The top 5% of star companies focus on building their power brands to turn sales transactions into loyal relationships, buyers into followers, while the 95% businesses just survive by focusing on just the bottom line, nose on the grindstone.
How many types of roofs can you visualize in 6 seconds? Now, STRETCH your imagination, and visualize what comes to your mind when you hear this sentence: “Our vast knowledge in various types of roofing installations is one of our greatest assets.” Perhaps a roof or two come to your visual mind?
From branding point of view, there is no better way of defining a brand’s unique value propositions (“UVPs”) than by studying its peers or “competitors”. How else do you differentiate yourself in the marketplace? It is by a theory of relativity and the myth of one’s innate originality. A brand needs to have a limitless mindset rather than a limiting one to embrace and leverage competition and turning competitors into peers. Synergy created by mutually supplementing strengths and weaknesses with collaboration among competitors creates better UVPs and a diverse ecosystem.
A brand lives and breathes. A brand’s survival depends on how it adapts to its natural environment. When the market environment changes, the brand, even though it has been around for more than 100 years, must rapidly adapt, or die. To thrive, rather than just survive, we need to regularly evaluate a brand and the marketing approach for the brand - in relationship to the competitive environment in which it exists and then come up with potent and fresh marketing tactics and brand narratives to promote each brand’s unique value propositions and persona.
Meaning + Emotions = Storytelling. To live is to be part of a story. To live a story, a vision, a dream, marks the difference between “living” and “existing.” For a business, it is the story that’s the difference between “selling products” and “influencing with a brand”. For a customer, that’s difference between being “sold [...]
If you’d like to first read the preceding Part 1, here is the link: (https://10plusbrand.com/2018/10/21/in-machines-we-trust-verifying-authenticity-by-ai-and-blockchain-part-1-of-2/ Who has the final authority to declare truth or falsehood? Who is to judge if a piece of news is fake or real or in-between, for a specific purpose or use by particular humans? In the end, a human [...]
“Information Authenticating Tech” is most desired today A prestigious club in Silicon Valley (Churchill Club) has annual predictions of the top 10 trends in technology. In May 2018, the winner by popular vote of several hundred in the attending audience was the prediction of a new class of software that guarantees authenticity for news, authorship, [...]
The danger of casually made “selfie” videos Has this ever happened to you: On LinkedIn you stumbled upon a shaky “selfie” video of a talking face trying to impose his/her messages on you, and you just couldn’t wait to click away, as if shooing away a fly? My heart goes out to those who create [...]
Giving customers a brand-experience “Buy experience, not things” is characterized as the new consumer trait for millenials and an increasing amount of people from other generations. Marketing and more importantly, BRAND-marketing is now more about your company’s identity (reputation, quality, trustworthiness, why you exist and more) and this identity can be delivered by giving buyers [...]
John McCain, A true American hero who has served his country for 60 years above himself and everything else, is resting in eternal peace today, August 25, 2018. The power of his own authentic brand transcended his affiliation with the Republican political party long before his passing. His own legacy, entirely based on the content [...]
