by admin | May 15, 2014 | Communication strategy
Of all the skills we teach prospective entrepreneurs, there’s an element missing. Where in our MBA or business preparedness programs do we talk about the skills of negotiation? Um… with the exception of sales training, which is highly focused on negotiation, perhaps the answer is never. My friend Dr. Richard Kaye raised this point to me recently as we discussed our strategies for business at a recent Pro Speaker Biz event in Las Vegas, led by the head of Performance 360 Events andPerformance Magazine, Dr. Jeff Magee. (I’ve interviewed Magee before here.) Dr. Kaye, Magee and I are fellow faculty members of the CEO Space business growth conferences (as a note, these roles are unpaid). In his business life, Kaye is a retired chiropractor who teaches and presents on how to build better rapport, better communication (here’s to that!) and better negotiation skills. Read more about these 7 magic words and 10 negotiation ideas...
by admin | May 14, 2014 | Brand strategy
Everybody knows that art often imitates life, and other times life imitates art. Sometimes these two opposite phenomena form a dialectic and complement each other in a fascinating cycle. A notable example of this right now is the way the acclaimed AMC series Mad Men depicts a 1960s advertising agency’s successes concerning brand strategy and consumer engagement (art imitating life), and how today’s marketing industry sees this depiction and successfully adopts many of these strategies in service of contemporary efforts to engage in advertising, brand building, and brand awareness campaigns (life imitating art). What follows are five such tips that the marketing industry can learn from Mad Men with respect to consumer awareness, building a brand, or just advertising in general. 1. If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation. Having created numerous brand strategy campaigns around products about which the general public was hearing negative things — Lucky Strike cigarettes in particular comes to mind — at one point early in the series Don Draper offered this wisdom to his colleagues and their client, Madison Square Garden, to inspire an ad campaign that “changed the conversation”. The concern was the perception that New York City was full of urban decay and Madison Square Garden would be a symbol of all that’s wrong with big cities. Draper offered a vision where something big, new, and ambitious like Madison Square Garden would be welcomed by the public if they did some brand building for it that painted the arena as a sign of a fresh, clean, beautiful new beginning for the city despite reality. Draper uses this aggressive and manipulative...
by admin | May 14, 2014 | Brand strategy
Creating an aspirational brand strategy is an unexpected move that can help evolve a brand from ordinary to extraordinary. Celebrity culture is more pervasive today than ever before, which is why synergizing attributes of it with a product can have fantastic results. This topic is addressed in Trend Hunter’s Branding Trend Report, where the concept of creating brand loyalty is characterized with manageable tips for businesses of any size. Creating an aspirational brand can be done in three simple steps: Advertise with excess: Targeting your demographic with seductive lifestyles like those of icons as seen within Socialite Persuasion will help enhance the exclusive level of a product. Celebrities and socialites are associated with excessive lifestyles and giving a product a Hollywood status makes it more appealing to those looking for a taste of the good life. Read about all of the three tips for creating an aspirational brand strategy right...
by admin | May 13, 2014 | Brand identity
On Friday I attended the 2012 Brand New Conference, a one day event focusing on the practice of corporate and brand identity. The event went smoothly again (hat tip to Armin Vit for organizing) and the speakers shared some great tips and stories on a large variety of topics. The most notable talk of the day for me, was by Simon Manchipp, the CD & co-founder of Someone. Simon’s talk was built around ten things to consider when creating a new visual brand identity. Here are some of the notes I took from his talk. There are some loose ends, but there are still a number of key takeaways so...
by admin | May 13, 2014 | Brand identity
Bridge Bank is a full-service business bank focused on offering small- and middle-market loans in the highly competitive Silicon Valley. They launched in 2001 with a rather lackluster image. Their new re-branded identity is a case study in how design can affect a company’s image and people’s perceptions of it. The new look and feel preserves the bank’s original red-on-black color scheme, but adds a layer of style and sophistication seldom seen in the financial world. The new design feels super contemporary — almost like an internet company — and exudes a feeling of class without necessarily suggesting a higher cost to consumers. Lesson #1: Never underestimate the impact your brand’s visual components have on people. There are quaint sayings like “never judge a book by its cover” and “beauty is only skin deep. While the clothes might not “make the man,” they can certainly help him get noticed. If people don’t notice you, you’ll never develop a relationship with them. That’s why you need to look as good as you can. Learn about the remaining 10 tips for building a world-class brand identity right...
