A time-honoured tradition of beleaguered and reviled organisations the world over is a name change in the vain hope people will mistake them for someone else. And so jest and more than a few jeers met the news last week that Adani Mining was changing its name to Bravus Mining and...
Does your to-do list include working on the brand? How about your team’s list? It’s almost certainly on the organisation’s list.And if yes is the answer you’ve got brand in the wrong place. Because it is not something you do, it’s the result of it.Marketing as driver of the brand...
Botched is the best word to describe the roll-out of the new Australia Unlimited logo, which ignited handwringing and rancour across media, government and design circles when it was released this week. News organisations pounced and paraded it alongside the Australia Made logo as if one was replacing the other. It wasn’t,...
People making demands of a company to act differently isn’t a new story. However, the nature of what they’re asking for is shifting.In a Bloomberg article sent to me by Nancy Hellmrich (@getnance), people working for furniture maker Wayfair had walked off the job because their company is doing business...
Photos of people in North Face apparel posing in remote locations were uploaded to Wikipedia pages. If you visited the Wikipedia page for Guarita State Park in South America a few weeks ago, you would have seen a lovely photo of the location featuring North Face clothing. No, Wikipedia didn’t sell...
Every organisation starts with a person or people. And in the early days of existence, founders (aka people who do the starting) understandably provide an outsize impact on its doing and being. Hopefully for the better, and recently, all too often for the worse. So, when it’s for the worse, can...
I’m a voracious reader and always on the lookout for titles to add to my reading list. It’s particularly nice when that reading connects with the enduring question about how to achieve a brand result.The book, in this case, is Deep Work* by Cal Newport. And while the headline gives...
The investigation into Australian Leisure and Hospitality (ALH) pokies venues returned yet more damaging details last week. On top of the fact that staff used customers’ personal information to encourage continued gambling, new whistleblower information alleges they also illegally gave free drinks to pokies players to keep them gambling longer, and were instructed on...
Purpose has been around for generations, even if it wasn’t explicitly called that. Nor is the purpose anything anyone outside the organisation should get to judge. (The problems created when purpose gets used as a kind of meta-marketing tool is a whole other article.) But judge it they do, leading to...
This past weekend I joined 200 people at a talk by poet and philosopher David Whyte. During his masterful mining of the nooks and crannies of our shared human experience, he recited some of his poems. As I listened, his work “Start Close In” revealed a poetic instruction manual for organisations...