The launch of new products and an accompanying campaign has commentators asking can Victoria’s Secret trade its image for one more in sync with the surging body positivity and equality movements? And will women buy it? Victoria’s Secret was inspired by an embarrassing department store experience and founded by Roy and...
These days, it feels like every damn thing I do is called a journeyI’m not buying a drill. I’m on a home improvement journey.I don’t need to make a different choice. I’m on a change journey.I’m not visiting my doctor. I’m on a wellness journey.I don’t deposit money into my...
Untethering a brand from day-to-day marketing activities can leave people feeling at sea about what remains. If it isn’t all the markers such as the logo, the campaign, the name, etc., what is it?Try thinking about brand as a warehouse for storing the value created by peoples and organisations day-to-day...
The combination of the devil, a pop song video and 666 pairs of Nike Air shoes containing a drop of blood appeared calculated to cause a storm. And last week, it also resulted in a judge upholding Nike’s lawsuit to stop MSCHF Product Studio from using Nike’s trademark swoosh and forced the...
The term ‘unheroic work’ first landed in my language via a book by Jedediah Purdy1 about the commons of politics and community.The quote reads,“Yet a political achievement cannot be taken for granted. It is always either a continuing accomplishment or an eroding one. It requires the sustenance of unheroic work.”Despite...
Federal politics. Private schools. Law firms. It feels like every day reveals another allegation of sexism, sexual harassment and worse. And, following close behind the claims are shocked utterances from people in those organisations saying, “this doesn’t reflect our values”. I’ve got a news flash. Most simply put, values are ‘how...
Promises play an indispensable part in how value accrues in your brand result. Yet despite that, too little thought gets applied to what’s going on within the promise itself.Have you ever found yourself trapped under an avalanche of cavalier promises, with people playing fast and loose with the content. And...
After hundreds of articles and speeches and a couple of books about ‘brand as a result of the promises you keep’, I still get people retorting “oh, so you do marketing.”After I swallow my frustration, I take their assumption and use it as an opportunity to talk about what it...
The team of five peered out from their respective Zoom screens. It wasn’t the ideal way to do the work we were about to begin, but after navigating some dicey days, exploring how to work together better was too important to wait until we could meet in person.Values and culture...
Late afternoon in early April, Eric Termuende sat down across a table in a small cafe on the jostling main drag of Vancouver hip Yaletown district.We met in 2019 while I was spending a short sabbatical there, and we bonded over our shared fascination about how organisations work together. Eric is an...