Category Archives: Brand Strategy & Planning

  Traditional marketing plans start with research, followed by planning and execution—in that order. Long-term marketing planning is important, but the ability to respond to marketplace events as they unfold is becoming a crucial planning and management skill. Agile marketing compresses initial planning, combining strategy with execution and adjusting course along the way by incorporating… Read More »

A Conversation with Ben Hill, Director of Marketing, Northwestern Medicine  A world of change Spurred by a long and steady rise in cost, as well as extensive new policy and legislative requirements, healthcare is undergoing massive change. And these change dynamics are leading to innovation within healthcare provider systems, among physicians and administrators alike. Consumers… Read More »

Innovation is a sensitive process. Creating a hospitable climate for innovation is a leadership skill. In her newest book, Midnight Lunch, The Four Phases of Team Collaboration Success from Thomas Edison’s Lab, innovation expert Sarah Miller Caldicott peels back the study of successful innovation practices, to find what it takes to establish a culture and… Read More »

Organizations face dramatic changes in their marketing channels. They are contending with enormous industry changes. They struggle to understand exactly which direction to take. This is not true of just a few companies. Everyone must change and evolve in order to keep their competitive advantage and to exploit boundless opportunity of our expanding markets. Brands… Read More »

All too often—and too quickly— marketing planning falls to the discussion of tactics, and the thinking becomes limited by what has been done before, or what people can imagine possible. Whether marketing thinking also arises from disagreement among the planning team, narrow, insufficient support for ideas, or failure to sell in to leadership. The net… Read More »

Business strategy is a firm’s theory about how to compete successfully— Peter Drucker. The job of marketing is to articulate the go-to-market strategy, and the business strategy is always the foundation for the marketing strategy. Business strategy is a competitive strategy and must attract potential customers, either by moving them away from other options, or… Read More »

  A secret brand is a business built without a big investment in publicity or paid media. The focus is entirely on getting customers or users. These companies are headed by strong technologists, product people who really understand their users and problem their products solve. With a secret brand, there is very little “spill” in… Read More »