A measure of brand maturity.
Ever noticed that people who seem to "really have it all together" are able to poke fun at themselves, take negative feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve, and surprise with their capacity to be absolutely, selflessly, honest? It is often the same with...
Brand ambiguity will be terminal
In a world of homogenisation, being different is both dangerous and necessary. Standing for something of value is absolutely essential, ambiguity is death.
C21 Moments of Truth.
Former CEO of Scandanavian Airlines, Jan Carlzon write a book in the eighties called "Moments of Truth" which reflected the journey of SAS from its commercial deathbed to being the most admired airline in the world. It was a best seller, articulating the then...
Social square pegs and round holes
Over the weekend just gone, I was a part of a strategy group setting out to build the marketing plan for an occasional client. There were several guest speakers, one an articulate and persuasive purveyor of what I regarded to be social media snake oil, and so a...
“Like” means nothing, go for “want”.
Like is too easy, no emotional investment has been made, to do anything useful, you need to move to want. As noted in a previous post, social media wombats, those clicking a "like" button on your site in the hope that you will "like" them back, are breeding at...
Relationships, not transactions.
"Relationships" is just a word used to describe the web of give and take that binds people together over time. A transaction can take place without a relationship of any sort. However, a series of transactions that require choices to be made will slowly build into...
Velocity of ideas
In the economy of C21, we are far less interested in physical stuff that we are in intangibles. A measure that will emerge both as one of internal corporate performance, and the performance of markets is the velocity of ideas. How quickly do the ideas being...
To hashtag or not to hashtag
It seems that there are a lot of hashtags appearing on ads in traditional media, and I wonder at their value. Some conversations are simply not worth having, and so inviting one by using a twitter hashtag is absorbing some of your hard earned brand credibility, for...
To Brand, to Brand.
Interesting verb, "to brand". On one hand, it can mean sticking a mark on something you own to indelibly claim ownership. On the other, it implies a process of building a relationship with something that provides you with some sort of satisfaction and gratification...
To communicate, be simple.
When you have something to communicate, do it simply, decisively, without any ambiguity or extra frills, and look the receiver of the communication in the eyes. This holds for personal communication, advertising, and now for the myriad of social communication sites...