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Meaningful Brands


The Age of Meaning: Break Through the Commodity Barrier

The Age of Meaning: Break Through the Commodity Barrier

Moving Your Brand Into the Age of Meaning: It’s Not a Trend, It’s Survival The Age of Meaning has significant impact on business visions, brand management, and marketing execution. In today’s fast-changing and competitive marketplace, it is hard to maintain a distinct and meaningful difference in the hearts and minds of people. It seems that as soon as you make a product improvement or change your service offering, your competitors are there either matching you or upping you one. There is another playing field available for your brand; one that most brands are blind to. It’s the...
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Does Your Brand Exude Meaning?

Does Your Brand Exude Meaning?

An emotive brand can’t simply advertise its way into being meaningful. It has to exude meaning at every opportunity. All too often brands seeking to appear more meaningful rely purely on tactical communications like an ad campaign. We are as likely as anyone to say, “that’s nice” after viewing an emotional commercial or a touching video on a company website. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Well, there can be. Sadly, these brands often come off as being superficial. They wear their feelings on their sleeves. And they use advertising to claim to be something...
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The Meaning Gap and What it Means for Your Business

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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Brand Moments Matter More than You Think

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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Could Your Brand Ever Command as Much Loyalty as a Sports Team?

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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Cooperation vs. Collaboration for a Meaningful Workplace

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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Meaningful Brands Are Led by Meaningful Leaders

Meaningful Brands Are Led by Meaningful Leaders

The key to meaning is empathy: the ability to step outside one’s own life and see the world from another’s perspective. In both branding and leadership, the value of this ability cannot be underestimated. Both areas depend upon engaged followers. Engagement only comes when followers see leaders connect the dots between their personal needs and desires, the goals of the business, and the greater good. Brands and leaders that are inward-focused and self-absorbed fail to connect with people who are increasingly attuned to the needs of humanity and the planet. This puts them in a precarious...
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Why All the Talk About Purpose and Brand Strategy?

Why All the Talk About Purpose and Brand Strategy?

A HBR blog post by Graham Kenny details the difference between the increasingly popular idea of purpose and the traditional corporate drivers of vision, mission, and values. His conclusion echoes our beliefs about the role and impact of a company purpose: “If you’re crafting a purpose statement, my advice is this: To inspire your staff to do good work for you, find a way to express the organization’s impact on the lives of customers, clients, students, patients — whomever you’re trying to serve. Make them feel it.” Mr. Kenny’s closing statement, “make them feel...
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Meaning in the Workplace?

Meaning in the Workplace?

We came across an excellent article on Fast Company about worker happiness (and the startling lack thereof). It starts with the story of an employee who, after two decades of service to a financial institution, decided he couldn’t take it any more: “I felt like no one cared about me as a person there, and finally decided to extricate myself from the grind. I know many of you feel the same way now in your jobs…trapped and unappreciated.” The article calls for significant changes in the intent, attitude and behavior of business leaders and makes the following observations and...
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Brand Strategies That Change Capitalism for the Better

Brand Strategies That Change Capitalism for the Better

According to philosopher Alain de Botton, Facebook thrives because it taps into an overlooked and underserved human need: the desire to have better relationships. So says a TechCrunch article recapping a recent speech he gave on the virtues of modern business. TechCrunch correspondent Natasha Lomas summed up the Facebook story this way: “Whether Facebook is actually serving that need well is a whole other question, but the appetite it taps into is undeniable. And de Botton argues that other core human needs continue to be drastically underserved by the modern business community — providing a...
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