Promise, deliver, prosper.

A brand is made up of two critical moments, a promise that inspires engagement and how close your experience is to that promise. All this builds your reputation.

Brands can promise all sorts of things, from literal promises like Woolworths’ “Australia’s fresh food people” to aspirational promises like Nike’s ‘Just do it’. These promises are often reflected in their positioning lines, and are certainly presented in their advertising.

How do you choose what to promise?

The first thing is to identify what value you bring to your customer in its most distilled state. Think about what inspires them to come to you. For instance, if you are a tax accountant,… ...read more

My tip for 2012 is confidence!

My goal this year is to not listen to the naysayers and doomsdayers. I'm concerned that hearing this and thinking about it a lot will negatively impact my ability to make the decisions required to build inspiring brands.

I understand how hearing doom and gloom on the finance report morning and night, might make you feel scared and drive you to activate your disaster survival plan (ultra conservative decision making, mixed in with a large dose of budget cutting within the 'innovation department', not to mention holding your hands over your eyes). It is after all, human nature to be risk adverse at times of uncertainty, Seth Godin calls it listening to our lizard brain, I call it the fastest… ...read more

The colour of India

India provides us branding lessons.

Having just returned from India I’ve been wrestling about what to write. I wanted to show India for all its wonderful chaos, beauty and confronting persona and draw some branding lessons from this. I could have written about cultural identity, and how New Delhi is tattooed with cultural expression including temples, monuments and unique cultural enclaves. I could have written about tolerance and harmony of different groups. I could have discussed why such an exhibition of power and control persists from the time you… ...read more