Branding

For some serious insight into the challenges facing grocery packaged goods, the Barron’s recent interview with Robert Moskow is an important read. One of the points made in the interview is that packaged goods’ focus on competing with own-label grocery brands seems to push a lot of buttons, except for innovation. Packaged goods seem to be fighting fights of the past rather than focusing on the future, in which packaged goods brands can win. Packaged...

From all my years in research and consulting, I think I’ve learned a thing or two about marketing worth sharing. Enduring fundamentals, mostly yet often overlooked. So, this year, I’m sharing some for your consideration. I hope they’re helpful. This week’s thought: Change is overrated. Marketers love fads and fashions. Change is the watchword of marketing. I’m in the trends and futures business, so I’m not unhappy about this. But part of studying trends and...

Let me be blunt: the annual ritual of demanding a marketing plan from the CMO is a boardroom charade masquerading as strategy. The corner-office crowd think they’re extracting a roadmap—a neat, glossy prediction of what the company will do, spend, and achieve. They think they’re judging the plan. Wishful thinkers. The plan is a distraction, a fetish of the naive who believe the world bends to their spreadsheets. The real game, the actual signal amid...

How will businesses use AI in the short-term and the long-term? There is a lot of speculation regarding its potential for specific businesses. Right now, for a lot of people, the exposure to AI is a digital entity on the other end of a customer service phoneline. For those creating platforms or running enterprises, AI is creeping steadily into day-to-day internal and external job activity, offerings and experiences. A recent shout-out in Barron’s, the financial...

Consumer anxiety has been building over the last two years, and it changes the face of optimal marketing and communications strategy. Rampant uncertainty is being nourished by upheaval over what the future looks like, impacting the chemistry of what people want (greater control) while the rules of culture-informed behavior and expectations around them relentlessly shift. Here we provide direction on the two pillars of sound strategy, arriving now at the pinnacle of the consumer’s hunt...

One morning, I noticed something curious in my city. Within just a few hours, I saw three different versions of the same brand: the REMAX logo from 2005 on a moving truck, their 2017 logo on a for-sale sign, and the latest 2025 version on a bus shelter ad. Three identities, one brand—coexisting in plain sight. I call this “brand residue”: the traces left behind each time a brand changes its skin. While designers are...

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s report on business schools’ ratings has just appeared. As expected, the big, elite business schools are holding the top ranks. Review the list of the top ten business school brands and aside from prestige and location, what is it that relevantly differentiates these business schools? Not every business school, even the top-ranking schools, has relevantly differentiated their brand purpose, brand promise, and brand values. Brands of business schools need proper brand management as...

The real risk when adding sustainability into a brand narrative isn’t saying too much or too little. It’s failing to connect—emotionally. Failing to enable people to feel why the work matters and how to participate in it. Sustainability today is under more than pressure; it’s under inspection. Despite media headlines, more and more people want progress to continue. And at the same time, believe claims less. Silence reads as avoidance. Overstatement reads as performative. And...

Despite all the talk about AI and the transformation of business, it remains that many brand businesses still wind up in financial distress, in the equity emergency room, repeating the same tendencies that lead to trouble. New is old when it comes to brand mismanagement. Viz Nissan. You may recall that in 1999, Nissan was in such dire straits that France stepped in and created a lifeline via Renault and Carlos Ghosn. The Nissan Renaissance,...