Skip to content

When Strategy Meets Story, Enterprises Excel

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that, in the desire to control their narratives, companies are “desperately seeking storytellers.” While many writers who have labored in the realm of marketing communications are probably using their head-exploding and head-slapping emojis in texts crossing the globe, it should be reassuring that companies seem to believe that a well-planned story, expertly told, can create value. This is why, however, merely dusting off liberal arts diplomas and providing writing...
Read more

The Six-Word Story Strategy For Brand And Leadership Growth

Every December, leaders everywhere sit down with the same familiar ritual: drafting resolutions. Lose the waste. Grow the revenue. Fix the culture. Get more focused, more organized, more intentional. And every March, most of those resolutions are quietly… forgotten. So this year, let’s try something far more powerful and memorable. Write your six-word story. If that phrase rings a bell, thank Ernest Hemingway. Legend has it that Hemingway once accepted a barroom challenge to write...
Read more

Brand Design For Enduring Profitable Growth

As 2025 draws to a close, several brands are focusing on revitalization. Why? Poor strategies, sour executions, ignoring basic, evergreen, brand principles, and other given reasons like the weather, tariffs, and, sigh, still COVID. Kohl’s, Cracker Barrel, Macy’s, and Bath & Body Works are redesigning themselves for enduring profitable growth. At the center of these brand rejuvenations are desires to improve brand experiences. As the CEO of Bath & Body Works told The Wall Street...
Read more

How Category-Centricity Neutralizes Consumer-Centric Frameworks

For twenty years, the CPG innovation failure rate has remained between 70% and 90%. During that same period, the industry adopted many frameworks – Design Thinking, Jobs To Be Done, Blue Ocean Strategy, and Horizon Mapping. Each framework was positioned as a way to make organizations more effective in translating consumer opportunity. Each was implemented with training, toolkits, and ceremony. But the failure rate has held steady. The problem is not with the frameworks themselves....
Read more

Marketing’s Financial Value Drivers

There may be no more important function within a brand-centric company than marketing to influence future financial (cash flow) success. Financial results are routinely explained by four drivers: volume, price, mix, and cost. Marketing’s effect on volume and price is well understood. Expressed most simply in economic terms, effective marketing increases brand preference, pushing the demand curve upward and to the right. The brand owner can then choose to capture this improvement as an increase in volume, an increase...
Read more

Neglecting The Service-Profit Chain Is Costing Brands

If you have spent any time dealing with AI digital entities to solve your brand problem, you will not be surprised to learn that we, customers, are totally frustrated with customer service. The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about our unhappiness with customer service. The title of the article is “American Customers Are Madder Than Ever.” After all, we can buy things and hold them in our hands on the same day of purchase. But...
Read more

10 Guiding Principles For Building Innovation Incubators

Branding Strategy Insider helps marketing-oriented leaders and professionals define, strengthen, and grow brand value. One way we do that is by answering real questions from readers navigating real challenges inside their organizations. Today, we’re hearing from Jennifer, a VP of Marketing in Boston, Massachusetts, who has a timely question about building an internal innovation incubator. We are exploring the creation of an innovation incubator inside my organization, what guiding principles should shape my approach? Thanks...
Read more
Back To Top