Helping good people build great brands.
Much has been written about Steve Jobs – he was the visionary with the prescience to anticipate consumer needs, the genius who could fuse design and technology with an elegant simplicity.
His successes were significant and well-documented. But Apple users are living with his greatest failure right now.
That failure? Continue reading “Steve Jobs’ Greatest Failure”
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.”
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”
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”
If you were to meet a chess Grandmaster, would you ever consider asking him or her, “What is the best move in chess you can make?”
If the question seems inherently ludicrous, it should. There’s no such thing as the best move – or even a good move – apart from the situation in which it takes place.
Each month in Esquire magazine, there’s a feature called What I’ve Learned. Celebrities or thought leaders (a top economist, for instance) are interviewed, and their words are presented as a string of short phrases. There’s wisdom in surprising sources, and it’s always the first thing I turn to when my issue arrives.
I’ve created my own list of “What I’ve Learned About Branding” in my 20+ years as a positioning and strategy consultant, brand manager, CMO and agency partner. I share it here in hopes that it might be useful to you:
In an AdAge article released this morning, Nokia CMO Tuula Rytila discusses the new spirit of marketing that apparently exists inside the mobile giant’s hallways.
According to the article, Nokia’s sales plunged by 22% in 2012. To hear Ms. Rytila tell it, that’s a fabulous thing, because now everyone’s head is right. She says:
Continue reading “No, Nokia! Market Share Doesn’t Determine Mindset.”
It’s late June here in Chicago, and that means at least three things:
In case this phenomenon is not happening in your burg, the “vests” are workers who occupy street corners and solicit donations for charity. They wear colored vests representing their causes – Children’s International, Greenpeace or whatnot. Sometimes they’re also called “chuggers,” short for “charity muggers.”