unconventional branding

To Slash or Not to Slash ?

Notice all the price cutting and special offers during our economic tsunami?  Seems that many brands decided that in order to increase brand profitability, they needed to slash prices.  Well, a recent study with marketing professionals noted that this price-slash practice is having a negative impact on profits. Even with deep discount, merchants are experiencing [...]

Making it Work: Social Media for Any Brand

After attending the outrageously successful Social Media for Business conference last week (#SMAZ for all my tweeple), I was inspired to share 5 key ideas that might help to make sense of online marketing and social media, and how you can make it work for your brand.

Social media programs are not necessarily intended to directly [...]

What's In a Name?

What goes through your mind when you hear that a company has changed its name. If you’re like me, you think, “why?” And right after that, you think, “did they do it for the right reasons, or the wrong reasons?”

Novelty Naïveté

 
Good taste aside, I recently watched the movie Mall Cop.  Amidst the various shenanigans and slapstick humor, I couldn’t help but chuckle whenever the protagonist cruised around on his mall police car equivalent– the Segway Personal Transporter.   Though the Segway has been relinquished to the status of a comedy punch line, its history holds important [...]

You May Have A Branding Problem If…

Your brand profitability is slipping despite great new products at competitive prices, sufficient inventory and an adequate distribution network (consider: BUICK)
You are increasingly being squeezed out by both higher-priced and lower-priced brands (consider: COACH)
Your target customers have limiting brand perceptions (consider: XEROX) or many different perceptions of who you are (consider: KYOCERA)
One of your strongest [...]

Plastic Brand Surgery

Ever thought about a fresh look? Nothing too drastic, maybe just some tightening here and there. A modest face lift of sorts, just to stay looking young and relevant. No one wants to be old, let alone look old.  What about plastic surgery for your brand? Just a few changes to update your look, to [...]