Branding and Brand Strategy for Growing Companies
Branding for Restless Companies and Driven Entrepreneurs
One morning, I checked my email to find an interesting email that had questions about rebranding a company. A dog company to be exact. I replied and soon found myself on the phone with Karen Miller, the owner of Highmeadow Farms that makes a premium line of fresh food for dogs, in fact food that …
For close to 600 million users globally, there’s a new thing on the horizon: LIVE video. And LinkedIn LIVE is supposed to tap into this growing trend. LinkedIn even has Gary Vaynerchuk lauding its value in business, “LinkedIn marketing is something I really, really believe in for 2019. LinkedIn has transformed so much as a …
Many talk about how to make competitors irrelevant. Few provide the roadmap. Here’s the roadmap. There is an epidemic in business today: It goes like this: The answer in business is not to economize and to always to try to do less. The answer is always doing more. Figure out how to efficiently do more, …
If there were ever a sector ripe for me to rebrand an industry, it would be the HR industry. It’s become stagnant, mechanical, and filled with more variables than some advanced mathematics class. So along comes a startup that is revolutionizing the standard of performance that can truly be achieved by HR departments without resorting …
Why are some brands and their clarity scrambled? Some arrive as fried as Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. While some are hunting for Easter eggs, the rest of us are hunting for our brand’s secret sauce. HOW TO UNSCRAMBLE YOUR BRAND Helping companies and individuals with their brands, I see all the smart …
“LinkedIn has transformed so much as a platform.… Now, it’s become more of a content platform. …. It’s where Facebook was at 5-7 years ago.” Gary Vaynerchuk Below is today’s One Minute Wednesday that will change a lot of things in your business. Six months ago I was doing nothing with LinkedIn. Now I have …
I’ve been not-so-secretly experimenting with LinkedIn. With video. With posts. With one-liners. The LinkedIn Secret (That Cost Me Nothing) For years, LinkedIn had zits. It was awkward. It didn’t fit in. But after years of gathering cobwebs and suffering from an indentity crisis, LinkedIn has actually (and finally) become a “social platform for business engagment.” …
It’s the question most brands seek: Is Our Brand Set Up To Generate Buzz? Most are not. They are missing a key component. This is the mindset to get it right. Waking Up Your Customer Nike founder Phil Knight said this, “Our job is to wake up the consumers. If we become predictable, that’s not …
Winning brands have a mindset. A mindset that eliminates all excuses — “all the reasons we ain’t as great as we aspire to be.” This mindset punctures the lies we’ve been fed. This line of questioning demanded I ask (and answer) this question: What’s the winning mindset of those who truly lead and unwaveringly serve? …
If you have a business today, you’ve experienced “shiny object syndrome.” One site defines it this way: “a disease of distraction, and it affects entrepreneurs specifically because of the qualities that make them unique. … It’s called shiny object syndrome because it’s the entrepreneurial equivalent of a small child chasing after shiny objects.” Focus. Yeah, …
Ever struggle with how to be a better brand leader? Becoming A Better Brand Leader (in 60 Seconds) I am so excited over this week’s episode 59 of One Minute Wednesdays. (If you haven’t subscribed yet and caught all the previous episodes, you ARE missing out. Plain and simple. Subscribe and make sure to click …
The Sixties ushered in the Beatles Revolution. These lyrics from the White album said it best: “You say you want a revolution “Well, you know “We all want to change the world…” Yup, the lyrics from The Beatles’ REVOLUTION. Your Brand: A Revolution or Just a Business? For every rebel, client, or entrepreneur I have …
Too many brands do not understand the real role of social media. They confuse followers with loyalty. They confuse likes with real engagement. In this new episode of One Minute Wednesday, we scratch beneath the surface. Social Media is the Digital Equivalent of a Drug You get your first “taste.” Then, after that first “buzz” …
In this important keynote, I discuss the #1 tool your brand’s not using. In this beautiful setting by the Adriatic Sea across from Croatia, I delivered two keynote speeches to an incredible group of professionals. In this excerpt, I specifically cover the two sides to your brand that are not being maximized to strengthen your …
The most inspirational speech I’ve ever given happened in Slovenia recently at the close of a 2-day annual conference. I was asked “I had the privilege to read your book. So many great pieces of advice in there. If you can pick one that we should leave this room with, which one would you pick? …
So the CEO sits down and asks, “Why are there so many brands that stay small?” After all the usual answers were uttered, the room fell silent. An awkward. Pregnant. Silence. Yes, there IS a secret branding ingredient overlooked by many brands. How is it that they all miss it? Because they’re all on the …
Some brands go (in the goal of wanting to sell more) into endless “pitch mode” at the expense of their brands. Shut Up Already. Seriously. Brands that make this mistake focus on short-term transactions versus the long-term lifecycle of a client relationship, adding value over the long term. I cover this in detail in this …
The problem with most 2019 business predictions is they attempt to look into some “secret crystal ball” and come out with some prophetic wisdom we’d expect to hear from the lips of Yoda. 2019 Business Predictions and The Worst Way to Predict the Future We’ve all heard the quote, “The best way to predict the future …
The 3 worst words in branding are Obscurity. Anonymity. Mediocrity. These words form what I call “The Bermuda Triangle of Branding Death” and they form the hell known as blending in. It’s as true for existing brands as it is for product launches. Your Brand Has Haters? No Problem. This is your actual problem. If …
One year ago, I published what became a #1 Amazon bestseller within 2 days of going live, specifically a breakthrough book on branding for every business and brand that didn’t have time to read another book on branding. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the book: Brand Intervention, 33 Steps to Transform …
Branding and being on Linkedin are not two phrases I would have put together 12 months ago. Like Pouring Gasoline on an Already Raging Fire But quite a bit has changed at LinkedIn. Similar to a teenager suddenly realizing they have the influence, impact, career options, and more opportunities as an adult, LinkedIn has suddenly …
When Jerry Seinfeld was asked by Elaine about men’s anatomy after swimming and how certain parts experience “shrinkage,” Jerry’s reply became an instant classic: “Like a frightened turtle.” As funny as this was, it’s unfortunate to see that too many brands lose perspective when planning their next move, experiencing their own shrinkage in the process. …
OK, Black Friday is coming fast. Yes, there’s price. Yes, there are “doorbusters.” But when all else fails, there’s this one secret weapon only the strong retailers (who will survive) will use very liberally at every point of contact with their customers. Yet this vital skill needed by brands is rare and overlooked, yet it’s what …
Who would have thought, after 132 years as a staple on the retail landscape that we would ever see the death of Sears? What this is, in fact, is the study of how a retail legend stopped doing what made it successful in the first place only to be crushed by a newer company (using its …
“…if you’re a copycat, you can never keep up. You’re always in a passive position. You never lead; you always follow. You give birth to something that’s already behind the times—just a knockoff, an inferior version of the original. That’s no way to live.” ― Jason Fried, New York Times bestseller, Rework Authentic branding is about …
