Branding Archives
Here you’ll find a collection of blog entries published under the Branding category.
Week in Review: Spotlight on Key Ideas
By Nilofer Merchant on November 11, 2007
Staying on top of some latest news, moves, thinking. Things worth paying attention to including FaceBook, Google, Landor Brand Study, & Amazon’s Strategy.
Online Marketing as Personality Marketing
By Nilofer Merchant on August 7, 2007
Online branding used to be about static, brochure-like, well executed but rigorously pre-defined websites. But great brands, like most people, are more than a flat dimension. People want to know more and engage the company at a different level than…
RIM’s Blackberry Campaign Commentary
By Nilofer Merchant on July 11, 2007
Blackberry’s been running a great campaign. It started with a banner ad. The banner asked you to share with Blackberry “why you loved it”. From there, you could read other stories of why people loved their blackberry. There are lots…
Spotlight on HP’s Campaign
By Nilofer Merchant on March 7, 2007
Great marketing is about demand creation. It’s about filling an unfulfilled need, or creating a need and then filling it. When done right, it’s magical to experience. Marketing has many elements, of course. There’s: - inbound marketing which helps define…
Branding 301: The Advanced Level
By Nilofer Merchant on March 5, 2007
Branding. Is only as meaningful as it is consistent. That means colors and type fonts. But it also means experience vs. marketing. So the questions: How consistent is yours? What will you do to make it consistent? What has to…
Employees Co-Create Brand
By Nilofer Merchant on November 15, 2006
A bunch of writing has been done by myself and others about how “consumers now co-create the brand”. But what about employees? Are they co-creators, too? Many, many fortune 1000 companies are afraid to let their own employees blog. “What…
Metrics: The Long and the Short View
By Nilofer Merchant on June 7, 2006
In business, metrics matter. It’s key to make sure you’re looking at things that indicate truth or at least a pattern of truth. I’ve been working for the last few weeks on a client Optimization project where we’re drawing…
HP redefines their value proposition for PCs!
By Nilofer Merchant on May 5, 2006
Do you know what you are selling to the user? Is it a thing (a unit, a box, a software package) or does that thing get associated with a solution, or feeling or a belief? In this day and age…
Sweat the small stuff, sweat it all
By Nilofer Merchant on March 28, 2006
Last week, I attended a roundtable of CEOs. And one CEO of a well-known and privately held firm provided a showcase of his upcoming rebranding effort. Interestingly, the consumer company had done focus groups and figured out what they needed…
B2C Marketing Has Its Nuances
By Nilofer Merchant on March 8, 2006
Last weekend I wrote about Cisco entering multiple, disparate markets at the same time. While I thought that vertical strategy appears to be a good fit with the strengths and their customer needs, I thought their consumer play would challenge…
Market Entry Moves by Cisco Warrant Review
By Nilofer Merchant on March 4, 2006
For every successful market entry, another 4 fail. I learned that in grad school. One of the few facts that made practical sense, and thus stuck. That metric included every type of company: automotive, pharmaceuticals, financial markets, etc. I…
Making a Better Widget isn’t a Competitive Strategy
By Nilofer Merchant on February 24, 2006
During my day job, I help both start-ups and billion-dollar tech companies pick market niches and position themselves to compete successfully no matter what size. Most of them start with a competitive mindset that is something like “we make…