If you don’t want your business book to be a success, just follow these five simple steps.
Not every brand needs a purpose
A great ambition statement is like an electric hare: it makes things run faster and in the same direction.
And there should only be one hare.
09 Feel like a brand strategy impostor?Your ‘odd’ background is a potential superpower.
The thing that makes you atypical is the thing that probably also makes you a good brand strategist (and maybe even a great one).
Write! Often!
The ability to come up with good ideas is one of the most essential skills of a brand strategist, but this counts for little if you’re unable to express those ideas clearly and beautifully.
Learn to love unpaid pitches.
If you can learn to love unpaid pitches then you’ll have a superpower that people who loathe them lack.
There’s no such a thing as a low interest category.
There’s no such thing as a low interest category. It’s just that a lot of categories are stuffed full of excessively samey, low interest brands. And every job is an opportunity to elevate your client’s brand beyond the unspectacular.
Listen to dinosaurs and focus on fundamentals
Yes, dinosaurs are old, but they’ve also seen a lot of bubbles inflate and subsequently burst. More importantly, they don’t lose sight of the fundamentals that drive value-creation and they don’t lose their minds with every new idea or technology that comes along.
There is such a thing as a bad idea.
There is such a thing as a bad idea. If you don’t know how to spot one, then you’re not going to last very long as a brand strategist.
Big consultancy or little consultancy?
Working in a big consultancy is great if you like structure and gives you lots of credibility. Working in a small consultancy is great if you crave autonomy, like mucking in with dirty jobs and don’t mind that the world hasn’t heard of where you work.
What the hell is a brand strategist, anyway?
A brand strategist is not a marketing planner.
All brand strategy is made up
Twenty-five years ago, I started a job as a junior consultant in the brand valuation team at Interbrand. I wanted to do something more serious than advertising and more fun than management consultancy, which didn’t involve spending yet more time in a classroom. I didn’t know anything about branding when I signed up. I know […]
The Distinctive Brand Assets Fallacy
‘Distinctive Brand Asset’ is a grandiose label for colours, phrases, characters, sounds, shapes, images and graphic devices that perform well in a very specific test of memory. ‘Individually Memorable Brand Asset’ would be a more honest term, but who would want to invest millions in building an asset purely because it performs well in a memory test?
Byron Sharp, brand purpose and the tyranny of the majority
In reducing the role of branding to a single aim – growth – Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute have simultaneously established the biggest strength and the greatest weakness of their ‘scientific’ approach: the single-minded pursuit of growth might be an appealing message for CMOs grasping for ‘scientific’ credibility; but it also absolves them of responsibility for important activities that should be a part of their job description, such as ensuring their businesses anticipate and respond to important changes in society, including the continuing struggles against systemic racism, climate change and social inequality.
A reading list for brand strategists
Once in a while, someone interested in becoming a brand strategist (or becoming a better brand strategist) asks me what they should read. Here’s a list (of sorts).
Predicting the rise of the Chief Creative Officer
The example of the FTSE100 shows that we have fallen into a pattern of behaviour that contradicts our stated purpose: not simply to make money but to create value. At some point, someone somewhere will establish a better pattern of behaviour. Perhaps a Chief Creative Officer will be at the heart of the change.
Fuck storytelling: great brands make a statement
This is what really great brands do: they have a point to make and then find the most effective ways to make that point.
Divided we stand: the hallmark of a resilient company
Resilience is about more than failure avoidance. It’s about creative dissent.
Kindness matters in business: why the nice guys finish first
Making the case for intelligent kindness in business.
Is the sharing economy a caring economy?
There’s a very real risk that the economic rewards offered by the “sharing economy” will crowd out the emotional and social benefits of sharing.
Brand positioning: avoiding the average
In theory, brand positioning can be an immensely useful tool for creating growth. But in practice, it is often a complete waste of time, money and effort.
Designing brands around a purpose
Intentions matter because they initiate outcomes.
The importance of unmeasurables
Not everything that can be counted counts. And not everything that counts can be counted.
Thinking about brands as systems
It’s difficult to find brands with clearly aligned positioning, strategy and architecture, which is why there are so few truly great brands.
Brands and the Economy of Mistrust
In the economy of mistrust, businesses create profit by outsourcing the policing of behaviour to their online communities: they establish spaces in which people are encouraged to act as judge, jury and executioner.
Would you prefer your company to work like a symphony orchestra or an improvisational jazz band?
Think about it: how many organisations have you worked in that actually operate like a symphony orchestra?
Why culture doesn’t eat strategy for breakfast
If strategy is about substance, then culture is about style – and style matters every bit as much as substance.
What makes a brand great?
Great brands don’t just deliver on expectations; they play with those expectations. They inspire us to see more of life’s infinite possibilities.
The secret to lasting leadership
Spend less time at work.
The future of brands is… Circular?
What do milk floats and glossy leggings have in common?
Authenticity: it’s not what it used to be
The past is something you learn from, but not something your brand needs to be wedded to.