“The only corporate asset that can appreciate is your brand.”
This sage advice was offered by Bill Kupper, President of Business Week. Mr. Kupper was part of a panel appearing at The CEO Forum, hosted in Beijing earlier this month.
We agree. Contrary to the depreciation experienced by every other balance sheet asset, a brand is the sole asset capable of appreciating in value.
Thanks to Mr. Kupper, our latest addition to the Laws of Branding.
[More posts about Brand Management | More posts about Brand Equity | More posts about Laws of Branding | More posts about Business Week | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Beijing | More posts about China | More blogs about Brand Equity]
For many organizations, a website is often among the most important of brand touchpoints. And, a website is often a company’s primary communications channel in reaching consumers. Today’s New York Times brings this point into focus:
Your Web site is like a digital business card, …the first online look at your company that a customer gets. With luck, it will not be the last.
A site must have addictive content, said Vincent Flanders, a Web design consultant in the Seattle area who is the creator of Webpagesthatsuck.com, a site that analyzes why some pages do not work. “People must be willing to crawl through a sewer for it.”
…[Another] Web site consultant [says],” it is essential that a Web page get a company’s message across quickly… Most people do not go beyond what is in front of their faces. Studies…show that only 50 percent of Web visitors scroll down the screen to see what lies below the visible part on their PC monitor.
In the end, getting a prominent placement in a search engine is the only way to ensure that your site will be seen by those who can increase your business.
“If your site is not listed on the first page of search results, you might as well not exist[.]”
Good advice. As with any first impression, if the consumer is not hooked within a matter of seconds, your competition wins. The key is to connect with your site visitor between the eyes, such that they are willing to invest their time to learn more about you. Accomplish that, and you too can own the conversation in your industry.
[More posts about Brand Opportunities | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Brand Management | More posts about Web Site Strategy | More posts about Web Site Design | More posts about Brand Touchpoints | More blogs about Brand Differentiation]
The results are in on the mid-term elections in the United States. The campaigns of many who won, and those who lost, often relied upon advertising strategies shouting a position, hoping to be heard over the din, such as these examples of television ads.
In the aftermath, the online magazine Slate offers advice to the winners:
[A]fter 12 years of playing defense, Democrats are getting the ball back. Having won the 2006 election with no affirmative message and a wildly diverse slate of candidates, they need something to hold them together. They need an idea.
Watching Democrats struggle to express what they stand for is always painful. They talk in platitudes and laundry lists. “The message of this election came down to one word: change,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, their Senate campaign chairman, declared on Election Night. “But the message of what we will do next comes to four words: We can do better.”
We can do better? Isn’t that what Robert Redford said in The Candidate, when he had no idea what to do?
At his post-election press conference, DNC Chairman Howard Dean described his party as a powerful collection of demographic groups—exactly what its critics fear. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of evangelical voters, “We, the Democrats, respect and value their faith and their values that they adhere to in their families and in their communities.” Faith, values, values, communities, families, respect, values. People can tell when you’re babbling from a polling memo.
After discussing how Democrats won control of Congress nearly in spite of themselves, the author offers a suggestion of how Democrats may change and begin to own the conversation of America’s politics, by rethinking how they engage the American electorate:
Two years ago, after Democrats blew the 2004 election, I threw an idea at them: “Go back to being the party of responsibility.”
They ignored me, of course.
…Look up the House Democrats’ Six for ‘06 agenda, and you’ll see lots of items that fit this frame[, such as] “budget discipline,” “energy independence,” “honest leadership” (congressional ethics), and “pension reform to protect employees … from CEO corruption”…
If Karl Rove were a Democrat, he’d pull these ideas together under an ideological banner and beat the other party’s brains out. But most Democrats lack the skill or will. They blather about “solutions” and the “common good.”
Instead, the author suggests that as “[f]reedom and responsibility go hand in hand,” it is this simple banner that should frame any public policy idea offered up by Democrats.
Whatever one’s political inclinations, and whether one agrees or disagrees with the author, what he offers is a brand strategy, a new use of old words shifting the conversational paradigm to a basis an organization can win, by offering a new and engaging story. When the story of an organization or product successfully prompts a consumer, or voter, to invest their time in learning more before making a purchase decision, the door into the human mind is effectively opened. The moment preconceptions are set aside is the inflection point at which real conversation begins.
[More posts about Brand Opportunities | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Branding v Advertising | More posts about Political Party Branding | More posts about Democrat Party Brand Strategy | More posts about Republican Party Brand Strategy | More posts about Elective Politics | More posts about American Politics | More posts about Campaign Advertising | More blogs about Branding v Advertising]
Monday, November 27th, 2006 - 10:22pm |
Brand Equity + Brand Management + Laws Of Branding |
Comments (1)