Skip to content

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

Boeing And The Quest For Quality

Amid all the issues surrounding air travel over the holidays, one thing that makes flying worth considering is safety. We do not need to place safety on our list of holiday air travel woes, a list that is already extensive. Yet, just before Thanksgiving, the press reported on new and improved safety elements from Boeing. If you recall, and who possibly wants to while actually sitting on a Boeing-manufactured plane, Boeing had several serious –...
Read more

How Marketing Turns Ideas Into Business

From all my years in research and consulting, I think I’ve learned a thing or two about marketing worth sharing. Enduring fundamentals, mostly yet often overlooked. So, this year, I’m sharing some for your consideration. I hope they’re helpful. This week’s thought: Marketing turns ideas into business. Ideas are the heart and soul of marketing. It’s all about intangibles—lightbulb moments of inventive strategic inspiration. It’s a lot of brainwork, and thus, marketing is easily mocked....
Read more

Starbucks’ Third Place Strategy: Built For The Past

This month, Starbucks announced that its coffee delivery business is now a $1.0 billion business. Yes, that’s right, $1.0 billion. With a “B.” And, even more striking, in its most recent quarter, Starbucks also announced that said delivery business grew by almost 30%. Now, some out there might be thinking, “Okay, that’s interesting, but what’s the big deal?” Well, the big deal is that the implications of this statistic go far beyond just selling coffee. The Experience...
Read more

Ray Kroc’s Strategy: The Playbook For Today’s Top Restaurant Brands

One of the things that makes marketing advice sound so specious, at times, is when the marketing advice dished up is considered newly insightful, but is, in reality, just a description of the eternal obvious, the “greens fees,” the “table stakes.” When The Wall Street Journal ran an article titled, “Restaurant Executives Tell Us How They Get Customers When Times Are Hard,” you might have been expecting some real insights. You might have expected some...
Read more
Back To Top