motivation

I am not applying for a new job as a CEO or Marketing Director, but if I did that would be my headline and I would run the brand I’d work for based on the insights that follow.

Steve! Bring it on!

Ok, so you’re s marketing director or even a CEO struggling to beat the he’ll out of your competition? Well, you are not alone. That’s more or less what all brands want, but why then are there so few that actually make a mark that can stand the tests of time?

Here are 14 pointers on how to get your brand charging into the future.

0.1. Before you read anything else. If your product or service doesn’t stand the competition. Get back to the drawing board and make sure it does. Then continue to Nr 1.

It’s really quite easy. Apple started their brand journey by making sure they had kick ass products.

1. Great branding is not about sticking to graphical guidelines, it’s about sticking to values and beliefs

I think I’ve written about it before. But years ago (1999) I found myself working with Nike after having called them to talk Framfab into a pitch. In one of the first meetings I attended I of course asked for Nike’s visual guidelines. One guy from Nike looked at me and said: “Just don’t touch the logo”. I repeated myself and clarified that I wondered about fonts and colorings. The guy again: “Don’t touch the logo, that’s all”.

How does Nike keep it together then? With great people of course. They act as gatekeepers of the brand. It’s in their spine like I’ve written about before.

2. Do things larger than life

Anish Kapoor knows how to make things larger than life!

Don’t be shy! Whatever you do, don’t expect that people wanna see everyday life things. We wanna get carried along and dream. The way you shape your products [click to continue…]

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Today I pulled a gig together with homie Stefan Hyttfors, the founder of Wenderfalck. We were invited by Pfizer to shake things up and draw out some ideas on how to prepare for the future. Stefan painted the background and I mixed the colors. I think we did a good job?

Among other things I spoke about the importance of passion and providing people with some kind of value based on your knowledge. To paint that picture I told a story about – Gary Vaynerchuk the founder of WinelibraryTV. Then after the session Stefan tipped me about this video where Gary talks about personal branding at Web 2.0. What a speech!

My favorite qoute:

“Which tool should I use? All of them! Your user base, people that care about you – you need to connect to them – anyway you can, everywhere you can, as often as you can. That is essential!”