Too many CEOs leave branding up to their marketing or branding staff. Company marketers can develop visual branding and brand campaigns, but the CEO must be involved when deciding what the brand means. That is, the core values of the brand, what the brand should be associated with, and the personality and character of the [...]

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” –Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare In theory, Juliet is right. However, perceptions and associations create a filter through which we experience a name. For instance, Hewlett-Packard (HP) as a name would not rank high on [...]

Positioning and branding one’s company is something that many companies don’t bother to do. It takes some time up front to develop a strategy and a plan, and too often companies want to get going with implementation. Positioning involves targeting your customer and market segment, developing a compelling value proposition and differentiating your company against [...]

Over the years, I have worked with a number of professional services clients—from systems integration companies to management consulting firms. The question that these clients always have is: how do you position a service? The underlying assumption is that a service is less tangible than a product—that is, messaging around a service is less clear [...]

All companies have multiple audiences. Each audience may have a different value proposition from the company. But, does that mean that we need to promote a different position with each audience? The short answer is No. Your corporate positioning goal should be the same for every audience. At a higher level, the positioning message needs [...]

Can countries or regions have a brand?  You bet. Anything or anyone can have a brand—even places.  Take Italy.  The mere mention of Tuscany evokes an image of the good life—sipping wine in a hilltop villa surrounded by cypress trees and lush vineyards.  Naples, on the other hand, brings to mind purse thieves in a [...]

Although I was a judge for the first-ever Silicon Valley Brand Impact Awards, I had to miss the associated Liquid Brand Summit 2007 due to a conflict.  The Liquid Agency (the founder and host of the Summit), however, has done a great job documenting the May 15 event.   Check out the Liquid website to get [...]

Branding non-profit organizations can be a difficult task for some marketers because there is rarely a large advertising budget and the marketing sophistication of the staff is often limited. Girls for a Change (GFC) is a non-profit organization based in Silicon Valley and Phoenix that has built a strong brand despite having no advertising budget. [...]

In February 2007, I wrote a newsletter/blog entitled “Full to Empty: The Jet Blue Brand” on the airline’s fall from grace, but I predicted that strong brand loyalty and excellent crisis response would buy them a second chance. Not only did Jet Blue get another chance, but the brand recovered more quickly than one could [...]