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It’s Alright AI (I’m Only Bleeding)
“That he not busy being born is busy dying…” —Bob Dylan Don’t freak out, folks. It’s only a tool. I repeat: It’s only a tool. And so far, these water-and-emotion-infused human beings (aka, us) are the...
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Why Brand? First of All, You Have No Choice.
Naomi Klein published No Logo nearly 25 years ago, around the same time I started working in branding. Her book was hugely influential: a call to arms for branding sceptics and discontents of...
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Brands in the Boardroom V: Six Reasons to Prioritize Brand for Financial Success
Throughout my “Brands in the Boardroom” series, I have always advocated for brand as a major business driver and for it to have its rightful place in the boardroom. In this edition of the series, I...
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Brand Strategy Spoilers: People Decide on Cost, Not Price
In this, the sixth installment of my Brand Strategy Spoilers series, I unpack the decision-making factors that explain shopper and consumer behavior–specifically, the four drivers of behavior and the...
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How Can We Help Brands Become Good Ancestors?
The Sixties and Seventies saw the first moon landing, hippies, rural communes and environmentalism, anti-war protests, the civil rights movement, and women’s liberation. The period fired the...
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Brand Campaigns, Part 1: What Exactly Are They?
Not long ago–in a place far, far away (from Cannes)–five people debated the existence of double duty, exploring whether it was possible to deliver ‘brand’ and ‘performance’ together in one campaign....
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Consumer Insight Makes for a Uniquely Influential CMO
Chief marketing officers (CMOs) have, perhaps, the most challenging and complex role in the C-suite. I’m not saying that other jobs are easy, but for the most part, despite the pressures, other...
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Brand Campaigns, Part 2: Where Did They Come From?
[Disclaimer: Highly recommend you read Part 1 if you haven’t done so already. It’s where we define what a brand campaign actually is.] Sometimes, to truly understand why things are the way they are,...
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De-positioning Mastery: Solving the Hero Pain Point
De-positioning highlights the customer pain points you solve better than your competitors do while simultaneously underscoring the discrepancy. What you solve for customers is your ‘hero pain point’ –...
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Brand Campaigns, Part 3: How Does Brand Advertising Work?
“As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.” – John Wheeler To understand how brand advertising works or doesn’t work, we must first understand how all advertising works....
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Why Rebrand? Or Better Yet, Why Not?
If 20-plus years of brand consulting have taught me anything, it’s that rebranding is (and should be) a huge pain in the arse. Taken seriously, a rebrand touches every part of an organisation: It...
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Enter the AI-powered Mascot Paradigm of Brand Personification
Mark Zuckerberg launched Threads as a competitor of the microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter), with the platform gaining 30 million users within the first few hours after launch and crossing 100...
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Brand Campaigns, Part 4: Why and When Should You Use Them?
Every marketer is inspired by famous video commercials, especially early in their career. You know, those emotional, cinematic ads from brands we all know and love. Ads that tug at our heart strings,...
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Disconnected Sound in the License-Obsessed Land of High Fashion
In today’s highly competitive market, luxury fashion brands often seek innovative ways to enhance their brand image and captivate their target audience. One popular method is by association with an...
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Brand Campaigns, Part 5.1: Thinking Different about Apple’s “Think Different”...
In case you got the wrong idea, I’m not anti-advertising, anti-agency, or anti-brand. I just don’t have the luxury of entertaining company activity that doesn’t contribute to the bottom line. That’s...
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Brand Campaigns, Part 5.2: Debunking Apple’s “Greatest Ad of All Time”
“Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.” – Phaedrus This article is a direct follow-on from Part...
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Why Are African Brands Not Going Global at Scale?
I traveled out of Nigeria for the first time in 2019, on a short business trip to Dubai–an experience that left me with a huge aftershock. Though a significant number of Africans (up to 8% of the...
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Solid Branding Means Niching for a Person, Not a Market
“Zoom in and obsess. Zoom out and observe. We get to choose.” Rick Rubin wrote this in his recent book, The Creative Act. And it sums up (almost) perfectly how I feel about branding and how to do it...
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Brand Strategy Spoilers: Stopping the Clock on Consumer Time Barriers
This is the seventh installment in my Brand Strategy Spoilers series, which unpacks the decision-making factors that explain shopper and consumer behavior. Specifically, the four drivers of behavior...
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As with Human Evolution, Brand Growth Is Found Amidst Dichotomies
I centered my high school thesis on the wonderfully-written dichotomies that fill Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. A foreigner myself, I was fascinated by the fact that a non-native speaker could...
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