brand culture compass

The Role of Culture in Brand

If we have a mantra at MarketPoint, it’s this: In order for a brand to succeed, it has to be authentic, transaction-worthy and sustainable. By “authentic,” we mean the brand must be consistent with the values, the purpose, and actions of the organization. “Transaction-worthy,” of course, implies that the brand must offer genuine value in context of the market’s needs and desires. And “sustainability” requires that the organization is committed to delivering on the brand promise at every touch-point in the customer experience.
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Big Fish - Shark

Eating the Big Fish

Often, in our work with organizational leaders, executives will reference seminal works by prominent business authors. Some titles seem to pop up routinely, others less so. One title we hear surprisingly seldom is Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders (Adam Morgan, 1999). Yet, to us, the concepts Morgan develops in Eating the Big Fish are every bit as critical to success as those of Trout and Reis, or Rosser Reeves, or Kim and Mauborgne, or Malcolm Gladwell, or Jim Collins, or Seth Godin. And so, we’ve decided to offer a brief overview, here… Read more

Bite Apple

One Last Bite at the Apple

In 1999, Adam Morgan published Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders, a manifesto on winning in the face of superior competition. Big Fish was about taking on the market leader despite limited resources; it was about making your own rules; it was about redefining the terms by which a product category should be judged.

Big Fish offered an alternative path to the top. In every market, Morgan argued, the leader was already entrenched, his inertia impossible to overcome by brute force, and his war chest overflowing with resources. The only path to market share, Morgan warned, was to win the battle for mindshare, and the context of that conflict would be defined in terms of thought leadership – with ideas that truly added value.

Morgan outlined eight “credos” of Challenger Brands. And though he illustrated his work with examples of many companies in many markets, the book was, more than any other, the story of one man – Steve Jobs. Read more

Sample infographic designed by Freepik http://www.freepik.com

Five Tips for Creating Meaningful Infographics – Confessions of an Addict

If you’re reading this article on SocialMediaToday, you probably know far more about the mechanics of creating infographics than I. If you’re reading it on my blog, maybe not. Either way, these tips from an infographics addict could go some distance toward improving the social media landscape. So, without further ado, here are five, by-no-means-exhaustive tips…
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Seth Godin We Are All Weird

Why You Should Read Seth Godin’s Latest Book (We Are All Weird)

I don’t mind admitting it – I’m a big fan of Seth Godin. So, when he announced his new book We Are All Weird in his September 21 blog post, I immediately bought the hardcover. Read more

Ending the War over Social Media Marketing Governance

What follows (all in the space of 500 words) are three interesting stories. The first two are closely interwoven; the third seems unrelated. Together, they span thousands of years. And while each is fascinating in its own right, when seen as one, they provide a solution to the war of governance over social media marketing.
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social media give and take

Social Media for Business is about Giving, not Taking

Many organizations – and particularly businesses – still look at social media and wonder, “Where’s the value?” From their perspective, social media fails to deliver the goods. And the bad news is, from their perspective, it probably always will – because the question “What can I get out of social media?” misses the very point of social media.
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Communications Problems

Weighing the Impact of Delivery on Deliverables

I began my career as a newspaper journalist, far from the glamour and lights of the CNN anchor desk. There, with the guidance of more experienced writers and editors, I learned to write compelling stories – stories that not only informed but captivated readers, giving them something to talk about, something to think about, and occasionally something to act upon. At the paper, brevity and facts were my deliverables. Life was simple.
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Looking Up to Mr. Weiner

Perhaps, businesses would do well to follow the lead of Congressman Weiner. No, not his internet flirting, or his bad-judgment photo texting, or his blatant lies to reporters… but his apology. In the rush to vilify Mr. Weiner and brush aside the whole affair in favor of the latest headline, we may have missed the moral of the story. In the end – albeit prompted by the fact that he was caught red-handed – Weiner apologized. And he did it well.
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Distracted Driver

Distracted Caller Law

Distracted driver laws are a source of heated debate in the United States. Consumer safety groups and law enforcement agencies warn of the dangers of distracted driving, citing statistics made available through the U.S. Government’s Department of Transportation, while users argue that cell phones create no more inherent danger than drive-through restaurants. In all, 34 states (and the District of Columbia) have enacted some form of Distracted Driver legislation, with 8 states specifically outlawing use of hand-held phones while driving. In 2009 alone (most recent Government statistics), 20% of all injury crashes – and 5,474 fatalities – involved distracted driving. And according to one study conducted by the University of Utah, “motorists who talk on handheld or hands-free cellular phones are as impaired as drunken drivers.”
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