they can take over water cooler conversations, their brand message will travel that much faster. Yet many brands misfired last week during Hurricane Sandy. In an attempt to capitalize on the storm news, they outraged consumers with self-serving and insensitive promotions. Gap used the #Sandy [...]
The marketing funnel (sometimes called the purchase funnel or customer funnel) maps a consumer’s journey toward the purchase of a product or service. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about the stages of that journey and how to maximize the number who make it from one stage to the next. The marketing funnel actually dates back to 1898, when [...]
I wanted to share that I’m putting on a a two-day workshop in Dubai next month called “Innovation Worth Sharing: Beyond New and Improved“. I’m partnering with Training Hotline, a Training & Development company based in Dubai Knowledge Village. Here’s a little background on the workshop on November 27 and 28. If you’re interested, register at thetraininghotline.com. Thanks! Every year [...]
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and it’s not even Halloween. Many retailers like Restoration Hardware are already decorating for the winter holidays. Target even aired a Christmas TV ad on October 14, three weeks before Halloween and six weeks before Thanksgiving. The Target voice-over announces, “The holidays are coming and they’re gonna be big”. One consumer replied [...]
Facebook debuted its first ad campaign ten days ago to celebrate its one billion user milestone. The ad has been ridiculed and parodied for it’s confusing and overwrought story centered on the message, “Chairs are like Facebook”. It’s one of the more inadvertently hilarious pieces of marketing communication I’ve seen. My favorite spoof so far is arelikefacebook.com, a site that [...]
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