Category: Brand Positioning
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What Bank Robbers can teach us about Grey Markets and On-Line Pricing
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…
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Are Brands at Risk of Identity Theft?
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…
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Channel Conflict…The Ugly Truth About Growing On-line Sales
“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.…
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Spot the Artist’s Mistake…A.K.A. Digital Marketing Defense
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…
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Managing the Brand “Experience”
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…