All posts filed under: Strategy

UnConference Miami 2015

Speaking at The Un-Conference

By Mark Di Somma

Back in Florida in a few days to speak at this year’s Un-Conference at the Versace Mansion in South Beach alongside Derrick Daye, Gerard Gibbons, Brad VanAuken, Pete Canalichio, Chris Wren, Hilton Barbour and Ashley Konson. This year’s theme is brand leadership, something we’re all thriving for. And with a line-up like this, expect plenty of opinions. Should be fun. If you haven’t booked yet, there may still be places left. Acknowledgements Photo of “Entrance Gianni Versace Mansion”, taken by Phillip Pessar, sourced from Flickr  

8 ways to build a more valuable brand

8 ways to build a more valuable brand this year

By Mark Di Somma

We talk a lot about the pressures on brands to perform and about the difficulties of staying competitive in huge and rapidly changing markets. Nevertheless, global brands experienced a 12 percent increase in value in 2014 – and there are powerful lessons for all those responsible for brands in how they did that. If demand generation is part of your role, here are eight things that you can be doing in 2015 to retain reputation, stem decline and make the most of upswings in economies and consumer preferences.

Is brand differentiation still possible

Is brand differentiation still possible?

By Mark Di Somma

Short answer – yes it is, but not in the way it was. I haven’t met a brand manager yet who didn’t tell me that they had a differentiated product. I’m not surprised. It’s part of the job description of any brand owner to be marketing something that is disruptive, market-changing, blue-ocean, category-killing … 15 years on from when I first suggested “parity is the real pariah”, every brand’s still talking up difference – but consumers are increasingly hard pressed to see any.

Brand strategy - not just brand paperwork

Brand strategy – not brand paperwork

By Mark Di Somma

Both Jeff Swystun and Mark Ritson have taken aim at the brand industry with characteristic frankness. Whilst applauding the advances in turning brand into a recognised commercial activity, Swystun believes that an industry developed to fight commoditisation has itself succumbed to that market pressure. It has, he says, become “… highly stylized, shiny, and cool but largely standardized, prescribed and frequently devoid of substantiated benefit.” Everyone is being different in exactly the same way. Brand is today’s shiny metal object.