People hate companies, but they like other people. Many companies focus on competence or low price, but people want to do business with other people. Still, with all of the work it takes to come across as human, if you can’t do it consistently, people smell a fraud. Isn’t it better just to stay a Read More
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3 Ways Brand Values Build Your Business
In the ‘90’s, we talked a lot about whether or not character matters. If you’re wondering, your values are the most real thing in the world, informing how you live out your brand values. Here’s why values — and character — both matter. To put it another way, values inform character. And character pays the Read More
5 Reasons Your Brand Story Isn’t Gaining You Customers
You can’t deny that the brand story is all the rage with companies these days. Pop open forbes.com or Inc.com and you’ll likely see at least one article on the homepage with the words “story” or “storytelling” in the title. And I can’t tell you how many consultants, agencies, and even former literary authors I’ve Read More
4 Reasons You’ll Have To Rebrand This Year (Part 2)
In our first part of this series on rebranding, we covered the first two reasons you’ll need to rebrand your company: You have a new vision You’re scaling up Both of these focused on the positive, internal changes that are causing your brand to need to change to keep up with your company, leadership, and Read More
4 Reasons You’ll Have To Rebrand This Year (Part 1)
It’s a new year, and I’m sure for some in your company, that means they’re bandying about the ‘R’ word in your latest strategic planning meeting. You know the word: Rebrand. But is this really the year for such an exhaustive (and perhaps exhausting) change to your company? Is this really what you need to Read More
SEO For Marketing Managers with More Brains than Budget
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sits at the heart of inbound marketing. As a manager, you only want to invest so much time in the details of SEO. Yet, you still want to be able to educate other leaders on it and have a sensible conversation with an SEO specialist when the situation arises. This article Read More
Saturating Your Organizational Culture with Values
Who determines values in your organization? Is it your CEO? Your board? Your marketing director? If you work for one of the few companies that receive input on corporate values from the leadership team…count yourself lucky. In my experience, anything related to differentiation and messaging tends to be relegated to the marketing team – values Read More
Attributes of Remarkable Brands | Transparent
Have you ever had a meeting with a vendor where you were fairly certain that their entire goal in life was to “sell” you? They didn’t care if they lacked the best product, or the best price, or the best customer service…they were bound and determined to “spin” it and convince you they did. They Read More
Attributes of Remarkable Brands | Empowering
We’ve covered a lot of ground in the past few weeks. The topic? What makes a remarkable brand. So far, we’ve established three traits that are integral to any remarkable brand: Purposeful, authentic, and responsive. Here comes 4/5. I’m sure we can all think of some pretty non-remarkable brands. As a consumer, what’s one of Read More
Attributes of Remarkable Brands | Responsive
When was the last time you were on a support call…for a really long time? Now imagine that your call is stretching past dinnertime. You’re getting hungry. You’re probably frustrated. And there’s no end in sight. Ding dong. There’s a pizza guy at the door. You didn’t order a pizza. This is exactly what a Read More
