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Adapting as Reality Changes Its Spots The “New Normal” is a phrase with which we’ve become all too familiar, with everyone guessing what post-Covid consumer behavior will look like and tailoring their responses accordingly. In 1973 oil prices spiked and gas shortages had drivers stopped in their tracks, leaving the global auto industry guessing about […]
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Refining Your Purpose to Find a Way Forward Forward can be a relative direction. In business we always want to be moving forward, but unlike North or West, each business has to define forward for itself. Apple Computer thought its forward lay in the launch of a new product. Based on an innovative touchscreen technology, […]
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Planning for the New Normal The public debate about reopening — whether businesses or beaches — shows no signs of a quick resolution and decision makers are finding that they will have to decide the right way to rebuild. This was a problem the city of Chicago faced in 1871 when a cow on the […]
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Staying Prepared When You’re Stuck on the Ground Uncertain times are the reason we work so hard to define ourselves – a clear, simple purpose is a deceptively difficult thing to distill but it provides something solid to hold on to when everything else is shaking. When one of Apollo 13’s oxygen tanks exploded, Ken […]
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How to Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say When You Write – And Maybe Move Some Hearts and Minds The Iceberg Ernest Hemingway’s short story Hills Like White Elephants begins: “The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees […]
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M&A decisions are based on multiple factors, principally expected financial benefit, operational synergies, the acquisition of a new user or client base, etc. However, companies must take into account the impact on brand, since the outward face of the post-M&A integration can have serious repercussions for both external market perception and internal organizational culture, not […]
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Successful brands combine both tangible and intangible qualities to evoke deep associations that engender loyalty among consumers. Among the most important intangible qualities are the people behind the brands and organizations we love most. These creators and keepers of the culture align the organization around the values and behaviors that form the outward brand personification […]
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Essential Brand Stewardship During M & A Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activity has accelerated for the last several years, supported by an unprecedented economic rebound in the US. M&A activity continues to drive forward new companies and combinations of previously existing ones, necessitating concerted effort to conserve and extend brand value throughout the M&A processes. […]
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Just like for their human stewards, the start of a new year (and decade!) provides a propitious promontory for brands to reflect back and evaluate all they’ve accomplished – and envision how they’d want the following year to look. What were some of the biggest achievements this year? What are some of the things we […]
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One of the most striking facets of the debacle of WeWork’s failed IPO and its pre-Thanksgiving set of layoffs is how very public the raw news has spread. Of course, people pay attention to a company with such a meteoric rise and there may as well be a bit of schadenfreude watching the implosion of […]
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