Helping good people build great brands.
Like thousands of people, I use the Weather Channel app for iPhone. This morning, my Weather Channel app looked like this when I opened it:
A concise summary of the current weather, with a rotating picture of Chicago as the backdrop. Nice.
Recently, the Weather Channel app introduced a feature called “Social Weather.” At the same time this morning, it looked like this: Continue reading ““Social Weather,” by the Weather Channel”
Last week, the Sweets & Snacks Expo, the country’s largest confections trade show, was held here in Chicago.
It struck me that I’ve been attending candy trade shows for 22 years now (oof!): Since starting my career managing the Airheads brand, then overseeing brands like Trolli and Brach’s, and consulting with several confectionery companies.
While walking the Sweets & Snacks Expo show floor, I made a few observations, all applicable well beyond the world of candy: Continue reading “Observations From the Sweets & Snacks Expo”
Almost every industry has its Goliath – its Walmart, its Amazon, its Home Depot. And once a Goliath emerges, challenger brands generally react in one of two ways: Fatalistic resignation or invigorated creativity.
This morning, NPR ran this piece about New York City’s Posman Books, the rare independent bookseller that’s actually growing. They’re doing it by tailoring each store to the needs of its consumers. The Grand Central store is very different from the Chelsea location. Continue reading “Facing Goliath? Pick a New Target.”
Radio Shack ran an ad during this year’s Super Bowl. It was essentially an acknowledgement that their stores have been horribly out-of-date.
After establishing the premise of “The 80’s called – they want their store back,” a stream of retro characters poured into a Radio Shack store and began to dismantle it.
Some people liked it. “Funny!” they said. Or, “Look at all these characters I recognize!” Or, “I’m in my mid-forties, and I equate these warm pangs of nostalgia with quality advertising!” Continue reading “Radio Shack’s Super Bowl Fumble”
On Monday, Lululemon cut its revenue and earnings guidance sharply. This sent its shares tumbling more than 15%, to a two-year low.
This is the outcome of a pretty awful 2013 for Lulu, which included a product recall and comments from founder and chairman Chip Wilson that were, shall we say, a bit insensitive. (In December, Mr. Wilson announced that he was stepping down as chairman in June of this year.)
Lulu’s struggles offer us all an opportunity to brush up on some key brand lessons. From where I sit, the four most important lessons are these:
When you’re setting brand objectives, you of course have to clearly identify what the objective is. But it’s even more important to identify the WHY – why it’s important to achieve.
A client once told me that her objective for a new brand strategy was to make her business seem “edgier.” When asked why, she told us that she was concerned that her legacy consumer was aging. So she thought an “edgier” presentation would help her attract younger consumers.
But.
For over two decades, her brand had delivered prestige, polish and refinement. It was truly a best-in-class service experience with the awards and accolades to show for it.
Through the course of the brand strategy project, I was able to convince her that “edginess” was inauthentic. And it would undermine years of brand equity.
A better approach to attract new consumers? Adopt new targeting methods and messaging. It worked.
Continue reading “Setting Brand Objectives: Not Just What, But Why”
During the Discovery phase of a recent project, I was fortunate to spend some time chatting with the company’s founder. Though he’s no longer very active in the business, he clearly conveyed the values on which the company was founded three decades ago. The employees live these values to this day.
He’s a wise, charming fellow, full of character, and I could really see why his customers loved him. Among the dozens of kernels of wisdom that I gathered in that conversation, one really stuck with me. When I asked him about the history of the company, he wrapped up a story of impressive growth by saying simply:
The more I think about this statement, the more I like it, and it reflects an excellent attitude for business-builders to adopt. Let’s break it into pieces:
Continue reading ““The Experiment So Far Has Been a Success.””
At the gym I frequent, there’s a personal trainer I don’t think very highly of. Let’s call him Duff.
My issue with Duff is that he doesn’t push his clients to work out very hard. In fact, I’ve never seen one sweat. Instead, it’s more like Social Hour. Sometimes, Duff and his client are chatting it up during an exercise, which suggests a pretty low level of exertion. I wish his clients would stop wasting their time and money, and I want Duff to do better training on their behalf.
On a seemingly unrelated note, yesterday I visited a Walmart in Chicago’s west suburbs. At this store, merchandising took a back seat to other priorities; “cluttered” is a fair term to use.
Continue reading “Personal Trainers, Walmart and Differentiation”
There’s a lot of advice out there regarding the development of a brand tagline, and some of it is crap. (Example: “It needs to be short and memorable.” Wow, it sounds so easy when a professional explains it.)
In this post, my goal is to give you a set of considerations – some contrary to “conventional wisdom” – that will help you decide how to best proceed with the development of your brand tagline.
The first two tips deal with the “before” phase – what to consider before you move ahead with the development of a tagline:
Continue reading “Developing a Brand Tagline: Five Tips for Success”
I haven’t always been a consultant. In my client-side career, I’ve held positions ranging from Brand Assistant to VP-Marketing. And in 14 years of consulting, I’ve worked with marketing teams of just about every size, shape and industry you can name. I regularly meet with young marketers, many of whom ask for advice as they start out on their career path. The following are some thoughts that I’ve shared (with absolutely no claim that I got them right myself):
Stop worrying about your “personal brand.” Do consistently excellent work, be of good character, and be emotionally mature. You’ll become known as a trustworthy achiever, and your “brand” will take care of itself. Let’s talk a bit more about a few of these ideas…