Branding and Brand Strategy for Growing Companies
Branding for Restless Companies and Driven Entrepreneurs
Whenever I tackle a brand, I start by measuring the noise. The clichés.The formulas everyone blindly repeats as “best practice.” Because of this one law: Every great brand has to outsmart the noise before it can rise above it. I’ve done this for everything from cities redefining their identity, to dog food brands clawing their …
When I wrote Brand Intervention, my mission was simple: cut through the noise and show leaders how branding really works. But here’s what I saw again and again: even brilliant campaigns and beautiful logos fall apart when a company’s brand culture is lacking or weak. That is why I wrote “Rich Brand Poor Brand.“ This deconstructs “brand …
When Steve Jobs said, “make our own stuff obsolete,” he wasn’t being clever.He was being ruthless and right, two crucial characteristics of a top CEO. And he was forecasting the future because in business today, raw, unfiltered disruption isn’t reckless. It’s the ultimate survival strategy. Who Is the Top CEO Everyone’s Talking About? Meet Steven Bartlett. He’s the …
While everyone is busy chasing the AI tool of their choice, here’s a brutal fact: everyone’s chasing the wrong AI tool. To drive this home, the brilliantly talented Caleb Ralston (the secret strategist behind Gary Vee and Alex Hormozi, two of the biggest personal brands in the world) sheds light on this topic: “My goal …
For centuries, the Dutch have engineered possibilities out of nothing. Both ventures made early backers wealthy. Both reshaped the future. And both shared one quality: everyone involved won. A Tradition of Engineering Possibility Fast forward to today. The world’s newest, most overlooked investment opportunity isn’t a gadget, a social app, or a cryptocurrency. It is …
Is AI a Useful Tool? An important question.I have a simple test for anything that touches my work that I think you can use too. Does that tool make me smarter? Or does it make me more dependent, and less able to think on my own? I have spent four decades on the front lines …
Dead brands need to know this: September 20th is National Dance Day. And I’m about to dance all over some conventional wisdom. You’re thinking: “Why is the $9B brand guy posting about dance?”Because most brands have forgotten how to move. The Connection Dead Brands Don’t See Dead brands stand still.Living brands dance. Not literally (though …
This year, it was an honor working with Taliesin Preservation in Spring Green, Wisconsin, the organization that owns and operates Riverview Terrace Cafe, The Wright Gift Shop, and provides tours of Taliesin — the 800-acre home, studio, and estate of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Last week, a CEO asked her team for feedback (and unleashed the new currency of growth). The room went silent. Not the silence of agreement but the silence of fear. Everyone knew the truth. No one wanted to be the first to say it. It was a moment that revealed a hard reality: we’ve built …
It was the deafening question in the room: “How to Sell in 2026?” Standing on stage at TOTALITY 2 in Tennessee, looking out at 100+ rebels, I realized something:This wasn’t a conference. It was a mutiny. Dale Dupree didn’t gather people to “learn sales.”He gathered them to torch the playbook that’s been killing businesses for …
Just a few years ago, mention “blue oceans” and you were seen as an expert. Yet it’s the new form of identity theft. Every few months, another “branding guru” slithers out of the algorithm to whisper wisdom that sounds less like business advice and more like a seizure dressed in designer jargon. They don’t sell …
Long before the Cracker Barrel debacle, long before Bud Light’s disaster and Jaguar’s destruction of its legacy brand, there’s something simple that’s not taught at Harvard. It’s worth noting in today’s deafening marketplace that the best brands have CEOs who know and leverage the role of branding. When embarking on a rebrand, this skill becomes …
Boring is the elevator music of business. Nobody requested it. Everyone ignores it. That’s why bold branding wins. Yet 97% of brands are humming the same tune: That’s not messaging. That’s morphine. The Beige Brand Epidemic and Why Bold Branding Wins I studied 1,000 company websites last month.947 could swap logos and nobody would notice.That’s …
Here’s the full story of the most profitable deletion in business history. In 2003, LEGO was 90 days from bankruptcy. Bleeding $1 million per day, LEGO had become everything. Except what they were. Theme parks. Clothing lines. Watches. Video games. Even a “Jack Stone” action figure line trying to compete with G.I. Joe. They had …
Most brands don’t die in a blaze of glory. (7 warning signs show up first.) The brands that die, die beige. (I wrote about this on LinkedIn yesterday.) They die in meetings.They die in bloated offerings.They die in strategies nobody remembers. I’ve performed autopsies on over 1,000 brands, and the cause of death is almost …
We’re halfway through 2025 so I decided to do a branding update because branding is still the most misunderstood, overcomplicated, and underutilized business advantage on the planet. If you’ve been around here for a while, you know I don’t sugarcoat that. Branding done right? It builds empires. Done wrong? It wastes years. Branding Myths Are …
There’s a disease—a fatal mistake—spreading through boardrooms, pitch decks, and tech stacks. It’s called feature-itis: An ocean of sameness with an endless tsunami of identical features. And it’s killing customer trust, market differentiation, and prospect retention at an alarming rate. Take the MSP industry (Managed Services Providers). They’re the folks who set up and babysit …
Welcome to the AI World—where speed is cheap, content is cloned, and originality? Originality. Now that’s premium real estate. But let’s get something straight: AI isn’t coming for your career.It’s coming for our excuses. We’re all in the AI World now. But don’t confuse “automation” with “authority.” In this new world, the biggest differentiatorisn’t your …
Let’s kill a myth. The ability to “make more money” has almost nothing to do with adding more features, more perks, or more fluff. But that’s where most people go. The myth: “If I just sweeten the deal a little more… add this bonus… tack on this AI-powered thing…” The myth is that this approach will attract …
Last night, I sat in a theater, mouth slightly open, as Tom Cruise defied physics, logic, and fear—again. The film? Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. A review? Not possible. Because this wasn’t just a movie. It was a masterclass in obsession, execution, and brand dominance. And it came with its own philosophy: Mission Impossible: The Myth …
Why does a case study on the best billboard and outdoor ads matter to you and your business? Fact: People are moving 70 MPH, just like a car. Why not build messages that communicate that fast? The skills needed to attract attention “on the road” are the same ones needed to crush it online. This …
Brand storytelling is the superpower of Ninja CEOs from another galaxy. It’s how Pixar movies pull us in like a powerful intergalactic gravitational force. Their secret is a killer narrative formula that turns everyday chaos into unforgettable blockbusters. And guess what? Your brand can do the same. But first, there’s something you need to know: …
Let’s cut through the hype: AI isn’t your genius intern. It’s not sitting in a dimly lit room somewhere, smoking a pipe and solving humanity’s existential crises. So What is AI? AI is the world’s fastest garbage-sifter, a glorified bulldozer for bad ideas, and a mirror that reflects exactly how lazy your thinking has become. …
Oh, Valentine’s Day. The one day a year where love is measured in overpriced roses, heartfelt (or last-minute) greeting cards, and an avalanche of chocolates wrapped in shiny red foil. Richard Cadbury—yes, the OG of chocolate romance—introduced the first heart-shaped chocolate box in 1861. Fast forward to today, and we’re moving over 36 million of …
Ready to ignite some real, sustainable growth and ditch the endless sea of me-too brands? Then buckle up. Recently, I had the absolute blast of going toe-to-toe with the legendary Brad Szollose on his Awakened Nation podcast—talking branding, differentiation, and my new book, Rich Brand Poor Brand: How to Unleash Your David in a World …
