Smart brand managers actively manage their brand portfolios for maximum collective and individual brand return. If you’ve recently re-assessed your brand portfolio and identified what appear to be one or a number of under-performers, there are a range of options you can pursue to fix that situation. Read More
Some events, like the Olympics, Formula One and the FIFA World Cup, attract huge audiences. If you’re a smaller brand looking to change how you are perceived, is it a responsible action to bet everything you have on being seen there? Read More
There’s some evidence to suggest that brands globally can expect to have shorter and shorter half lives. But do the same dynamics apply to digitally-based brands that have applied to the brands that were built “physically” in the past? Read More
Often, when people in agencies talk about brand strategy, what they are meaning is the thinking that has led to the work they have been doing on the brand. That’s not brand strategy. Read More
Coke’s new campaign direction feels like a push back towards product-focused advertising. The decision to move away from the more abstract concept of happiness towards a campaign that focuses much more specifically on the taste and the bottle begs the question: are marketers trying to be too clever? Have we forgotten that we’re here to sell? Read More
There’s a lot of things that brands keep doing that can turn their value south. By way of a checklist, these are the things I see happening far too often. Read More
As the middle market takes a battering in many sectors, size matters more than ever. It matters up and it matters down – because the positioning options themselves are becoming more extreme. You either expand to compete regionally or globally or you go the other way entirely and focus on specific opportunities. Read More
I first connected with Shawn Callahan on LinkedIn a number of years ago and was immediately drawn to his storytelling style and his theories about what makes business storytelling tick. Read More
Ever since the GFC, global markets seem to have become more volatile. Oil prices rise and crash; China’s growth soars and slides. When market dynamics are this dramatic, how should you look to effectively develop a brand? Do you go with the ebb and flow, or act as a beacon of constancy? Read More
An observation from the Havas CES 2016 report that we will increasingly see more companies working together across widely different marketplaces is a reminder of the new bridges that brands must be looking to build going forward. Inevitably these invite new approaches. Read More
