Strategic Brand Consultancy
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 …
NBA lockout is about to end. The hot topic of discussion is what's the damage to Brand Jordan? Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player of all times. But his skills and will are not enough to explain how he became the magnetic person that he is. During his Hall of Fame induction speech, …
Do you love "the Office?" I do... In one of my favourite episodes, Michael Scott got herpes and wants to know who gave him the disease. He starts working backwards through his partners, chronologically. Michael Scott, being the man he is, instead of informing his past partners of his infection, he asks them relationship-related questions …
Continue reading "You and me: The Brand Relationship Theory"
Last week we talked about Starbucks’s recent experiment of serving alcohol in some of its locations. We ended up recommending them to create a second brand. We also said, on our next article we will focus on a successful line extension from Canada: Tim Horton’s, one of Starbucks’ archrivals. For those of you who are …
Continue reading "Smoothies and Tim Hortons… Success or failure?"
I recently read an article by Mr. Martin Bishop from Landor about Starbucks serving regional wine and beer in some of its Seattle locations. Lately, Starbucks successfully updated its identity and announced that it aims to be more than a coffee company. The brand’s little experiment clearly shows that it means it. But I think such …
Continue reading "Alcohol and Starbucks… Success or failure?"
I love working with a brand named after its founder because they make my life much easy. The majority of brands still communicate merely what they’ve got (their products, their services, or their features.) Only a small number of brands communicate their “promise”, which is definitely a better marketing strategy. A promise is the universally-accepted …
Almost a year ago I decided to start this blog, primarily because I realized that as a non-native speaker, I needed to improve my writing skills, a problem far beyond writing error-free articles. I had to improve the structure of my articles to be a more effective communicator. Structured writing was a skill that I …
Previously, we talked about how to identify your stakeholders and how to prioritize them. Today, I will give you some insights on the common characteristics of your key stakeholders. As you may recall, we use two criteria in assessing the importance of a stakeholder: its power and its level of interest. Let’s analyze some of your …
Continue reading "How to conduct a 360 stakeholder audit? -3"
If you want to communicate more effectively, then there are two things you could do: First, you can map out your brand messages. That would provide you with a structure. Second, you have to write in a way to make your words stick. Here are four keys to persuasive writing. Relevance Relevance is the most …
Previously we talked about the importance and identification of your stakeholders. Let’s continue from where we left off. Not all stakeholders are equally important. You should focus your attention to the “key” ones. Who are they? They are the ones who can affect (and will be affected by) your branding project. You have to get …
Continue reading "How to conduct a 360 stakeholder audit? -2"