Brand Planning

Watch out, here comes Wonder-Woman

Brands beware. There’s a highly powerful and increasingly influential segment of women fast emerging.
She’s confident, she’s ambitious. She’s strong-willed and well educated. She’s married. And she earns significantly more than her husband. In short, we call her Wonder-Woman. She represents a large chunk of consumer spending power. And it’s time for brands to take her [...]

Headed for a breakup with your best customers?

They’re looking for someone who gets them. Think of it as a personal ad … from one of your best customers. For most service marketers, it’s a pretty chilling message, one that reflects an important truth that we uncovered in our recent study, Service Marketing in the Era of Brand Vulnerability. More than ever, the [...]

2010: A smarter, wiser and responsibly indulgent consumer

Based on our studies, we anticipate the consumer will transition into recovery mode in 2010 and start spending again, but with some degree of moderation.
By contrast to the free-spending days of old, the post-apocalyptic consumer will be more savvy, responsible and prudent – although interestingly, as the year progresses, they’ll be increasingly more likely to [...]

Mullen’s new director of strategic analytics builds technology for personalized communication

Mullen announced today that Dinesh Gopinath, Ph.D., has joined the agency as executive vice president, director of strategic analytics. Gopinath, who was selected after a review of 35 candidates, will lead the agency’s analytics practice, which plays a key role in modeling, predicting and optimizing communications strategies across a wide range of client businesses. [...]

Marketing service brands: the toughest branding challenge today?

When it comes to building and maintaining a strong and distinctive brand in any category, the marketing terrain has never been more challenging. Arguably, the challenge is even more daunting for service brands. In part this reflects the power of today’s better-connected, highly empowered consumer to use digital word of mouth to spread the news [...]

The thousand days of pain

Last week I had the honor of participating in a panel at the New York Times building and the opportunity to talk about “Marketing in a Recession.”
The event was sponsored by outprofessionals.org, moderated by Stuart Elliott of the New York Times, and featured panelists Rachel Sklar (photo: right), editor-in-large at Mediaite, and Stephanie Blackwood (photo: [...]

Taking time to smell (and harvest) the roses

As technology and globalization continue to expand, our appetite for instant gratification grows with them. Given the fast paced, multitasking, 24/7 society we live in, it’s surprising that one of the biggest growing trends right now is about slowing down. Starting as one man’s protest of a McDonald’s opening in Rome, and fueled by books [...]

Game changing questions for service marketers

While working with our service-industry clients to assess their brand and business-building strategies and programs, typically we begin by asking some potentially game-changing questions:

What’s your plan for branding from the inside out? Are your employees steeped in the brand? They better be, because the strongest service brands today are built on an employee base that [...]

A cultural awakening: the new era of the Yippie

Summer is in the air. It’s a new beginning. And with a sea of tents before you and over 70,000 starry-eyed young adults gathered all around, you’re smack in the middle of the Bonnaroo music festival. It feels like a Gen Y Woodstock and percolating below the hub of excitement a new set of values [...]

There’s brilliance in simplicity: the rule of one, two or three

It’s a complicated world. There’s a lot at stake. And the last thing a brand needs is an overly convoluted positioning idea. Let’s be honest, complexity is so yesterday. Today’s new brilliant is simplicity. That’s what a brand needs to win.
But why’s being simple, so brilliant?
It’s because in an undifferentiated world, being clear about what [...]