An almost absurdly simple point made recently at EffWeek 2017 should give marketers cause to reconsider their content marketing expectations and efforts. To state the obvious, driven by the ‘content is king’ mantra, almost every brand is churning out more content. This all modestly adds to the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that according to … Continue reading
Tagged with brand strategy …
The Case Against Social Media Marketing
Recently a growing number of voices have been questioning the logic and value of social media marketing. But in the main these views are overwhelmed by the ubiquitous support for all things social. This post summarises a range of these dissenting arguments to help invite greater debate about why and how brands should use social … Continue reading
How to Create Strategy That Works
A new, ‘unconventional’ framework for business strategy is emerging. One that various high-performance companies have used to succeed at a time when most businesses have struggled to find growth. This post outlines a tested approach for strategy development aligned to this framework that can be adapted by any organisation with relative ease. Business strategy has … Continue reading
The Four Fundamental Team Principles of Brand Marketing
Consumers may now shape and define brands. But it’s still the marketing team behind a brand that builds it. This post outlines four key team principles for outperformance brand building. The Challenge of Synchronising Mid to Large Brands To direct their team’s brand management efforts, a CMO typically employ a variety of tools and resources, … Continue reading
Johnny Depp’s Sauvage ad – deeply meaningful or deliberately ridiculous?
Fragrance advertising is one of the last bastions of pure image advertising. Little concerns about brand ‘authenticity’ or ‘truth’ here – just good, old fashioned aspirational sizzle. The latest offering from the category is the campaign for Dior’s new men’s cologne, Sauvage. The commercial is a big budget production with – interestingly – both art … Continue reading
The Death of Marketing Strategy
Is marketing strategy dying? The default analogy for strategy used to be chess. Now it increasingly seems more like Pick a Box or Join the Dots. Here’s a quick look at this shift and why marketers need to brush up on their chess games. Continue reading
A story CEOs & CFOs need to know about brand story-telling
The view that a brand should tell a story rather than just have a ‘positioning’ is not new in marketing circles. However, for CEOs who often already see marketing as the ‘soft’ side of their businesses, investment in story-telling may seem too esoteric a notion, and one with questionable commercial benefit. But the outcomes of … Continue reading
Should brands always confess their imperfections?
Over the past few years it’s been in vogue for brands to do what not long ago would have been unthinkable. To point out their flaws, openly admit their mistakes and offer products that are deliberately less than ‘perfect’. More often than not, proudly so. Imperfections are the latest phase in the brand authenticity movement. … Continue reading
Three amusing ‘brand’ examples of why nothing should be a commodity
Let’s face it, despite all the efforts of the marketing community to champion brand building, there are many businesses that don’t get – or simply pay lip service to – ‘brand’. Typically they see ‘branding’ as a name, logo, slogan or a few graphics that they slap onto what they sell. And typically these businesses … Continue reading
P&G’s restructure – the ‘end of marketing’ or the beginning of ‘brand asset management’?
Proctor & Gamble has recently caused quite a stir in the marketing world with a global restructure that, as reported by the UK’s Marketing Magazine, “abolishes the term ‘marketing director’ and renames the marketing organisation as ‘brand management’”. As a result of this, its senior marketers across the globe will now be known as brand … Continue reading