Archive for the ‘Brand Strategy’ Category

04.11.13

Influential Brand Trends – Enter the Clean Slate Brand

brand trends

Why in the world of brands, heritage aint worth what it used to be.

In the world of brands, consumer trends will over time create a tipping point, changing the way markets engage and respond. When this occurs, established brands see their market share eroding and at the same time opportunities appear for new, competitor brands to successfully launch. Potentially one of the strongest and most influential trends we’ve seen in the last five years has been identified by trendwatching.com as ‘clean slate brands’. This trend has been the result in a shift in consumer behaviour with the potential to disrupt a wide range of brands, especially those in B2C categories. This shift is demanding established market leaders sit-up and take notice, as it provides significant opportunity for also-ran and start-up brands to gain ‘fast mover’ advantage.

Read the rest of this entry »

04.10.13

Home Brew Branding: Beloved & Believed

Branding Beloved & Believed: You're basically making oatmeal

Today I’ve got a simple example of how two of the corner stones of good branding: Emotion & Authenticity can inspire a great brand. The Brooklyn Brew Shop is based on a simple idea: nano brewing kits. That is brewing kits designed to work in small kitchens with standard kitchen equipment. But it’s when the two owners Erica & Stephen explain the idea that it really comes to life. Read the rest of this entry »

04.08.13

Samsung brand strategy: ‘Change everything but your wife and children’

samsung-galaxy-s4-new-york-release

More and more when I have been with friends in recent times the phone they are pulling out of their pockets is not an iPhone but a Samsung Galaxy smart phone. And as it turns out Samsung is probably the only other company that can throw a product introduction and have people line up around a city block, as they did in New York City on March 14 for the launch of the Galaxy S4. Likewise the retail formats that Samsung are adopting have the same appealing presence that Apple stores have delivered us. They are doing a lot of things right.  Read the rest of this entry »

03.27.13

EDUN : a brand with a powerful mission

EDUN-image-1-resized

At Truly Deeply, we have a deep rooted belief that every brand needs to live and breathe by a single essence. A guiding thought that drives everything they do. While generally internal, for many brands, this essence becomes a launch pad for their external messaging. A way of helping to communicate to potential customers why they do what they do. I recently stumbled across a brand who is certainly doing just that. Founded by Ali Hewson & Bono in 2005, EDUN is a global fashion brand bringing about positive change through its trading relationship with Africa and it’s positioning as a creative force in contemporary fashion. As Ali Hewson herself articulates, “EDUN is our voice, to help raise awareness of the possibilities in Africa. It’s why we exist.”

Read the rest of this entry »

03.26.13

Retail brand strategies in a real world assault

Abercombie-and-Fitch

JWT’s trends for retail in 2013 suggests that retailers who find a way to integrate will have a “killer brand.”  It has experts suggesting that one needs to be where the customer is, with both your messaging and your product. Consumers today are both online and offline, and sometimes both – online while shopping offline.  Online they are sharing, friend validating, researching, learning and developing a point of view. Offline there is touching, brand comparing and brand associating. All of this drives the brand of the future. Finding the formula to leverage that online/offline dynamic is critical. Read the rest of this entry »

03.22.13

Bicycled – A Cycling Brand with a Higher Purpose

Bicyled1

A Bold reason for Being
There’s a reoccurring theme been playing out in recent posts, which is the recognition of brands who have clarity around their higher purpose – a reason for being that goes beyond the commercial transaction they have with client and customer. The concept of a higher purpose is one we typically associate with not-for-profit brands such as The Livestrong Foundation we wrote about yesterday, but that perspective ignores the impact the same mindset can have on any brand in any category.

Lola Madrid are an ad agency based in Spain. They are a professional services firm in a super competitive environment who have got their head around the concept of a higher purpose. In their case it is a project called ‘Bicycled’ where they set-put to create the perfect, sustainable cycle.

Read the rest of this entry »

03.21.13

Not-For-Profit Brand Management – The Livestrong Foundation Loses Lance

not for profit brand agency

Livestrong’s Bold Re-branding Strategy
In the competitive world of not-for-profit, the rules of brand apply just as they do in the corporate universe. As cycling’s black sheep Lance Armstrong continues to discover his personal brand, tarnished by drug cheating, continues to be cut-loose from the organisations who previously leveraged it so enthusiastically. The most recent, most graphic and I’m sure most heart rending for Armstrong has been the re-branding of his own Livestrong Foundation, which has seen his name removed from the brand.

Read the rest of this entry »

03.20.13

Beechworth Bakery – leveraging provenance into country greatness

Beechworth Bakery logo

Evolving and taking brand ownership of being the best country bakery is a big call, but doing it in not just one town but across multiple locations is quite a feat.

Beechworth Bakery has done just that. Leveraging their provenance and heritage from the small picturesque gold-rush town in North East Victoria, Beechworth is now the quintessential country bakery that is a welcome addition to many towns.

Read the rest of this entry »

03.19.13

Lean In : A very good case study in social cause branding

g_sandberg_0427

If you have been following the recent media coverage of the pending release of the new book by Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook, titled Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead – you will have been witnessing the core ingredients to a very good social cause marketing case study.

Read the rest of this entry »

03.12.13

The New Business Acquisition Power of Social Media for Business to Business Firms

online marketing strategy

Proving the Digital Experts Wrong
Much has been written over the last few years about the role of digital marketing and social media for business, yet the subject remains one viewed by most executives with skepticism bordering on derision. Like any other new channel to market, there are plenty of myths and equal measures of hype surround the subject, with an as-yet poorly defined roadmap for how companies might navigate the medium for commercial benefit. This conundrum becomes less clear again when applied to the B2B categories and professional services firms in particular. Our own experience four years ago was consistently sage advice from the experts that social media simply wouldn’t work as a driver of new business inquiries for a professional services firm in our field of brand strategy and design. There was a firm view expressed to us that the nature of the projects we worked-on, and the investment required which is typically in the tens of thousands of dollars meant that there was little benefit in investigation the resources and budget required to implement an ongoing social media strategy. Thankfully we had a firm belief that this commonly held view was incorrect, and our experience with social media as a business acquisition tool has proven to be a positive one in every sense of the word.

Read the rest of this entry »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »