An Entrepreneurial Journey of Monetizing Your Mission A rare yet not impossible sequence of events: Seeing a need in the world that sparks a personal mission That mission inspires a product The production of that product turns into a business That business becomes a vehicle for not only serving the injustice but also for inviting others into the mission And the cycle goes round ...
3 Mistakes You Could Be Making When Telling Stories
By Jennifer Lawhead Telling stories about your brand is easy. But practicing storytelling in a way that perks up the ears of those you want to reach, encourages dynamic dialogue and subtly reveals something important about your brand in the process? This skill, my friends, is difficult. “I’ve tried telling stories about my brand before, but they’re not having the impact on our audience ...
Vision is a marriage, not a hookup
By Emily Soccorsy + Justin Foster You always have to know more about where your brand is going than the marketplace. This is the role of vision for your brand. Vision prevents reactiveness. And reactiveness is the enemy of great branding. Reactiveness as a brand dilutes your ability to be memorable, to have a sustained impact or result and it wastes your time and energy. Without vision, you ...
How Do I Do Big Marketing With A Small Team?
As the director of marketing, you are one person. You are one person who acts as the chief mouthpiece, the brilliant broadcaster and the tenacious town crier for your big organization. With limited resources, it’s up to you to manage publicity, message, brand voice, campaigns, digital, visuals, and video, all while vetting new marketing advice and services, newfangled technology and CEOs who ...
Podcast Appearances
Throughout the various podcasts that we’ve been grateful to appear on, it has been such a joy to speak to other experienced leaders who share similar passions as we do. Having the opportunity to help guide visionary leaders convey their message to the world is extremely rewarding, especially when they are ready to let their true self reflect in the ...
Find the Flow, F (orget) the Formula
By Emily Soccorsy and Justin Foster The marketing world is over-saturated with formulas. This is because formulas are intended to remove uncertainty. And because uncertainty is the boondoggle of human existence. There’s no way to remove uncertainty, folks. Life is uncertainty. And as part of that: all formulas are flawed. Most formulas only work for some people, some of the time. That’s the ...
Ungrateful about marketing?
Marketing is a little bit like a Rodney Dangerfield quote. It can’t get no respect. Everybody in the business wants great marketing and basically nobody wants to do great marketing. This is fueled by an Industrial Age bias in many leaders that marketing still follows a direct, linear path. That there’s a straight line between Product A and Audience B. Leaders want marketing to be simple. ...
What is your brand’s MLE (minimum level of excellence)?
By Emily Soccorsy and Justin Foster A brand is an organic, living thing. It is both a practice and a discipline. And yet there is also a baseline, or minimum, level of organic environmental excellence to create for your brand to grow and thrive. Without this brand primordial soup, you may inadvertently stunt the growth of your brand and reduce its vibrancy and reach. Most people begin ...
Small Brands: Storytelling is Yours for the Taking
6 Easy Steps to Creating a Storytelling Flow Storytelling — it’s one of the hottest buzzwords in marketing today. Everyone wants to tell stories, and do it in a way that gets others excited about their brand. Some of the biggest modern-day brands agree, and have employed a storytelling strategy to great success. Starbucks launched its Upstanders campaign, stories of altruistic customers ...
Who the heck is my target audience?
Editor’s Note: As we move into the last two seasons of the year, we are answering questions people have repeatedly asked us about branding and marketing. Let’s start with this bit of heresy … there are no target audiences. One reason is practical: traditional demographics have broken audiences into chunks, which have been shattered into even smaller groups. So there’s no singular ...