Losing control of your brand
Apple’s recent stand-off with the FBI refocuses the dilemma of what to do when someone has used your product in a way that was never intended. What should brands do to influence or change how their products are used?
All posts filed under: Digital marketing
What’s the half life of a digitally-built brand?
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?
Brand strategy vs creative strategy
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.
Planning beyond now
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?
Your brand must do more than trend
Everything your brand does happens within a context. You can’t ignore that, nor should you. But here’s the irony – if you allow that wider context to drive how you manage your brand, then you risk losing control because the course you are steering is no longer yours.
Brand in a world of screens
In The Smarter Screen, Shlomo Benartzi lays out a world where we are besieged by choices; choices that, far from helping us to make better decisions, confuse us into behaving in ways that are actually less informed.
Digital advertising needs to be more interesting
Marketers love what they do and with good reason. It’s exciting, stimulating and inspiring to work on a great brand. But the rise of ad-blockers proves something no-one wants to admit. Brands are failing to maintain interest. Consumers want out of digital advertising. Literally.
How to respond to social media feedback
In an age where brands are increasingly seen as shared, companies can easily be lulled into treating social media as polling booths for their strategy. That’s not a good idea. However, there are times when you should respond to what is being said. The secret is knowing what to respond to, when and how.
Personalising the brand proposition
Personalisation is the quest of the moment for so many marketers, with 70% of executives interviewed by Forrester saying it is now of strategic importance to their business. (What may surprise you, as it did me, is how generalised so much marketing still is.)
Introducing experiences to on-demand brands
The sharing economy is substantial. Uber’s valuation just hit $50 billion. Airbnb is valued at around $20 billion. And Entrepreneur believes the sharing economy’s size in five key sectors will reach 335 billion by 2025. As this article explains, “The catalyst behind the sharing phenomenon are technology platforms—big data and mobile—allowing consumers to share anything, anywhere, and anytime at an affordable price. Sharing is ubiquitous today.”