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 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...
How does a company go from the concrete visual language of “a computer on every desk and in every home” to this? Last week the chief executive of Microsoft Satya Nadella came out with a 1500 word email to all staff “boldly” outlining the future direction of the company. So what...
I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard people in businesses say “Oh we couldn’t say that, we need to sound professional”, which sadly these days is code for boring jargon-laden language devoid of humanity. The literary landscape of the corporate world is a pretty barren place indeed and that matters because...
The encouragement to explore and keep asking questions is a bit of a central theme these past weeks. Even the engagement blog last week was about thinking in more detail about a topic that had become a slogan. And anyone who has worked with me has probably heard me use the...
Just imagine the transformation in attitude and outcome if instead of writing a vision statement, you did a little “visioning”. I’m on a short break this week, but I’ve been party to a whole lot of vision talk lately so here’s one from the archives that might help shine a slightly different...
Continuing my series of answering questions sent in by you, this week’s question asks about the all–important values of an organisation. 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...
I’m often accused of not liking marketing and advertising, and while nothing could be further from the truth, I do have a particular dislike for bad marketing and lazy advertising. Good marketing broadly and advertising more specifically connect with what I care about in a way that gets me to take...
It’s a common tale. I have a set of things I believe and care about but feel like that isn’t enough to get attention in the marketplace. I need to differentiate. I need to stand out more. I need people to notice me. It’s subtle at first. I can’t just be good,...
When people start talking about brand one of the inevitable questions that pops up is “what do you think X org” stands for? This question gets asked of employees, customers, partners – pretty much any stakeholder with a pulse will at some time or another get it thrown at them. It’s...