Award-winning branding, rebranding and package design
How brands outshine, outlast and outperform their competition
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 …
A few day’s ago, the world chose to celebrate International Women’s Day. Over my career, I have had the honor and pleasure of working with female entrepreneurs, business owners and CEOs. Why I Celebrate International Women’s Day Besides the sheer enjoyment of building businesses into household names and multi-million-dollar brands, I have had the sheer …
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 …
In an age where top Hollywood stars are readily available on streaming services, it is interesting to see one such star choose traditional methods to promote his latest movie. “Traditional methods” every entrepreneur can use for their own brands and businesses. At 59 years old, Tom Cruise shows what it’s like to marry branding, buzz, …
Why did businesses search the topic “content marketing plan” over 673,000 times in 2021? Because the landscape has changed: the world has become a buyer’s market. The internet has given buyers unprecedented power. They can find out everything they need to know about your product without even talking to you. They can read reviews, compare …
Knowing when to rebrand, and then doing it, is a big decision — one that should not be taken lightly. Because of one very simple fact: no audience, customer, or prospect wants “more of the same please.” As a result, every business that knows its business knows it’s in the job of introducing something disruptive …
I finally was able to collect 3 of the worst branding mistakes I see entrepreneurs make in this brand new video. And these 3 tips are short and powerful, kind of like Danny DeVito but without the neck strain. Like many entrepreneurs who started their own companies, I’ve had to wear multiple hats. One of …
Client testimonials do for your business what exercise and diet do for your body: they tighten up the loose and jiggly parts replacing “brand flab” with “brand muscle” and tone. The result? People see you and your brand in a whole new light asking questions like: “Have you lost some weight?” “Working out?” “Are you …
This is how I took a startup during the pandemic (a luxury brand in the adventure vehicle space), from zero to $4 million in revenue without even launching. How did I leverage the human need for freedom and turn it on its head with a launch right at the start of the pandemic in March …
The best rebrands share one common trait: They disrupt: 10% of companies grow by more than 50% Only 2% of companies double their growth every year 99.9% are not profitable or growing With what I talk about here, you don’t have to be one of them anymore And when it comes to technology branding, it’s …
How do I determine when a makeover will become one of the few powerful rebrands to attract more new customers? It has to do with one factor: Will the new brand actually exceed expectations of the current landscape my client is competing in and does it differentiate my client in their marketplace? This uncovers two of the most …
“Is Branding Dead?” is a question entrepreneurs and CEOs all wonder about. Instead, they routinely ask, “What about personal branding?” or “Isn’t social media the answer to everything” or…? Very easy and common holes to fall into unless you understand the following: In a recent discussion with entrepreneurs around the world, I stated, “Branding as …
A brand is a considerable investment for any company, and one question every CEO wonders is why branding matters. This is the story of a brilliant company based in Australia. A company known for its ability to use technology to simplify the complex. When owner, Mikel Lindsaar, saw what small to medium-size companies had available …
Every business owner knows there are warning signals and danger signs of a brand. But which ones are vital to address first? (And which ones should you ignore, knowing they’re just symptoms and not the root cause of the situation needing your attention?) Where to Start? It’s true that branding has become so complicated that …
I hate posts that offer a 7-day checklist. Why? Because 98% of the time, they’re written to give us some shortcut hack, rather than empowering us to think for ourselves and problem-solve intelligently. Every 7-Day Checklist I’ve Seen Overlooks This Those who look only at the numbers and lose sight of what made those numbers …
