All posts tagged: competitiveness

What will be, will be

What will be, will be?

By Mark Di Somma

We’d all like to think we have a greater understanding of what’s ahead than we do. And while some ideas may seem more credible than others, the fact is that people make predictions and indeed projections every day that may, or may not, be right. In fact, markets depend on it. Without opinion, emotion and uncertainty, they’d be no derivatives market for example, because they’d be no motive for volatility, which is, after all, the lifeblood of trading. We want our brands to be predictable too. We want to know where they’re heading. And yet, at the same time, we need them to be refreshing and interesting. A strange alliance To me, the art of branding is pinpointing what must change versus what must stay still. It’s a strange alliance of familiarity, response and initiative. Familiarity – enough of what we know about a brand needs to remain consistent enough for long enough for us to recognise it and treasure it. This is the bedrock. Change at this level happens very infrequently. Response – markets …

Refreshing your brand promise

By Mark Di Somma

Great products sell themselves. No they don’t. But equally, people don’t just buy brands because they’re brands either. Familiarity matters, but for the most part today’s customers are far too sophisticated to buy just anything with a nice or familiar name attached to it. Or rather to keep buying it without question. A brand by itself doesn’t guarantee you anything. Sometimes companies with brands that were once iconic forget that. They somehow believe that because the branding process can add margin, all brands must equal margin and presence must equal profit. Wrong. So wrong. Brands will only bring margin when everything else is right. Right itself seems pretty straightforward. Make a really interesting promise. Deliver on it in really interesting ways. Do that, and the circle is seamless. Get it wrong and the circle is vicious. When you don’t pay attention to the detail of your brand, there are consequences. The brand itself starts to breaks down. It degrades. To a name. And instead of a brand portfolio, all you’re really left with is a …