We the people

Reprinted from The Journal of Brand Management, Volume 15, Number 2, November 2007.

Branding is about people. People build brands. People buy brands. The relationship, at first glance, is a simple one - build a good brand and others will buy it. At the heart of this relationship, however, is another group of people, that of the employees. It is the employees who enact the attributes of the brand and whose actions ultimately foster customer experience - whether good or bad. Staff actions should reinforce the promises a brand makes to its customers. If wisely conducted, this reinforcement breeds more success in terms of sales, awareness and loyalty. Employees have the formidable task of demonstrating the brand by the actions they take. The adage actions speak louder than words is a truth that holds firm in the process of building successful brands.

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Giving strategy
some momentum

Reprinted from Business Voice, the CBI magazine, July/August 2006.

Ask ten people to define strategy, and almost inevitably, you will be presented with eleven answers - each of them different. This is unfortunate, especially in today's fast-paced world where the right strategy, properly executed, may just be the difference between failure and success.

The most succinct description of strategy at a meta-level, is to pose three questions -

• Where are you now?
• Where do you want to go?
• How will you get there?

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Of cows and men

(with apologies to Steinbeck)

This article first appeared in Exhibit: A Quarterly Review of Alternative News, Gamma issue, Summer 2003.

It was while growing up in Louisiana that I was given one of those earthy pearls of wisdom that sticks with you for life, although I can no longer remember the source. 'When cows escape from the farm, you've got two problems. You have to catch the cows and you have to mend the fence'. This may not be as powerful a tool as the BCG matrix, or anything produced by Michael Porter, but it is a simple representation of the duality and multifaceted nature of issues we face in everyday problem solving.

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