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Brand Strategy

What structures can I use to organize my family of brands?

When it comes to building a strong brand, creating a brand family is a popular strategy. A brand...

Why Your Values Matter

Every company or organization has values to which it adheres, and it’s important to define them for yourselves and for your customers. Your values are your brand: A company’s set of values is an increasingly important factor for buyers. What you stand for is often just as important as what you sell. If your brand […]

How to Survive Trade Show Season, Part One

It’s the beginning of a new year. Time to set a fresh round of quarterly goals, fine-tune your branding, and finally put that new internal strategy into place. Oh, and it’s also trade show season. And with that comes the trade show hangover. Remember the last time you attended CES in Las Vegas, or that […]

Is Facebook a brand or a product?

It’s one of the most recognizable logos in the world: a small white f set against a shiny blue backdrop. Alongside Twitter, McDonalds, and Apple, the Facebook symbol is one of a handful of icons that transcend borders, nationalities, and cultures with its meaning. And Facebook’s logo is just one small fraction of its global […]

Talking With—Not At—Your Website

We were intrigued recently by a Medium post from Tomaž Štolfa of Layer which explored the evolution of what he called “conversational interfaces” from DOS to the desktop trash can to instant messaging to more recent arrivals like SMS and Slack. His conclusion? Nearly every product or service online today “has or will soon have […]

Is Adversity the Business Model of the Future?

Traditionally, American culture has aspired towards the finer things in life, leisure time and luxury goods among them. But increasingly, basking in luxury is no longer top priority for a growing class of consumers. These happiness hunters are looking away from consumer goods and towards a less quantifiable asset: a sense of accomplishment from overcoming […]

3 New Ideas on Brands for 2016

As 2016 dawns, it’s a good time to revisit the perennial head scratcher of the marketing world: brands. Are they overrated, over-thought examples of tepid consensus thinking? Or are they essential, pick-poorly-at-your-peril keys to marketing success? We’ve reviewed some recent thinking on brands (and the pursuit of the perfect brand) for insights into the age-old […]

Removing awkward conversations as a business model

I recently took a trip to Southeast Asia. It was a fantastic visit, filled with spectacular food and impressive sights. But I also came away with a healthy dose of bargaining fatigue, driven by the seemingly requisite haggling that accompanied every transaction. I understood the role of bargaining in the local culture, and the importance […]

Insight of the Week: When branding, look to your employees

In the traditional marketing world, branding efforts are often shepherded at the executive level, with C-suite leaders initiating the process and driving the results. But a new study indicates that branding might be taking place in less obvious places, too, as the growth of the Internet and the availability of social media allows employees to […]

The Braggart’s Dilemma: Social Change and Where Brands Fit In

The reactions came quickly, and they were blunt: the company was suffering from a mid-life crisis, was a negative force in low-income urban communities, was patronizing, was elitist, was naive. And that was just day one of Starbucks’ “Race Together” campaign. The multinational coffee company waded into the national debate over race relations in America […]

Insight of the Week: Brands on the Brain

There is a persistent rumor among marketers that strong brands create an emotional attachment within consumers, and that eventually consumers can even associate human qualities with brands. But until a team of Chinese and American researchers put this theory to the test, no one had any scientific evidence to back it up. Now, it appears, […]

Structuring a Highly Focused Team: A Conversation with Ian Grabill, Lead Developer at Ticket Evolution

Ian Grabill is a lead developer at Ticket Evolution, a software company which he describes as “a behind the scenes tool that powers the secondary ticket industry.” Acting as the “pipes connecting ticket brokers to distribution sites,” Ticket Evolution has a strong development focus that supports ticket brokers across the web. Earlier this year, when […]

4 Articles on Branding Insights to Read This Week

Every week, we turn over our reading lists to help share some of the web’s best writing on marketing and business. This week, we’re looking at the perennial marketing topic of building and nurturing a brand, and the surprising changes (and industries) that are reshaping the term. Techno-brands: Companies like Tesla and Sonos have a […]

Q&A: Mike Beach on Why Constant Change is a Business Necessity

We talk weekly with members of the Cardwell Beach team about strategy, marketing, and sales techniques. This week, Matt Hansen interviewed Mike Beach about the important role that change plays in business success and how Cardwell Beach has evolved since its early days. Q: Why do you feel that the idea of change is so […]

Archetypes 101: Brands Rooted in Our Dreams

I don’t claim to be an expert in psychology, but it’s certainly one of my passions both in and outside of work. There are dozens of ways archetypes are useful, including personality tests like Myers-Briggs, but I find the most interesting relate specifically to the role archetypes often play in brands (and buyer personas are a form of […]

The Ever-Higher Cost of Rebranding

Improving your brand gets more expensive every day you don’t take action. I’m not talking about inflation, rather customer perception and the momentum you build with customers– whether consciously or not. Here are three reasons to improve your brand sooner rather than later, no matter what stage you’re in. 1. Confuse fewer customers You reach […]

Business Growth: A Constant Transition

If you’re not growing you’re dying. Many firms achieve a certain level of success and stop growing because the skills that got you to $1 million won’t get you to $10 million; the skills that get you to 10 won’t get you to 100, nor to a billion. At a certain point your effort is […]

Should Enterprise Marketing Tech Startups Bypass Ad Agencies?

I’ve talked with a number of marketing-focused tech startups about whether or not they feel ad agencies are a useful path to customers. In these conversations there’s strong consensus among freshly-funded companies that they can go it alone, and strong consensus from companies that have burned through their funding that they need help. I have […]

Buyer Personas: Silver Bullet for Sales/Marketing Alignment?

70% of CEOs are dissatisfied with how marketing and sales are working together. Speculating about the cause is fun, but trying to fix it is a better use of our time and the focus of this post. The notable differences between what’s expected from a B2B sales and a B2B marketing department are pretty straightforward. Sales […]

Tech Startups Over-Emphasize Technology When Selling to the Chief Marketing Officer

When I was in the technology world, there was a strong emphasis on product; it was the heart and soul of everything we did. Now that I have a macro perspective on tech startups trying to sell to the CMO, VP of Marketing or agency partners, I realize the emphasis on product is confusing. Tech […]