“Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger.” Captured in this quote from Jorge Luis Borges is the part of a person’s brand that to often remains unexplored. Who am I and what do I truly care...
I’ve been thinking a lot about organisational identity these past few weeks. In particular, a couple of issues that constantly bedevil discussions of core values – how do you know what they are and what should they be? For many organisations, finding them is an experience that feels like a cross...
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about organisational identity these past few weeks and as part of that, organisational values have been on my mind. And in particular a couple of issues that seem to constantly bedevil discussions of values – how do you know what they are and...
For a number of weeks now I’ve been recommending the book The Score Takes Care of Itself by the late Bill Walsh and Steve Jamison. While it’s predominantly a leadership book, I can’t think of one thing that has a bigger impact on building a strong, resilient brand than the leadership of...
Every week I see the stories trumpeted across the pages of the business press. “Brand launch”, as if it is a space shuttle shimmering with unspent force just waiting for lift off. “Rebrand”, complete with (at least) a shiny new logo, clever tagline and assorted related items. Box ticked, event...
The first step to brand alignment is getting the foundations right. One thing that truly irks me is the idea that you need a separate set of things to define what that is. Because when I talk about the foundations of brand, I’m not talking about a whole separate raft of things...
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...
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...
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...