Blog

“Employee loyalty and expectations have changed as pensions and nice retirement packages have disappeared.” @smaxbrown Before you complain about the morale of your staff, consider the massive change the employee market has undertaken over recent years. Job security is a dream of the past. A cozy retirement is assured for only a very few. For many, even the task of finding a job is a threatening and demeaning experience. Add to this the growing angst about the overall economy, the dysfunctional infighting within government and the increasing concerns for the health of our planet. Of course,...

We cling to traditional ideas and ways of being because they bring a certain level of comfort to us. As the environment around us becomes more turbulent and threatening, we tend to revert even further into the known and comfortable worlds we inhabit. We do this even though there is no evidence that “staying put” and “holding on” will make our situations any better. Indeed, we simply keep falling further and further behind, feel weaker and weaker, and lose more and more. One reason we fall into this trap is that we often focus on the wrong things. Consider these excerpts from Umair Haque’s...

Putting aside the polarizing views from what Apple announced today at WWDC 2013, flat vs. skeuomorphic…Who cares? That’s another discussion, for another day, on another blog. Apple made me feel a few things today. At first, a sense of huge disillusionment over the future of the aesthetic design world around me with their new approach to the iOS look and feel. This maybe an over reaction, and it was short lived when I saw this video. From this video was my second reaction, a sense of pride in who I work for and the industry I am in. I think this is the best ad I’ve seen from Apple....

Sustainability reporting is harder than it looks. Companies new to reporting often pick up the reports of competitors, suppliers, or customers and think, “Well, that’s not rocket science. We already have a corporate brochure and a website. We’ll just add some ‘sustainability facts’ to that stuff and we’re good to go.” Then they produce a report that looks like a corporate brochure mashed up with a website and a data dump, and they wonder why no one is impressed. The reality is that good sustainability reports are icebergs: you can’t see three-fourths of what goes into them until you get up...

I came across an article on FastCompany.com that posted that modern business should look for people who are better able to deal with ambiguity, know the value of learning through failure, and who can think creatively. So, out with the MBA and in with the MFA (Master of Fine Arts). I graduated with a fine arts degree from NYU. Since that time I’ve been a “creative” in the advertising/branding field. But that job description doesn’t really capture all that I do when dealing with clients and their business and branding issues. This does: “Many people see artists as...

Know your audience. In Western culture, this instruction starts with Aristotle, mainly. Living in a time when public speaking decided the fate of nations, he figured out that the most logical argument didn’t always win. More often, the winning argument came from the person who knew the audience best, and played on its ideas and emotions most persuasively. Fast forward 23 centuries or so, and it’s still true. Whenever we start a project for a client, the first question is, “Who’s in the audience?” For most projects, the answer is simple. It’s employees, or customers, or investors. Once we...

I worked for Ogilvy and Mather for nine years. At the beginning of my time there, it was still a privately-held company – though within a few years of my tenure, it was absorbed (and changed forever) by WPP. I came across this piece written by David Ogilvy (whom I had the pleasure of meeting once), about the culture of Ogilvy back in the day. I think all leaders should use it as a culture check-list for their companies. From The Unpublished David Ogilvy. Here is how I see our culture. A NICE PLACE TO WORK Some of our people spend their entire working lives in our agency. We do our damnedest...

It’s the corporate dance that never ends. Management sees the need for change – in strategy, values, brand or execution. The change will succeed only if employees embrace it. Management struggles to engage and inspire employees with the change, which takes longer and costs more than anyone wanted. Repeat. Human nature plays a role in the dance, by making people leery of anything that pulls them out of their comfort zone. This goes double when people have been through the dance before and seen it bungled. Yet for some reason, management and their consultants seem bent on ignoring human nature...

Brand strategies strive for focus. As such, most brand strategies are customer-centric. And while there may be a certain logic to that (after all, where would your brand be without customers?), customer-centric brand approaches can backfire. To illustrate this point, think of any brand that has a positive, upbeat “brand campaign” and either me-too products, miserable employees, or horrible customer service. By embracing a broader, more holistic view of your brand, you start to see how your brand’s success relies on numerous interdependent factors. The quest, in my opinion,...

Sage advice for brands that are failing to reach their targets. How well is your brand connecting with the people who are important to your brand, both inside and out? Is your brand working out from itself, or out from the needs, interests, values and aspirations of people? Bringing empathy to your brand approach changes everything. Seeing things from another perspective opens up new opportunities. Putting people first leads them to putting your brand first. Photo Credit...

Jim Signorelli is the author of “StoryBranding”. I love the way he makes the distinction between the classic marketing idea of “unique selling proposition” and the modern meaningful branding concept, “unique value proposition”. USP’s (a “plot line” in StoryBranding) We often refer to plot lines as brag lines, simply because that is what they do. They express the brand’s “how so?” more than its “what about it?” Plot lines are more a manifestation of the brand’s opinion of itself. As such, they lack the believability...