People in the real estate business will tell you that there are three important factors to consider when buying a property. Location. Location. Location. Likewise, there are three important factors...

Events and Sponsorships - Leveraging the Brand Strategy This is where you can have a lot of fun in integrated marketing communication. The brand strategy you want to leverage with events and...

“I don’t have the time or the money for marketing, I need to focus on running my business.” This is probably one of the most common complaints about marketing in the startup and small and medium...

Post-Crisis and Brand Pivot In the past, we addressed the need to do a brand pivot during the lockdown (and now during the beginning of a Post-crisis life) because customer attitudes are altering...

The importance of CSR Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is no longer a nice to have addition to our overall business plan; it has now become a must have. Mankind’s impact on global weather is no...

Creating a brand positioning targeting different stakeholders is not so different from how and why you build a brand positioning targeting consumers. The fundamental point is that if you want...

The core of brand management is understanding customers and uncovering insights that allow you to position your brand successfully. A strong understanding of your stakeholders and the resulting...

The New View of Marketing Our view of marketing is expanding. We’re moving from narrowly defined brand management focused almost exclusively on the relationship between the brand with the goal of...

Most businesses narrowly focus on delivering customer value. That’s a good thing. It’s the shortest route to achieve sales and profit success. The problem with that focus, though, is that your...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), typically the purview of the PR department, usually focuses on company reputation and positive press coverage for the company and its CEO being good corporate...

When Darwin talked about "natural selection", giving rise to Herbert Spencer’s coinage of the term "survival of the fittest", he wasn’t saying that it’s the strongest who thrive over time, but those...

What Service Businesses Can Learn from Tourism As we start to bounce back after COVID, we are happy to see customers returning to our stores, restaurants, businesses, and tourist attractions that...

In 2011, Solen established a brand strategy for their Biscolata brand that was highly controversial for some segments of Turkish society but loved by the primary consumers of the brands – a...

As marketers, we know that one of the toughest challenges we face is how to develop creative advertising that captures the customer’s attention in a very cluttered environment in a way that also...

Brand managers typically spend a disproportionate amount of time with their creative agencies in developing TV advertising. As though creating brand preference and purchase intent was the whole...

Why people do what they do People buy for emotional reasons and then look for rational reasons to explain those emotional decisions. More and more marketers, in B2C or even B2B, are recognizing this...

Getting things done requires the support and commitment of a lot of people inside and outside the company. It is not enough to tell them what you want to do; you must involve them. The ancient...

Previously, I wrote about experiential marketing being a much more effective communication tool to grow brand equity and create purchase intent compared to traditional media. Nowhere does that...

As marketers, we talk a lot about the brand experience being the cumulative effect of various brand features and benefits that fit the emotional and functional needs of targeted customer segments....

One of the most intriguing questions in brand strategy development is how we are going to deal with the competition and the impact they may have on our brand’s position with the customer. That's...

In an era where digital is becoming pervasive, online shopping is becoming more and more frequent. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are fighting back against the internet’s efficiency and...

What’s Driving Trump’s Amazing Appeal with American Voters? Whether you are for or against Donald Trump becoming President of the United States, it is undeniable that he is redefining what voters in...

Sponsorships: Drowning in a sea of logos How many times have we seen a football game, a Formula One race, a basketball game, or any other sporting activity with sponsorships being just logos...

In the last century, we have seen a clear shift in customer behavior from simply buying different products to shopping. The word shopping, over time, has become more and more important and has...

American comedian Jerry Seinfeld stated that the architecture of humor is all about digging into a tension point and releasing that tension through the punch line – with the resulting laughs. His...

As marketers, we like to believe we are consumer-centric or even human-centric in everything we do, but the reality is that we often get lost in processes, tools, and procedures that are more...

People in the real estate business will tell you that the three most important factors to consider are:
Location.
Location.
And location.

Likewise, the three most important factors in marketing a brand are?

Wayne Gretzky, one of the greatest hockey players of all time once said: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.” How can we translate these words into today’s marketing...

David Packard, one of the founders of Hewlett Packard, once said that “marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” He was right – it is. If you believe that marketing is...

Problem or opportunity for marketers? There has been a rise in nationalism across the world over the past several years. A lot of it is fueled by politicians who want to increase their popularity by...

These days’ companies are becoming increasingly concerned about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the role of the company in the community. Some companies do it because they believe they can and should have a more positive role in society, while others see it mostly as a defensive move in the event something goes wrong. Regardless your motivation, it makes sense to do it.

Imagine the new manager of a Formula One team. His goal has been predetermined with extreme clarity:’ Win the Formula One within three years.’ Because he comes from a business background, he pulls out the tried and true SWOT analysis form (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) and begins to fill it out. is this really the best start?

Developing an effective strategy for your brand in the market is tough work. It is even tougher to manage a global brand across multiple markets and all that it carries and means from one market to another and yet still ensure that it is highly relevant to a specific local market.

We all know Dr. House; the guy we love to hate. The famous TV-character who turns the rules upside down, without any hesitation, but always manages to get his answer. You often see him standing if front of the white board jotting down diagnoses, eliminating them one by one through trial and error. His process is called Differential Diagnosis (or DDx). Lets see how this technique can be applied in consumer insight mining.

In May 2011 Apple took over the throne from Google as being the most valued brand in the world. There are many reasons for this shift. One is their understanding and support of their brand ambassadors – The Key Influencers.

We have all heard marketing communications defined as either ATL (Above The Line) or BTL (Below The Line). But what line are we talking about it? Surprisingly, very few people in marketing or in their agencies actually know.