The legendary management consultant, educator, and author Peter Drucker liked to say that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The best-laid strategic plans invariably hit a wall if they are not aligned with the organization’s culture — the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company’s employees and management interact and handle business transactions…
While a comprehensive verbal and visual system forms the foundation of a brand, it’s only the beginning of executing an effective branding strategy. To be successful, a brand needs to be expressed consistently across all internal and external touchpoints. Consistency is critical to establish a well-defined brand and eliminate confusion in the marketplace…
Technology has been a business game-changer at every level — revolutionizing customer experience, enabling groundbreaking innovations, and accelerating the speed of business. Technology giants are expanding their reach while companies with decidedly non-tech histories like Maersk and even McDonald’s have reinvented themselves to excel in the digital era.
B2B tech companies need to…
Our clients have delivered many bits of wisdom as we’ve navigated the pandemic era together. One, from consulting firm West Monroe, stands out in particular: 2020 was the year of the customer, while 2021 is the year of the employee. With so much focus on customer-facing pandemic pivots, employees went above and beyond…
It’s the classic chicken or egg question — which element comes first when aligning brand and culture? Leadership teams often ask us this question during transformation initiatives. While there is no one-size-fits-all answer, there are three critical questions that any leadership team must answer to understand how to begin optimizing the relationship…
A tale as old as time
From early humans drawing pictures on walls to parents telling bedtime tales; from ancient civilizations that invented myths to modern creators who create sagas on the screen and plots on the page — storytelling is a tradition as old as humanity. Today, it’s also one of the most popular…
In the second post of our archetype series, we looked at how a brand team can successfully identify which archetype their brand is and why. Once they’ve aligned around the role the brand plays in its customers’ lives, that information will serve as a guide as they develop brand strategy and express it through…
As we noted in the first post of this series, brands are similar to people — they’re driven by unique personalities that help create their identities. To help our clients tap into their own archetypes, we’ve developed an interactive exercise that guides them through an exploration of nine Jungian archetypes. We challenge workshop participants…
In a crowded market, it can be tough for brands to find whitespace. Identifying an ownable market positioning while maintaining brand authenticity is infinitely harder — but doing so is imperative for a brand’s ongoing success.
Our client, CDISC, was facing this challenge. CDISC began as a grassroots, nonprofit organization determined to develop and advance…
Few would dispute that the world in which we live and work is changing at an extraordinary pace. In this dynamic landscape, business executives face immense pressure to not only survive – but thrive. In other words, they have to keep up with the pace while bumping up profits.
Continuous innovation is a strategy we hear…
Brand positioning. It’s a concept pioneered by branding legends Jack Trout and Al Ries in the 1960s that has since become the essential foundation upon which all of an organization’s marketing is based —from print campaigns to digital engagement, sales outreach to recruitment efforts, content strategy to customer journey mapping. Defined as the…
According to the Harvard Business Review, “study after study puts the failure rate of mergers at somewhere between 70-90%.” More often than not, brand is not promoted or leveraged to provide unity, clarity and solidarity during this critical inflection point, yet brand can make all the difference between success and failure for the companies…
We recently found ourselves in the following conversation:
Client: We need to engage employees in our company’s new mission. We need your help with the execution of the communications campaign. We already have the positioning and messaging. The CEO wrote it.
DB: Oh, that’s great. What kind of research was conducted in developing…
In 2015, a year marked by unprecedented M&A activity in the technology industry, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (itself a spin-off) made headlines with its announcement of plans to spin-off its technology services operations and merge them with those of Computer Sciences. As then-Chief Executive Meg Whitman told it, the deal was…
Successful B2B brands are built from the inside out. A company’s own people are the living embodiment of the brand in a way that is rarely the case with consumer businesses. How a B2B company’s people act, speak and even think will be far more effective in communicating the brand’s promise than…
When it comes to maximizing the impact of corporate volunteer programs, a well thought-out branding and communications strategy can be your most powerful tool. This whitepaper shares seven principles for leveraging communications to enhance the long-term success and impact of your employee volunteer program.
Although it seems like just yesterday we were reading about the rise of the millennials, a new generation is hovering outside the threshold of the corporate world. Generation Z is about to hit the workforce, and their unique motivations will force brands to reevaluate their internal and external strategies. While businesses have a few years…
Two regional banks’ futures are on the line, and all stakeholders await the decisions of the top brass: will a merger-of-equals result in lay-offs? At large firms today, most communication happens through email, and that’s how a lot of news is delivered (hopefully employees never have to learn company news via…