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Is the age of the Goliath brand over? Author Ben Zifkin’s book The Rise of the Craft Brand, set’s out a compelling case for why smaller, craft-focused brands are set to become a force in the changing world of commerce. The world of brands and…

D-Day approaches as Southern Cross Austereo (SCN) rebrands regional radio as Triple M or Hit. Next week, most of SCNs regional stations will get a new name and identity to align with the company’s city stations. This is largely a corporate brand architecture approach to…

  Meaningful branding builds deeper customer loyalty An unwritten law of commerce is that we do business with those we like. This applies equally to B2B sales as it does to B2C where it’s often about how much we like the brand rather than the…

There’s more to branding than meets the eye Recently a small, independent supermarket opened at our local shopping strip. I was immediately drawn to the name and brand identity which are  naively unethical and amusing in equal measures. It turns out this is the fifth…

Exclusivity has always been an important differentiator for luxury brands. Quality, price and aspiration are the other key dimensions for brands wishing to be positioned in the luxury end of their category. As a category becomes more competitive (such as the craft end of the…

The trend of minimalist branding We’ve had some recent discussion with clients and in turn in the studio about the relevance of minimalism in brand identity or logo design. Some point to a trend of recent rebrands like Pentegram’s work for Mastrcard, wondering if there’s…

How much are consumers really noticing your brand? In 2004 Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons shared the Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology, awarded for ‘achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think’, for the experiment they completed at Harvard that inspired The…

When mega brands go organic Gatorade is introducing an organic version of it’s brightly coloured sugar water for ‘athletes’. While the new product will be tested in select markets it seams Pepsi Co., the parent brand, sees the threat to the market dominant sports drink from more…

BONDS introduces their first ever cross-category sports range – led by a perfectly on brand campaign. BONDS have recently announced the introduction of their first ever cross-category sports range. The collection features BodyCool technology, which boasts moisture absorbing and quick dry properties, and marks a…

Differentiation works in Major League Baseball too. Re-reading Marty Neumeier’s book ‘Zag’ this week, I was fascinated by the story of America’s shortest ever professional baseball, Willie Keeler. Wee Willie, as he was known back in the good ol’ politically incorrect days of the 1890s…

Optus is the second largest telecommunications provider in Australia offering mobile, fixed, and broadband services to consumer and business customers. It has repositioned itself in the market with a flexible rebrand. You may remember their recent rebrand back in 2013 that received many mixed reviews and…

Department store giant David Jones unveils new Spring/Summer 2016 collections and new brand promise. Department store giant David Jones has launched their new Spring/Summer 2016 collections, along with a new brand promise ‘One Name: Endless Possibilities’. The new campaign was launched over the weekend, with…

The changing landscape of hotel accommodation to target millennial travellers Since Airbnb’s disruption of the hotel industry from its inception in 2008, and pioneering a shift toward the sharing economy, many have predicted the demise of traditional hotels as a result. While younger travellers have…

Once again Telstra’s public relations team is frantically working to deal another brand attack, this time from Choice. The problem for Telstra is their network performance is not just core to the brand, it is really everything the brand stands for. Telstra needs to urgently…

Melbourne brand strategy and design agency has developed new packaging, brand messaging and design for the Heatbeads range of products. “The team at Truly Deeply took the time to really understand the Heatbeads customers and market to create packaging that both respected our brand’s long…

Measuring your brand’s social standing Jeremy Waite (Head of Digital Strategy EMEA @Salesforce.com Marketing Cloud) in his book, ‘From Survival to Significance’ represents an interesting perspective on the way brands and consumers engage on social media. This is an area of brand management that is…

  The Science of Brand Influence Here at Truly Deeply we bang-on a lot about brand experiences and why they are so important for brand engagement. The science behind this phenomena is what we call the Dopamine effect. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (a chemical in…

Time for Lion Group to step up. It’s milk brands, including PURA and Dairy Farmers are suffering from no real brand differentiation and now they are fighting a legal as well as marketing battle. For decades, full cream milk has been just been milk. The…

4 Basic rules the top brands are using to ensure brand survival Branding is one of the key areas a business should focus on in order to differentiate themselves within a crowded market. Brands that we have grown to love, would not have had such an immense…

Customer Evolution – The Important Numbers for the Future of Retail Brands Recently I attended a presentation on Global Trends in Retail put on by PWC. One of the speakers was Dr Violet Lazarevic from Monash Business Schools ‘Australian Consumer, Retail, and Services’ Research Unit…

How Wesfarmers’ cannibalisation strategy backfired, leading to Target’s downfall Brand cannibalisation occurs when a company offers a brand, product or service that directly competes with another within the same company. When this level of internal competition is directly head-to-head, only the strongest will survive. Australian consumers…

A good brand story is worth a thousand data points. Science & education You-tuber; Veritasium looks at why a story is much better at influencing our decisions than hard data. For so many brand managers and brand owners the emphasis in their branding is focused…

By its nature, a boutique brand built on super relevant experiences is intrinsically linked to one location. Brand and independence are often at odds, but W Hotels seems to have cracked the code of how to scale luxury experiences and having a clearly defined brand…

Music streaming giant Spotify continues their expansion of audio advertising by  allowing brands to sponsor their most popular playlists. Spotify has announced that they will be expanding their advertising opportunities by allowing brands to sponsor their most popular owned and operated playlists. Brands have previously been able…

When is a car more than a brand? Never! Specially when we don’t want to talk about the car, but we still have to sell them? Volkswagen latest campaign #morethanacar focused directly on the value of brand heritage to stir the emotions in the car…

The Finnish company signs a new agreement, making a comeback doing what they once did best, but is the boat already too far gone?  Two years after Microsoft’s mistreatment of Nokia’s mobile business, the Finland based company has signed a new strategic brand and intellectual…

Managing brand reputation is becoming increasingly challenging A plumber in the US state of Texas is suing a car dealer for US$1m after a truck he traded-in appeared in a propaganda video from Syrian rebels in an attack on the city of Aleppo. When he…

UberEATS arrives in Melbourne, helping restaurants reach more consumers, but can the ‘market place’ app bring more harm than good? Melbourne recently became the first city in Australia to gain access to Uber’s diversification into food delivery services, UberEATS. UberEATS joins a highly competitive market…

Global hotel brand AccorHotels taps into key consumer trend to build brand affinity In the highly competitive world of hotel brand loyalty the battle is raging for the hearts of consumers. Air bnb – the worlds largest hospitality brand that doesn’t own a single room,…

All brands have associations – both positive and negative Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the minds of the market place. Well considered brands establish a differentiated value proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning to…

Watching a TED Talk recently from Organizational psychologist Adam Grant I came across a brilliant insight that challenged the long and firmly held belief of First Mover Advantage. For as long as I can remember in business and brand the ‘first mover paradigm’ dictated that…

Finally a green car brand without compromise. The huge challenge for all ‘Green Brands‘ is to meet or exceed consumer expectations on price, quality and design/functionality allowing those brands to then leverage their environmental credentials as a powerful differentiator. Almost without exception green brands offer-up…

Loved brands are profitable brands Is the whole ‘Loved Brands’ thing a fluffy piece of feelgood PR from the branding community or a commercially savvy strategy? That so much cynicism surrounds the brand industry must be a reflection of the inability of the industry to…

A questionable brand strategy In response to the UK Governments announcement it plans to increase tax on high sugar content soft drinks, Coke has announced plans to sue. As the soft drink market continues to decline globally Coke has been doing a good job of…

Ruslan Kogan to Revitalize Dick Smith Retail Brand It’d be tough to find two hotter topics in the world of brand and marketing than ‘new thinking brands disrupting’ and ‘old thinking brands imploding’. The latest move by Australian online retailer Kogan combines both. The move…

Not-for-profit providers pushed to market The National Disability Insurance Scheme, NDIS, was designed to support a better life for Australians with a significant and permanent disability, and also their families and carers. But the implementation of it, is having far reaching and costly implications for the not-for-profit…

How Brand Focus can be the best Brand Strategy One of the most powerful truisms of branding is; ‘You can’t be all things to all people’. Yet when we think about the supermarket category, and even the innovations in this space of convenience stores, mini-supermarkets…

Big food’s short term thinking on sugar Every day there seems to be more and more information surfacing about the activities of major food brands in response to the obesity epidemic the western world is facing. There’s little doubt they’re using their financial muscle and…

US burger brand disrupts the category with old school American attitude. Carl’s Jr. also known as Hardee’s, is the latest burger brand to hit the Australian shores. It’s bold, irreverent and unapologetic and it is focused on young hungry Aussie blokes.

You’ve got a great business idea, now it’s time to take the plunge into the world of brand to bring it to life. Not that we have favourites, but we do love a good start up business branding project. There is usually bucket loads of…

‘Enrich not exploit’ becomes new brand belief for The Body Shop After 40 years, The Body Shop is seeking to reaffirm its position as a leader in ethical business with a new commitment to its audiences. The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick has always wanted…

One Brand’s Loss in another Brand’s Gain The US Olympic Committee’s recent announcement that their athletes may choose to sit-out this year’s Games in Brazil if they have health concerns over the Zika virus may prove to be an ominous sign. Facing a whole host…

What exactly is a Challenger Brand and why are they so interesting? We’ve long been fans of Challenger Brands – businesses with the mindset to disrupt their category, to unlevel their playing field and upset their competitors’ apple carts. We categorise ‘challengers’ by mindset – what’s…

Has the West has reached it’s peak of Consumerism? During a recent interview with NPR in the US, IKEA’s Global Chief Sustainability Officer, Steve Howard opined: “If you look at things like oil–well, actually, oil sales have peaked in the U.S. and Western Europe. Beef sales have pretty…

Iconic Aussie surf brand gets $US600m refinancing approval from US Court and makes big brand plans. With its finances now under control, Quicksilver is planning to turn around fledgling brand with ‘boardrider’ stores that showcase the true brand experience.

  (Brand) names have baggage When creating a new name or identity for something there’s always the challenge of seconding guessing due to current associations. But by knowing you’re following a plan, backing yourself and a little patience it can all work out. Names are an…

D&G engages the valuable Muslim market You can count on a single finger the number of audiences with a US$300 billion annual spend ignored by major brands globally… that is up until now. With few exceptions the world’s major fashion brands have largely ignored the…

What should my branding cost? So you’re at start-up/running a growing business/recently merged/feeling the heat from new competition/just stepped into the big chair and you’ve got a sense that your branding isn’t working. No matter how clear-minded you are at leading your business, the task…

Not all brand activities are born equal. This is a brand principle that Nike know better than most brands as the recent release of the ‘Nike sole’. The Nike sole has been developed to fit onto the ‘flex-run’ prosthetic running blade, designed for by Nike…

Welcome to the New Retail Era The world of retail is changing more rapidly than ever. On-line stores compete with off-line stores, fashion boutiques feature new ranges every month, and it seems almost everything can be made in China for next to nothing, creating undifferentiated…

All Brands Have Meaning Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the minds of the market place. Well considered brands establish a competitive brand proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning to both differentiate themselves from their…