Healthcare for Brands on a Budget
Brand health is a hot topic. Find out what matters in the checkup.
Toward Sustainable Branding
Do away with disposable brands and embrace brand sustainability. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Extensions and Deep Cues
Deep cuts aren’t just for your iTunes playlist. Learn how brands connect with consumers through cues beneath the surface.
Brandlore
Brandlore is Larry’s third book, due out at the end of 2009. It explores the myth and the promise of exceptional brands, and offers a practical strategy guide for the modern business manager.
Why Flickr Rocks!
I’m convinced that Flickr is the greatest web app … ever. Yes … ever. If you love photographs, it’s hard not to fall in love with Flickr. From a brand perspective, it has a wonderful voice. Colorful, creative, and friendly.
Branding in a Troubled Economy
Many assume that branding is less important when budgets are tight and jobs are on the line. Evidence from past recessions, however, advise otherwise.
Brand Preference, Experience and Memory
Brand marketers often fall prey to a massively faulty assumption. They assume that consumers are rational. But consumers don’t really behave that way. The irrational consumer is more than a hypothesis. It’s a well-researched reality.
Promise or Position?
Is a brand built on a position or is it built on a promise? Promise has become the word of choice in recent years. But I might suggest that the two words have different meanings, and should be applied at different times.
Alaska Airlines "Gets" Customer Service
Just when I thought customer service was dead — when I lament how brand after brand gets it dead wrong — a candidate comes along that surprises and delights and restores my faith in brand experience.
Demarketing
A friend turned me on to a great story on Studio 360 about signage for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site. Here’s the dilemma: how do you design a symbol that will instantly communicate ‘danger’ to future generations? Think about it. Nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years. The site needs signs that [...]
Listen Up!
This Friday, StoryCorps encourages people to participate in the National Day of Listening. For all you aspiring storytellers, this is a wonderful way to explore living narrative. It’s a simple process of interviewing a friend or a loved one. StoryCorps provides a helpful guide on how to conduct your interview, with tips on structuring an [...]
On the Subject of Brand Narrative
This is from a presentation I gave earlier in the week to a large technology company. It’s a mix of legacy content from Legendary Brands and new content from my upcoming book, Brandlore.
On the Subject of Brand Narrative
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: culture symbolism)
The Dark Side
One of the most fascinating ways to study brand equity is to study the deviants–the “dark side” of branding. For anyone who thinks that a brand doesn’t have power, look no further than the Mongols, an outlawed US motorcycle gang.
The Mongols took the extraordinary step of securing a trademark for their logo. The brandmark is [...]
Storytelling Architecture
At their best, brands tell stories. Sometimes it is overt, such as when they advertise, and sometimes it is subtle, such as when they cue a story already in your head with a brand interaction. Because stories are fundamental to the richness of our experiences, it’s no wonder that brand managers talk a lot about [...]
Why I love the Miller High Life campaign
Too many brands and advertisers try to sell you on cultural norms — you should use our product because everyone else does. They try to pander to social paranoia. There’s nothing I love more than a brand that says, “maybe you’re not for us.” The new Miller High Life campaign achieves that goal. It takes [...]
Cinemax Antes Up
I scoured the web to find some examples, but the campaign is still too new. Check out the new Cinemax rebranding. In the high stakes world of premium cable, Cinemax has finally stepped up to the plate. It’s too early to tell whether or not their programming and scheduling will measure up, but the new [...]
Making Web 2.0 Work for B2B Brands
Yesterday, the folks at Baptie & Company invited me to speak on a webinar about branding for business to business companies and the use of web 2.0 technologies. I posted slides from the presentation here. You can also download a full webcast at Baptie & Company.
Making Web 2.0 Work for B2B Brands
View SlideShare presentation or [...]
More Than Voice Alone
I spend a fair amount of time coaching clients on how to apply their brand voice. Brand voice is most often associated with a brand’s personality. It guides the tone and style of verbal and visual identity. It’s easiest to understand brand voice when reviewing copy. Sometimes, the way the brand chooses to express itself [...]
Passing the Breaking Point
Two questions I am most frequently asked about Legendary Brands are: (1) can brand cultures grow around B2B brands, and (2) how does social media play a role in brand culture development. The answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second requires a bit more explanation. As digital media becomes an [...]
From Empowerment to Containment
Apple is the darling of brand managers. At least once a week I hear a client ask me how their brand can be more like Apple. I’ve written about the company’s brand narrative extensively. Indeed, Apple is linked to a compelling story that rests in the minds of its faithful consumers. It is a story [...]
Remembering is Like Living
For all those who question the logic of emotional branding campaigns, read this NY Times science article on recent research into the brain’s processing of memories. The study found that single brain cells became highly active when remembering recent experiences — these cells were equally as active when the actual experience occured, suggesting that remembering [...]
The Yoke Goes Down on Airline Marketing
They’re calling it a ‘co-payment.’ I’m not kidding. That’s what they’re calling it.
Today, American Airlines announced that it would begin charging for some mileage upgrades. Now, I get it. Times are tough. Fuel prices are high. The airlines are getting squeezed from every angle. I’m actually sympathetic. Carriers like American are saddled with a legacy [...]
Backlash A-Brewing
People are growing fatigued by brands. I don’t have any empirical data to prove this … just a hunch. Part of it is linked to my travels, where I find the same collection of retail stores in the heart of the city. Part of it is based on the feedback I hear in focus groups [...]
Tap the Power of Genre
Becoming a great brand storyteller requires mastery of genre. Novelists, screenwriters and poets would be lost without the guard rails it provides. The truth is that there really are no original stories. Every story you can imagine has been told before. Over centuries of yarn spinning, the storytelling patterns have clustered into familiar plot progressions [...]
