Branding and Brand Strategy for Growing Companies
Branding for Restless Companies and Driven Entrepreneurs
Brands like Oatly have successfully differentiated themselves and become one of today’s iconic brands through bold and irreverent visual styles, creating a unique space in crowded categories. Some stats help frame the importance of this: Iconic brands succeed by questioning assumptions, embracing trust, and delivering unexpected customer experiences. These two quotes from my new bestseller …
Loyalty doesn’t mean conformity or tolerating a “cancel culture” environment. Let that sink in. True loyalty involves critical thinking because one is being loyal to the overall purpose, not merely saying “yes” because it’s the acceptable thing to do. Here’s the kicker: Cancel culture doesn’t just “happen.” It thrives where weak leaders reign—where toxic workplaces …
Word salads are ruining brands. And they’re destroying your business. What is a word salad? A jumble of fancy words tossed together, hoping it tastes like a story. But really, it just leaves us hungry for a point. Word Salads are Not a Small Issue ❌ They confuse customers.❌ They ruin brand stories.❌ They send …
Nike, the global juggernaut known for “Just Do It,” is no stranger to breaking molds and pushing boundaries. This might be the most important thing you read in 2024. It’s how to transform your brand from ordinary to iconic. And a lesson in simplicity. And focus. The Nike Mindset: Their Unfair Advantage Here’s the thing: …
I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey, a National Geographic Explorer, TED Talk speaker, and recipient of the United Nations Visionary Award. I immediately fell in love with Elizabeth’s love and respect for the power of storytelling. Two Hearts. One Mind. This video is the result of our relationship blossoming during the …
How do you take a color technician and curly hair specialist and disrupt the hair care industry? By finding a whole category everyone was busy ignoring. Everyone was so busy promising the same old regurgitations that nobody bothered to look at an entire opportunity hiding in plain sight. How I Reinvented a New Category in …
In the last 4 months, I have written some of the most powerful about the most powerful rebranding strategies to implement in 2024. In fact, these are nine powerful articles in total. And I wanted to make this instantly available to you. They roll out like this: February 6: CEOWORLDRebranding Disasters: How to Avoid the …
Just the other day, I had the thrill of diving deep into the branding stratosphere with William Harris, the visionary CEO of Elumynt. After an amazing month with 5 feature articles in February alone, I sat down and dropped a masterclass in branding: In order of appearance, here they are; Now Picture This An advertising …
Sam Cox created a bold and compelling brand, is a 28-year-old illustrator born in Kent, England, a multi-million-dollar auction sensation and known as “Mr. Doodle.” Too many brands take themselves too seriously. Sam is a prime example of how one artist takes his art so unseriously that the world stops, applauds, and asks for more. Where …
Before I answer what’s next for 2024, I wanted to look at what happened in 2023. I’ve broken this information into the following sections: Let’s get started, shall we? 2023: The Year of AI Of course, AI was on everyone’s radar. AI appealed to everyone’s desire to get the most done with the least effort …
Many companies attempt a rebrand. But surviving a rebrand? That is a milestone few ever forget. Few see the impact of a rebrand in real-time: raising over $200K in less than 30 minutes, which secures future growth and service to the community. I previously shared this journey here and spoke with Harvard Executive Leadership Coach …
After successfully rebranding several non-profits, I discovered something: Non-profits think of themselves as a different breed of organization. Are non-profits different? Yes. But, in the most fundamental areas of branding, they aren’t. I first learned this when I rebranded a city in the Midwest. Twelve months after the rebrand, they experienced a 500% increase in …
Killer statistic: When it comes to brand architecture strategies, about 80-90% of new products, including line extensions, fail. Let’s play a game: Name something more challenging than trying to match socks from a laundry load. If you said, “being an physician in need of the brand architecture necessary for a successful brand extension,” then ding, …
As someone who has spent years studying (and working with) some of the best entrepreneurs and their businesses, I can tell you there is no one-size-fits-all approach to success. As a practitioner in the transformative power of entrepreneurship, I am often stunned at how the best entrepreneurs create ground-breaking innovations and disrupt entire industries. In …
I wanted to share the most powerful brand strategy I know. I call it EYEBALL HIJACKING. As businesses, we must stand out from the crowd and become impossible to ignore. My Most Powerful Brand Strategy: Eyeball Hijacking We must hijack eyeballs and differentiate ourselves from competitors. Because the most memorable brands challenge old ideas. Sure, …
Businesses today are asking the wrong questions to master storytelling. Business today must know how to frame their conversations. Otherwise, people still look at the world through the same lens and come to the same old conclusions. Having the wrong conversations about their roles and brands costs businesses relevance, sustainability, and customers. Businesses today must …
I recently spoke with Matt George, an executive coach providing Leadership Education at Harvard to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. He’s someone who’s raised tens of millions of dollars for a non-profit he ran for 30 years. Matt is a rare breed who unites empathy and compassion with hungry entrepreneurialism. In our discussion, one thing …
Don Draper’s pitch for Kodak’s slide projector, “The Wheel,” is considered by many to be the best pitch in advertising history. Kodak executives had decided to call their invention “The Wheel,” a move Draper considered a major misstep. In the hit television show “Mad Men” set in the ’60s in an era when cigarette smoke …
Storytelling gets a bad name. People in finance and accounting give it an even worse name. Why? Too often, they lack the three most valuable skills in business: The Wolf of Wall Street showed the darkest side of this. More commonly, talking with a finance person is a dreadfully long-winded conversation that’s stiffer than a …
1984. The year Apple aired its now-famous “1984” Super Bowl advertisement, the title of George Orwell’s famous book about a dystopian future, and the year new recruitment and staffing firm, First Search, opened its doors. It was after having completed my Masterclass that Al approached me. “David, nobody understands the power of branding to do …
There’s no question that companies need to focus on branding today more than ever before. But what does that mean for entrepreneurs and CEOs? It means creating a strategy to awaken customers and inspire them to take action. Easier said than done. To say that the world of business has changed in the last few …
In 1936, Alan Turing, the father of computing, wrote a paper largely ignored by cybersecurity companies (embraced by the perpetrators of malware and ransomware, a multi-billion dollar industry). Fact: In 2021 alone, 66% of organizations globally were the victims of ransomware attacks. This vulnerability results from the “malware solutions” used by companies today. This results …
All leads are not created equal. In fact, some leads are actually quite bad for your business and morale. If you’re not careful, you can end up wasting a lot of time and money on leads that don’t convert into sales, growth, and lasting relationships. So how do you determine which leads are worth pursuing? This …
