A brand is much more than a logo or a tagline. It’s the cohesive combination of what the brand stands for, what it says and what it does. To truly come to life, a brand needs dimension beyond the 2D world of its verbal and visual identity; it needs to live in the everyday…
While conducting research for our branding project with ICF, a global consulting firm, we did a lot of “typical” research: in-depth interviews with senior leaders in the organization, conversations with current and prospective clients, and an online, all-employee survey. We were getting a lot of good material – insight into the company culture, perspectives…
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…
For a business to be successful, it’s no longer enough to just have the best offering or most talented employees. These have become table stakes thanks to players like Amazon and Airbnb that have reinvented what it means to be customer-centric. Now, customers can order almost anything with the click of a button…
SailPoint, a worldwide industry leader in identity and access management, had succeeded in winning over technical buyers with its superior products. But it struggled to connect with the C-suite and business executives who were becoming increasingly involved in security and IT purchase decisions— and who did not prioritize identity management as a critical IT…
In professional services, people are the brand. If consultants, accountants and attorneys don’t walk, talk and think their firm’s brand, the brand may never amount to more than a catchy tagline or an attractive logo. But professionals are a tough audience to convert to brand ambassadors. They work long hours, often billing for…
DeSantis Breindel recently met with Forrester as part of Huddle — an intimate community of B2B marketing leaders who come together to connect, collaborate, and learn from each other and from outside experts. Forrester researchers and branding experts shared some of their latest CMO research about human-centered branding and B2B customer obsession. Here are key…
The traditional lines between technology and management consulting are blurring. And consulting firms of all sizes are trying to keep up, broadening the scope of their offering (often through acquisitions) to meet the increasing demand for technology solutions and services.
We first looked at this situation in 2015, when we read the TBR 2015 Professional…
Have you ever put on a favorite sweater or jacket, looked in the mirror and thought, with a sinking feeling, It’s just not working for me anymore? The garment’s the same. It’s you that’s changed.
So it is with a brand. The brand that got your company to its current level…
Securing internal buy-in is one of the most difficult, and necessary, parts of any branding project. And, as more and more areas of the organization realize the importance and implications of brand, more and more stakeholders’ sign-offs are becoming necessary before a new positioning is embraced.
We’re used to this increased decision…
Millennials. Generation Y. Whatever you call them, consumer brands understand the importance of the huge cohort born between 1980 and 2000. Whether they think millennials are refreshingly confident and engaged, inappropriately self-centered and entitled, or some combination of the two, marketers realize they are critical to the success of consumer businesses, responsible for $600…
One of the most common objections we hear during rebranding initiatives with professional services firms is, “This is a people business. Why do we need a brand?” Senior partners and “star” consultants or lawyers assume that their clients are buying them – their knowledge, their expertise, their charisma. But in today’s hyper-competitive global marketplace…
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A leading energy consulting firm had a proprietary methodology for significantly reducing energy costs (think seven-figure savings, each year). Though the company’s proprietary solution was extremely powerful, it was communicated in such a seemingly straightforward manner, that many prospective clients thought – mistakenly –they could build a comparable energy-savings program on their own…
You’ve heard these statements from professional services firms before: “We are committed to meeting client needs,” “We have deep industry expertise,” “We have a culture of transparency and trust,” These statements might be true, but they are also completely forgettable. They do nothing to make the firm stand out.
Finding a unique brand position…
We recently partnered with a fast-growing data analytics company. It had successfully leapfrogged larger, more established competitors by providing hands-on, high-touch, over-the-top customer service. Branding around this level of service was a no-brainer, right? Well, maybe not. The company was preparing to go public. High-touch service is a…
