Blog
Humanize Your Brand
We are constantly communicating. One generation ago, when my father left the house in the morning he did not communicate with my mother until he returned home in the evening – now we text all day. There’s a constant stream of information flooding into pocket via our smart phones. This has changed how a product or service promotes itself. How it gets attention and how organizations engage with people. If you’re not in people’s newsfeed, you don’t exist. This means brands must shift from talking at you to conversing with you. It means being louder, bigger and in your way more often, doesn’t...
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Investing in Brand Management?
A brand strategy can take what people know and believe about your business to new levels. Active brand management takes a valuable asset that may now be largely underused, and turns it into a powerful competitive weapon. Regardless of how sophisticated your current approach to branding is, your business has a “brand” today, though you may have acquired it by default. Simply by being active in the marketplace, your business will have accrued a reputation, a level of fame, and a degree of notoriety (for better or worse) with your customers, and within your industry. A brand strategy will take...
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What Does This Say About Your Leadership Style?
Leadership style. What is yours? Gianpiero Petriglieri is Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, a regular contributor to the HBR blog, and a prolific and insightful tweeter. Indeed, the title of this post is taken from one of his recent tweets promoting his latest piece on HBR, “There is no shortage of leaders.” Professor Petriglieri’s main point is that the methods and goals of leadership are misplaced. He suggests that the current view of leadership development and practice is falling short of what’s needed in today’s world. “There is no shortage of leadership at all.”...
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The Meaning Gap and What it Means for Your Business
Your business’s performance suffers when people don’t do what your business needs them to do. So why aren’t they doing what you need them to do? The meaning gap represents the distance that’s growing between your business and the people vital to it’s success. As your business becomes more sophisticated, measured, and managed – in other words, less human – it moves one way. As people, acting as customers, employees, social media users, and citizens, become more mindful, concerned, and discerning – in other words, more human – they move in a different way....
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Business Success is All About Building a Meaningful Workplace Culture
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” – Albert Einstein A business’ fate is determined in large part by its culture. A business culture is the reality created by how people act, react, and interact with each other based on their attitudes, beliefs, and ambitions. The most damaging business cultures are those in which aggression, neglect, and punishment leave employees feeling they have no reason to commit their energies and skills, share their ideas, or help the company advance. Wanted: A culture that unites and connects...
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Innovative Leaders Articulate the Way Forward
Innovative leaders. Getting Innovation right. Seth Kahan, a change specialist who authored the book, “Getting Innovation Right” presents three practical secrets for the innovative leader. We were particularly struck by his second secret. Articulate the Way Forward People rely on their leaders to craft a vision of the future that makes sense and can guide their everyday decisions. Most of the leaders I have met improvise this activity and many do it badly. And yet articulating a rousing vision of the future isn’t difficult. It can be your secret super-power, if you just master...
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Is it Time for Your Business to Embrace the Purpose Economy?
According to Aaron Hurst, we’ve moved from the Information Economy to the Purpose Economy. He states that this is a natural evolution, which is taking us from the first levels of human organization, the hoe-and-plow Agrarian Economy, through the smokestacks of the Industrial Economy, to the data farms of the Information Economy, and now to the human-centric Purpose Economy. Each of these economies been built on top of the proceeding, and represent evolutions more than revolutions. In his book, Hurst states: “When I say purpose, I mean more than serving others and the planet. Service is...
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Purpose Becomes Ambition in a Meaningful Workplace
“Ambition” is the new “purpose.” Workplaces become meaningfully relevant when employees see the point of what they and their employers are out to do: the company’s “why”, it’s reason for being, it’s meaningful ambition. When presented in a credible, inclusive and authentic way, the company’s meaningful ambition is respected, admired and embraced by employees because it aligns to their personal values and answers their desire for meaning. Employees can see themselves within the company’s meaningful ambition. They see how they can actively make it possible. They feel inspired to...
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Brand Moments Matter More than You Think
There are many “tangible” brand moments that are under direct control of a brand (the lobby people enter, the ad campaign they see, the packaging on the product they open, etc.) However there are also many “intangible” moments that play an important part in defining the success of a brand. These are moments when employees of the brand interact with other employees, customers, partners, suppliers, distributor, investors, community leaders, and so on. Behind every great brand, there are great people talking with important people. When a brand seeks to move toward...
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The Value of Hiring a Brand Strategy Firm
When might you need a brand strategy firm? Your business is an intricate machine that leverages people and processes to generate profits. Until now, your way of doing this has been satisfactory to both you and your shareholders. But obviously there is something in the wind telling you that some changes are needed. This has you thinking about how to best deal with this situation, and to determine what partners, if any, you need to make these necessary changes. What drives your need to change? There are many reasons why a company would need to change what it’s doing. Maybe competition...
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Could Your Brand Ever Command as Much Loyalty as a Sports Team?
Sports Fan Loyalty Brand Loyalty – a strong feeling of support or allegiance. At least once a year, my good friend wears the 40 year-old T-shirt of his favorite sports team. It’s too small. It’s faded and threadbare in places. It’s garish color looks terrible on him. It has a hole in the shoulder. But he loves it. It represents something that matters to him. His team. 40 years ago they won an NBA championship. Who knew at the time that it would take 40 years to get another chance? Over the decades, even though the team had highs and low, he still held out the hope that they could be...
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The Importance of Brand Behavior in the Trust Economy
The Trust Economy It’s no secret that we are living through a revolution in the delivery of products and services. Driven by the internet’s uncanny ability to match sellers and buyers, people all over the world are engaging in direct commerce with other individuals, brokered by branded platforms. Some people call it the sharing economy, collaborative consumption, on-demand services, or the peer-to-peer economy. Since all models depend on trusting that a virtual stranger will do what he or she promises, let’s call it the trust economy. The trust economy is transforming sectors like travel,...
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How do you differentiate your startup in a crowded category?
Startups in crowded categories should lead with brand. There are many wake-up calls for the founders of startups. One of the more difficult realizations comes fairly early into your journey; the day you wake up and discover that despite your unique, disruptive offering, you have plenty of company. When you first started, when you made your investor pitch and got that angel round, you thought you were so far ahead, there was no category to contain you. But while you’ve been heads down, looking for funding, hiring people, grinding out product, and trying to get customers, a crowded category...
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Cooperation vs. Collaboration for a Meaningful Workplace
Successful businesses in the future will share a common characteristic: a cooperative approach to employee engagement, morale and gratification. Stowe Boyd is a super-smart researcher and author who focuses on “The future of work, and the tectonic forces pushing business into an unclear and accelerating future.” In his work he has made the following observation: “In the collaborative business, people affiliate with coworkers around shared business culture and an approved strategic plan to which they subordinate their personal aims. “But in a cooperative business, people affiliate with...
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What is a Brand Promise and Why You Need One
There’s a lot of talk about the concept of a brand promise. But, what is it? Why does my business need one? How would it make my business stronger? How does it relate to my brand strategy? Here we explore the answers to these pressing questions. And perhaps more important, what kind of a brand promise does your business need in today’s world to have an impact? A brand is a promised delivered. A contemporary brand promise articulates an idea that goes beyond the rational benefits that worked in the past, and extols a higher-order emotional reward. A brand promise is not a slogan or...
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