If the Super Bowl is about beer, chips and boobs, then this weekend’s Oscars ceremony is all about diet soda, yogurt and hunks. Continue reading

When it comes to Super Bowl ads you can always count on seeing several things: Celebrities, special effects, babies, animals, sexy girls and dudes getting hit in crotch. This year I expect nothing to be much different. But even in this social media obsessed world, success still comes down to producing a Super Bowl ad that is engaging, relevant, on message. And if it has a Visual Hammer too? Touchdown! Continue reading

When you combine a focus, name, verbal nail and visual hammer, you can build a brand that cuts through the mind and goes straight to the heart. Wounded Warrior Project does just that. Continue reading

I appoligize for not posting as often to this blog as I should. I have been writing it for almost 10 years now. And during that time I've published three books and given birth to two boys. It's been an... Continue reading

Obama's “forward” slogan won him four more years in the White House did what most slogans do not. It cut both ways. It said something positive about his brand while also saying something negative about the competition. That’s tough to do. Obama set up the election as a choice between going forward with him or going backwards with Romney. Continue reading

Frozen yogurt is a popular summertime treat and personal favorite of mine; it is also a category that has experienced tremendous growth with new brands branching out in all directions. Like a tree that branches out as it grows, categories grow and diverge over time. What was once one category ends up diverging into multiple categories. And many times the original leader fails to keep up. Here is my recap of the Fro-Yo wars. Continue reading

Happy Birthday America! We are celebrating the Fourth of July holiday in the United States today! I'm also using today to kick-off my new Visual Hammer of the Week series. It should be no surprise that this week's selection for Visual Hammer of the week is the Flag of the United States of America. Continue reading

Captcha boxes are annoying and customers hate them. But companies need them to stop the bad guys. Or do they? Could a branding and research opportunity replace captcha and still stop fraud? Continue reading

A company makes a major mistake when it develops a verbal strategy without considering what visual hammer might help hammer that idea into consumers' minds. Continue reading

In 1990, Audi hired my Dad to help them revive the brand in the U.S. after the 60 Minute segment that nearly destroyed the brand. I remember the case well and was curious about what his exact ideas for Audi were so I dug up a copy of his report. Al’s advice: "Don't try to fight a bad perception...... Continue reading

My father's theory on positioning was revolutionary, but it had a weakness. Invariably, positioning strategy was expressed verbally. You looked for a verbal hole in the mind and then you filled that hole with your brand name. The best way into the mind is not with words. It’s with visuals. They can play a more important role in marketing than words because visuals hold emotional power that words alone do not. Emotion is the glue that sticks memories and brands into the mind. Continue reading

While the gridiron battle between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots was close, the advertising battle on the tube was not. The Super Bowl battle for commercial success might better be described as a mixture of the old classics, the new stuff, the overly sexy and the over the top. Continue reading

Tim Tebow is the hottest story in sports. While the Green Bay Packers are charging ahead with an undefeated record, everybody is talking about the Mile High Messiah and Tebowing. How did this happen? What can you learn from it? Continue reading

Steve Jobs was a rebel who didn’t go about life or work in the normal way. He dropped out of college, was a fruitarian for a time and was often called an arrogant, obnoxious, weirdo. Being a rebel, however, wasn’t the secret of Steve Jobs. In our youth-obsessed culture, rebels are a dime a dozen. Steve Jobs was a technology genius. But being a technology nerd wasn’t Job’s secret either. Silicon Valley is filled with brilliant technology nerds. Steve Jobs was a design genius. He was obsessed with creating tools that were not just good but beautiful. But being a design genius wasn’t the secret of Steve Jobs either. The world has many great rebels, great technology geeks and great designers. What made Steve Jobs so unique was his supremely-gifted marketing ability. Continue reading

Netflix owns movies-by-mail. They might make a lot of money today, but are not the future. Netflix has wisely bet on streaming as its future. And they have wisely made an aggressive move to be first in the mind in order to dominate the new streaming-video industry. But Netflix made a critical error by using the same name on its new streaming business as it does on its existing mail business. It might be logical to take a trusted and loved brand name and extend it from one business to the next. But it doesn’t make marketing sense. As time goes, each business will compete and clash with each other. What Netflix needed was a new brand name for streaming not mail. Continue reading

In a down economy with consumers pinching every penny, you would think that sales at a retailer synonymous with "cheap" would be up, not down. Yet sales at Walmart have been down for two years in a row. So how does the world's largest retailer defend its position in the mind? Advertising. Massive advertising that reminds consumers in a memorable way what the Walmart brand stands for. Continue reading

What’s a Google? It’s a search engine. Want to find something online, you Google it. After domination of a category like search, the question business leaders and investors always have is, What's next? What's next is usually taking the incredible success of the mother brand and extending it into new areas. As well as gobbling up lots of other companies and rebranding them with the same brand name. If you know me, you know what I’m going to say next. It is a mistake. Continue reading

It’s the headline of our times “Brand X Moves to Social Media.” It’s the hottest trend in marketing with executives from the corner offices at Coca-Cola to the front lines at the local barber shop talking up Twitter, Foursquare, Groupon and Facebook. Since the Great Recession hit, we have been forced to do more with less and what better way to accomplish this than with social media. Compared to traditional advertising, a social media campaign is cheap. But is it effective? It all depends. Continue reading

What is RIM doing wrong? Why don’t people appreciate RIM’s BlackBerry brand, profits or growth? Because they are fighting the wrong battle. They are focused on the wrong target. BlackBerry has been chasing the consumer instead of chasing its less-sexy business customer. Why it is that companies that have great success and profits with business clients feel the need to ditch them for the fickle, finicky and thin-margined consumer? Continue reading

The stand out star of last night’s Super Bowl was clearly Aaron Rogers. Most people will be talking about Aaron and the Packers today instead of the commercials. Because it was the game was far more super than any of the ads. But with the most-watched commercials of the year, the Super Bowl provides a good picture of the state of the advertising industry. Here is my roundup of who scored and who fumbled. Continue reading

So you want to start a business? You’ve got an idea, you see an opportunity in marketplace and you plan to work hard in building your business, but where do you start? You start by building a brand. So how do you build a brand? You need to do three things: get focused, be first and become famous. Continue reading

The Starbucks brand was built on coffee and nobody knows that better than Howard Schultz. Seeing him so blatantly and arrogantly remove it from the logo is blasphemous. And not because Starbucks shouldn’t launch non-coffee products. Starbucks should be thinking of launching non-coffee products. But not with the Starbucks name. They should think like Toyota and launch brands like Lexus, Prius and Scion. Instead, Starbucks seems to be planning line-extensions that will dilute the brand in consumers’ minds. And nothing is worse that a watery cup of Joe. Continue reading

These days marketers are going in exactly the wrong direction. The recession has caused a lots of companies to panic. And when companies panic, they print coupons and throw up sale signs. Look in your mailbox, your email inbox or your newspaper and you will see what I mean. Everybody is having a sale.But does this coupon-sale-discount strategy work? Coupons and discounts do one thing every well. They teach consumers that your regular prices are too high. A lesson consumers learn very quickly. Once they think your regular prices are too high, they won’t buy from you until given a discount. And desperate companies are too quick to oblige. Continue reading

They used to sing “Fall into the Gap.” And consumers did. Since the Woodstock era, the Gap has outfitted millions of consumers with its lines of basic clothing. But over the past few years, it is the Gap brand that is doing the “falling.” Continue reading