I’ve been a marketer for more years than I’d like to count, so I’ve been able to witness numerous marketing communications triumphs, failures, and ho-hum results. And I’ve admittedly been responsible for...
Sometimes, the most valuable business lessons are those that are formed early in one’s career. In my case, I discovered the importance of “truth in marketing” from a rather young and inexperienced automotive engineer....
Imagine that there are two gold miners: Swifty and Grace. Both are skilled mining managers and have dual degrees in engineering and mineralogy. Both are working mines that have been in operation for years. Over time, Swifty experiences a decline in his monthly yield of gold ore. Figuring that the actions he has taken for years have always worked, Swifty has his crews blast away ever more aggressively, with more equipment deployed over longer hours. Grace also experiences a similar decline in yield, but she takes a different tack. Instead of just doing more of the same, she assesses the situation. Grace...
Here’s a distressing thought: New research might suggest that everything you ever learned about brand marketing was wrong. Okay, saying everything you learned is invalid might be an exaggeration, but there are several recent studies coming to light that suggest the old brand identity model popularized by David Aaker several years ago just doesn’t work in most product categories. Yes, you read that right – new findings suggest that most of the advice first popularized in Aaker’s blockbuster book, Building Strong Brands, is fundamentally useless to marketing managers. Moreover, these same findings suggest that the wisdom of “The Aaker Model” didn’t simply fade...