Category: Branding

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Stunts, lipstick, pigs, and COP26

By Chris Owen, Director, UK, The Hoffman Agency Earlier this week Co-op announced that six of its stores were to ‘rebrand’ as Co-op26 in line with what’s acknowledged as the most important climate summit we might see in our lifetime – COP26. See what they did there? Problem is, it begs the question that aside …more

Oatly Takes Conversational Language to the Next Level

You would think every company would prefer to communicate in a way that connects with people. After all, before segmenting the target audience, we know the objective is to reach people. Yet, business writing often comes off as mechanical and even stiff. Do you want the narrative to sound like it comes from an actual …more

Lee Kuan Yew and His Gift for Brand Building and Communications

Politicians tend to be skilled communicators. Lee Kuan Yew was gifted. Today marks the five-year anniversary since his passing. Much has changed in Singapore on the communications front. Maureen Tseng who heads our Singapore office offers an on-the-ground snapshot. Social media represents the biggest change over the past five years. Previously perceived as elitist and …more

Don’t Confuse Real-Time Marketing with Improv Marketing

What do you remember about the 2013 Super Bowl? Unless you’re a fan of the Baltimore Ravens or the San Francisco 49ers, your overriding memory is the blackout, when someone pulled the plug at the Superdome for 34 minutes. And if you work under the marketing umbrella, you admired the nimbleness of Oreo Cookie to …more

Governments Jump into the Sponsorship Game

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stepped up to the podium, his words didn’t get my attention (and not just because my Hebrew vocabulary is eight words on a good day). Instead, I zeroed in on the backdrop depicted in the photo below. If I’m reading this correctly, Mobileye, a maker of technology for …more

Putting a Face on a Company

Check out the headline in The Wall Street Journal last month. “Apple Teams with Jack Ma” The headline didn’t say “Apple Teams with Alibaba.” Why? And don’t say because the word “Alibaba” wouldn’t fit in the space for the headline. It turns out that both words take up seven characters. I think it’s because the …more

The One Quality That Unites All Brands

The key to branding isn’t just knowing who you are and what you stand for. It also calls for communicating those very qualities to the outside world. Take the Singaporean store in the picture. Is there any question about its value proposition? Closer to home, everyone seems to think there’s a deep lesson in Donald …more

Nailing Your Sales Proposition

It doesn’t matter whether you sell pizza, cars or solid state memory chips, every company grapples with the question: why should the customer buy me over competitors? Few companies try to compete on price, and even those that do are careful in how they play the low-price card. The next time you’re at Costco or …more