Let’s talk about values – again. In my article about VW’s big mess last week I noted that central to the big mess was a fundamental misalignment between the company’s stated values and their actions. Which got me thinking about the importance of values in the whole scheme of things. And I’m not alone....
A couple of years ago, when VW last hit the news for doing stupid stuff I wrote about their inaction and lack of willingness to accept responsibility until forced to by regulators. Clearly time has passed but not much changed. There are however (more than) a couple of differences between this recent...
Google unveiled their new logo a couple of weeks ago and the world gave a collective yawn. Not so much a new anything as an update of the typeface of their current logo. And while in the hype driven media landscape anything that is not a revolution is seen as a...
Spring has finally sprung. And as we chase away that winter dust what better time to dust off your brand. 2015 is disappearing at a rate of knots, so there’s no time like the present to get your brand in tip top shape as we head into the home stretch of...
When an entrepreneur is building a brand the focus is often on the ‘doing’ side of things. For too many that starts and stops at the veneer they want (deciding a name, getting a logo, applying it to everything that moves). But more fully it can extend across and align...
My friend, collaborator and all around word goddess @getnance sent me an ad. A great ad which got me thinking about why so much advertising isn’t so great… Lazy advertising really bugs me, and I doubt very much I’m alone. At times I’m called on to comment when the Australian Ad...
I was on the receiving end of a customer experience this week that completely and irrevocably changed the opinion I had of a particular company. And while I’m tempted to name and shame, there’s a bigger lesson to be shared. Without going into specifics of what and who, the crux of...
I was emailed a question this week about positioning. My friend and colleague @anthonyjoseph wanted to know my thoughts about the relationship between positioning and the competitive environment. What is your approach to positioning competitively? Positioning is the element of brand that is most often treated as the foundation for marketing, and...
What organisation wouldn’t like a big leap in customer loyalty? What magical marketing promotion would deliver a result like that? The quick answer is that there isn’t one, because if you are looking to marketing to deliver customer loyalty you are probably looking in the wrong place. While marketing can generate...
“Actions speak louder than words,” so the saying goes, and with apologies to all my writer friends, I’ll have to agree with that sentiment. As I’ve explored in this blog over the last couple of weeks – words do matter. Quite a bit. The right words get things off and running....