Category Archives: Corporate Brand Building

Emotional Connection – Inside and Outside

Developing a strong brand is about creating an emotional connection with a consumer.  Right?  This brand axiom seems to be the first lesson that marketing professionals learn.  How to get there and how you know when you arrive at that … Continue reading

How Well is Your Company Leveraging the Modern Brand Portfolio?

What do you do when your company’s product just got leapfrogged by your nearest competitor? Not long ago I was asked by a senior executive to speak to the company’s 700+ salespeople who were being challenged to sell against a … Continue reading

In Professional Services Two Strong Brands Equal One Stronger Brand

In the professional services category, which brand is more important?  Is it the personal brand of the associate or the brand of the firm?  The simple answer is both because they both represent important relationship connections with a client.  The … Continue reading

Corporate Swagger – It’s more important than you think

“We have lost our swagger.” This was the response from a CEO of one of our clients as we were discussing his perspective on why their once powerful brand had waned. I followed up by asking him, “How has that … Continue reading

Leadership Platform 2.0 – A practical example

This is a short little ditty describing a real-life illustration of a concept I presented in a recent blog. While I was catching up on my unending stack of business magazines I came across an article that illustrated a simple … Continue reading

Leadership Platform 2.0: Fostering Customer-Centric Leadership

  “The purpose of business is to create a customer.”

The meaning behind customer engagement

What do customer engagement and employee engagement have in common? And why does it matter? Hint: The relationship between these two things will help senior managers make a cognitive connection between “the soft stuff” or business intangibles, and hard tangible … Continue reading

How Personal is Your Organization’s Brand Strategy?

There are brands that are personal and then there are personal brands. At the core of every brand strategy is an objective to create a personal connection with a brand. Organizations create brand identities that represent and remind customers of … Continue reading

Is it a Halo or a Smokescreen?

The Halo Effect, by Phil Rosenzweig, is the business book that has been a long time in coming. I love this book. As far as business books go it is a page-turner. If you don’t own it yet (or haven’t … Continue reading

Words that Matter

While cleaning out my briefcase I came across an article that was worth re-reading. The article is titled “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?”, written by David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad, published by Harvard Business Review. In … Continue reading