We talk a lot about our customers, but most people in the business only see that as being external. How can we get them to see that we are our customers too? Some business terms get used with such strong framing it’s virtually impossible to shift what people think of when...
The old chestnut of personal brand is as topical as ever, so I’m reaching into my archives and here from March 2011 is a bit of list of some things about personal brand you might want to think about (or any brand for that matter). Ever thrown a pebble in the...
Our agency is telling us we can’t build a brand without figuring out our “core motivating idea”, but we’re still figuring things out, so should we move forward without it? Any way you slice it there are way too many brand models out there. But the same could be said for...
I’ve lost count of the number of times value propositions, positioning, and unique selling propositions have come up in my conversations with organisations. And at the centre is usually this question: How can we make sure we’re different to everyone else? Very few businesses are unique on any meaningful scale. The idea...
There are lots of decisions you will make over the course of building your brand. Brand is, after all, the result of those decisions. This week’s question gets to the heart of one of the most important decisions you will make – not just once but over and over. I know the right people...
A week ago, I was part of a panel discussion for some executive MBA students and among the great questions they asked was the following one: You talked about not rebranding but evolving a brand, how do you do that? I believe that brands should always be evolving, just like the environments...
This week’s reader question from my friend Richard Keeves is a doozy. If brand is the result of the promises you keep, isn’t it also the result of the promises you don’t keep? For example, United Airlines breaks guitars. They didn’t promise to break a guitar. They probably promised to look after the luggage of their passengers....
Last week, I was fortunate to attend the Growth Summit 15 Event featuring Jim Collins. As any of you who follow my blog will no doubt have figured out, I’m an unabashed fan of the idea sets from Jim’s books Built to Last, Good to Great, How the Mighty Fall, Great by Choice and also his lesser known...
From my series answering questions sent in by readers, this week’s question asks about values. We recently came up with a set of values and rolled them out to everyone in the business. We even have them up on posters around the office but I still see people doing a lot...
It’s easy to think about purpose (your why) around the big things. What we do. How we do it. Who we do it for. Where we do it. Much harder is to push purpose into the corners of everything you do. I often see organisations sweat the big stuff only to...