Branding Strategy Insider

In the early 2010s, entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield and his team of developers were building an online game called Glitch. Butterfield’s team eventually decided to shut Glitch down after it struggled to gain traction with users over years of effort. But amid that failure, the team noticed something interesting: the internal messaging system they had built to collaborate on Glitch was really effective. In fact, it solved many of the communication problems they had experienced in...

The most effective enterprise strategic plan flows from purpose, vision, and values. These guideposts provide context for long-term priorities; objectives and key results to be achieved through well-defined projects; and key performance indicators to measure how it is all going. And as the circulatory system for projects and teams, processes — their efficacy and unexploited potential — are critical to the success of the plan. Effective workflows within each process are the secret of performance. The...

For decades marketers have found certain stages in a person’s life where they are more susceptible to messaging and marketing. Whether it is the impending birth of a child to a physical re-location there are times where people are more open to change or to paying attention. Marketers also recognize that there are moments of interaction where up-selling or cross-selling is likely to be more successful, such as when someone is opening an account or...

For some serious insight into the challenges facing grocery packaged goods, the Barron’s recent interview with Robert Moskow is an important read. One of the points made in the interview is that packaged goods’ focus on competing with own-label grocery brands seems to push a lot of buttons, except for innovation. Packaged goods seem to be fighting fights of the past rather than focusing on the future, in which packaged goods brands can win. Packaged...

From all my years in research and consulting, I think I’ve learned a thing or two about marketing worth sharing. Enduring fundamentals, mostly yet often overlooked. So, this year, I’m sharing some for your consideration. I hope they’re helpful. This week’s thought: Change is overrated. Marketers love fads and fashions. Change is the watchword of marketing. I’m in the trends and futures business, so I’m not unhappy about this. But part of studying trends and...

Let me be blunt: the annual ritual of demanding a marketing plan from the CMO is a boardroom charade masquerading as strategy. The corner-office crowd think they’re extracting a roadmap—a neat, glossy prediction of what the company will do, spend, and achieve. They think they’re judging the plan. Wishful thinkers. The plan is a distraction, a fetish of the naive who believe the world bends to their spreadsheets. The real game, the actual signal amid...

How will businesses use AI in the short-term and the long-term? There is a lot of speculation regarding its potential for specific businesses. Right now, for a lot of people, the exposure to AI is a digital entity on the other end of a customer service phoneline. For those creating platforms or running enterprises, AI is creeping steadily into day-to-day internal and external job activity, offerings and experiences. A recent shout-out in Barron’s, the financial...

At Amazon, there are no PowerPoints at key meetings. Rather, a well-written and reasoned Word document is distributed and read by everybody at the meeting. Then a real meeting, which involves discussion and interrogation of the material, takes place. Everybody has the same information, and reading the information is far more time-effective than being paraded through a few words or charts flashed in sequence slowly. In many cases, even this well-crafted Word document may not...

Consumer anxiety has been building over the last two years, and it changes the face of optimal marketing and communications strategy. Rampant uncertainty is being nourished by upheaval over what the future looks like, impacting the chemistry of what people want (greater control) while the rules of culture-informed behavior and expectations around them relentlessly shift. Here we provide direction on the two pillars of sound strategy, arriving now at the pinnacle of the consumer’s hunt...

One morning, I noticed something curious in my city. Within just a few hours, I saw three different versions of the same brand: the REMAX logo from 2005 on a moving truck, their 2017 logo on a for-sale sign, and the latest 2025 version on a bus shelter ad. Three identities, one brand—coexisting in plain sight. I call this “brand residue”: the traces left behind each time a brand changes its skin. While designers are...

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s report on business schools’ ratings has just appeared. As expected, the big, elite business schools are holding the top ranks. Review the list of the top ten business school brands and aside from prestige and location, what is it that relevantly differentiates these business schools? Not every business school, even the top-ranking schools, has relevantly differentiated their brand purpose, brand promise, and brand values. Brands of business schools need proper brand management as...

The real risk when adding sustainability into a brand narrative isn’t saying too much or too little. It’s failing to connect—emotionally. Failing to enable people to feel why the work matters and how to participate in it. Sustainability today is under more than pressure; it’s under inspection. Despite media headlines, more and more people want progress to continue. And at the same time, believe claims less. Silence reads as avoidance. Overstatement reads as performative. And...

Despite all the talk about AI and the transformation of business, it remains that many brand businesses still wind up in financial distress, in the equity emergency room, repeating the same tendencies that lead to trouble. New is old when it comes to brand mismanagement. Viz Nissan. You may recall that in 1999, Nissan was in such dire straits that France stepped in and created a lifeline via Renault and Carlos Ghosn. The Nissan Renaissance,...

My odd last name, “Wunker,” comes from the medieval German word for “flag-waver.” We were the idiots in the army carrying just a flag. Miraculously, someone survived to become my ancestor. And that is why this story, from my new book AI and the Octopus Organization, is especially meaningful to me: Until the mid-nineteenth century, Europe’s armies consisted of heavily drilled regiments that stood shoulder to shoulder and fought in tightly coordinated formations. Each regiment...

Hain Celestial Group, the natural foods and organic personal care enterprise, just reported less than stellar results. This is not the first financial quarter that disappointed management, investors and Wall Street. There have been performance issues since 2016. This is a shame. Hain Celestial Group parents some well-known brands including iconic Celestial Seasonings with its true 1960s cred. Red Zinger tea is on the same nostalgic pedestal as a Day-Glo painted VW bus, bellbottom jeans,...

From all my years in research and consulting, I think I’ve learned a thing or two about marketing worth sharing. Enduring fundamentals, mostly yet often overlooked. So, this year, I’m sharing some for your consideration. I hope they’re helpful. This week’s thought: Price is the most important P. When E. Jermone McCarthy first articulated the “Four Ps” in his 1960 textbook as the best way to organize a managerial approach to marketing, he put primary...

Chaos is a recurring condition of civilization. Whether caused by an outside force or the enemy within, chaos can put people and organizations into response mode and, worse, lead to disorientation within the organization. The good news is that strategy is born of chaos. Carl von Clausewitz (pictured), Michael Porter, Richard Rumelt, Margaret Heffernan, Jay Barney, Jack Trout, Al Ries, and Peter Drucker — among others — have addressed the corners of chaos through their...

Cracker Barrel has relented and returned to its original brand proposition. At the same time, we learn that Jaguar, the iconic British sports car, is completely redefining itself including a vehicle overhaul redesign. Is the choice of a single-dimensional solution the answer? Are marketers still tethered to the “tyranny of the OR” as Jim Collins and Jerry Poras pointed out in Built to Last (1994)? Have marketers and corporate executives not learned anything over the...

Why do some brands spark passionate debates while others are quickly forgotten? The answer lies not in what they embrace, but in what they boldly reject. The best brands aren’t built by trying to be everything to everyone. They’re built by drawing a line. In a crowded marketplace, it’s not enough to say what you stand for; you need to be bold enough to say what you stand against. This is the power of a...

It’s always important to have a deep, unvarnished understanding of your brand. This clarity is what allows leaders to make smart decisions, inspire confidence, and build trust inside and outside the organization. One must: Know its qualities and strengths. Acknowledge the organization’s accomplishments. Nourish a positive vision of the business’s future. However, at the same time, the pathway to sustainable growth can be unwittingly compromised by the absence of unflinching, critical, self-examination and regular reality...