Association naming used to follow a relatively simple formula, combining geography with industry description followed...
Brand Strategy Articles
Mission Statement vs. Brand Promise: How Do They Differ?
Executive coach and public speaker Gerry Valentine’s piece for Forbes on the importance of an inspiring mission...
Sugar and Spice: Nice Brands Finish Ahead
Valentine’s Day is around the corner. It's a day for love, thank goodness! Spend too much time online reading news...
Fake Followers & Contrived Connections: Is Your Brand Reputation at Risk?
More than a few brand reputation and social media managers have been dealing with the aftermath of having thousands of their Twitter followers disappear overnight. It’s hard to find much online sympathy or support from companies and businesses that are so focused on...
Brand Loyalty is Dead. Will Brand Connections Replace It?
For companies accustomed to the old ideas of winning a customer’s brand loyalty and then forgetting about it, the last several years have been disruptive to say the least. All around us, societal shifts are dramatically altering the way we live and work. At the heart...
Politics, Profanity & Unicorns: How Personal Brand & Professional Reputation Go Hand-In-Hand
Politics are never pretty, but the 2016 presidential election was particularly nasty. The nastiness was magnified by social media, with people across the political spectrum adding their own two cents—often at the expense of their personal brand and professional...
Stop Playing It Safe: How to Win at Trade Association Branding
Playing it safe is not good enough when it comes to trade association branding (or rebranding, as the case may be). Chances are you know a professional trade association—or are a member of one—that emerged from a rebranding project with little more than an updated...
Turn Ideas Into Action: How to Create a Winning Brand Plan
To turn a brand into an asset that is managed and measured, you need a strategic brand plan. This is harder than it sounds. Many companies struggle to allocate the time and resources necessary to turn big ideas into everyday actions. It’s like trying to move a massive...
Use Selfies to Build Your Company Brand
Like many Americans, I visited a National Park this summer. And like many Americans, the crowds overwhelmed me. (Read “Record Crowds Make America’s National Parks Hard to Bear.”) On the one hand, it is heartening to see so many families enjoying our country’s natural...
Turn Your Brand Strategy into a Compelling Brand Story
You’ve invested organizational resources to develop a solid brand strategy, one that differentiates your company in the marketplace and provides a clear plan for success—only to realize that the average attention span is only eight seconds long. It’s a problem that...
Every Brand Story Needs a Hero
In content marketing, the brand story is everything. While content marketing is relatively new, storytelling has been around for ages. Stories have always been the key to convincing people to do something, buy something, or tell their family and friends about...
What Would Prince Say? A Brand’s Misguided Tweet Offers Social Media Lessons for All
With Prince’s death, the world has lost another musical legend. An ambitious artist with unbelievable talent and style, Prince's legacy as a songwriter, singer, producer and showman will live forever. Not surprisingly, social media has been flooded with tributes and...