Upheavals

“What are we going to do?”

It’s been said on too many occasions that actions speak louder than words. Said so often in fact, that many brands today seem to have a disregard that borders on disdain for taking the time to really think through what could make them outstandingly competitive. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 3/02/2012

Market leadership: you can’t lead as a brand if you follow another brand.

Looks to me from this article like Samsung are going down the same competitive route as others before them in their battle with Apple. They’re looking to out-do them and to build a reputation and loyalty for themselves that replicates the following that Apple has. Read on

category: General | posted: 1/02/2012

For your information: why so many brands are not listened to

The insurance company wrote to me again. That can only mean it’s a bill or a change in policy. Either way it’s more expensive – literally, because I’m paying more, or metaphorically because I’m getting less for the money I do pay. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 26/01/2012

Likeable brands: Debating the value of Likes.

If brand owners are buying Likes on Facebook, what are they actually worth?, asks Alexis Dormandy in this recent article in The Telegraph. “Can we really value a ‘Like’ or a ‘Follow’ when so many of them are bought rather than earned?” Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 23/01/2012

The future of brands: 7 takes from Jim Stengel

Recently, Jim Stengel, the former global marketing officer at P&G, opened up on his blog on what he perceives as the future of marketing. I very much liked what he had to say. My takes and comments. Read on

category: uncategorised | posted: 16/01/2012

Human marketing

This highly informative post from James D. Roumeliotis on Customer Devotion introduces to me the expression “human marketing” which I am much taken with. Not only does it speak to the necessity for everyone within the organisation to think and act like a marketer, it’s also a reminder that, ultimately, people deliver some of our most powerful and memorable consumer experiences – and insights. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 13/01/2012

Gazing into the tea leaves

Happy New Year to you all. Over at Corporate Eye, Susan Gunelius references two JWT Intelligence reports just out that are predicting these five key trends for 2012. Here’s how I see what JWT are seeing. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 2/01/2012

Please don’t try to change your brand

It’s that time of year when everyone’s head turns to changes – or more particularly resolutions of change. Most of us will lapse from whatever pledges we make, not because we want to necessarily but often because the habit of what we have done or know well is too comfortable for change to last. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 28/12/2011

The Balanced Brand: some preliminary thinking

What is it with me and earthquakes? Last Christmas, I was in Christchurch for the Boxing Day shake. This year, I was there on Friday, and it happened again. They are scary – and it’s interesting how different people are scared about different aspects. For most, the fear of death and injury is prevalent as you’d expect – but almost as distressing for others are the noise, the shaking itself and of course the damage that brings silt to the surface, breaks possessions and puts everyone on edge. To all those in Christchurch, including of course my own immediate and extended family, my prayers and thoughts are with you. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 26/12/2011

Seen and not herd

What’s the real cost of the sales seasons on the high street? That’s the question posed and answered by Laurence Green in this well-considered article in The Telegraph. Green quickly hones in on what he sees as two of the biggest enemies of effective branding today: the impulse to discount; and the compulsion to appeal to everyone that manifests itself in communications that stand out from no-one. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 19/12/2011

Getting real value from your CSR

This thought-provoking article from McKinsey looks at what really drives value in corporate responsibility. As the authors point out, CSR continues to influence how companies and brands go about their business: carbon footprint, ethical and greener supply chains, volunteer programmes and philanthropy are now all par for the course. We all know that not being involved in such investments can have a negative effect on consumer perceptions, but do the activities themselves add value and if so what are the best ways for companies to make the most of that potential? Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 13/12/2011

Passing the feedback test

Conflict resolution is one of those huge opportunities that so often goes begging. Ask yourself how many times you’ve been in, or watched, this scenario unfold. A client is upset with something that’s happened or has voiced concerns about a brand or some element of the service. The immediate, almost instinctive, reaction is to jump to your own defense; to justify in your own mind why things have happened, and to look to foist that justification on the complainant. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 10/12/2011

Will they or won’t they?

So often it seems to me brand owners hope to bring about change rather than planning to bring about change. They see persuasion as an awareness issue rather than as a behavioural issue – often because they regard their product as the obvious choice that somehow, miraculously will spark a “road to Damascus” moment as soon as consumers encounter it. To that end, they pad out their media schedules with as much presence as their budgets can muster and throw huge amounts of energy and disarming levels of resource into whatever’s trending on social media. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 8/12/2011

Absolute quality loses to perceived quality

This post by James D. Roumeliotis and Violetta Ihalainen of Whitefield Consulting, absolutely challenges my worldview as an unabashed meritocrat, but includes some fascinating points – particularly that absolute (objective) quality is far less important for consumers in their decisions about brands than perceived quality. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 6/12/2011

Energy versus focus

Brands require huge levels of energy. They need to be promoted, they need to be maintained, they need to be serviced … just to keep them going. And that can lead some to believe that that is all they need. Surely, if you invest enough energy in this brand, it will succeed. Read on

category: General | posted: 30/11/2011

The power of patterns

I have little doubt that news of a study by Facebook and Università degli Studi di Milano showing that Facebook has reduced the degrees of separation from six to four will inspire many to post advice on how and why to push everything Facebook’s way. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 28/11/2011

Making the most of game dynamics

In a helpful article in Fast Company, Seth Priebatsch provides his insights on how brands can use game dynamics to forge new levels of engagement with customers. He cites three robust principles: Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 21/11/2011

Two leaders kissing. A killer app or a sex tape?

I always grin when people do that whole “any publicity is good publicity” thing. Because it’s simply not true. That observation it seems to me is predicated on a belief that awareness is the doyen of marketing, whereas I would argue that, in most cases, perception overwrites straight recall in terms of bankability. Read on

category: General | posted: 18/11/2011

Cancelling the brand: what has Qantas really grounded?

The ramifications for the brand after Qantas’ decision to ground its entire fleet over the weekend are obvious. It’s a move that has no doubt put tens of thousands of people in a very bad mood and set the scenes in my view for an ongoing internal war that may well prove unrecoverable. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 31/10/2011

Does efficiency jeopardise brand?

In the hunt for more streamlined businesses that are less resource intensive, how real is the risk that brands are actually putting people off dealing with them? When does an efficient process become so rationalised that it loses its humanity and therefore its appeal? Read on

category: General | posted: 18/10/2011

Customers or passengers?

It’s amazing who we forget and how quickly. I don’t remember any of the people on the bus last week. Who did I ride home with last Thurday? My mind goes blank. It’s nothing personal – it’s simply that I have no reason to remember them. Or they me. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 10/10/2011

Turning your brand into the authority

In this article in Business Week, Howard Schultz talks about how the mighty Starbucks brand lost its way – mistaking aroma rather than coffee for the core of its business and embraking on a strategy that saw it shift seriously off-course. The problem, as Schultz explains, is that by the time the company realised that they had diluted their brand position, breakfast sandwiches had become 3 percent of the company’s total revenue. Getting back on track was a big call. He did it anyway. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 3/10/2011

Brands only work locally

Really enjoyed this piece by Pankaj Ghemawat on the myths surrounding global brands. His point that only 16% of the top 10,000 brands on the Milward Brown database are recognised in more than one country, and only 3% are recognised in more than seven is a reminder that the world is not as open as many of us would like to think. Indeed Professor Ghemawat points to what happened to Coke as a sure sign that Ted Levitt’s principle of increasingly homogenous markets was incorrect. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 29/09/2011

What’s a brand strategist?

There are two answers. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 23/09/2011

Finding an obsession

When you apply the concept of provenance to brands, it becomes a concept centred on systematically and competitively ‘localising’ what you’re about rather than diversifying to try and meet the generalised needs of the wider world. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 22/09/2011

When sales go wrong: the real cost to brands of bad sales

A car salesroom should be like Disneyland – a place of magic, where life smells wonderful and dreams really do come true. So much resource goes into making that possible. The warm environment, the sparkly cars, the people, the music, the freshly brewed coffee … Everything should be an unapologetic charm offensive designed to inject reassurance and a sense of joy. When it’s done properly, it’s a show stopper. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 19/09/2011

Lessons from a great party

After some time away travelling, last night I was fortunate enough to be invited to a fantastic event on the Wellington waterfront. The place was packed with the renowned and the influential alike. I understand why it is regarded as the party of the year in the city. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 15/09/2011

The fashion of value

The stark reality for most brands, particularly those integrated into a supply chain, is that if your presence is not seen to be value-adding, then chances are it is perceived as value-costing. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 7/09/2011

Measure for measure

Economist Brian Easton’s statement – “don’t talk about the intangibles when there is nothing else” – is a timely reminder to all of us in the ‘fuzzy’ areas of business that if there is no demonstrable bottom-line return for all the reputation enhancement, profile building, credibility, authenticity, loyalty and goodwill that has supposedly been generated by or at a particular event or activity, then it essentially carries no value. It may not be worthless, but the cost that has been incurred has subsequently made no tangible economic contribution. Therefore there is no actual return on the investment. Read on

category: General | posted: 5/09/2011

Getting your social approach right: protecting your brand from activist critics

A number of people have asked me this week about how they should prepare their brand for attacks from activist groups who criticise them in the media. I’ll leave the mechanics of crisis management to the legal and PR people who specialise at it – but here are some thoughts on simple things you can do as a brand to make sure you are as ready as you can be. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 30/08/2011

Connecting your brand and your social responsibility policies

Almost every brand I work with has a community policy, an environmental policy, a sustainability policy … as they should. And everyone seems to acknowledge that the policy or policies they have form an important part of their reputation and their stakeholder relations … as they should. And yet precious few brands have actively connected those social responsibility activities with their brand. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 24/08/2011

Are you indecisive? I’m not sure …

Edward Boches pointed me in the direction of this thought-provoking article by John Tierney on “decision fatigue”. Decision fatigue happens when ordinary people are asked to make decision after decision after decision. Such processes run down the mental batteries that power our self control. Eventually it seems, we start looking for shortcuts – either by acting impulsively or by opting to do nothing. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 23/08/2011

The opportunity of dull

There are days when Alex really makes me laugh. I grinned merrily at her observation recently that if you really want to make significant changes as a brand, you should go all out and look for something … dull. That’s right, find something uneventful, even pedestrian – and poke it for opportunities. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 19/08/2011

Is Google mad?

No-one can accuse Google of resting on the laurels. But having sought to shape-shift the social universe with Google+, what to make of the decision to acquire Motorola? Are patents the latest tech bubble? This post on Business Insider certainly raises some doubts about the prudence of Google’s decision, saying basically that unless they’re in it to strip the intellectual goodness of the patents and run, this is a Time Warner-AOL re-run in the making. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 18/08/2011

Critical mass: understanding what drives fluctuations in likeability for brands

Whilst I continue to question the financial returns from social media for brands, there is no denying their ability to galvanise. In fact, social media is the driving force behind “critical mass” – the ability to bring together consumers from many places to form a significant mass of opinion, in support or against, based around an issue they consider critically important to them. Read on

category: General | posted: 15/08/2011

Time to rethink the business model of some NGO brands?

Brands like Toms with their “one for one” shoes programme have proven that companies can be both profitable and philanthropic. So why do so many NGO brands stick with a funding model that relies on, well, charity? Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 10/08/2011

Don’t be disappointed: why price underwrites the brand experience

What’s the difference between a budget airline and a pig? Pigs fly more often – and on time. Harsh perhaps, but it’s a reminder that in a market, there is always a price to pay, and the price is not just about money down. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 9/08/2011

Everything to no-one

Great question by Paul Dunay: Is sentiment making brands stupid? As the writer points out we are increasingly obsessed with using monitoring tools as virtual tea leaves to try and read the sentiment of the markets towards our brands. Mentions have become the new money – and machines now break those mentions down into chunks of data and attach a ranking to them that brand managers read as gospel. Read on

category: uncategorised | posted: 8/08/2011

Last week on my Facebook page:

Some of the things I’ve been linking to and talking about over on my Facebook Page this last week: Read on

category: General | posted: 7/08/2011

How brands lose sight of customers

Interesting observation in a meeting yesterday from Richard about service organisations, and specifically large service organisations and why they often lose sight of the customer and the shifting demands of a dynamic market. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 4/08/2011

Intersections

At dinner the other night, the conversation turned to carpet ads. Why, someone asked, do retailers keep advertising carpet ads when most people only buy carpet once every 7 – 10 years? Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 2/08/2011

"Why do they only look like that in the ad?"

You want to tell the best story you can, to showcase your product in the best light, to prefer you over others. So you show the optimistic end of what you deliver. The burger looks generous and juicy. The staff behind the counter are attractive and smile. The car corners beautifully on endless, empty roads. The child in the trolley in the busy but not overly crowded supermarket is gorgeous, and the product is lit up like Christmas. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 1/08/2011

On my Facebook page this last week

Some of the things I’ve been linking to and talking about over on my Facebook Page this last week: Read on

category: General | posted: 31/07/2011

Sure you’re social, but are you interesting?

Fans matter, but friends of fans matter more it seems when it comes to spreading the word. According to this article in FastCompany, just 16% of company messages reach users in a given week, and the solution to that is to reach the friends of fans. So while Starbucks's 23 million fans is impressive, the bulk of the numbers are the friends of those same fans: 670 million. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 28/07/2011

Is thinking a desk job?

Read on

category: General | posted: 27/07/2011

The vital (and ironical) difference between brand and identity

Are there such things as brands in much of the Government sector? I don’t think there are. That’s a good thing. And here’s why. I believe brands fundamentally require a competitive environment in which to actually work. I’m sure there’s an economic model that explains why – I don’t know it. But the reason why and when I believe brands work best has to do with the value I think they are intended to create: to drive preference; to encourage loyalty; to lift margin; to underpin and align a competitive and commercial business model with the people who believe in and buy from that organisation. Read on

category: General | posted: 26/07/2011

Announcement: Now on Facebook

In a move that may surprise some after my recent posts, I’ve decided to make a move onto Facebook by starting a Mark Di Somma, Writer page. Read on

category: General | posted: 26/07/2011

Volume is nothing like intensity

Speculation in recent days about what a “fan” is worth to a business is a timely reminder to separate volume from intensity. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 25/07/2011

Competition amongst brands in the social universe: is it an open and shut case?

This thought-provoking Fast Company post calls into question something that I think most of us hadn’t even bothered to question – and that is whether in fact social media sites compete with one another. Google’s Eric Schmidt has argued for some time that this is not a zero-sum competition and that Google does not actively compete with other social networks, saying that everyone benefits when people spend more time online. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 21/07/2011

Nudging: making the most of the power of suggestion

We’re much more susceptible to the power of suggestion than many of us might like to think – at least that was my take-out from more reading from Time: this time on how brands use buying suggestions to entice us to buy more than we might otherwise. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 20/07/2011

A brand that discounts or a discount brand?

This article in Time on how to get the most out of Apple is a reminder that there is a noticeable difference psychologically between a brand that discounts (even if it’s only occasionally) and a discount brand. Apple does discount – but for selected parts of its range or for specific reasons: change-over on a model, for example. The most important thing is that they don’t give that impression. Read on

category: General | posted: 19/07/2011

Positioning your brand through memories

I think it’s healthy for there to be a direct relationship between memory and frequency for a brand. The more often a customer comes into contact with your brand, the more consistent the memory needs to be. That’s because brands that frequently interact with their customers have the power of habit on their side. In fact, when someone is buying from you frequently, the memory itself needs to focus on regularity: greeting customers by name; being easy to find; recognising what they like and maybe working with that; introducing suggestions that fit with what they’re looking for. The memories are smaller in their impact and their “experience” factor, but their frequency makes the effect powerfully cumulative. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 18/07/2011

We need to talk

What have you got to say for yourself? We were talking about this today as we discussed how and when a brand should best take a stand. Go hard or go soft? Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 14/07/2011

Renormalising

Brands are all about habits. But as this article in Time reminds us, sometimes the best thing a brand can look to do is to change a habit – even if they helped create the habit in the first place. Of course, brands tell themselves they do this all the time – but for many brands, the focus of their problem solving is on increasing consumption. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 13/07/2011

Are your analytics cheating on you?

Numbers matter, but different numbers matter differently. To me, one of the great confusions is extent and value: Read on

category: General | posted: 12/07/2011

Not worth the paper it’s written on?

What do you do with a toxic brand? If you’re News Corp it appears, you opt for euthanasia, perhaps in the hope that the sheer ‘shock’ of stopping a 168 year old institution dead in its tracks will be enough to divert the rest of the media from your crown jewel assets and side-track regulators and other scrutinisers into believing you’re done enough to warrant completing other lucrative deals. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 11/07/2011

In your face

I think you can read a lot of things into Facebook’s decision to team up with Skype. It certainly aligns with my “war of the worlds” theory in some ways. But what interests me is that, regardless of the technical pros and cons, it does actually make sense from a brand point of view. (I’m still far from convinced that Skype constitutes a sustainably bankable business, but that’s another argument.) Read on

category: General | posted: 8/07/2011

Don’t study their actions, study their habits

We get it so wrong don’t we? We develop ideas and look to see if they’ll work by intricately studying people’s actions and reactions. We poll them. We survey them. We sample them. We question them exhaustively. Whereas, what we should be doing, according to Dr Art Markman, is studying our customers’ habits and developing products and services that fit with how people want to behave. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 6/07/2011

Who’s afraid of commitment?

Christine responds to my observations about the “war of the worlds” with an observation of her own that could well prove a dilemma in the making, although not an immediate one. As the big social media brands synergise and extend their offerings to make it more and more convenient to inhabit their brand of ego-system (hat-tip Brian Solis), when will it all become too much? Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 5/07/2011

Being liked: The danger of popularity for a brand

Wonderful, wonderful article by Neil Strauss on why we should all dislike the “Like” culture. Strauss maintains “Like” motivates us to compromise, to chase stupid metrics in a desperate search for acceptability. “There's a growing cultural obsession with being blogged, digged, tweeted and liked,” Strauss observes, and it’s all about hitting the numbers, at the expense of having a distinctive point of view. Read on

category: General | posted: 4/07/2011

Joining the dots

Jeff Bullas’s piece on whether Google’s new Google+ marks an all-out war between Facebook and the search giant for dominance in social media raises some important issues. Bullas points to the demise in popularity of MySpace as a precedent for Google’s need to be concerned. From a technical point of view, I can see why Google+ can be perceived as an intervention in the social media space and as a challenge to the incumbent Facebook. But I think seeing it in that context alone risks missing the wider environment within which this struggle may well be taking place. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 1/07/2011

Take a moment

Coming home from Sydney, Paul and I were talking about ‘moments of truth’. One of the great ironies, and frustrations, for many brands is that reputation must be built over years, but can be lost in a tiny fraction of that time - seconds. All because of an action or a word, a misunderstanding or an expectation that may or may not even have been reasonable in the first place. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 29/06/2011

Funnel vision

It’s always fascinating to compare how you see your place in the market with how others see you. Warren made this astute observation the other day. If you’re in a very small market like New Zealand and you look out, you see the whole world before you. There seem to be endless opportunities. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 28/06/2011

Can brands fly?

Do you remember when you were a child the first time someone made you a paper plane? If your recollection is anything like mine, you couldn’t believe how it left your hand and made its way across the room. Before long though, it lost height and velocity, and fell to the floor. Read on

category: General | posted: 25/06/2011

How should we rethink the advertising industry?

I enjoy seeing people poke business models, but it’s important that when you look to disrupt a business that you do so without assumptions. The call by Marc Ruxin of Universal McCann to rethink the creative department of ad agencies is a great idea but my sense is that his suggestions still assume the battle is for attention, and that winning that attention and holding it via great content, well presented, is critical to achieving consumer preference. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 23/06/2011

Headgames

I love this observation by Jay Deragon about the Social Learning Curve: “All things social are creating a herd of copycats following practices, methods and behavio[u]r created by the frenzy of learning something new …” Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 22/06/2011

When was the last time you actually changed your mind?

The hardest thing a brand can do is convince – to go against what people already believe and to ask them to believe something different. Actually, that’s not just true for brands, it’s applicable to anything or anyone. In the scheme of natural human interactions, conversion is relatively rare. To succeed at convincing, you need to overcome all the natural resistance that comes with encountering something new. Essentially, you need to break down all the inclination that has already amassed for an idea or a storyline. You need to destroy the loyalty that already exists for what people have and replace its equity. That’s amazingly difficult. As Seth Godin once observed, “If the story of your marketing requires the prospect to abandon a previously believed story, you have a lot of work to do.” Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 21/06/2011

An option or a choice?

Just getting a presence in most markets can be hard work. One of my friends is finding that in the beverages game – a longer runway than he and his partners expected, and a lot more patience required as well. Long days, he says, having to justify every metre of shelf space you’re allocated. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 20/06/2011

Two very different types of stickiness

I love this distinction by Martin Bishop between the brands we’re stuck on versus the one we're stuck with. Brands we're stuck on captivate us. Brands we're stuck with hold us captive. As Bishop points out, “Consumers may be loyal to both types of brands if loyalty is simply measured in terms of repeat business but their feelings about the two types brands [are] very different.” Read on

category: General | posted: 17/06/2011

Conversation vs recommendation

Nice piece from Neil Glassman draws a distinction that I think has escaped many of us between conversation and recommendation. As the author himself says, he thought of social media as a platform to directly scale up word of mouth (WOM) marketing. But the synergy that looks so obvious doesn’t happen. In fact, says Glassman, compared to the effectiveness of what takes place offline, surprisingly little WOM is generated on social media. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 16/06/2011

Becoming a cultrepreneur: the first 3 secrets

I coined the term ‘cultrepreneur’ some years back to describe enterprising business people who consciously set about developing brands that are anti-scale, hard to find and fervently followed – cults. A number of people have asked me how you to go about building a cult brand. So here’s my first three secrets: Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 15/06/2011

The alternative to free

Regular readers will know that I have a major problem with the free model. To me, it’s misleading – and the reason why is that it’s based on a false premise: that if you offer goods for free, people will be in time upgrade to the paid model. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 14/06/2011

Paying less and less, getting less and less

The response by airlines to customers’ demands for lower and lower fares has been to do exactly that, lower seat costs, but at the same time to strip more and more of what is included in the fare out of the price. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 13/06/2011

The 7Rs of a great brand strategy

A great brand strategy combines what Adrienne used to call ‘the logic and the magic’ – that mix of rational and emotive elements that, together, combine to give a brand engagement, connectedness and distinction. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 10/06/2011

Hey you, get onto my cloud

You could see iCloud as Apple’s long-awaited move into the cloud – a response at last to what Amazon and Google have been doing in this space. But to my mind, from a brand point of view, iCloud supersedes because it once again joins the dots, and in so doing it both ring-fences and reinforces the Apple ecosystem. Read on

category: General | posted: 9/06/2011

Shapeshifting how your customers feel

I was at a speakers’ evening once when the conversation turned to those who make the big dollars on the podium. Referring to one particular keynoter who charges around $100K for an address, one of the people in the group observed, “That’s $1700 every minute they’re onstage.” Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 8/06/2011

How to create strong signals

Spotted this article in The Economist on the growing cost of thought leadership. In an escalating battle for top-of-mind, the top consultancy brands it seems are prepared to spend large amounts – up to 5% of gross revenues by one estimate – to produce thinking they then give away for free. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 7/06/2011

What’s new about what your customers already know?

Most brands get launch. They understand how to make a splash for a product on a day. But what do you do between splashes? How do you keep front-of-mind? And more importantly, how do you stop the inevitable awareness fade as the ripples from your big splash die away? If you’re Walt Disney, you start introducing shorts between your new features, just to keep up awareness of your most popular and lucrative characters. And you do so knowing that such a cue will reactivate interest and re-kick merchandise sales. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 6/06/2011

Reaching the limits of conversation

Reach is one thing. Notice, and more particularly trust, are quite another. Yesterday Alex gently challenged me over my assertion that six degrees of separation will soon be replaced by six clicks. Her point – and it’s a very important one – is that there is a marked difference in loyalty between degrees and clicks of separation because we generally build stronger bonds face to face than we do online, and the strength of those bonds will extend further into our networks. Read on

category: General | posted: 3/06/2011

Would you be a fan?

What would you do with your company’s mission statement? Would you tweet it?, Brian Solis asks in this article. Just as importantly - would you retweet it? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 2/06/2011

9 lessons planking can teach brands

1. Sometimes, there’s just no way of knowing why something becomes a phenomenon. But momentum is addictive – once an idea takes hold, it assumes a life of its own. After a time, it is because it is. The power of an idea is not in actually in the creation, it’s in the radiation and the subsequent take-up. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 1/06/2011

Every brand must dream

Positivity comes with benefits if this article on the optimism bias is anything to go by. While, collectively, our view of the future can swing in synch with the news, the budget or the crime stats, a 2007 study found that 76% of respondents were optimistic about the future for their own family. According to the author, “Even if that better future is often an illusion, optimism has clear benefits in the present. Hope keeps our minds at ease, lowers stress and improves physical health.” Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 31/05/2011

Waiting for the uplift

I once had a flatmate who was a pilot. He used to fly these ridiculously small planes in and out of crazy airstrips throughout Papua New Guinea. Every take-off, he used to tell me, was almost literally a leap of faith. You barrelled down a ramshackle runway in the middle of the mountains, literally fell off the end and waited for the winds to pick you up. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 30/05/2011

The effect on Oprah?

We’ve all seen what the Oprah-effect has done for others. Now it will be interesting to see the effect of change on the O-brand itself. By changing the formula, how much does she risk tampering with the magic? Will another talk-show rise to fill the afternoon gap, or will the 40 million O-army decamp and migrate en-masse? Is that even possible? Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 27/05/2011

Be happy

Not the best of days yesterday. Put my back out, and retired to a lie-flat position. Brain racing, body stopped … Aaaargh. To pass the time, I mused on getting my understanding of the purposes of business and branding down to their most basic forms. It led me here: Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 26/05/2011

Well, well, well

When place branding specialist Simon Anholt explains in a podcast why nations need a carefully thought through brand strategy to which all players in the economy subscribe, he quotes the legendary David Ogilvy who once said, “If all you want to do is attract attention, then you put a gorilla in a jockstrap”. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 24/05/2011

What will be, will be?

Well, in the words of the song, looks like we made it. The world didn’t go into rapture over the weekend. I checked with some of the most God-fearing, Christian people I know and it seems all of them are still here. Think of this as another prediction that didn’t quite make it – like bird flu from a couple of years back, or Y2K. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 23/05/2011

Taking it personally

There are days when the commercial creative process really does feel like blinding optimism in the face of unrelenting stupidity. And that’s the problem – it’s so easy to adopt an ‘us and them’ mentality, to slip into ‘right and wrong’, ‘enlightened and ignorant ‘… Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 20/05/2011

What will LinkedIn link into?

LinkedIn finally goes public today. This is going to be fascinating – not just to see what this IPO for a name social media company gets, but also to see what investors themselves are buying into. Are they riding a media wave, as is suggested here, or do investors see real and continuing value in B2B networking? Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 19/05/2011

Portion control

Often we don’t leave a favourite brand because of anything dramatic. In fact, quite the opposite: the experiences we have quietly fade to the point where there’s less reasons to stay than to go. One day the food isn’t quite as good as it was, the movies on the flight haven’t been changed in a while, the person we spoke with just now was that little bit less warm, the changes in the insurance policy are more inflexible and the biscuits in the pack are smaller and taste different. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 18/05/2011

10 ways to build a truly likeable brand

Recently David McInnis wrote this in a comment: “You can have all the social pieces in place but doing so does not make you likeable. Most companies that have a social strategy should not. They should focus instead on being likeable first.” Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 17/05/2011

Weasel hunting

In what may well turn out to be a Pajero moment in politics, Newt Gingrich has kicked off his run for the presidency under the theme Win the Future – which shortens, conveniently, to WTF. Read on

category: General | posted: 13/05/2011

Now playing

Slowly it seems everyone is coming round to the idea that content owners and developers and a new generation of distributors need to start working together. What interests me is how those content developers increasingly see social media as a valid outlet. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 11/05/2011

How to win

I’m always interested to see how successful people think and to learn how they go about building competitive marques. In 2009 – 2010, in the course of working alongside Alex and the crew at Milk on Will to Win, a history of the Pryde Group and its brands, I spoke with Neil Pryde many times. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 10/05/2011

The power of interesting

I think we’ve all seen the movie about the ad agency that starts telling the truth only to find that business booms. Funny then how fiction turns to fact with news that in 2010, Domino’s US same-store sales rose 9.9% in a market where 1%-to-3% growth is closer to what’s generally expected. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 9/05/2011

What do you do?

What do you do? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 6/05/2011

Plenty of great ideas coming out of AG Ideas 2011

I was lucky enough to be invited to watch the AG Ideas 2011 plenary yesterday morning via the simulcast into Wellington’s Te Papa museum. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 5/05/2011

What they see is what they brand

Oh the irony. For years, many of us tried to get the people we worked with to broaden their understanding of what a brand was. It’s not just a logo, a product, a TV commercial – that conversation. We were fighting to make the definition of brand bigger. Now I’m wondering whether we have to start going back the other way. Read on

category: General | posted: 4/05/2011

It’s complicated

I really like this thought from Lars Bjork, CEO of QlikTech, in an interview in the NY Times: Love order, hate bureaucracy, he says … “Order is where you put a process into place because you want to scale the business to a different level. Bureaucracy is where nobody understands why you do it.” Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 3/05/2011

Never stop answering

Let’s return to two posts from April – because one actually answers the other. Last Friday, I discussed the paradox that while assumptions equalise our world, not all assumptions in that world are equal, and that the dilemma for any brand is to sift the assumptions it must make from those that it must break with. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 2/05/2011

The assumption paradox

It’s easy to assume that your customers love your brand, that they are loyal, that they have every reason to continue doing business with you, that they want the next upgrade. It’s easy to assume that no-one noticed or cared about a slip-up or that if they did, they will understand. It’s easy to assume that your customers will continue to want what they have always wanted. Or that they will never want something back. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 29/04/2011

Telling

What gives you the right to sell a product/service at margin today? It’s easy to assume you have a mandate. Or that you deserve one. But what is your brand doing to earn/retain the mandate it wants/has? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 28/04/2011

Mind games

Here’s another of those inconvenient questions: is it really worth our while for New Zealand to be involved in hosting global sporting events? Or more to the point is it worth our while, the way we go about it? Yes, I know … participation, competition, world stage, all that … but given that it’s actually costing us significantly more than we can expect to make to host the Rugby World Cup, for example, how do we intend to get a payback? And the $36 million for the America’s Cup – what are we projecting that will bring home? Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 27/04/2011

How real is the value of reality brands?

Last night I sat down and watched Inception. Today I spied this article on the Kardashians – and I couldn’t help but wonder whether the dream states of the film mirror the “reality” of the brand value of reality brands. Read on

category: General | posted: 26/04/2011

Everyone expects to be rewarded

According to this post in the NY Times, Americans racked up about $48 billion of rewards via fly miles, hotel rewards, credit card points and other programmes in 2010. The average household it seems has 18 loyalty programmes and earns $622 a year in miles and points. So, roughly $35 value per programme per year. And yet nearly one-third of that amount will go unclaimed. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 21/04/2011

Upsizing the impact

Interesting isn’t it how we perceive messages. 50,000 jobs on offer at McDonald’s sounds huge, but it actually averages out at around 3 – 4 positions at every restaurant in the U.S., which suddenly doesn’t seem anywhere near as impressive. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 20/04/2011

The difference between less and off

If I buy something on sale, what should I get? 40% less – or 40% off? They are very different things. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 19/04/2011

What would you Like?

In this discussion on whether Liking a brand on Facebook makes you more inclined to be positive about that brand, writer Gregory Ferenstein says that rationalisation theory suggests “our actions secretly influence our opinions”. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 18/04/2011

Take a chance

Why do consumers go out and buy a Lotto ticket or take part in brand-run promotions when they know that their chances of winning are so very small? According to Kelly Goldsmith in this article in the Time blogs, it’s not because of what they stand to win, it’s actually because of where consumers focus. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 15/04/2011

Little jewels

Last night I attended the launch of my latest “book” – this one, the story of the Victoria Cross with particular emphasis on the 22 New Zealanders who have been awarded the country’s highest military commendation. It was a commission for New Zealand Post, one of a number I’ve done for them over the years on a range of subjects. Read on

category: General | posted: 14/04/2011

Every price tag needs a story

The temptation is to see story as a luxury item: something that brands implement to lift their margin. There’s nothing wrong with that of course – it’s powerful and it works. But I don’t think that story is just a top-end nice-to-have. My view is that most brands, no matter where they are priced in the marketplace, need a storyline. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 13/04/2011

The Feynman principle

A review of a review about scientist Richard Feynman in the Freakonomics blog caught my eye this morning because it also provides a simple but telling thought for every brand owner. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 12/04/2011

Going, going, Groupon …

You know what you think you’re worth. But what are you really worth? Some great points about company du jour Groupon in this article originally posted on Forbes. Most interesting perhaps because the article helps explain why and how value can so rapidly commoditise. Read on

category: General | posted: 11/04/2011

Which north?

Yesterday St John asked whether north meant true north or magnetic north. Good question. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 8/04/2011

Travelling north

Keith Yamashita has a phrase I love. He talks about companies and brands finding their northern star. The term isn’t astronomical, it’s aspirational. He’s referring to an ideal of your company or brand that burns bright in front of you and your staff, that leads you on, that fires you up and that you never let out of your sight … Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 7/04/2011

Beautiful adventures

It seems even iconic hotelling isn’t safe from convergence. Flagship Parisian hotels are now finding themselves challenged by major Asian hotel groups keen to make their mark on the Continent. For the European establishment, it seems, the Far East just got a whole lot closer to home. The effect, according to Time, will be a 40% increase in the number of luxury rooms in the city, and a classic competitive tug-of-war between iconic Gallic chic and a lighter, more cosmopolitan stay that still emphasises luxury. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 6/04/2011

Finding the long tail of distribution

This story about how United Villages is using motorcycles, mobile phones and face to face selling to bring big brands to the smallest villages in Jaipur in Rajasthan, India is a stark reminder that tapping tomorrow’s multi-billion dollar markets isn’t about the latest fave apps at the tech conferences. Read on

category: General | posted: 5/04/2011

A brand within a timeframe

It is perhaps the ultimate exit strategy – a company with a closing date. This article in the NY Times talks about NPOs such as Malaria No More and Out2Play that have decided their work is done. They’re closing because they have accomplished what they set out to do. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 4/04/2011

CEO discretion is advised

Further to the post of a couple of days ago. One of the great temptations of the online age is that you can gain attention. A lot of attention. Very quickly. Do something outrageous – in the case of GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, shoot an elephant and display the trophy video for all to see – and people will react. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 1/04/2011

Loyalty and lust

Over tea with Alex in the sun a couple of afternoons ago, we got talking about what you can count on in a market, and what you can observe but not necessarily depend on. I’ll leave it to Alex to share the specifics of what she talked about in her own inimitable way, but our conversation did get me thinking about the different kinds of customers that brands have today because in the face for scale, it’s easy to confuse the different levels of interest and loyalty. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 30/03/2011

Making the second sale

People say the first sale is the hardest to make. You have to find the right person in the right company, you have to catch them at the right time in the right mood, make your pitch, you have to convince them to go with you. That’s got to be the hardest thing in the world doesn’t it? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 29/03/2011

What are you worth?

Some fascinating insights in this piece on how consumers are valued collectively and individually by organisations. I was amused to see how, in B2B trades, consumers were valued at much, much more than they were when organisations contacted consumers directly. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 28/03/2011

What's a brand problem?

I’m always fascinated when people tell me they have a brand problem – because I’ve seldom encountered one. I’ve encountered a whole range of business problems however that addressing the brand can fix. Read on

category: General | posted: 24/03/2011

Light my fire

What do you do if you’re one of the world’s most famous lighter companies and the number of smokers is dropping? If you’re Zippo, you look for ways to capitalise on your ‘cool’ image and extend your brand into products ranging from watches to leisure clothing. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 23/03/2011

Checking the All Blacks line-up

Brand extension is always one of those issues that people grapple with. On the one hand, there’s a wish to capitalise on the goodwill that has been patiently built up, sometimes over an extended period of time. On the other, there’s always the concern that the brand is going to run out of road, and end up attached to products that don’t reflect the true spirit of the marque. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 22/03/2011

What’s in the box?

Marc Levinson’s book The Box explains why a “soulless aluminium or steel box held together with welds and rivets, with a wooden floor and two enormous doors at one end” was able to revolutionise trade. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 21/03/2011

Reading between the lines

One of my favourite reminders to every brand is – be very clear about what it is you are selling. So often, companies have a view of what they’re offering that differs from what their customers are actually buying. News that The New York Times has confirmed its pricing strategy has me wondering if they have fallen into the same quandary. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 18/03/2011

The response dilemma

A very different post today – not about brand as such or business necessarily, but rather how we should prioritise after a disaster. When is it time for life to get back to normal? Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 17/03/2011

Noting Moleskine

In theory, a company like Moleskine should be redundant. Who needs a little black sketchbook these days? Who needs pencils and the ability to sketch and note down ideas? And yet many people – and I’m the first to confess, I’m one of them – are ardent fans. Why? Read on

category: General | posted: 16/03/2011

The dangers of categorical denial

Some things are too big to fight. If you’re planning to redefine a whole category for example, then, unless you’re already a market leader, plan on a big outlay and a long runway. You’re literally battling the millions others have already invested to define what it is, what it means, who it’s for, where it’s found, who the key brands are, what the products generally cost and so much more. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 15/03/2011

What triggers a surge of popularity?

What prompts 2.5 million people to follow Charlie Sheen? It can’t be because they expect individual recognition in return. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 14/03/2011

Keeping things spicy

This article about the hugely successful Old Spice campaign makes the point that Proctor & Gamble wasted a lot of opportunity when they allowed a database of more than 100,000 individuals to dissipate. Read on

category: General | posted: 11/03/2011

Pleased to meet you

This really thoughtful post by Associate Professor Rob Cross of the University of Virginia on building valuable networks caught my eye today. Specifically, I was drawn to the final para: Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 10/03/2011

Follow the money

So what are the chances that Charlie Sheen’s much publicised “breakdown” was really just a reality-style seeding exercise? Depends how cynical you are I guess. But it is an interesting coincidence isn’t it that within just a few days the man has created a larger-than-life controversy, attracted two million people to his Twitter account and now signed to the latest version of the celebrity endorsement. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 9/03/2011

The strategy consulting dilemma

I remember having an animated discussion with the CEO of a professional services firm once about their right to take a market-leading position in problem solving. His resistance was based on the fact that, statistically, such work constituted a relatively small part of what they did, even though it was the work that the whole firm loved, and that they had built their reputation on. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 8/03/2011

Tea and Coke

An interesting piece on how organic beverage company Honest Tea might fare as part of the Coke empire. As is observed here, so often these brand acquisition are a disaster. The very essence of the brands that saw them lapped up in the first place is squeezed out by multi-nationals in their hunt for a return on their investment. Unable to act as quickly as they had when they were growing on their own, and often without the inspiration and commitment of their entrepreneurial founders, the brands quickly wither. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 7/03/2011

Reaching the social consumer

New media guru Brian Solis has filed this excellent article on what some are predicting to be branding's next key customer: the social consumer. Based on research from attendees at The Pivot Conference, there are a number of key out-takes: Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 4/03/2011

Stars and scandals

I’m not a huge one for the ins and outs, behaviours and otherwise of the fashion world (preferring to leave such pursuits in the experienced hands of friends like Jack), but I did take some note of the recent John Galliano scandal because it highlights the risk that brands take when they associate themselves so closely with an individual who is a brand in their own right. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 3/03/2011

Cult branding: Developing a scarcity strategy

In a world dominated it seems by the push for scale and mass coverage, it’s easy to forget that sometimes the smartest thing you can do is the polar opposite: develop a deliberately limited edition brand that shuns the mainstream. I’ve written about this a number of times – here’s an example - and coined the phrase cultrepreneurs to describe those enterprising individuals who have chosen to create and market brands with cult status. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 2/03/2011

Lessons from Wikileaks

What’s Wikileaks really selling us? Access to information we deserve to see or the chance to participate in something that piques our curiosity? How many people have actually read the Wikileaks files – and at the end of the day, does it actually matter? Is Wikileaks important for what it says, what we’re told it says or what it claims to represent? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 1/03/2011

Rediscovering trust

While the officials, scientists and insurers in Christchurch start the interminable discussions over what, when, where, why, how much and who, perhaps the toughest task of all for the authorities doesn’t lie in rebuilding the structures, but rather in bringing back the very human aspect of trust. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 28/02/2011

Out-thinking the recession

When everyone’s in sale, no-one is. It simply means the market has reset the prices that consumers expect to pay. So I was interested in this interview with retail specialist Jim Lucas of Draft FCB about how businesses should approach recessive times. Here are my key out-takes from his interview: Read on

category: Recession | posted: 21/02/2011

Four hard yards

Sitting in the lounge waiting to board yet another plane, it’s fascinating how many people are busy. Laptops open everywhere, conversations on smartphones everywhere (at various levels of discretion). No-one wants to miss a minute. And yet today Borders tanked, and local book chain Whitcoulls announced it’s in schtum … Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 18/02/2011

What's your reply?

“I can’t believe they got that job. We are so much better than them”. We’ve all heard that. Some of us have said it. Here’s the question. Then, why did they get it? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 17/02/2011

The real recipe for Coke's success

So someone’s supposedly discovered the recipe for Coca Cola. What does that mean for the world’s most popular drink? Very little I would have thought. Because the world’s most closely guarded beverage trade secret has already done its job – it has helped build perhaps the most consistently powerful brand in the world. Beyond that, its value as a formula today is questionable. Read on

category: General | posted: 16/02/2011

Ten minutes of Gaga

If I was a Lady Gaga fan, how would I feel about her claim to have written her latest single in 10 minutes? Would I see that as a sign of her huge creativity? Or would I, on reflection, consider that the return for minutes invested, assuming this is another big hit, is going to make most Wall Street bonuses look relatively modest? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 15/02/2011

The power of occasions

Habits are powerful, but occasions may be even more so. I think they engage us so effectively because they combine time and focus. And because of that, they provide permission – it’s OK to behave this way or that. It’s OK to do something you wouldn’t do on any ordinary day. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 14/02/2011

The value of market valuations

Now it’s Twitter’s turn to be valued like a phone number, and it seems I’m not the only one thinking this is just a little OTT. Google's Eric Schmidt says there are clear signs of a bubble. Great. Then he adds: “But valuations are what they are. People believe that these companies will achieve huge sales in the future." Read on

category: General | posted: 11/02/2011

Groupon humour. Save us please.

So everyday discounters Groupon chose the most expensive ad day of the year to draw attention to themselves, and somehow came out the other side looking cheaper than their specials. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 10/02/2011

Huff or puff?

What to read into AOL’s acquisition of The Huffington Post for 32 times earnings? Another sign of a social media bubble? A bid for respectability by the corporate that, for many, has defined the unsuccessful merger? Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 9/02/2011

New words and altered meanings

Sue sent through a list of new words and altered meanings from a competition run by The Washington Post. These were my favourites: Read on

category: General | posted: 8/02/2011

The power of opinions for brands

Dennis Ryan, the Chief Creative Officer at Element 79, believes that “Brands are opinions”. Dr Philip Kotler, world-renowned marketing expert, says “Brands help people make decisions.” Increasingly my own view is a mix of both these wonderful ideas: Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 7/02/2011

7 lessons from the Sevens

Mickey Mice, surgeons, musclemen, vampires, men in tutus … yes, it’s Rugby Sevens weekend in Wellington. And that means teams of people dressed thematically and wandering the streets of the CBD. Welcome to a brand of rugby where the games themselves are virtually the backdrop for the actions and celebrations going on in the crowd and beyond the stadium. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 4/02/2011

The real power of endorsements (and other opinions)

The purser on the plane this morning reminded us as we landed that the airline had just won two industry awards. She didn’t name them but the point was made. Endorsement brings that extra degree of confirmation that we as consumers have made a good choice. It plays to our collective wish to make wise purchases. It tells us we got it right. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 3/02/2011

That’s a wrap

Format is really just a polite word for expectation. The way something is meant to be packaged. Years ago, they told The Doors they’d have to recut “Light My Fire” to make it a single because it didn’t fit the format – too long. It was an OK single I guess, but it was nothing like the real thing. Change led to compromise. The original didn’t cram into a single for a reason. It would be like trying to make a 3 minute version of Bohemian Rhapsody. What are you going to leave out? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 2/02/2011

How do you value a crowd-based brand?

What is the value of global friendship and can you actually assign a price to it? Facebook’s own stats say that the site now has more than 500 million active users, and that 50% of them log on to Facebook in any given day. That means Goldman Sachs’ implied valuation of $50 billion suggests every active user is worth around about $100. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 1/02/2011

Refreshing the connections: a perspective on The Pepsi Refresh Project

It’s great to see Pepsi deciding to spend money over a year in communities instead of splashing the lot on the Super Bowl. It certainly makes sense at one level. Conscientious consumers are asking corporates more and more questions about where their money is being spent and how committed they are to the people who buy their goods. On that score, this is huge. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 31/01/2011

Upheavals - now available in two flavours

For some time now, my friend Simon Young has been bugging me to incorporate comments for Upheaval posts. Read on

category: General | posted: 31/01/2011

Pass the salt

Once, salt was one of the most valuable commodities on earth. Usual supply and demand dynamics: plenty of need because of its preservation skills versus hard to find. Read on

category: General | posted: 28/01/2011

Work in progress

Didn’t work – Something was tried, and for reasons known or unknown, results were disappointing. Doesn’t mean that the same outcome would happen again, or that whatever is being proposed shouldn’t be tried again. This is a statement of history, often made blithely without the investigation of context, input, resource, influence or wider climate. It presumes a track record of past and therefore continuing disappointment. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 27/01/2011

The invisible language

My friend Simon is a designer. One of his favourite lines is “Great kerning will save the world”. Chances are if you’re an art director or a designer or, if like me, you work with art directors and designers every day, you’ll find this amusing because it references a whole bunch of things about the discipline, the passion and the perspectives of those committed to impeccably forged design. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 26/01/2011

Tying brands up in knots

Three things all of us probably need to spend more time thinking about: Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 25/01/2011

Flogging a dead Playhorse

Brands retain value from their legacy providing they are still seen as relevant and interesting, providing they are still competitive and providing they retain goodwill. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 24/01/2011

The difference between next and again

Why have all the sequels that have been planned to the Rocky Horror Shows either not been made or have flopped? Read on

category: General | posted: 21/01/2011

Circling …

Great products sell themselves. No they don’t. But equally, people don’t just buy brands either. Today’s customers are for the most part far too sophisticated and informed to buy generic-quality products with a nice or familiar name attached to them and a decent media budget. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 20/01/2011

Why personal branding alone won't work

It’s easy isn’t it to live your life in something of a bubble – to place boundaries at the edges of your social circle and say that’s as far as I feel like going, and to think of work as extending to your current “to do” list and inbox. Those are your parameters; often they become the home of your worldview. If say I live in London, I tend to see the world in London, or perhaps English, terms. That’s my day to day. Read on

category: General | posted: 19/01/2011

Vocational guidance

The next time you’re bored at dinner, here’s a discussion guaranteed to re-animate conversation. Simply ask “What do you think is the world’s most unnecessary/useless/over-rated job?” (choose any option – they all work). Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 18/01/2011

Staring at stars

The temptation to excel at what you do and, just as importantly, to be recognised for that is huge. It’s not always a good thing. Last night, finally got a chance to watch Michelin Stars - The Madness of Perfection, William Sitwell’s look at how a guide that started out as a simple way for motorists to find something to eat has evolved into a gastronomic obsession that makes and breaks restaurants and chefs. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 17/01/2011

Choosing where you take your cue

Further to the last post on Michelin. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 17/01/2011

My thoughts on developments at MySpace

Another reminder this week that the social media space – just like every other market - is not one consistent goldfield. While the likes of LinkedIn and Facebook continue to build powerful brands and potentially public business models, what I see taking place at MySpace takes me back 10 years to the boom and bust of the dot.com times. Some parallels I noticed: Read on

category: General | posted: 14/01/2011

There’s a language for that

My lawyer friend Nicola used to say that a sure sign of a market coming of age was when the litigation started. I suspect she’s right. In which case, Microsoft’s petition to block Apple from trademarking the term “app store” is perhaps a sign that many can see a very bright future – perhaps the future – in this idea. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 13/01/2011

Plotting what counts

Interesting isn’t it how we see numbers. I was reflecting on this yesterday after someone made the point that whilst all of us would agree that words tell stories, we tend to forget that numbers tell stories too. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 12/01/2011

Coffee’s cold …

I’m getting some mixed messages off Starbucks’ decision to par its logo back to an emblem. I’d like to think this is a sign of evolution. And at first glance that’s how it looks. Dolly up the icon, drop the name, drop the association with caffeine. Simple, clean, single minded, international. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 11/01/2011

Distinctualising: getting purely personal

It’s one of the great myths of the New Zealand tourism story that we have great scenery. But only in the sense that it implies other countries do not. Or that that is all New Zealand has. Of course we have eye-wateringly beautiful sites, as anyone whose been here or lived here can attest. But so do many other places in the world. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 10/01/2011

On design and clients

Dean Poole has one of my favourite minds. Here’s why. Design, he says, is creating things for clients who “don’t know what they want until they have seen what you’ve done, then they know exactly what they want and it’s not what you did.” Yip. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 26/11/2010

Lessons from the Hobbit

1. Once you’ve lost credibility in the eyes of the people you’re trying to convince, your assurances about what you will or will not do actually count for nothing. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 29/10/2010

A new role for Paul the octopus?

With Paul the Octopus’ role as Soccer World Cup predictor drawing to a close, and some talk of his former hosts wanting to turn him into calamari, I wonder if New Zealand’s Rugby World Cup Minister might consider employing the eight-legged wonder for the now vacant role of New Zealand’s Rugby World Cup Ambassador. Read on

category: General | posted: 10/07/2010

The death of iconic advertising?

Last night, watching a programme on ad man David Ogilvy, I paused to wonder what today’s equivalent of the ‘man in the Hathaway shirt’ or the Rolls Royce electric clock ad might be, and realised, all too quickly and sadly, that the days of iconic advertising seem to be largely over. Read on

category: General | posted: 8/07/2010

Peak trust

Doing some research for a speech next week, I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague about whether certain sectors of the economy – particularly the financial sector – have hit “peak trust”. Read on

category: uncategorised | posted: 7/07/2010

Inevitable for most

New addition to my notebook of favourite quotes - this statement by Bill Taylor: If your customers can live without you, eventually they will. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 21/06/2010

Cultivated scarcity

It’s always an interesting phenomenon when sectors choose to move en masse – because what they effectively do is change the market rules unilaterally. There’s all the appearances of competition, in the sense that there are players in the market who claim to be competing against one another, and different identities to distinguish the variations on a theme, but when everyone in a sector plays to the same rules, the differences for consumers – differences upon which the very spirit of competition depends – are as good as non existent. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 19/06/2010

Seeing past now

Jack Yan was off dealing to deadlines yesterday, but there was plenty of debate over New Zealand’s future at yesterday’s Vista Group meeting. Jim Donovan’s position was that the country’s businesses needed to attract more capital in order to fund international expansion and generate revenue. I argued that the key problem was our lack of marketing power in-market (which Jim ascribed to a lack of capital) … and so it continued. Read on

category: General | posted: 18/06/2010

A case of two over?

Overhead recently and smiled at: Read on

category: General | posted: 7/06/2010

Do you think they’re taking the piss?

What is it about new technology that seems to have everyone focused on body functions? First of all, there was the uproar over whether the iPad was a hygiene product reference. Now it seems a German company has come out with a rival to Apple’s tablet, which they’re calling the WePad. Read on

category: General | posted: 14/04/2010

Flagging the issue

This morning, on our national day, I chime in with my views on how we might approach resolving our national flag debate . I really like Gren’s points about why the fern might suit us as a national sporting symbol, but lacks the back-story and arguably the depth to represent us a national symbol. Read on

category: General | posted: 6/02/2010

Search vs find

Search engines are an example of redundant excellence. Anyone can search. For anything. And once, when the internet was a big, expanding and mysterious mass, that was enough. It was exciting just to see what showed up - right or wrong, good or bad. And to witness the sheer volume of possibilities. Read on

category: General | posted: 16/01/2010

Role play

No surprises that Apple was named Brand of the Decade by Adweek. But an important insight in the accompanying write-up: “Most brands are run by committee, but this one is the embodiment of a living, breathing person … Of course it helps when you're a brilliant marketer who happens to be the CEO.” Read on

category: General | posted: 16/12/2009

How badly will Woods be knocked?

James Surowiecki writing in the New Yorker makes an important point about what may happen to Woods’ bankability. Read on

category: General | posted: 15/12/2009

Sorry seems to be the easiest word

[Update: Seems even Tiger Woods must break his silence and respond, even if it is only to announce that he is walking away "indefinitely".] Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 12/12/2009

At least 25 things every marketer needs to recognise

Giving a guest lecture this week at summer school, I suggested that the search for customer motivation might begin here. Read on

category: General | posted: 10/12/2009

Success: plates versus profits

Congratulations to Jason Fried of 37 Signals for this insight from a great article on how he likes to work: Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 20/11/2009

Understanding the five threats

Here’s some great insights for anyone involved in change programmes of any kind. According to this article in Reuters, the key to successfully transforming organisations lies in better understanding what people feel threatened by. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 4/11/2009

How many complaints does it take to make a change?

The saga with the cereal maker continues. Seems that simply finding one large fly in a box of cereal is not enough to warrant anything as drastic as a recall. They are taking it seriously apparently - or at least that’s what they told my wife - but they’d have to receive more complaints before taking this further. Read on

category: General | posted: 27/10/2009

Cereal killer

My wife found a fly in her cereal this morning. It was a big fly. About the same size as the generous berries that the cereal is meant to be packed with. Except this “berry” was black. With wings. And judging by the look of it, it had been a passenger in the manufacturing journey for some time. Read on

category: General | posted: 25/10/2009

The new social status? Or - what difference does soup make?

If your senior managers are struggling to see the connection between what you support and what you earn, direct them to this great article on the influence of cause on shopping decisions. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 22/10/2009

What happens when communications agencies lose the creative monopoly?

It’s interesting what captures your eye. Right at the bottom of this article about Google’s plans to launch an ad campaign to promote its apps to the business world was a para that has disquietening overtones for communications agencies around the world. It was the fact that the creative part of the campaign had been designed in-house by Google’s own Creative Lab team led by former Ogilvy & Mather executive Andy Berndt. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 20/10/2009

Option or alternative

My favourite saying is “Life is not a popularity contest”. It’s a maxim easily forgotten in these days of convergence. But in my opinion it’s more true in business than anywhere, and most true in terms of how companies need to think about their branding. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 8/10/2009

The importance of being Smith

It doesn’t matter whether you know about Paul Reed Smith - if you’re not a guitarist. If you are a guitarist, and you’re not aware of PRS guitars, then that may say something about you too - to other guitarists who count themselves in the know. Read on

category: General | posted: 29/09/2009

What’s really fair?

Two interesting dilemmas in this piece about the politics and commercialisation of fair trading. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 27/09/2009

What’s your CSR really saying?

Smart move on the part of Absolut. Link trendy no logo design for Fashion Week in London with a clear social message. In this case, the vodka maker has used lack-of-label to also express their thoughts on a world free of sexual prejudice. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 24/09/2009

So what's going on at Audacity?

For those who are interested in what happens over at The Audacity Group, we've started a Twitter account. Read on

category: General | posted: 15/09/2009

Learning to think in analogue

As regular readers will know, I don’t agree with everything about Chris Anderson’s FREE theory. But two key points have been playing on my mind recently, and now it’s time to share. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 15/09/2009

Voting with chocolate

Cadbury’s decision to stop using palm oil in its dairy milk chocolate points to far more than just the ability of public opinion to sway an international brand. What’s significant here is the reason people were up in arms - their view that using palm oil instead of cocoa butter constituted an environmental slip-up on the part of Cadbury’s that warranted direct action. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 18/08/2009

The new battlefield

Yesterday I told a group of delegates during a keynote that, in my opinion, we all faced a new battlefield. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 15/08/2009

Who will pass the L’Oreal test?

About 18 months ago, I argued that one of the greatest dilemmas facing companies as we headed headlong into recession was going to be how they coped with what I called at the time “the loss of pace”. Who would find impetus in deceleration? Who would use the sudden lack of customer demand to rethink and rescope, and who would apply “ostrich economics” and carry on trying to do business the way they always had, even as their revenue engine spluttered and in some cases stopped beneath them? Read on

category: Recession | posted: 26/07/2009

Why most advertising doesn’t wash

The outrageously scary washing machine for sale seems to have the whole country in its grip. It even featured on the national news tonight. Gorgeous writing. And if you have the time, the questions and answers are an absolute scream. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 12/06/2009

Cooking up a controversy?

When Gordon Ramsay insults an Australian TV reporter, is he hurting or helping his brand? And when the Australian Prime Minister, no less, expresses outrage at his antics, does that help or hinder public perceptions of the celebrity chef? How far is too far when your whole brand is built on being notorious? And does it even matter if you’re serious or not? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 10/06/2009

What’s really being bailed out at GM?

Can’t help wondering whether the American Government’s decision to take over ownership of GM is not dissimilar to the last Commander-in-Chief’s famous cry of “mission accomplished”. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 10/06/2009

Painting

Isn’t it interesting how the simplest sounding things are so much more complex when you think about them a little more? Yesterday,when I asked him what we would do if something didn’t go to plan, Paul glibly suggested that we would have to “paint our way out of the corner we are in”. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 27/05/2009

The Emperor’s new hits

More and more people reportedly are turning off the mainstream media because of the programming and the interruptive marketing messages. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 22/05/2009

Branding 3.0

As social media makes more and more in-roads into popular culture, particularly amongst the young, advertisers are starting to recognise the power of building branded communities, both online and off (even though I reckon they haven’t worked out the money model yet). Brands are crowding onto social media sites to build presence and gather followings. Read on

category: General | posted: 22/05/2009

Do social media negate the need for advertising standards?

Now that consumers have the means to voice their support or condemnation globally for whatever happens in the public arena via social media, I wonder whether Twitter, Facebook, Bebo et al are eclipsing the need for advertising standards. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 19/05/2009

The power of inconvenient questions

Watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room for the first time recently. A huge reminder of how easy it is to assume; that the massive confidence of some readily inspires the trust of many. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 7/05/2009

The cult of popularity

I wonder if it’s too easy in these days of Twitter and instant global chat to get drawn into believing that every storm in the social media is a public relations disaster or conversely a proven runaway success. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 30/04/2009

The concept of “badwill”

If a strong brand adds value to the physical costs of a product, does a bad brand reduce the asking price? The instinctive answer of course is yes. But does it actually materially affect the asking price to the point where anything associated with that brand can only ever reach below what it needs to be worth? Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 23/04/2009

Lessons from Dominos

The key point about the Domino’s story is that it goes to much more basic points than hygiene standards in the food industry or the increasing influence of social media (just in case there are those who think they are immune from such a situation because they don’t serve food and/or they’re not consumer-facing). Read on

category: General | posted: 22/04/2009

The reputation contradiction

24/7 Wall Street, an online financial news Web site, has published a list of the brands it believes could be dead by next year: Budget rental cars; Borders books; Crocs footwear; Saturn vehicles; Esquire magazine; Old Navy apparel; Architectural Digest magazine; Chrysler brand cars; Eddie Bauer; Palm; AIG; and United Air Lines. You can read their rationale for why here. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 22/04/2009

The clarity of light

Tactics are like torchlight. You switch them on, they show you a way forward, you act on them there and then. They’re logical, reactive, contemporary. Your customers and your competitors probably see and react to them in exactly the same light. Read on

category: General | posted: 20/04/2009

Out is the new in

Bargain-hunting continues to be highly resistant to recession-mania. One of the most interesting developments of the downturn has been the increase in store format experimentation. As full-price formats hit the wall, even high street icons are seeing opportunities to recreate “low street” channels. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 17/04/2009

In the ship

Boom times really are the season of plenty for those participating in the supply chain. With markets screaming for more to be supplied, being part of the delivery cycle is a highly efficient way to make money. Plentiful transactions virtually guarantee you work. All you have to do is show up. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 14/04/2009

The perils of association

Seems Harvard Business School’s brand is under fire after several of its previously illustrious alumni experienced a sharp decline in credibility. Questions are now being asked about the currency of Harvard Business School teachings and whether it has adequately prepared some of America’s most powerful decision makers for the sharp change in the financial weather. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 13/04/2009

The secret to next

With so much talk about innovation these days, many companies must be tempted to believe that all they have to do in these toughening times is create something new and exciting and that’s it. They’ll hit the shelves with their next big thing, it will be a huge hit, problem solved. Read on

category: General | posted: 2/04/2009

Taking on Washington

Surely no-one can be that surprised that GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner has been asked to leave. After all, the company has lost a huge amount of its value under his watch. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 30/03/2009

Which three letters should it be?

Apparently, AIG has formed a holding company for its property casualty companies which they’re thinking of calling American International Underwriters (AIU) . But according to someone who supposedly knows, that’s not necessarily the name they’re going with - "AIU Holdings plans to develop a 'go-to-market' name that reflects the financial strength and security that the insurance companies provide business and individual customers worldwide." Read on

category: General | posted: 28/03/2009

Redefining value

There’s been a lot of talk in recent times about value shifts. Economists keep hailing this as the epoch where the greatest write down in value in history has occurred. As a marketer I don’t see it that way at all. Read on

category: General | posted: 27/03/2009

Three into one

Interbrand global chief executive Jez Frampton’s summation of great retailing as "the perfect mix between finance, space and brand" is an excellent crystallisation of the inherent tensions in that sector – the need to pack in enough of the right branded product within an environment displacing the right number of square feet to deliver customers a great experience and achieve the requisite return. Read on

category: General | posted: 26/03/2009

It’s not a name change, it’s just a synonym

From a brand point of view, I’ve questioned for some time the sense of investing bail-out money in poisoned brands, because while the funds may bring some relief ostensibly to balance sheets, and enable the payout of outrageous “bonuses”, they do nothing whatsoever to salvage the reputation of the company. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 25/03/2009

Finding your customers’ tag cloud

I’ve got a new question, and it’s driving my clients crazy. What’s in your customers’ tag cloud? And what I mean by that is what are the ideas and the phrases that your customers are most excited by? What box of thoughts and keywords do they most want to see associated with you? Read on

category: General | posted: 23/03/2009

The dangers of typical innovation

I’m always fascinated when organisations see and recognise a direct threat to their business model but then do little or nothing to take the initiative because … well, I’m not sure why. It’s a phenomenon I’ve referred to before as ostrich economics. Companies see a threat, they know it’s there, but they seem to prefer to just ignore it and hope it goes away. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 22/03/2009

It may have windows, but who’s looking?

Rule #1 for any business. Never try to beat your competitor at what they’re renowned for – especially when your track record in the area is far from flash. And that’s why I think Microsoft’s decision to open physical stores, proportedly to enhance its relationship with customers, is a very dangerous strategy. Here are just some of a whole host of reasons why I don’t think they should do it: Read on

category: General | posted: 25/02/2009

Be careful what you ask for

OK, here’s a left-fielder. Setting goals may be bad for your company’s health. New research shows setting ambitious targets often encourages poor performance. This is of course anathema to conventional management theory which has preached for some time that pushing people to excel brings out the best in them. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 23/02/2009

Bookends or beginnings?

Here’s one of those seriously audacious statements that one can only admire. Amazon chief Jeff Bezos announced the arrival of Kindle 2 by saying he wanted to make every book available for download in an electronic form to be read on the device. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 10/02/2009

Facing up to life beyond five

The adage used to be that three years was “forever” in the online world. So, the interesting thing about Facebook turning five recently is not the number of users nor the fact that these days its use is ubiquitous to the point where people use it to announce changes in their marital status. The most interesting point for me is that, after all this time, Facebook has still not found a way to monetarize its business model to anything like its estimated “brand value”. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 9/02/2009

God save the cream …

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and sometimes the results can be quite amazing. Having issued a profit warning in November, as a result of spiralling milk prices, Dairy Crest seemed to be facing tough times indeed. So I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the creative people came in to pitch to the idea of former Sex Pistol Johnny Lyndon fronting on TV for Country Life butter. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 5/02/2009

Lessons from the football game

What do Superbowl advertising and spam have in common? Both subscribe to the eyeball theory. In both cases, it’s about scale. In both cases, it’s about interruption. In both cases, it’s about hope. Read on

category: General | posted: 4/02/2009

The end of a Classic

Nearly 25 years after the New Coke debacle, it seems Coca Cola have finally decided that it’s safe to remove the word “classic” from its packaging in the US. The move apparently is designed to help enhance the brand’s appeal particularly to younger consumers who think classic means vintage. With New Coke now gone, the company argues it no longer needs to differentiate between the two. Read on

category: General | posted: 3/02/2009

The search for secret ingredients

Astute take on the value adding power of recycling in an excellent article by Michael Beverland in this month’s Idealog. As Beverland points out, “Although brand managers may believe in recycling … they rarely recycle the substance of the brand—the bits of the brand that have latent value …” Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 2/02/2009

History lesson

A nice round-the-sectors piece by Brandweek looks at prospects for a wide range of brands, concluding this will indeed be a year of mixed fortunes: Read on

category: Recession | posted: 30/01/2009

What’s in a name?

The recent buy-up of brand name Linens ‘n Things for around a million dollars proves three things in my book. First, a brand name can have a monetary value. Second, it’s nowhere near as much as we were led to believe (a bit like house valuations in that regard) since the company was bought for $1.3 billion just three years ago, and not all of that can have been stock. Third, the brand name is independent of the business itself. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 29/01/2009

Everything you need to pretend to have an MBA

You’ll love this piece on what it takes to pretend to have an MBA. The core thesis: simply learn all the lingo, and it’s as good as having the degree. As the writer points out, “You don't really have to understand it because most of it is meaningless anyway. You just have to know when to drop in the odd strategic phrase or word.” Read on

category: General | posted: 12/01/2009

Not so long after all

It looks like I’m not the only one having problems with Chris Anderson’s theorems. A study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a not-for-profit royalty collection society, has revealed that more than 10 million of the 13 million music tracks available on the internet failed to attract a single buyer last year. Now of course that’s not what “long tail” suggested would happen, with its hypothesis that online was redefining niche markets, creating unlimited demand from limitless choice Read on

category: General | posted: 9/01/2009

What does Apple’s Macbandonment signal?

Perhaps they are just putting on a brave face in the light of more serious developments, but the news that Apple will abandon MacWorld has interesting implications, and it highlights the potential difference that can exist between the "facts" (what the company knows or claims to know) and signals (what the markets reads into a set of actions) Read on

category: General | posted: 7/01/2009

All together now?

Welcome to a new year - but over the Christmas break, did it strike anyone else as more than just a little bemusing that Coke’s advertising theme tune for summer in NZ was also used here recently by the Salvation Army? Read on

category: General | posted: 6/01/2009

Quite clearly cloudy

Further proof that this really has been the year of the cloud. I remember some years back when I was working with the Xero team as they canvassed the opportunities and challenges of taking a SaaS (Software as a Service) based business public, many people remained skeptical about the feasibility of such an approach. Some I spoke to saw Salesforce et al as the successful exceptions rather than the new rules. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 17/12/2008

C what’s possible

Monetarisation of the internet continues – and some are saying this is just the start of a major revamp not just for the media companies, but for the way these companies and others might need to start thinking about their income and their content models. This story about people making good incomes from YouTube shows that online is increasingly finding effective ways to fund channels – and ironically, the new model is not that different from the old. Except for one important difference so far, and that is the idea of partnering. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 15/12/2008

Jailhouse rock

The way I see it the multi-billion dollar rescue packages being proposed to support the so-called “cornerstones” of the American economy are less a bail-out and more a “fail-out”. That old adage - when you owe someone a hundred dollars, it’s your problem, but when you owe them a million, it’s theirs - has never sounded so true. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 10/12/2008

Be careful what you signpost.

If you’re part of a company with a large customer base, it’s easy to convince yourself that you understand your customers so well that you can actually apply labels to them on signage. You can, in effect, identify them on your terms, and still firmly believe that you are absolutely doing the right thing. You may even believe you’re being helpful. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 18/11/2008

Would you like a logo with that?

I was very interested in this story about the Muji stores in Japan, the latest example of which seems to be a no-brand Quarter Pounder store. Burgers from the Golden Arches – but without any of the usual corporate identity. Read on

category: General | posted: 14/11/2008

The new up

I grinned from ear to ear when I saw this quote from Wenda Harris Millard of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia at the EconWomen Conference: Read on

category: Recession | posted: 4/11/2008

Helluva stupid, by my reckoning

In a competitive arena like fast food, it must be very tempting to resort to shock value – to say, damn it, the most important thing we need to do right now is get attention. Any attention. Any way we can. And if your name is Hell Pizza, then it’s easy to see how you could believe you have an open license to be shocking about anyone or anything. Read on

category: General | posted: 3/11/2008

Lessons from the kitchen

It wasn’t so long ago that the key concern for many businesses was “how can we keep up with demand?” Now that momentum and organic growth has evaporated in many sectors, there’s a new question, which in many ways is much more puzzling – “How do we go slower and stay profitable?” Read on

category: Recession | posted: 31/10/2008

Don’t bank on your brand

Media Post has this thought provoking piece that highlights another danger in numbers – this time in relation to brand valuations. As reported in the article, John Gerzema and Ed Lebar’s book The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It contends that we are indeed in the middle of a “brand bubble”, with consumer opinion on the value of brands falling at the same time as corporations continue to attribute those brands with increasing balance sheet value. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 30/10/2008

The danger of numbers

As recent times have shown up only too clearly, it’s very easy to confuse strategy with demand – to get to the point where what stakeholders or decision makers want or have led themselves to expect becomes what must be achieved. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 29/10/2008

You say Apple and I say PC

Very good piece today by Jeff Sexton on what he believes was Apple’s pre-prepared strategy to draw Microsoft into answering them back. According to Sexton, the gizzumph was already good to go. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 28/10/2008

Was, not is?

Perhaps the CEO of Harcourts, needs to read Black Swan. If he did, perhaps he’d be less disappointed than he says he is that recent house sales haven’t held up to the way things usually are in September. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 22/10/2008

Forget what they want. What do they intend?

Need and want are subsets of the real motivation I believe we should all be searching for as marketers – and that is intent. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 21/10/2008

Eight lessons from luxury

The Brand Strategy Magazine’s blog has a very useful summary of the Luxury Institute’s eight tips on how to survive the recession. They’re great ideas – and with a little adaptation they’re as true for a small business as they are for the high-end high street. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 20/10/2008

Vista in October

Another Vista Group lunch yesterday – my first in quite a while, given all my travelling. And in between Jack Yan’s “around the world in 80 accents”, the usual wide ranging discussion. One of the dominant topics, given that both Jack and I run virtual organisations, was how to cement loyalty and commitment inside an intangible structure. When people don’t have places to call their own, how do they derive a sense of belonging? Read on

category: General | posted: 17/10/2008

What a difference a word makes … apparently

According to this article, the financial bail-out simply needed a name change to succeed. The problem it seems was in the use of the word “bail out”. If the Administration had just used the word “rescue” instead, getting the package through Congress the first time would have been a walk in the park. Bush, it seems, should have opted for a movie trailer approach or gone for the David vs Wall Street approach. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 13/10/2008

Further proof that small may indeed be the new big

This last weekend, the world’s biggest retailer took on a whole new approach – small. The company that is famous for its use of scale launched four Marketside stores in the Phoenix area, a first step perhaps in a move towards introducing more compact store formats. Read on

category: General | posted: 6/10/2008

Let them eat soup

Seems one of the few stocks not freefalling on Wall Street on 777 day was Campbell’s Soup. In fact it was the only stock – excuse the pun – on the S&P 500 to rise that day. And then again on Tuesday. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 2/10/2008

AM, FM, TM?

Quirky little story from London Free Press about whatever happened to Barry Manilow. Seems the hit Vegas act is no longer just a person, now he’s a trademark, owned by Hastings, Clayton & Tucker, Inc. Which is kind of a whole new take on personal branding, don’t you think? (Still trying to work out why anyone would buy Barry Manilow boxers.) Read on

category: General | posted: 30/09/2008

Hitting the Wall … Street

The much vaunted financial Wall Street bailout appears to me to be a bit like President Bush’s expedition to Iraq. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 26/09/2008

How far would you go?

In Christchurch recently for a workshop, I noticed an interesting article in the local paper sourced from the Washington Post (sorry, I don’t have a link). Seems that rising fuel prices are having such an effect on the “China price” – the huge price advantage that Chinese producers have been able to offer – that more and more US companies are turning tail and bringing their production back inside the States. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 24/09/2008

Message in a fishtank

While everyone else seemed pre-occupied with the fact that artist Damien Hirst had earned $198 million from auctioning his latest works in the midst of financial turmoil, the bit that interested me was that, in doing so, Britain’s extremely rich enfant terrible had completely bypassed the dealer system and sold the works directly through an auction house – the first time anyone had dared defy the established order this way. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 22/09/2008

The implications of Chrome: a beta state of rivalry

Now that Google have launched their beta browser Chrome, I guess many of us who weren’t in the know about its release are asking why wouldn’t they? Given Google’s complete dependence on the web, continuing to leave browsing to their main rival would have made no sense. Read on

category: General | posted: 3/09/2008

Racing ahead

Spotted this fascinating documentary on how Formula One has become the ultimate global branding platform, with more than 500 million viewers globally. One of the most interesting aspects for me has been the evolution of the brands involved, and how this change has tracked alongside the worldwide expansion of venues and audiences. Read on

category: General | posted: 1/09/2008

Another side to the board?

Wouldn’t exactly say I’ve ever hailed Lovemarks as the pinnacle of thinking on brand, and I continue to have some disquiet that the head of Saatchis worldwide is now on the board of what must surely be their biggest client in New Zealand. Nevertheless, I was pleased on one level to see that Kevin Roberts had been appointed to the Telecom board – because at least his appointment represents the admission (subject to approval by shareholders) of another marketing mind to the hallowed halls of corporate governance. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 29/08/2008

The contradictions of confections

Smiled when I spotted these contradictory articles almost side by side on BBC. First up, this video report says chocolate companies are reporting rising sales as the rest of the economy slows down. The report points out that the relatively small cost and high pleasure values of chocolate mean that it is one food that consumers won’t give up on easily. Read on

category: General | posted: 28/08/2008

The 5 -ests.

At a conference I was also speaking at recently, Rob Smith, CEO of Paper Plus, outlined the 5 ests rule that they drew on to define their position. There are only five possible positions in a sector and you need to own, and align yourself, to one: Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 27/08/2008

An unnatural state of work

Home at last – after what feels like an eternity out on the road. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 25/08/2008

Socialising your brand

A sign of the growing awareness of social media for branders. Justin Hunt posts this about a new tool that rates how a brand is represented in social media. And judging by the fact that when I visited there was a note at howsociable.com stating that they weren’t ready for this much interest quite so early, the site initiators have clearly picked up on something that’s on more and more marketers’ radar. Read on

category: General | posted: 6/08/2008

Reducing the intake or tightening the belt?

According to Business Day, the concerning thing about the closure of 61 Starbucks stores in Australia is not just the fact that one international company is experiencing problems, it’s that things are seriously awry when the food sector starts shrinking. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 5/08/2008

Brands in the house

I was intrigued to read about the rise and rise of house brands in the United States as more and more people shift to a recessionary mindset. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 4/08/2008

If you’re no longer great, were you ever?

I’m going to throw my 50c of opinion in on Steven Levitt’s post recently about Good to Great. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 31/07/2008

Redundant excellence

Earlier this week at a conference in Christchurch, I introduced the concept of redundant excellence – the danger of focusing on improving products and services that in fact have been, or are in the process of being, surpassed, either by new technology or shifting consumer attitudes. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 30/07/2008

Let the platitudes commence …

If what’s described here is anything to go by, looks like the 2008 Olympics ads will be as dull, shallow and completely predictable as previous efforts. Read on

category: General | posted: 25/07/2008

What were they not thinking?

In the search to capitalise on equity, some brands have pushed the boat out and made it to the other side. Others haven’t been quite so lucky – and Mental Floss gleefully highlights some of the extensions that were a reach too far. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 24/07/2008

Unprofitable – or just one of those sectors where you can’t make a killing any more?

Could the world’s most (in)famous security company be feeling a little … insecure? According to Associated Press, Blackwater Worldwide, the guys with the security contractors in Iraq, say they want to get out of the security business and more into areas like training, aviation and logistics. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 23/07/2008

Suing with silence

Alright, I admit it. I did grin when I read this piece from Freakonomics about the lawyer who is suing a newspaper because he doesn’t believe it is now worth the money he paid to renew his subscription. Stephen Dubner’s question is who would you like to take on? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 18/07/2008

Turning the tables

When you know an area very well, it’s easy to believe that you have a natural advantage over strangers who loom as competitors – especially when those rivals are from a completely different culture and half a world away. Read on

category: General | posted: 17/07/2008

Where are they going with this?

We’re invited to see the big picture and learn more about fresher thinking on flying. But this new puff-piece about the A380 seems to me to very long on environmental graphics and sentiments and astonishingly brief on the actual detail. Read on

category: General | posted: 16/07/2008

Simply not enough

It’s easy to be tempted into thinking you’ve done enough. When the world is rivetted on your launch, when the media has been building up for weeks, when people are queued outside the store waiting for days (like they were in Wellington) – the most natural thing in the world is to believe you’ve done everything right. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 15/07/2008

Railway signals

Talk of this joint venture between Air France and train operator Veolia should give travellers even more reason to choose short-haul rail over short-haul flying, accelerating a trend that’s already seen high speed rail gobble up European routes such as Paris-Brussels. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 14/07/2008

What’s the plural of sale?

How successful is a sale when everyone else is in sale too? I wondered about this as I walked through a mall yesterday bedecked in Sale signs. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 11/07/2008

The joy of flying … or perhaps not.

I think it’s a sad day for all concerned when an airline decides that it’s going to stop showing movies inflight to try and save costs. That’s exactly what US Airlines are talking about – apparently they feel pressured into doing this because of rising fuel prices. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 10/07/2008

Have done … or has been?

It’s interesting reading what’s happened to newspaper analysts. Seems plunging valuations and a lack of investor interest have seen analyst numbers halved. You can read the obvious sector implications into this: the US newspaper industry can’t keep up with the online glut for advertising, so who needs to analyse the industry? Which kind of has a rather large Exit sign attached to it somewhere. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 7/07/2008

Starbucked?

It’s far too easy to confuse expansion with momentum. But as this article on Starbuck’s growing dilemma shows, the reason why the coffee chain is contracting at its current rate is that it has expanded its way out of the high-end and into the middle ground – and there it has suffered the fate of many a middle market player – it has stagnated. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 3/07/2008

Taking in the view at the roundabout

Lovely piece from Brian Bond of Future Now on the new “there’ll be a charge” mentality sweeping the American airline industry. Forget a la carte. This is à la suitcase, as airline companies look for reasons to remove services and charge for things that always used to be included. Bags, drinks, seats. And all this justified by the classic excuse, “well if they can do it so can we”. Read on

category: General | posted: 2/07/2008

Seizing the nettle

Mike and I presented to another group of investor relations specialists in Auckland last week – and one of the things we talked about was the very real risk associated with not communicating well. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 1/07/2008

Talk is cheap? Not in this case.

What would you pay to have dinner with someone whose business acumen you admire beyond all measure? A guy named Zhao Danyang, a general manager at Pure Heart China Growth Investment Fund, has just forked out US$2.1 million to have dinner with the Sage at a New York steakhouse. The money goes to charity – the Glide Foundation, a not-for-profit helpng poor and homeless people in San Francisco. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 30/06/2008

What do you give one of the world’s richest men?

So today is Bill Gates’ last day in the office running Microsoft. I wonder what they’ll give him as a going away present? A copy of XP, do you think? Read on

category: General | posted: 27/06/2008

Outsourcing our thinking

A few days ago, Johnnie Moore referred to whether we were all suffering from internet-induced ADD in a piece that praised the power of succinct. One particular phrase in the post really caught my eye. He talked about the fact that “we're in danger of outsourcing our thinking”. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 24/06/2008

Brand big

This article in BusinessWeek about small companies like Ciao Bella who have made it big by capitalising on their brands carries an important lesson for us all. Brand big. Companies that give themselves big brands also give themselves something to expand into – in other words, room to grow. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 23/06/2008

The wider role of regulation

It’s easy to see regulation as a reaction to the corporate scandals of previous years and to characterise the return to a much more compliant environment as one of bureaucracy on a roll (and a role for that matter). Thinking on this today, as I prepare for two presentations next week, it occurred to me that there’s a wider attitudinal shift happening here that is easy to overlook. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 20/06/2008

Crying for their beer

Is the InBev offer for Anheuscher-Busch poised to the Micro-hoo of the beverage world? Carlos Brito, InBev’s chief executive, seems to be doing all he can to allay fears that jobs are not at risk, even saying that St Louis would be the company’s US headquarters and that InBev will protect Budweiser's heritage. Locals, it seems, are having none of it. Read on

category: General | posted: 19/06/2008

It’s more than a download, it’s a world record attempt

It’s underway right now. Firefox is celebrating Download Day, the day version 3 of its Firebox browser goes on general release. But, in true Firefox fashion, they’re not just making it available, they’re going for a world record for the most downloads over 24 hours – even though there is no such record yet as far as Mozilla themselves can tell. Read on

category: General | posted: 18/06/2008

Never say never

I wonder if Michael Jackson knows the words to the Bruce Springsteen classic Glory Days, because it may be a song with more than a hint of relevance. According to this article, Colony Capital, the people who saved Jackson’s ranch from foreclosure, are now looking at a range of options to help him repay his debts. Their suggestions seem to include launching a comeback in Las Vegas, an appearance on Oprah (maybe they’ll wheel out the Tom Cruise couch) and/or doing a TV special. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 17/06/2008

It’s advertising. It must be true.

Friday at Freakonomics, Stephen Dubner asked Which industry makes the most misleading ads? . His personal opinion was the companies that advertise closets. As he says, they always seem to be pieces of furniture that are bathed in sunlight, and that are owned by people who have three pairs of identical and very clean pants or skirts, but never anything unshapely like an accordion, or hockey stick. (A bit like those layouts in “Have a more organised life” books!) Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 16/06/2008

Don’t chew. Bite.

Guy Kawasaki’s interview with Rohit Bhargava about the importance of personality in building distinctive brands is well worth the read. “Personality,” he says, “is what brings a brand to life”. Tick. VG. Give that man a star. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 13/06/2008

Frank Sinatra has a new deal with Warner

For many of us in the branding world, licensing is probably a relatively unknown territory – a bit like franchising in that regard. Huge brand element, but different business model. So I was intrigued to read this recently: news that Frank Sinatra has signed a new deal and is now on the comeback trail. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 12/06/2008

Too many slices of Apple?

Many will see it as a great thing – the announcement by Steve Jobs that the second generation iPhone will be 3G and cost as little as US$199. This new model is apparently three times faster than its predecessor and appears to be Apple’s bid to directly confront competitors like Blackberry. Read on

category: General | posted: 11/06/2008

Call me loyal?

Interesting that several companies should be considering reviewing their loyalty programmes as economic conditions tighten. Though I’m more than happy to use them myself, I’ve always been reluctant to advocate such programmes as a marketing tool, for a number of reasons. Read on

category: General | posted: 10/06/2008

10 critical success factors for investor branding

A recent article in the Washington Post highlights how major investors are turning onto the power of brands as investments. These so-called “brand investors” are putting their money behind brands for many of the same reasons that marketers look to develop brands in the first place. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 9/06/2008

Hummer goes hmmmm …

Airlines aren’t the only ones struggling with high fuel prices and unevolved business models. Over at General Motors, they’ve cottoned onto the fact that the Hummer may no longer be a vehicle of our age. According to this article, at current US gas prices, a 100 mile round trip in the mid-size model costs about $30. (That’s still a lot cheaper than what we’d pay in New Zealand!) Read on

category: General | posted: 6/06/2008

Femonomics is the lead story in this month’s Marketing Magazine

This month, Marketing Magazine carries a lead story about the importance of women consumers. I’m thrilled they’ve chosen to pick up on the “femonomics” theme. Thrilled too to have been interviewed and for the article to include a section from an extended article I wrote on why male marketers must change the way they sell. Read on

category: General | posted: 5/06/2008

Making the shortlist

Findings from recent research of the ways we go about our lives have confirmed we are nowhere near as random as previously thought. In point of fact, after tracking more than 100,000 mobile phone users over a period of six months, the clear conclusion is that people mostly visit a limited number of locations time and time again. Read on

category: General | posted: 5/06/2008

Glocal brands

Further to the themes in my last story. David Wolf explores opportunities for global organisations to make much better use of dormant local brands in this article. In particular, he points out how what he refers to as a glocal branding strategy could work very well for Chinese companies looking to enter overseas markets. Read on

category: General | posted: 3/06/2008

Wash that brand right out of my hair? Not necessarily.

When an ad that has had millions of dollars spent on it fails to reappear on the screen, how long is it before anyone actually notices? That was what I was left pondering after coming across this article by Rob Walker about a company called River West Brands that has built a business out of bringing brands back from the dead. Read on

category: General | posted: 30/05/2008

Hello dolly

I see the Barbie vs Bratz argument has made it to court, and now both sides are arguing over whose time designer Carter Bryant was on when he came up with the designs. That may well be the legal argument, but from a marketing point of view, the questions over Bratz success extend beyond actual ownership of the ideas. Read on

category: General | posted: 29/05/2008

The good oil

Here’s an interesting twist. Shareholders at ExxonMobil are up in arms - not over profits, but over the fact that the company is not living up to its social responsibilities. They’re so miffed about it in fact that they’ve lodged a series of proposals for the AGM. You could dismiss this as more troublemaking from the activist brigade, but for the fact that the actions have support from the heavyweights - major institutional investors as well as the Rockefeller family. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 28/05/2008

A loop or a noose?

First, it was Yahoo getting into trouble over turning down the Microsoft deal. Now, IAG’s hit a similar problem in Australia over a takeover bid by rival QBE insurance – and it’s a decision that has cost the Chief Executive his job. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 27/05/2008

Closing the ultimate sale – a salute to Paul Potts

Watched a documentary on Paul Potts last night. I still think the clip of his performance is one of the most inspiring and uplifting pieces I have ever seen. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched it, and yet every time, it’s absolutely magic. Say what you like about his recital technically, the point is that from the point of view of sheer emotional impact it’s incredibly hard to beat. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 26/05/2008

The $50 billion question

If I was a Microsoft shareholder, I’d certainly be asking for a little elaboration over this curious statement from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Read on

category: General | posted: 23/05/2008

Ethics vs patronage

A follow on from yesterday in some ways. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 21/05/2008

Making a decent profit

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal Online examines the business of social responsibility and asks what’s the financial payback for generating all this goodwill. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 20/05/2008

Airbrushing

In a world of choice, it’s tempting to retouch your brand story to make it more appealing. It’s tempting to say your clothes are made in one country, when in fact some of the garment is made somewhere else. It’s easy to state that you have a rigorous environmental policy when in fact it’s still under development. It’s simple to say that your food has the perfect mix of whatever, when in fact your machines are not calibrated to tell you exactly how much of which ingredient will end up in a randomly sampled pack. It just takes a moment to add a qualification you don’t have and to say it’s from an impressive institution – because you know you’re that good anyway. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 19/05/2008

Mindsets

Just a quick reminder to all those who are currently dismissing the whole concept of recession as a mindset divorced from reality that has been talked up by the media. So were the boom times. What’s your point? Read on

category: Recession | posted: 16/05/2008

Never do nice work.

Yesterday after a Board meeting, Graham and I went for coffee, as we always do. He reminded me of a piece of work that we had both been involved with that had been deemed so outrageous at the time internally that a petition had been circulated to have the project stopped dead in its tracks. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 15/05/2008

Can we talk?

Joan Rivers’ famous phrase has taken on new meaning with news that Facebook, My Space and Google are all making sharing noises in the social network space. Suddenly, proprietary social networking it seems is out the window – and everyone wants to get together. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 14/05/2008

What will you label them? Food for thought.

In the crowded, hyper-competitive world of FMCG, food brands live and die on their perceptions of trust and truth. After all these are products we feed to ourselves and our families. And with so many brands flogging the fact that they are fat free, sugar free, glutin free or contain added vitamins and minerals, we’ve been conditioned as consumers to include label-gazing as part of our purchase routines. Conditioned and convinced. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 13/05/2008

Cause and effect

Another one of the things we talked about in Sydney last week was the rising importance of CSR issues for investors – and the implication that environmental and social issues were becoming key considerations for companies looking to grow their investor brand. Read on

category: General | posted: 12/05/2008

Love is the drug

It’s easy to fall in love with your product, to believe that the thing you’ve worked on so hard for so long is the best thing going. From there, it’s a very small step to believing that everyone must know what you’re doing. And from there, it’s a very small step again to the commitment to do whatever it takes to get your product and all its benefits out to the public. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 9/05/2008

Guesswork is not a great communications strategy

Just been in Sydney with Mike, speaking to investor relations managers about what to do now that the old annual report has all but died in Australia. The figures we’ve seen show opt-in figures (people choosing to receive a physical copy of the annual report) of as low as 6%. Andrew, one of the other presenters, had figures of around 9.5%. But that still leaves 90%+ of investors saying no thanks – we’ll look elsewhere. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 8/05/2008

What’s KFC without the chicken?

Here’s one of those stories that proves successful brands – even food brands – can be defined by much more than just the product. Read on

category: General | posted: 6/05/2008

Right now, Yahoo has the wrong value attitude for Microsoft

Is there a take-out for Yahoo in Microsoft’s decision to walk away? Time will tell. There is a lesson though in the decision for all of us – and that is, that in the end what you think you are worth counts for nothing to anyone else. It’s just your opinion. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 5/05/2008

Coping with the outrage

Whilst everyone is shocked and sickened by what has come to light in Austria, I agree with Simon Anholt that the Austrian government is perhaps over-reacting by calling in the consultants to fix its image. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 2/05/2008

See you round?

Just read a great article by Jim Collins, of Good to Great fame, about life and death on the Fortune 500. Collins points out that over 2000 companies have appeared on the list since its inception in 1955. But of the 500 that appeared on that first list, only 71 are still there today. That’s an 86% disappearance rate. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 1/05/2008

Amazing experiences – true or false?

Today I found a review of Lisa Johnson and Andrea Learned’s book Don’t Think Pink, which is about how to effectively market to women. One of the key points they make in the review is the difference between visible marketing and transparent marketing. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 30/04/2008

Taking sides

Sometimes it’s a fine line between irony and opportunity. As the Microsoft/Yahoo liaison makes its inevitable trundle into what looks like a hostile takeover, Mars and Wrigley’s have, with the involvement of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, announced a deal that certainly puts the sweetener back in recession. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 29/04/2008

This is no time for presence

News this week from the Agenda crew that some of the most expensive and well-managed luxury brands in the world are doing very well thank you. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 28/04/2008

Anzac Day

All the anger, bitterness, atrocity, outrage, anticipation, pain, grief, triumph, pride, disfigurement, panic, hatred, death, injustice, comradeship, loss, desperation, disease, mud, stench and utter, utter waste – captured, symbolised, in a simple, single red poppy. Read on

category: General | posted: 25/04/2008

Lessons from Vista

Yes I know I’ve gone on about Microsoft all week, but after reading this article by Peter Griffin this morning, I can see at least five lessons that the company should take from Vista: Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 24/04/2008

Clouds on the horizon

A follow up to my story about Microsoft and Starbucks, courtesy of my friend and colleague Hannah Samuel. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 23/04/2008

Things are looking bad. Where’s my broker?

An interesting and upheaving article in the Sydney Morning Herald suggests that recession is the most important time to use an intermediary. The argument goes like this. When the market is booming, the gains are easy, and investors can afford to do it themselves. But once things get a little more volatile, the full-service broker really comes into their own. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 22/04/2008

Is Microsoft the next Starbucks?

According to two analysts from Gartner, Microsoft’s position is untenable and Windows is collapsing. Strong language indeed, underlined by a message that the software giant needs to make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 21/04/2008

The Delta/Northwest merger – what’s the real message here?

Very early start this morning as I head out of town – but couldn’t board a plane without commenting on the latest mega-merger to hit the US airline industry. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 18/04/2008

I’ve just accepted the role of editor at allaboutbranding.com

It’s an enormous thrill to be able to announce that I have been offered, and have accepted, the role of editor at premier global branding reference site, allaboutbranding.com. Read on

category: General | posted: 16/04/2008

Can you depend on Lonely Planet?

It’s one of the most trusted travel brands in the world. But now it seems Lonely Planet may be neither as lonely nor as planetary as one might have been led to believe – that’s if author Thomas Kohnstamm’s account is anywhere near accurate. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 15/04/2008

Lessons from the Sex Pistols

30 years on, it’s still one of the most intense and energising performances I’ve ever seen - the Sex Pistols leering and sneering Pretty Vacant on British TV. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 14/04/2008

The commitment to compete

I disagree with Howard Schultz. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 11/04/2008

Ostrich economics

It’s not a very good year in the airline industry – with American Airlines cancelling hundreds of planes for safety checks, the Terminal 5 chaos at Heathrow, more delays for Boeing’s Dreamliner, the end of the Hong Long based airline Oasis. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 10/04/2008

Sensible to the max

Thumbs up to the Automobile Association in New Zealand for recognising that what looks like Max Mosley’s whole new take on ‘get your motor running’ might not make him a brand-aligned choice to attend their transport and environment summit in June. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 9/04/2008

Running rings around the Games

Imagine if Mahatama Ghandi had had access to the internet. What would he have done to use the medium to best advantage? Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 8/04/2008

The online revenue riddle

Two very different and contrasting stories shed light on just how unresolved (or evolving) the online revenue model continues to be. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 7/04/2008

Drinking the dream

Selling beverages is often not about selling the science. It’s about inviting people to drink a dream. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 4/04/2008

Pinning the cause on the market

In a great post today, Stephen Dubner asks The Stock Market Surged Yesterday Because … Why? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 3/04/2008

Like a Virgle

If you haven’t read about Virgin and Google’s plans to pioneer life on Mars by 2014 posted today (yes, today), you should. What’s scary is how close it sounds to some very real pitches for other “visionary” projects. Read on

category: General | posted: 2/04/2008

A post-rational economy? In places, perhaps.

A poll by online magazine brandchannel.com has resulted in Apple being named the brand with the biggest impact on consumers globally. Microsoft by contrast was the brand most readers wanted to argue with, and the one they most wanted to revamp. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 1/04/2008

Open wide

The opening up of vast tracts of air space with the new "open skies" agreement between the US and European Union should be a bonanza for travellers. After all, now any number of planes can fly routes trans-Atlantic. Read on

category: General | posted: 31/03/2008

Shut up. I’m flying

I read with a sense of resignation today that the UK regulator has just approved the use of mobile phones on flights within European air space. Read on

category: General | posted: 28/03/2008

Playing with bricks

Here’s another one of those “scientists have nothing better to do” stories that supposedly proves the power of branding. Read on

category: General | posted: 27/03/2008

Finding your value stack

Today, I was reading an excerpt from one of 0800-CEO-Read’s featured authors, Ade McCormack, from her book The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership. The book looks at the value of IT value realisation. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 26/03/2008

Tibet or taboo?

Mixed messages indeed from the world’s major corporates as Olympic sponsors find themselves associated with a political situation in Tibet that’s becoming a little uncomfortable. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 25/03/2008

Tipping point?

Over at Brand Autopsy, John Moore offers his ever-informed appraisal of Starbucks’ proposed transformation programme arguing that many of the ideas proposed will do nothing to improve US business, one or two may enhance the connection with customers but 4 out of 6 represent opportunities for investment for future growth. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 22/03/2008

Lunchstorming

Another meeting of the Vista Group yesterday, with Jack Yan (on time), Jim Donovan (on form) and Natalie Ferguson (on debut) and once again it amazes me how much stimulating conversation can be crammed into a relatively small period of time. Read on

category: Vista | posted: 21/03/2008

Wellbucks?

One of the most worrying signs of a company veering off strategy is when they start talking up the opportunities for entering a completely unrelated market, perhaps on the grounds that they see untapped potential there. So news that Starbucks is planning to diversify into new categories such as health and wellness strikes me as very concerning. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 20/03/2008

Problem or placebo? Actually it doesn't matter.

Interesting article in the Wall Street journal about whether generic drugs are better or worse than their brand-name counterparts. Apparently, there’s a few people questioning the FDA’s position that generics are interchangeable with the original medicines, citing examples that, they claim, show that shifting to a generic is not the same as staying on the original drug. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 19/03/2008

Swan or turkey?

Reading about the woes of various financial institutions in the States after years of prosperity, I’m reminded of that great story about the turkey in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book The Black Swan. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 18/03/2008

Sisters are …

Further proof of the power and importance of femonomics. Holly Buchanan reports that women entrepreneurs are growing businesses at nearly twice the rate of all firms. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 17/03/2008

Looking for Mr Goodbook

Over at Brand Autopsy, John Moore’s post about Borders’ decision to test a front-facing display strategy sets up some interesting questions about the nature of competition generally. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 14/03/2008

Feathers and wigs

Have you ever noticed the curious parallels between Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds and trying to get anything past Legal? Read on

category: General | posted: 13/03/2008

Shedding the strategy skin

The interesting thing about being involved with strategy is that it has a built-in contempt phase. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 12/03/2008

What will you see when the tide goes out?

Lance Wiggs includes this quote from Warren Buffett in a recent post Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 11/03/2008

Reporting on annual reports

On her blog recently, content specialist Rachel McAlpine pointed to the fact that, according to the New Zealand Securities Commission, annual reports have only a 30% pass rate. According to an article in the Dominion Post 20 of the 30 annual reports sampled by the Commission in recent times had problems. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 10/03/2008

Changing attitudes

I was intrigued to read that Penthouse is going public. That’s right, the magazine that sat in “that” part of the bookstore will go to Wall Street later this year looking to IPO for $250 million. (Should make for an interesting prospectus) Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 7/03/2008

The pushback pattern

Over in my consulting life, I’m working on two very ambitious projects this week. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 6/03/2008

The next tobacco?

As a little village of 400 people files suit in the US for damages caused by climate change there are two conclusions: Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 5/03/2008

Sexy back

Excuse the pun, but a revealing article in The Wall Street Journal recently on Victoria’s Secret’s struggle to retain its growth. The brand, famous for its sexy attitudes, is now saying it might just be too sexy, or at least the wrong kind of sexy. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 4/03/2008

Long time, no see. Thank God.

Some lessons I’ve learnt recently: Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 3/03/2008

To free or not to free

You may or may not agree with, or even like, what Chris Anderson has to say about the prevailing forces in a technology-driven economy, but his argument is certainly interesting and well worth the read. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 29/02/2008

Personal branding - answering the fame question

Just a quick thought this morning as I dash out to a board meeting. There seems to be an increasing tendency to regard personal branding as the image you want to project. The problem with that of course is that it’s not dissimilar to the myth it took years to break down – you know brand = logo, except in this case, you can substitute logo for clothes or car or manicure. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 28/02/2008

Stuffing the pigeon into the rhombus

I enjoyed Johnnie Moore’s post this morning on classifying people. The dilemma with pigeon-holes of course is that not everyone fits, and some of the best people in industry do defy what’s expected of them. That is literally what makes them exceptional. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 27/02/2008

Commoditising attitudes

It’s interesting what we get used to. Just seven short years ago, most of us walked freely through airport gates. Now we’re subconsciously taking our laptops out of their bags way ahead of the queue, and trying to remember whether this belt is one of the ones that trips the security. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 26/02/2008

Branding, branding everywhere …

You don’t have to look far these days to see recruiters calling themselves employer branders. Or image consultants saying they are now involved in personal branding. Or every designer who puts a modicum of thought into what they’re doing suddenly hailing themselves as brand strategists. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 25/02/2008

What a rush …

Yesterday at the second meeting of the newly dubbed Vista Group (named after the café, not how we operate), Jack Yan, Jim Donovan and I had an interesting discussion about cult brands and their power. Read on

category: Vista | posted: 22/02/2008

The delay dilemma

So the long running battle is over. Blu-Ray has out-gunned, outcharmed and out-marketed HD-DVD to become the next generation DVD format. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 21/02/2008

Age old questions

Turns out the concept of commodities and indeed that of branding may be an older idea than we imagine. Most of us recognise both ideas as mass-production phenomena. Recently though, David Wengrow, a lecturer at University College London, has presented new evidence about labels on ancient containers. Most have assumed these were just identifiers, but actually according to Wengrow, they actually functioned as brands. Read on

category: General | posted: 19/02/2008

The Joneses … the end is just the start

There will no doubt be many in the real estate industry this week rubbing their hands with glee and viewing the voluntary liquidation of the Joneses as the end of an alternative business model to the current commission system. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 19/02/2008

Bridging gaps in growing markets

Here’s an interesting mix. Electronic Arts, the people behind many of the world’s most popular gaming titles, has signed a partnership agreement with sports and entertainment marketing giants IMG. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 18/02/2008

Apples and lemons

Today Agenda quoted Ron Johnson in an interview done late last year with Associated Press. Talking about what Apple was looking to achieve in its stores, the head of retail at Apple said, “We try to pattern the feeling to a five-star hotel. It’s not about selling. It’s about creating a place where you belong.” Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 15/02/2008

Happy Valentine’s Day …

Today as the restaurants are filled to capacity, flowers are on sale at a huge margin, shops clear out of chocolates, every type of stuffed toy imaginable has been cleaned off the shelves, the singing telegrams people have full books and lingerie sales spike remarkably – all for just one day - it’s time to remember why we increasingly talk about the power of th emotional economy. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 14/02/2008

Looking to succeed

In a new survey by Landor Associates and Lightspeed Research there’s news that this year bodes well for some in the online space, but other icons of the American retail scene will truly struggle. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 13/02/2008

Is no bad news, good news?

I was intrigued to read recently that Ebay is changing its feedback system so that sellers aren’t allowed to leave negative comments about buyers. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 12/02/2008

Reaping riches

According to Agenda old money is fighting back. Fed up with the democratisation of luxury, those in the elite 5% are looking for ways to put distance between themselves and the 40 – 60% of all consumers that make the “new luxury” movement. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 11/02/2008

Made in New Zealand

On this our national holiday, it’s interesting to reflect on what our strengths as a country of origin are, and what they mean to business. Here are my impressions: Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 6/02/2008

The power of adjuncts

Sometimes what happens alongside an event can be just as important as the occasion itself. The Superbowl is as much about the half-time entertainment and the ads as it is the game. Sevens’ rugby has a highly visible social element – evidenced by how many people actually watch what’s happening on the field compared with socialising on the concourse. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 5/02/2008

Searching for a different way to compete with Google

So Microsoft and Yahoo are talking about the possibility of joining up. Great for the stock market, impressive, enormous, everything that scale demands … I’m just far from convinced that scale is the answer here. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 4/02/2008

Two names – and just one k between them

Do I smell a double standard here? Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 1/02/2008

The great Apple escape

It’s a fascinating dilemma for Apple. On the one hand, their brand promotes individuality and the right to express yourself your way through their technology. On the other, they’ve tied the roll-out of their iPhones, and a big chunk of revenue, on having a single network partner in each country. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 31/01/2008

Fighting pirates

Great piece today over at Brand Autopsy about Matt Mason’s The Pirate’s Dilemma. Pirates are entrepreneurs who are “doing things differently and working out new ways to share information, intellectual property, and public space.” Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 30/01/2008

Interesting time to have a board meeting

Very good article in the Sunday Times Online about Jerome Kerviel. (Thanks to Freakonomics for the point.) Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 30/01/2008

Betting the debt of France – and no-one noticed?

I’ve been watching the Societe Generale fraud scandal unfold over the last few days with interest. I now have one question for the bank – and it’s a very simple one. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 29/01/2008

“C’mon kitty, get back in the bag”

News today of the launch of Qtrax an ad supported and legal music download system that has the support of major labels. It’ll launch with up to 30 million copyrighted tracks, and depend on advertising revenue in order to offer songs free. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 28/01/2008

Fighting recession with joy

From a marketer's point of view, numbers don’t drive recessions. They may start them. They may justify them. But they don’t actually make them happen. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 25/01/2008

Superficial sweetener

Disturbing news today that Starbucks is about to start selling a US$1 coffee and free refills in its Seattle outlets. Disturbing because the very last thing a price premium player like Starbucks should be doing is peddling cheap coffee in the search for accelerated turnover. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 24/01/2008

Here's the hat. Next rabbit please

Imagine you’re Steve Jobs. You’ve just had your best quarter ever. You’ve achieved your highest revenue and earnings in the company’s history. In one three month period, your profits climbed by 57% from a year ago. Sales for your revolutionary mobile phone have hit 2.3 million. You shifted 44% more computers than the year before. And you shipped out 22 million iPods. You’ve just announced the world’s thinnest laptop. And you’ve signalled that iTunes is about to take it to the movie rental market. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 24/01/2008

How much more money could you make if you slowed down?

Mounting fuel costs and increasing environmental awareness are driving new agendas in a whole range of industries. This article on shake-ups in the shipping industry proves just how effectively dilemmas can provoke open acceptance of ideas that a short time ago would have been considered heresy. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 23/01/2008

The irony of research

Everyone wants the relevance that great research brings. They want products that fit with them, service that gels with them, ideas that excite them, attitudes that ring true … They want retailers and manufacturers to read their minds. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 22/01/2008

Corporate or crisis – the C in CSR?

The Economist seems to have confused crisis response with corporate responsibility in this piece on managing risks to reputation but it still makes for interesting reading. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 22/01/2008

Does my carbon emission look good in this?

If environmental responsibility is one of those things kicking around your boardroom, it may be worth reading this great piece about the value of carbon labelling, because it brings a lot of what’s being mooted down to earth. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 21/01/2008

The new driver for change in the entertainment sector: no drive.

It seemed almost buried in the latest news from MacWorld – that the new MacBook Air would not have an optical drive. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 18/01/2008

On a harpoon to nothing

The Japanese whaling industry may be indignant over the boarding of one of the ships in their fleet by two protesters, but they’ve already lost the war Why? Because from the moment they left port, most of the world it would appear has been urging them to lose. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 17/01/2008

Alright I was wrong

Apparently the new Telecom network is called Chorus. Read on

category: General | posted: 16/01/2008

A shudder of faith

If I were a franchise owner right now, I’d be paying very close attention to what’s going on at Green Acres, even if my franchise was in an area that seemed miles away from theirs. Here’s why. The potential dilemma could parallel the one faced by finance companies. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 16/01/2008

Can you guess?

So Telecom New Zealand have a wholesale division called Telecom Wholesale Read on

category: General | posted: 15/01/2008

How not to set records

Major problems at EMI if the reports are to be believed, with the company rumoured to be looking to axe up to 2,000 jobs. What’s interesting here, aside from the size of the job losses – 36% of the workforce according to my calculator – is the nature of the jobs that are said to be being cut. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 15/01/2008

Weren’t you the guys who …?

The Green Acres franchise scandal is turning into a major headache for all concerned, and highlights one of the major branding risks in being associated with a franchise. When the brand is strong, everyone benefits. Once the brand is weakened – sometimes, as in this case, for reasons beyond its immediate control – then the shock waves spread right across the business, affecting every franchisee in the process. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 14/01/2008

Looks like Tata might just have a Schlieffen Plan

So Tata has just released the Nano, a shopping basket size vehicle that is designed for the very lowest end of the market. At the same time, their acquisition of Land Rover and Jaguar, at the high end of the market, means they are now very well positioned to execute a strong and viable Schlieffen Plan. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 11/01/2008

Six lessons from Swiss knives

Great piece on the resurgence of Swiss knives in the International Herald Tribune today. In many ways the issues faced by Victorinox seem to me to symbolise the dilemmas and the opportunities for iconic brands that look like they’d passed their use-by date."> Read on

category: General | posted: 11/01/2008

Interview with Hannah Samuel

Hannah Samuel is a reputation champion. In her new book Reputation Branding, she argues that powerful reputation branding can help people in business create deeper, more meaningful and profitable relationships. In fact, she describes reputation branding as the new business frontier. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 10/01/2008

For whom does the warning bell toll?

Every time one pivotal group (or even a member of that group) within an industry says they’re not happy with the current arrangements, that’s a dilemma in the making. It may not happen then. It may not happen for many years. But it will happen. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 9/01/2008

Look who else went to the beach on this one?

Seems I’m not the only person who thinks the new Xerox logo looks like a beach ball. Read on

category: General | posted: 9/01/2008

The Xerox rebrand – sorry, X didn’t marque the spot for me

It’s interesting isn’t it how one person’s earth-shattering news is another person’s so what? Which was pretty much my reaction to the hoopla that surrounded the launch of the new Xerox brand. Read on

category: General | posted: 9/01/2008

Men marketing badly

Copywriting supremo Holly Buchanan at Future Now Inc has released a PDF detailing The Seven Biggest Mistakes in Marketing to Women Online. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 8/01/2008

Are communities the 2.0 of markets?

Hi – and welcome to Upheavals 08. If you’re from my part of the world, you’re probably coming off a summer break, in which case, I hope you and yours had peaceful and happy times. If you’re from more northern climes, chances are this post catches you in winter’s icy grip – in which case, please stay warm and be good to yourself over these chilly times. Read on

category: General | posted: 7/01/2008

6 things that got my attention this year

In my part of the world, it’s the beginning of summer, so Christmas for New Zealanders is a time to hit the beaches, fire up that true New Zealand institution, the barbeque, and have our big break for the year. Before I do so, here’s some of the things that got my attention this past few months and where I think they may be taking us: Read on

category: General | posted: 24/12/2007

Earning the right to knol

Knols – a.k.a “units of knowledge” seem to be the next rage, as Google unveils an opportunity for people all over the world to write about a subject in which they are an authority. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 21/12/2007

Responsibly ostentatious – or ostentatiously responsible? Maybe neither. Yet.

Yesterday I was reading an article by Brian R Richards on “consumanism”. According to Richards, “central to the incredible rise of eco-living is the rise of ethical consumption”. "Consumanism", he says, “is increasingly influencing purchasing decisions and consumers have no qualms about punishing companies that don't fit within an ethical framework.” Good point, well made – and one familiar to those who read this blog regularly as a drum I also like to bang. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 20/12/2007

Blow-fishing your presence

Sometimes the competitor you are most aware of is not as big as you think they are. Awareness literally makes them loom larger than they actually are. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 19/12/2007

Winning in the workplace - skills, set and match …

A recent survey by Microsoft of 500 business leaders saw knowledge of IT ranked number 7 on the list of most important workplace skills. This according to Microsoft should be seen as proof that computer skills continue to be undervalued. Read on

category: General | posted: 18/12/2007

Innovation depends on making or breaking habits

Earlier this year it was my privilege to work with Rod Drury, Hamish Edwards and the team at Xero as they prepared to take their company public. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 17/12/2007

If you can’t beat em, be just like them. Not.

Yum Brands, which operates Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut in the States is looking to revive its business – and it has a remarkably simple strategy. Follow the competitor. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 15/12/2007

Coffee to go

I walked into one of my favourite haunts yesterday. They were busy – OK, frantic. Waiting staff were running everywhere trying to get things done, serving people they didn’t know, trying to make a good impression. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 14/12/2007

Wii bit of a dilemma (part 3 of 2)

The problem with traditional answers is that so often they look like they’re making a difference, even as they potentially continue to undermine your position in the one place you can’t really measure – the mind of the customer. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 13/12/2007

Worldsourcing - truly global value

Fabulous piece by William Amelio, President and CEO of Lenovo, on why outsourcing is being replaced by what Amelio calls “worldsourcing” - sourcing the best value from wherever it takes. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 12/12/2007

Tis the season not to trust men

Further proof that femonomics is alive and well at Xmas here in New Zealand. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 12/12/2007

Wii bit of a dilemma (Part 2 of 2)

Yesterday I talked about what I’d do if we were working for Nintendo and we had to pacify a whole lot of eager gamers about the fact that they might be in for a delay over getting hold of the much-in-demand Wii. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 11/12/2007

Wii bit of a dilemma (Part 1 of 2)

News at the end of last week that Nintendo is looking seriously at stalling its advertising for Wii in the UK in the run up to Christmas because it quite literally can’t keep up with demand. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 10/12/2007

What's so scary about an Asian Jaguar?

It takes a lot to take my breath away – but a group of Jaguar car dealers in the US have managed to do so. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 8/12/2007

The online dilemma that won’t be settled by sorry

The Facebook dilemma over Beacon that finally saw Mark Zuckerberg apologising this week is only going to become more acute I reckon. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 7/12/2007

The secret of cakes

The power of secrets today is not just that the information is hard to find. The power of secrets is that, once found, they represent a shortcut. And that, more than anything, is a powerful attractant. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 7/12/2007

Brand communities - what makes them tick

Yesterday on his blog Robert Kozinets asked what makes a brand community-able? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 6/12/2007

Delivery can be a state of mind

In another great article in the Telegraph this week, Paul Farrow seems to be asking why so many people put their trust in famous financial brands. The trouble, he says, is that these brands often fail to deliver once you've been hooked in. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 5/12/2007

Ad-ing what exactly?

The music industry is not the only behemoth in a state of dilemma. The ad industry too is struggling to return much more than the savings bank. Again, another business model that looks well past its use-by date. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 4/12/2007

Does today mark the beginning of the end of international trade?

It’s easy to dismiss bird flu as the Y2K of medicine. But, as every marketer knows, the reality of anything is nowhere near as compelling as the perception. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 3/12/2007

Challenge vs dilemma (deckchair, anyone?)

Yesterday at Fast Company, Donna Karlin was blogging about the fact that humans seem to have this tendency to wait for crises to occur before we consider changing our ways of being. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 30/11/2007

How far is too far when your promise is local?

I’m a little curious about the recent announcement by Yellow Pages Group to outsource its Directory service to the Philippines next year. It seems more than a little ironic that a company that proclaims itself proudly to be the country’s “find it” brand will soon require New Zealanders who can’t find someone to get that information from somewhere thousands of miles away and from an agent who has probably never been here. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 29/11/2007

Playing your part

They’re preparing for an international soccer event in this part of the world … or rather, the whole of this part of the world is getting ready for David Beckham to turn up and kick a ball around. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 26/11/2007

Not looking, just comparing

Is that a bigger pay-packet in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me? Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 24/11/2007

How easily can you relocate a flower show?

Would the New York Marathon still be the New York marathon if it was held in Budapest? If they moved the Chelsea Flower Show to Paris, would it still be the same? Where is the franchise strength in such an institution? Is it in the place itself or in the brand? Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 23/11/2007

You don’t always have to yell to be heard

Sometimes the best way to get attention is not to ask for it – especially when everyone else is begging. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 22/11/2007

The real pace challenge

According to a report by US analyst firm Nemertes Research featured on the BBC today consumer demand for bandwidth could see the internet running out of capacity in as little as two years. That in turn could mean not only a return to the days of waiting for downloads, but the very real possibility that the next Google or YouTube may not even get off the ground. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 21/11/2007

More proof of femonomics

Still not convinced on the femonomics argument? Perhaps this study from Saatchis of women shoppers in the UK might help change your mind: Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 20/11/2007

Open or shut case?

Lots of excitement for some today at the announcement by Amazon that they are launching an electronic book reader with wireless access. Read on

category: General | posted: 20/11/2007

The fallacy of frantic

Being busy doesn’t make you invincible. It just makes you … busy, for now. Except of course being rude to your customers or not returning their calls or treating them like they’re expendable, or doing the one hundred other things we’re all tempted to do when we’re busy isn’t just a now thing. It’s a lot more permanent. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 19/11/2007

Missing the boat (Part 5 of 5)

There can be little doubt that as women become even more aware of their financial influence and economic strength that the ‘push’ dynamics of a few will become the ‘pull’ dynamics of the many, as women demand more respect, attention and business done their way. Organisations will have no choice but to regear their cultures and adjust their decision making when pressure turns to shove on the bottom line. That means not just new attitudes to female customers, but new service models and ways of selling that gel with the way women like to buy. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 16/11/2007

New article on Femonomics now posted

Thanks for all the feedback this week. As promised, here's the new article on the case for femonomics. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 16/11/2007

Celebration is the most powerful endorsement (Part 4 of 5)

Today - why celebration of all that women are achieving has the opportunity to turn the world’s biggest market into a powerful endorser of your position. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 15/11/2007

Cause as a purchase decision (Part 3 of 5)

Today – why doing good is becoming a buying filter, for and against purchase. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 14/11/2007

Accuracy flies out the window

In the heat of battle it can be easy to forget that there is a difference between lure and attract. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 14/11/2007

The next era of CRM (Part 2 of 5)

Today – where CRM must go. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 13/11/2007

The search for a new kind of value (Part 1 of 5)

My new article – Femonomics must change the way we sell – will be released on Friday. In it, I explore some of the implications for male marketers of a burgeoning participation by women in the paid workforce. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 12/11/2007

Trust: comparing Facebook with Nielsen

According to the just published Nielsen report “Trust in Advertising”, consumers around the world still trust each other more than they do the dazzling array of new media advertising channels. In fact, they still trust traditional advertising media to a surprising degree. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 10/11/2007

Now showing … so what?

Most of the sponsorships I see are the equivalent of banner ads. They’re strips of communication plastered round an event, hoping that people will see them, remember them and somehow feel good enough about what they’ve witnessed to click through. Read on

category: General | posted: 9/11/2007

Gesture or business model?

The figures are in on how the Radiohead pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth album is faring. Read on

category: General | posted: 8/11/2007

Racing for priority

Yesterday, tens of thousands of people stopped work and spent several minutes yelling at a TV screen as the Melbourne Cup, the biggest horse race in this part of the world, roared into life. The result was a record take for bets. Read on

category: General | posted: 7/11/2007

Picking off dots on the fadar …

The business section of your bookstore is now no different from your supermarket. – packed with product that for the most part is a comet or a meteorite. It’s either an idea that’s been here before but has now come back, or one that came out of nowhere, will burn bright and then die well before it hits paydirt … Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 7/11/2007

The irony of dates

Did it strike anyone else as ironical that we should be celebrating Guy Fawkes last night? Read on

category: General | posted: 6/11/2007

How do you define responsible?

Another survey, another result – but this one yielded an interesting dilemma. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 5/11/2007

"I’d like to register a complaint …"

Smart companies expect their customers to complain. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 3/11/2007

Sailing round in a triangle

Another logo debate (yawn). This time it’s Auckland City Council. Read on

category: General | posted: 2/11/2007

A ticket to ride – or not

Clearly air travel can still be exciting. Singapore Airlines have just publicly asked passengers in First Class on their new A380 not to engage in sexual activities because even though the suites have double beds, they're not discretely sealed for noise. Read on

category: General | posted: 1/11/2007

Reputation in real time

Online is quickly changing the rules on how we manage corporate and brand reputation. Only now are we really starting to understand what it means to manage your reputation in real time. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 1/11/2007

Five rings … but you can’t call

When cash turns from a flow to a flood, things can get very messy very quickly if you’re not prepared. Read on

category: General | posted: 31/10/2007

Buy New Zealand Made needs to make up its mind

As the scandal over Gap’s accidental use of child labour in India was breaking, I was, ironically, watching a documentary called China Blue - the story of a very young woman’s life making jeans for Western markets. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 30/10/2007

Massclusivity

I was taken by this description from Jorgen Anderssen, Marketing Manager for H&M, for the Swedish fashion chain’s strategy of creating limited designer ranges for high street shoppers. Read on

category: General | posted: 29/10/2007

Seeing what’s needed

Thousands of products we come into contact with set out to make us feel good in exchange for money. But how many actually make us feel that we have, in a moment of time, in a small small way, changed the world by interacting with them? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 27/10/2007

Look who hasn’t woken up in the city that never sleeps.

Technology it seems might just be a state of mind. Because what is ubiquitous to some, even the vast majority, is clearly novel to others. Read on

category: General | posted: 26/10/2007

Lift-off …

What could you do to make your next launch a part of history? Read on

category: General | posted: 25/10/2007

The World’s Biggest Blog Party – I’m in!

I met speaker Tim Richardson in Tucson in January 2006 when I was presenting at the National Speakers Association “University” in Tucson. Now Tim is putting his considerable energies behind The World’s Biggest Blog Party Read on

category: General | posted: 25/10/2007

Femonomics rising

Does your brand have a distinctly feminine side? It needs to. Read on

category: Femonomics | posted: 24/10/2007

Gone in a flash?

If you hold the high ground in any industry, subsidence is now a given. Read on

category: General | posted: 23/10/2007

Far, far away ...

Most organisations seem to structure their relationship attitudes around four degrees of customer separation: Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 20/10/2007

Defining your terms of brand

Most of us feel comfortable defining our terms of business, but how many of us are as assertive in defining our terms of brands? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 19/10/2007

Testing the love

From a brand point of view, Apple seem to have pushed customer love to its limits over the iPhone, and today we may be seeing the first signs that they have recognised that. Read on

category: General | posted: 18/10/2007

The plural of ignoranus

Just following up from yesterday - a few suggestions so far on the plural of ignoranus: Read on

category: General | posted: 17/10/2007

More amazing words

My friend Mike Goot shares more words from The Washington Post's Style Invitational. The secret here apparently is to take any word from the dictionary, change one letter and give it a new meaning. Read on

category: General | posted: 16/10/2007

Leading maybe, but also a little out of date

If you needed proof that the real estate industry globally is struggling to move with the times, consider this example which popped up in my Google Alerts this morning. Read on

category: General | posted: 15/10/2007

Grate expectations

Grenville Main made the point the other day that New Zealand was so busy getting the All Blacks ready to win, we forgot to prepare them - or us - for how to lose. Again. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 14/10/2007

Anyone for shark-fin soup?

There is definitely an upside to right and proper regulation. Because while low barriers to entry might encourage market competition, they can also foster low standards and outrageous behaviours. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 12/10/2007

Honestly?

Just further to the previous post ... how much money do you think many agents in the real estate industry would make if they had to operate under the honesty box system? Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 12/10/2007

Anti-commerce is just another market position.

I’m always fascinated by the fact that even those who proclaim to be most against branding and marketing are more than happy to put those very same techniques to work when it comes to telling and selling their own message to the world … Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 11/10/2007

Game over ... value gone.

Sometimes the gap between must-see and must-miss can be very small indeed. Read on

category: General | posted: 8/10/2007

For the record … or not

Those of you who’ve come to my “Making money in the new middle” presentation will recall my statement that in a world where everyone wants to go direct, distribution alone is a dying business model for many – because it’s increasingly unjustifiable as a raison d’etre. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 4/10/2007

Running out of reason

I gaped when I spied an article in the NY Times recently talking about the fact that the major US carriers can’t agree on how many hours confined passengers have to wait inside a stranded plane before they can demand to be released. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 2/10/2007

Old words, new takes

Recently The Washington Post published its winners in its annual neologism contest. Read on

category: General | posted: 1/10/2007

Back online ...

Sorry - technical difficulties with something. Normal trouble-making should now resume. Thanks for your patience ... Read on

category: General | posted: 26/09/2007

More on flat out ...

Further proof from Roger that "flat out" doesn't mean what it says. He comments: Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 6/08/2007

The frenzy of lists

So the list of the world’s top 100 brands is out again – and everyone it seems has an opinion. Who’s moved and why? Who hasn’t and why not? Read on

category: General | posted: 4/08/2007

More from lunch with Paul

Another one of Paul's questions from yesterday: Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 27/07/2007

A closer look at must-see

Lunch with Paul today – and the usual freewheeling conversation spanning marketing and humanity. One of his comments really got to me. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 26/07/2007

New job description

Thanks to the security guy at the IBANZ conference last week who found his own word for what I was doing: Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 20/07/2007

No wrinkles please, we’re recruiting …

Interesting to read via our friends at Agenda Inc an article from globeandmail.com in which big companies are now looking to recruit via channels like Facebook. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 20/07/2007

Will Facebook change the face of branding?

Suddenly it seems everyone wants to talk Facebook to Facebook. And as the requests have tumbled in this week, it’s led me to question the changes this is bringing for brands. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 18/07/2007

Getting there may not be everything

Gosh, what a sandstorm this week in the media over our national carrier’s decision to ferry Australian troops to Kuwait on a chartered jet, on their way to Iraq. It just goes to show that effectively having politicians as your 75% shareholder can make for some interesting corporate responsibility discussions. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 17/07/2007

Is Carbon lite the next consumer catch-phrase?

Interesting piece by Stefaan Simons, a professor at University College London, last week on the BBC’s Green Room feature, in which he discusses the fact that carbon offsetting schemes may well pay for the guilt we feel over carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but do little to change behaviours and will not help save the planet from the very real problem of rising emissions and global warming. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 11/07/2007

Innovating your past

So the Spice Girls are planning to go back on tour, Crowded House have reformed, Genesis, the Who and half the radio playlist for the middle-aged it seems is back on the road, pounding the stadiums after years, sometimes decades away. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 9/07/2007

Paris on the podium?

So The Learning Annex has announced recently that it wants to pay Paris Hilton a million dollars to talk about branding at an upcoming convention. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 3/07/2007

Green with stupidity

This just in from a power company in their latest newsletter. Read on

category: General | posted: 1/07/2007

Would you like information with that?

The recent share float by Burger Fuel in New Zealand has drawn flak from some quarters in the financial press for its lack of financial detail. I’m not surprised. Read on

category: General | posted: 28/06/2007

Stake II out now

The latest Stake newsletter is out now. If you're not yet on the mailing list read it here, and if you like what you see, why not subscribe before the next one? Read on

category: General | posted: 23/06/2007

The next level of robust

Best of breeding thinking has done much to cement the logical side of running businesses. I’ve currently got it pegged at about 70% and falling for what’s vital in most service-aware sectors. It’s falling, in terms of its competitive vitality, because of course consumer expectations continue to rise – ironically as more and more best of breed thinking is installed. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 20/06/2007

Hold the money but pass the buck

Whatever leads some intermediaries in this day and age to believe that they have the right to hold down all-commission-and-no-responsibility jobs? Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 18/06/2007

Is eco the new luxury?

Wow! What a difference a few years and an Al Gore tour make! Not so long ago, environmental issues seemed strictly left-stream, overblown, radical, something youths and hippies did. Today, we have airlines offering customers the chance to pay more to feel better about flying. We’ve got laundry products that cost more because they claim to pollute less. And suddenly, all this ‘save the earth’ stuff seems far more acceptable, something people want to be part of and are much more prepared to stump up for. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 15/06/2007

Branded and blonded – two different approaches to personal branding

Three articles I read today combined to provide some interesting insights on the difference between on-brand and in character in the realm of personal branding. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 13/06/2007

World class

Had to share with you this deliciously scathing appraisal of best practice - courtesy of Grenville Main: Read on

category: General | posted: 8/03/2007

Water, water everywhere - and the price is going up

News recently from ABC that bottled water is now retailing at up to $75 a bottle. And in the same article, commentary by a member of the UCLA School of Public Health that there is very little difference in the quality of high end waters, cheaper brands and even tap water. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 5/03/2007

Bean there, done that

Good on Howard Schultz for coming out and telling his people that success was putting Starbucks at risk of becoming complacent. Read on

category: Dilemmas | posted: 1/03/2007

Occasional reasons

So today, a whole bunch of people will go out and spend more money than they would normally on flowers, chocolates, dinner ... and they'll do it happily. Why? Because the occasion justifies the price. And not sending flowers or teddies or whatever at an inflated price to someone they treasure is more "expensive" emotionally for them than doing so. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 7/02/2007

Anger management

Couldn't resist passing on this wee gem from the quiet folks at Loudhailer: Read on

category: General | posted: 5/02/2007

Sometimes doing something silly isn’t a dumb idea at all.

First hint was yesterday. Coming home to Wellington and a chap got on the plane in Sydney dressed in a shirt that should have been prosecuted for disturbing the peace. I was busy casting mental aspersions about the taste of our neighbours when another fella appeared wearing the same shirt, then another, then another … Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 2/02/2007

What makes a good motivational speaker?

Was asked this yesterday by someone. So I suggested three criteria. Read on

category: General | posted: 27/01/2007

Hammer time?

Just picking up on my last post – I’m not saying I disagree with having an IP strategy. Far from it. Primarily though, I see such a strategy as defensive rather than a front-foot initiative; one with the potential to help deter those whose actions might otherwise pose a fundamental threat to the existence or integrity of the brand. Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 22/01/2007

Does intellectual property make you more competitive?

The Trelise Cooper vs Tamsin Cooper case may have wandered off the media radar in recent months, but the questions posed by the case of one designer suing another for, amongst other things, wanting to use the same surname point to bigger brand questions. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 20/01/2007

Lessons from the Atkins Diet

So far, 20 million people have shown their willingness to fly in the face of conventional dietary wisdom if they believe: Read on

category: General | posted: 18/01/2007

The move to America – on the ball or on brand for Beckham?

Newsweek this week carries a web-exclusive commentary on the move of soccer legend David Beckham to the US to play for LA Galaxy. I’m no specialist in the beautiful game, but I’m interested from a branding point of view in the opinion that the Beckham brand is now much bigger than the player, with some marketing experts reportedly predicting that his total value could rise by hundreds of millions over the next few years as the sponsorship contracts, merchandising and profit shares roll in. Read on

category: General | posted: 15/01/2007

Stop making sense

The flipside of a marketplace where branding encourages people to buy for emotive reasons is that brands also need to counter consumers’ irrational reasons not to buy. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 11/01/2007

Sense and sellability

I first noticed it at an airport, then one day on a train … later at the gym. Everybody around me had on headphones – everybody - and to a man, woman and teenager, they were wearing a look that said “Disconnected from the world” as whatever they were listening to thumped its way into their skulls. Read on

category: General | posted: 9/01/2007

There's no such thing as a business problem

Mark features alongside allaboutbranding.com editor and Jill Brinsdon in this month's edition of NZ Business talking about Delivering the Brand. Read on

category: General | posted: 4/01/2007

Fairweather friends?

As the UK Met Office predicts 2007 will be the warmest year, interesting article in the Dominion Post this morning about cold weather in December at my end of the world and the effect it's had on retail trade. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 4/01/2007

A year ago today ...

365 days seems such a long time when you say it slowly. Read on

category: General | posted: 3/01/2007

Blinkpoints

Re-reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink inspired me to ask this question of a group the other day – one I thought worth repeating for you to ponder on. “If blink is the phenomenon of knowing before you know – then what is your brand’s blinkpoint?” In other words, what is the subconcious association you want consumers to have the moment they encounter your brand, before they even recognise how the brand makes them feel? Read on

category: Opportunities | posted: 19/06/2006

Not for profits?

Started out to prepare a presentation on brands for a not-for-profit that unfortunately didn’t eventuate. One of the questions I was keen to ask them was this. How sensible is it for any sector – especially one that is this competitive and philanthropically-driven – to define itself by what it is not? Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 16/06/2006

Cultrepreneurs

I’ve been submitting articles to the Evan Carmichael site – a meeting place for entrepreneurs, that features articles and insights on a full range of topics that will be of interest to anyone running a business or looking to go that way. Read on

category: General | posted: 16/06/2006

Unbeatable vs unbreakable

Rob Hill from Two Hills Ltd and I shared the podium recently at the IT Services Management conference in New Zealand, and got talking afterwards about how quickly even ideas can become commoditised, and the effect this has on their competitive impact. Noting my heightened level of disdain for “world class” as a differentiating standard for anything, Rob alerts me to Core Practice (CoPR), a concept he’s been working on for some time. Read on

category: General | posted: 1/06/2006

Another weasel word

Keith merrily chips in with a further addition to the weasel word list. Read on

category: General | posted: 31/05/2006

Weasel words

Those of you who’ve been to a “Wallop the weasel” workshop will enjoy this. It’s based on an article that appeared in Business Life several years ago, but sadly, the truths it alludes to don’t seem to have changed that much. The premise: what people in advertising agencies say, and what they really mean. Read on

category: General | posted: 30/05/2006

Stake newsletter, out now.

Better read it soon or subscribe before the next one. Read on

category: General | posted: 5/05/2006

Two new articles

My thoughts on Brand Legacy and the need to brand-factor your Word of Mouth initiatives have just been posted in the Articles section. Look back at why the House of Chanel has been so successful, and then look forward to a new age of reputation management and some of the factors your brand may need to think about in the new age of online gossip. Read on

category: General | posted: 3/05/2006

Faith and truth

It’s occurred to me over the last few days that the interesting changes in customer attitude that accompany brands are not necessarily on the radar of enough companies. Consider this. Before we know them, our key concern as consumers with brands is truth. Can we trust them? Are they all they say they are? Why should we believe them? Most brand communicators get this bit. They know how to fashion a story that talks to our world view … well, sometimes. They know how to intrigue us. They can persuade us to call or to visit. They’ve learnt to hunt. Read on

category: Attitude | posted: 1/05/2006

I really don’t give a flying cred …

In the United States recently, I was amused to see notices at airports proudly proclaiming that America West Airlines and US Air were joining forces to form the largest low fare airline in the world. Nice, I thought – for you – but I wondered why they bothered telling me, because, as a customer, I failed to see what their credential had to do with my travelling experience. Read on

category: Reputation | posted: 3/03/2006

A new definition of margin

Margin is the distance between your brand and China. Read on

category: General | posted: 2/03/2006

It’ll never happen to them …

Noticed yesterday that one of the cafes near work has closed. It’s only been open about a year. Strange thing is that the café that was there before them, on the same site, also closed. And the one before that. Clearly this is not a good site. It’s right on a corner. There’s no parking. And most of the competition is about a block away, so there’s no clustering effect. Read on

category: Recession | posted: 1/03/2006

Mark headlines at the 2nd Strategic Branding Conference in Auckland

Last year I featured at the inaugural Strategic Branding Conference, talking about cult brands and the lessons they offer those looking to take a different approach to their customers. This year, I'm returning to kick off the first day of Bright*Star’s 2nd Annual Strategic Branding Conference with a typically heretical keynote on the future of brand. Read on

category: General | posted: 28/02/2006

Hungry?

Read recently in BRW, and enjoyed: The truth [in this case] is a moving famine. Read on

category: General | posted: 22/02/2006

Budget airlines

Staying with aviation - are budget airlines an industry-changing revolution or aviation’s version of the dot.com era? In other words, as low fare airlines proliferate and prices continue to fall, are we seeing the same disregard for business fundamentals that accompanies an economic bubble, or is this just a phase that the revamped industry needs to go through before everyone comes to their senses and gets back to actually making a dollar? Crunch time will come, I believe, when a budget airline has a mishap and the problem turns out to be safety based or the result of bad maintenance. There’s no doubt that there are valuable lessons for all players in the take-off of the budget airline phenomenon – but learning from their success, not slavishly imitating their business model, could well turn out to be a better, if harder, course of action for mainstream players looking to retain customers and reign in spiralling costs. Read on

category: Challenges | posted: 21/02/2006

Pilot announcements

Why do pilots always insist on giving us details of the flight plan and our intended altitude? Because, to be perfectly honest, I don’t really care how high we’re flying or the course we’re taking – just as long as we get there. I just need to know they’re present and correct, and in an appropriate state of body and mind to do their job. And besides I have no way of knowing whether it really is 27,000 feet or not, so what’s the point in telling me? Perhaps they should change the announcement to “Hello from the flight deck. I’m the first officer, we’re all here, no-one’s pissed, and the flight’s on time.” Read on

category: General | posted: 20/02/2006

Heretics flock to be anonymous

Speaking of HA, seems there’s quite a lot of you who fancy being quietly unorthodox. If you haven’t signed up as a heretic yet, don’t hold back. It can be our little secret. Read on

category: General | posted: 14/02/2006

More details on Shanghai

Speaking of Tucson - many of you who attended Mark’s sessions asked about the presentation tool, Shanghai, that he used for his presentation on branding and for the “Wallop the Weasel” workshop. Good news! A preview website featuring examples of Shanghai in action has now been posted here. Read on

category: General | posted: 4/02/2006

Photo op

In full flight at the National Speakers Association University in Tucson, Arizona, January 2006. Read on

category: General | posted: 3/02/2006

Mark speaks at the National Speakers Association University in the USA.

Mark joins the Breakthrough Branding Faculty for the National Speakers Association University in Tucson, Arizona in January 2006. He teams up with Dr Janelle Barlow, co-author of the highly regarded book Branded Customer Service, and Five Star Speakers Partner, Steve Gardner in an intense 4 day programme designed to help professional speakers achieve differentiation in this increasingly competitive field. The NSA University is the first time that Mark has been invited to speak in the United States. Read on

category: General | posted: 20/12/2005