Musings of a Marketing Maven

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Entries Tagged as 'Brand Matters'

My Phone Company Is Stupid and Wasteful

January 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Brand Matters, Marketing

I wish some agency that specializes in intelligent database mining and direct marketing would help my local phone company stop wasting trees on fruitless direct mail pieces.
Here’s the deal: my recycle bin now contains somewhere between 5 and 10 pieces of unopened direct mail offers from Qwest,

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On Biking & Branding

November 14th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Brand Matters

The cycling sub-culture offers an interesting environment for observing the power of branding in action. Over the years I’ve learned that the “boys who bike” are very status conscious, and proudly display team affiliations and other brand badges all over their bodies, their bikes and their gear. I’ve also learned that if you ride the “wrong” bike, you’re invisible to your fellow cyclists.

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Learning from Parisian Shop Windows

November 13th, 2009 · No Comments · Brand Matters, Marketing

I love strolling and window shopping in Paris. There’s a special mystique that window dressers in Paris employ that brand teams and marketers everywhere would do well to emulate.
Shop windows in Paris do a wonderful job of conveying the idea of what’s being sold — of conveying the brand essence, helping you envision how you [...]

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Marketing to Women: 2 Examples

November 12th, 2009 · No Comments · Brand Matters, Marketing

After blogging about “the female economy” as the world’s biggest untapped market opportunity, I’ve been on the lookout for evidence that companies and brands are marketing specifically to women. I’ve seen a couple of examples recently, an encouraging sign.
Both offers focus on helping women overcome the gaps in our understanding of mechanics – things most [...]

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Falling Out of Love with QuickBooks

October 30th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Brand Matters, Tools & Technology

For years I’ve loved QuickBooks – a tool that made managing my company’s money remarkably pleasant. I used to rave about it to colleagues. But over the past several product releases I’ve become disenchanted; I think Intuit has lost its way, and has lost sight of whose interest it was pursuing.
No longer customer centered
With its [...]

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Visualizing Your Digital Persona

October 13th, 2009 · 3 Comments · Brand Matters, Tools & Technology

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have released an online tool that  attempts to characterize your digital persona based on data mining of online resources.
Right now the tool is in the fun and exploratory phase, but it offers food for thought. Have you ever wondered what your digital fingerprints might look like, if there [...]

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Managing Your Personal Brand

July 5th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Brand Matters, Marketing

My friend Shivonne Byrne has just posted a wonderful entry on how to manage your personal brand. Check out her blog: Marketfusions: Everything is a Brand, Including You.
She encourages people to think through:

Their person vision
Their fundamental purpose or reason for being
Their values
Their passion

and then develop a personal brand plan that will help them recognize wonderful opportunities [...]

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Lululemon: Cult-like Loyalty?

June 9th, 2009 · No Comments · Brand Matters, Marketing, Yoga

So how does Lululemon inspire such cult-like loyalty among its customer base (principally yoga practitioners)? They do the basics really well — for both in-store and online shopping. It’s clear they’re paying attention to customer experience management across many dimensions.
A Well-Designed Experience Playbook
Here are some of the things they get right:

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Business Purpose – Brand Context

April 27th, 2009 · No Comments · Brand Matters, Marketing

Last month I blogged on the purpose of a business and the problems that can arise when organizations lack a clear sense of purpose, or when they define success narrowly in financial (shareholder-centric) terms. Today’s post focuses on business purpose and its links to corporate brand strategy.
In the context of brand strategy, purpose energizes the [...]

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When Advertising Misrepresents the Brand, Who’s Accountable?

November 19th, 2007 · No Comments · Brand Matters, Marketing

A while ago, Forrester Research analyst Brian Haven asked who’s at fault when there’s a serious disconnect between the brand promise conveyed by the advertising campaign, and what a person experiences later. Is it the agency or the company (brand owner) that’s accountable?

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