Making sense of international marketing and brand strategy in the information age
Confusion, loss of vision, incessant babbling. They used to call it old age or senility. Now we recognize these as the symptoms of brand dementia. Brand dementia is the leading cause of... Read more
20 August, 2012Yesterday during a presentation in Stockholm, my desktop was put up on screen. The CEO of the company began to laugh. “I thought I was bad,” he said, “You have almost 95 thousand unread... Read more
10 August, 2012Part 2 of 2 To recap from part one: Although their tenure is increasing, CMOs are still the most frequently fired members of the C-Suite. A survey conducted by the The Fournaise Marketing Group... Read more
31 July, 2012Part 1 of 2 The concept of the “ROI Marketer” was coined this month in a report from the The Fournaise Marketing Group. Here’s why I think this is the worst idea in marketing — and why it... Read more
25 July, 2012You have read how social media wastes a lot of people's time. I couldn't agree more. But I'm not talking about the three hours you spent on Pinterest last night. I'm talking about the hundereds of... Read more
19 July, 2012As we head into the dog days of summer, I'm sure a lot of you have your mind elsewhere (like the golf course). So I thought I would join you on the links with a golf analogy to emphasize the... Read more
15 July, 2012Part 4 of 4 From a branding perspective, Google's behavior is consistent with a company that sees itself as too big to fail. As recent history has taught us, no company is too big to fail (or, at... Read more
10 July, 2012Part 3 of 4 “Don’t be evil” was coined by Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel in 2000 and has been kicking around as an unofficial motto ever since. It was included in the prospectus... Read more
6 July, 2012Part 2 of 4 I don’t believe any brand can be everything to everybody. But that seems to be the new ambition in Mountain View. Over the past decade or so, Google has launched or acquired 217... Read more
27 June, 2012Part 1 of 4 To most people Google seems to be a benevolent nerd-fest offering a free search engine and other online stuff with a quirky corporate culture. That seems accurate. But beneath the Doodles... Read more
25 June, 2012
