Strategic Brand Consultancy
If you were to ask me to name the least-understood concept in branding, I would say "brand personality." Plenty of insightful approaches exist for discovering a brand's purpose and promise. There are universally-accepted methodologies for developing brand identity and architecture. Marketing communication is -literally- a science. But I have yet to hear a branding expert …
Continue reading "How to create a brand personality for a place that stands out?"
Back then I was collaborating with a renowned agency on a re-branding project. Upon completion of nation-wide research, we started working on brand personality, one of the building blocks of brand strategy. At that point, the creative director of the agency adamantly insisted that the brand should opt for a humorous tone of voice - …
Over the last two decades, brands have become 200% less distinct from one another. The ones that stand out, however, have something in common: They integrate two seemingly opposing personality traits. In this series of six blogs, I offer different methods to discovering and leveraging the duality embedded inside your brand. By tapping into these insights, …
Over the last two decades, brands have become 200% less distinct from one another. The ones that stand out, however, have something in common: They integrate two seemingly opposing personality traits. In this series of six blogs, I offer different methods to discovering and leveraging the duality embedded inside your brand. By tapping into these …
In the field of communications, there is a rule: If you want to turn off your audience, then use Latin words! To tell you how to create a brand personality, I will have to break that rule. Bear with me. It will be worth it. I promise. I see things with faces We, humans, have …
Continue reading "How to create a brand personality that stands out"
When Stephen Hawking was asked, how he has sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex, he famously said, “Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales!” So, he avoided using equations in his writing and became a bestseller. In the field of communications, there is …
Are you considering to use numbers as a part of your brand? Then, you may want to learn about the symbolic meaning of numbers! For instance, why do you think 7 is the world's most popular number? Or does 5 have a gender? Which of the following is better to convey a sense of uniqueness? …
Is place branding a money trap invented by evil advertising agencies? Is it a fool’s gold for destinations? Has any place ever benefited from so-called place branding? How about this scary stat?: 86% of place branding projects fail within a year of introduction. Is there a way to break this curse? Let's figure out the …
Recently, I have learned that 86% of place branding projects fail. While the research does not explain why, I am willing to bet that one of the principal causes of failure is “thinking stereotypically instead of archetypically,” and go even farther to suggest the only way to successfully brand a destination. Case in point: Ottawa. The picture on the left was taken …
Have you ever left a meeting questioning why you were even summoned in the first place? What was the objective of the session - if it had any? What was the convener trying to achieve? I don't know about you, but I have been to too many such meetings, in which we, collectively, wasted valuable time …
