Category Archives: Brand Management

When I was in elementary school I had to do a project on my family’s history. I asked my father if any of our ancestors had been war heroes.  He went on to tell the following story: In the 1700’s a great grandfather many generations back had been an Admiral in the Royal Navy.  One Continue Reading...

  The bank robber’s motivation is to make a lot of money fast, without putting forth a lot of effort. The same is true of the grey markets made up of on-line Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP) violators. In both situations, the perpetrators know what they are doing is wrong, and therefore disguise themselves to avoid Continue Reading...

15 million victims lose $50 billion a year, In the U.S. alone. Identity theft has exploded because of technology, but people aren’t the only ones at risk. As counterfeiters get more sophisticated, brands become just as vulnerable. I would imagine that most people who buy a fake Rolex watch or fake Gucci bag are well Continue Reading...

“Increasing our on-line penetration is the key to our future sales growth.” This line has been uttered so many times, in so many ways, by so many corporate leaders in CPG, in the last five years that it now falls into its own special class of cliché. On the surface this phrase makes perfect sense. Continue Reading...

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and the explosion in digital media would tend to support that conclusion. In fact, a large part of marketing is “imagery management” and the concept of “association”. Certain things go together to help create concept. Very clean black and white cows, in a green Continue Reading...

Without trying to sound too jaded, it seems to me, the less that is collectively known about a given subject, the more experts there are in the field. My case in point is the number of “experts” who are calling for the demise of brands due to the social media revolution. Social Media is so Continue Reading...

How can a brand possibly deliver a consistent experience, if they don’t even know all the potential points-of-sale? The simple answer is they can’t. I recently had the pleasure of attending the BRITE conference at the Columbia Business School. This world class conference is focused on the intersection between brands, technology and innovation. The overarching Continue Reading...

It’s Midnight on the internet…do you know where your brands are? The honest truth is, that for most of us, the answer is no. Like the naïve parents of teenage children, we don’t precisely know where brands are, but like to think that all is well. It’s not until the phone rings at one in Continue Reading...

“If Showrooming is so pervasive, why aren’t companies doing more to combat it?” This is a question we are hearing more and more. Companies, be it brands or retailers, realize that this problem is reaching epidemic proportions, yet seem to be doing little to change the dynamic. Why? We can’t manage what we don’t measure. Continue Reading...

That right. It’s coming. Showrooming is no longer just a minor business nuisance, it’s becoming a life altering change in the lives of traditional brick and mortar retailers. And they’re not taking this change sitting down. They’re coming out swinging. Brands that are involved in Showrooming will be shown the door by their top retail Continue Reading...