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"| Brands Are People Too By Joy Panos Stauber Published Dec. 9, 2009 8:27 p.m. "When you talk about 'branding,' you are not discussing a superficial activity. More and more business people are finally starting to understand that. A brand is not a veneer you apply to make a business (or product or service or idea) appealing to its intended audience. Instead, a brand begins to exist when a business has something to offer to the world-values, services, or products. From there, the brand's work is to articulate those unique attributes and strive to communicate them the right way, and to the right people. Even so, a brand is not what a business says it is. It's what the consumer ends up perceiving it to be." "

"Issue 67 - 01 | How To Fascinate: Why Your Brand Should Do A Shot Of Jägermeister By Sally Hogshead Published Feb. 10, 2010 8:18 p.m. "If you're under age 45 or so, there's a good chance that you've tried Jägermeister. However the odds are low-quite low-that you actually enjoy the taste. And that's okay. Few people do. Very, very few. I'll wager that most of the people who make Jägermeister don't like the taste of Jägermeister. Yet the brand continues to grow at an astonishing rate. If so many people actively dislike the taste, how does the company manage to sell 83 million bottles a year? With sales increasing up to 40% per year since 1985, Jägermeister is the most popular drink nobody likes. Many companies successfully advertise products and services that consumers don't necessarily need (bottled water, luxury cars) or even enjoy (backache pills, oil changes, burial plots). But here's a brand that manages to sell an extraordinary volume-at a premium price point, no less-of a product that people don't even want, and more to the point, actively dislike.""

"Issue 64 - 02 | Meaningful Digital Strategy: The Next Evolution of Marketing By Bob Gilbreath Published Nov. 11, 2009 10:02 p.m. "Four years ago, I grew frustrated with the lack of brand investment in digital marketing and set out to understand the fundamental reasons why this promising new space was still only attracting a small sliver of marketers' multi-million-dollar budgets. I discovered that the issue was bigger than tiny click-thru rates and cautious organizations. Rather, there was a need for an entirely new way of approaching marketing strategy from the ground up. The interruptive, tell-and-sell model of slick ad copy and buying eyeballs by the thousands was already showing strain, and most digital advertising tactics were simply replicating this failing marketing model. I set out to discover an alternative path, starting with the handful of our clients that had put digital in the forefront of their strategy, and then broadening my vision to companies that seemed to be enjoying success with a completely different course. I found that these organizations had a common approach: People were choosing to engage with their marketing and they were using marketing itself to add value to their customers' lives. I called this approach 'Marketing With Meaning'and captured the model in a book that was recently released: The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with your Customers by Marketing with Meaning. This manifesto brings my search full circle, providing a supplement to The Next Evolution of Marketing that specifically focuses on how brand managers must reset their digital strategy to win customers in this new space.""

"Issue 66 - 04 | The Wow Factor Is You By Frances Cole Jones Published Jan. 13, 2010 4:38 p.m. "The 'Wow Factor' is you. The knowledge that you've done the research, considered the risks, paid attention to every detail. It's the calm that comes from no-regret living. The confidence that says, 'I have something to offer.' Unfortunately, however, we rarely access our Wow Factor. We talk ourselves out of contributing with the one of the 3 mantras of self-defeat: * 'I'm sure it's been done before.' * 'It's a great idea, but it's just not me.' * And, everyone's favorite, 'It'll never happen.' (There's a reason why you don't see these phrases on bumper stickers.)" "

"Issue 64 - 03 | Social Response Capitalism: Today and Tomorrow By Bruce Piasecki Published Nov. 11, 2009 9:47 p.m. "I believe we need something no less than a new kind of leader. Most social commentators today, from Sarah Palin to Barack Obama, note that we need leaders we can trust, leaders who can compete on price, quality and social needs-from avian and swine flu, to new forms of energy, and better cars, computers and homes. We need to combine the best that MBAs get with what Masters of Public Administration know and get in their experiences of a lifetime. How is this possible? And where will they work? This essay explores what I mean by social response capitalism-sometime quite necessary but still missed by Fox News and the Heritage Foundation, as well as by most of the liberal leaning members of our thought establishment. Is this a new form of capitalism? Is it a deviant form of socialism? Or simply a new way to compete in a smaller more integrated and globalized world?" "