Newsletter

Poor user experience design can actually be fatal to your brand. A good user experience builds brand equity with every interaction, while a poor one erodes brand equity. Consumers are expecting more speed and better experiences all the time. Learn how to design for success.

Steve Jobs’ death resulted in many reflections about his life and his role in creating one of the most innovative companies in the world. What motivated Steve Jobs to do it well? What can we learn from his view on life that might inspire greatness in us too?

One of the biggest challenges any marketer faces is knowing how swiftly or strongly to react when the competition introduces something new. This article will provide you with a simple framework for how to respond to innovation and the disruption it can cause for your business.

We’ve been in the specialty brand business for nearly 30 years, and in that time we’ve seen an explosion in the number of choices available in the way these products are marketed to shoppers. This article will discuss the way it was (delicious cardboard displays), the way it is ­(kind of a hodgepodge of everything) and the way it will be (digital, digital, digital). 

Category enthusiasts are critical to specialty brands, and we have been studying them and why they’re so important for quite a while. Years in fact. This article will first explain what the category enthusiast is and then let you know why they are so important to specialty brands and specialty retailers. 

I had the privilege recently of helping a local non-profit art center think about their brand and develop a strategy for increasing the support and use of their facility. They were facing a significant problem: despite their 35 years of service to the community, funding sources and participation were not...

As technology and mobile devices march ever forward, brands out there – the big and the small – are coming under increasing fire. After all, within moments of hearing about something a company or retail brand has done or not done, or experiencing the actions of a brand for yourself...

“We’ve got to think outside of the box!” This is a common exclamation, heard almost every time a marketing department faces the wrath of an executive not happy with the company’s performance. We’ve all been there before. You’ve held lots of focus groups, conducted more than enough surveys...

The number of products on shelves, the number of options we have in our daily lives is beginning to paralyze us. Shoppers are walking out of stores or leaving websites – frustrated, unsatisfied and without buying anything. This has big implications for retailers and marketers.

I have been amazed at the speed and breadth of the change underway in mobile devices. Truth be told, as a marketer I’m quite worried about this rapid change because of its potential influence on shoppers, particularly specialty store shoppers. Think about it: the iconic value propositions of...

For the past couple of years, all we’ve heard about is an economic Armageddon. Research companies started using terms such as “value-conscious,” “staycation” and “conscientious cost cutters” to help segment changed shopping behavior and rationalize declining sales. Reports began...

I recently read an advice column by Carolyn Hax (yeah, I know) that contained a remarkable suggestion. The subject had cheated on his girlfriend, yet through hard work regained her trust to a point where she accepted his marriage proposal. His conundrum? He still had thoughts about...