Instead of trying to buy brand, look inside the business and use what is really going on, what actions are really being carried out to shine a light on what I like to call “what is”. It can often seem like I’m anti the things that many people attach to brand,...
Continuing my series of answering questions sent in by you, this week’s question asks about brand management. How can a small company manage a brand effectively and economically given the shortage of manpower in lean-running SMEs like mine? It seems a huge task. (Brand management as I see it is maintaining...
I’ve been thinking about, working with and generally immersing myself in what it takes to build a brand for many years now and I’ve always had an internal war going on about which is more important – skill or will. Not that it’s a contest, because in truth you do need...
It’s a great line – “the sustenance of unheroic work.” I wish I could claim it as mine, however, it is from author Jedediah Purdy’s book For Common Things. The full quote reads: “Yet a political achievement cannot be taken for granted. It is always either a continuing accomplishment or an eroding one....
The ‘slow’ movements around the world which began with Slow Food, have since expanded into various areas of thinking and doing underpinned by the ideal of taking the time to make a connection. Reading the terrific book Slow Fix by Carl Honoré got me thinking about the idea of “slow brand” (I sense a...
You’re building your brand today. Right now. Whatever you are doing is in some way contributing to it. That’s the power and the danger. Because too often people act without a basis for what they are doing and without thinking about what it could lead to. I see it in the decision...
When was the last time you stopped and took a good hard no blinkers look at here? The present. The now. If you’re like a lot of the people I work with the easier question is when did you take the time to think about where you are headed. Where you...
Most days I tweet out a “brand to do” to my followers. They make up quite a list of things big and small, easy and hard, internal and external, advice and action. All written in 140 characters or less to help build a strong resilient brand that people will care...
Malcolm Gladwell famously alerted us all to the 10,000 hours of practice it takes to get really good at something. And I don’t see why building a brand is exempt from that rule. Brand is not an event, it’s a result. It’s a result of the constant doing of things that...
For many years I’ve practiced yoga. And in our practice we spend a lot of time looking at the little things and their impact on the whole. How is your weight distributed over your feet? Are you bending forward from your waist or your hips? Are your inside elbows facing...