The Easiest Marketing Activity That Many Fail to Do
The secret to successful networking is not the initial meeting but the follow-up. Read more to find out how you connect more effectively.
How to Build a Powerful, Amazing Brand
Building a powerful brand is so much more than about advertising and social media. This blog offers practical tips to make your brand amazing.
The Amazing Cherry Blossoms and Growing a Business
As the cherry blossoms on my street hit their peak a few days ago, it made me think about how similar these beautiful trees are to the businesses we are growing every day. For more than 50 years, thanks to the civic-minded spirit of my neighborhood’s first residents, these trees have shaded my street.
Don’t Let Your Brand Collapse from Deferred Maintenance
In Marketing and Communications, it is easy to want to chase the shiny bright object--the newest social media platform, a new design for the logo, a new tagline. But the real magic of branding is making your brand live in the hearts and minds of your stakeholders.
Don’t Use the Word Strategic Unless You Mean It
It seems everyone and everything these days is strategic. We have strategic plans, enter into strategic partnerships, undertake strategic marketing, make strategic hires, and even, according to one State Department official, practice “strategic patience” in the Middle East.
The Secret to Effective Communications: Dispel the Fog
If asked, most executives will say that clear, compelling and effective communications is essential to the success of their enterprise. The reality is that this is an area where so many organizations fall short.
4 Tips to Rebuilding a Tarnished Brand
As an avid runner and supporter of various nonprofit causes, springtime means deciding, which 5Ks and 10Ks? Until 2012, the Komen 5K in Washington, DC, was always at the top of my list. It was a positive and powerful brand that I admired. For more than 15 years, I ran that race until they so bitterly disappointed me with their decision to withhold funding from Planned Parenthood, which I wrote about in this post.
PR Disasters (and How to Avoid Them)
The last few months have seen a cornucopia of PR disasters. My friend and colleague Rob Deigh sent around three links highlighting some embarrassing gaffes in the fashion industry. Then there was a seriously flawed ad campaign for Malaysian Airways.
Five Tips to Help You Leverage Communications
In our last blog post, we wrote about the need to Leverage All Your Communications. To become adept at leadership communications, we have to better connect with our internal and external audiences. We need to become more strategic in our actions and consistently express value within our organization and with our enterprise’s key audience(s).
Leadership Communications: Grace in Defeat
A great Olympic moment occurred not on the medal podium but on the sidelines as dejected snowboarder Shaun White failed to achieve his dream of capturing a third gold and earning a unique place in the history books.