We believe every great brand is a spiritual experience. A movement. A brand is the only place in business where your inner world is experienced by the outer world. For too long, we have accepted the belief that these worlds are supposed to be separate. We say no. When these worlds are kept separate, dissonance occurs. Identity crises emerge. Leaders drift from the mission. Employees feel ...
Slow Down to Speed Up
As a director of marketing, you’ve become friends with timelines and time management, buddies with bandwidth. Even if the leadership team loves your ideas and encourages you to execute, they then repeatedly and persistently ask one question: “When?” When will it be done? When will the website launch? When will the new brand language be live? When will we see results? And you are always ...
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 ...
The Unstoppable Power of an Aligned CEO and CMO
In our work with mission-based leaders, there is one factor above all others that leads to successful brand differentiation. That factor doesn’t involve SEO or PPC. It’s not the best ad campaign. Nor even the best product. It is spiritual and strategic alignment between the CEO and the CMO. Particularly when the CEO has been thinking for a while: “There’s something missing from how ...
‘I Thought I Could Do It On My Own’
By Jennifer Lawhead Branding was always something I didn’t feel like I needed help with,” our client Sonya Stattmann recalled. “But I started to realize there was misalignment with who I am and how I ran my business.” This realization dawned on Sonya about a year ago: as she continued to grow her business, she knew it needed to more closely represent who she is today. Not who she was ...
Planning for 2021 is foolish: Question instead
A plan is a method for achieving an end, so says Merriam-Webster. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that relying too heavily on the solidity of your plans is foolishness. Defining yourself by your adherence to a plan subject to the current volatility of our world can leave you feeling disappointed, jaded and cynical -- and cause you to operate from a defensive or a defeatist ...
Want to be a great marketing leader? Build a great team! An Interview with John Hardesty
On October 1 at 2p CT, we will be visiting with John Hardesty on our "Being Marketers" webcast. Here is a sneak preview of our discussion. Q: Who are you and what do you do? John Hardesty, Chief Brand Officer at VShred Q: What do you love about marketing? The ah-ha moment when a user connects to the value of your product in their life -- the creative reveal of that ...
The Evolution of a Growing Mission-Based Brand
By Jennifer Lawhead Jennifer Stevens built her company, JHL, around her own credibility and reputation. Jennifer was the brand. Her public relations client list grew as she landed high-value media placements on behalf of her clientele over and over again. As she began planning more events, Jennifer quickly became Austin’s go-to event planner, overseeing some of the community’s biggest ...
How do I do biz dev now?
Even as we’ve settled into routines around working remotely, meeting virtually and supervising online learning, many of us still seem stuck when it comes to how to carry on doing business development. More than once recently we’ve heard the exasperated frustration, “I used to go to lunches and happy hours and events! Now I can’t do any of that, so how do I still do biz ...
3 Unexpected Ways to Share Your Story
By Jennifer Lawhead The biggest mistake I see businesses make with storytelling is they put it in a box. That box is assigned to the marketing team where they are responsible for caring for the stories and sharing them as they see fit. Why this is a mistake, you ask? After all, isn’t storytelling the job of the marketers in the building? No. No, it’s not. It’s a responsibility that ...
Why is marketing so hard right now?
Branding and marketing have never been easy. But throw in a pandemic, social and political unrest and a recession and that will complicate things a bit more. So no shame from us if you went into hunker-down mode. We get it! But we would also challenge you to consider this: the world needs you and your brand right now. So maybe it’s time to re-emerge. Maybe the reason it was ...