Our old friends Sears are in the news again. Having, against all odds, staved off bankruptcy, the venerable challenger home improvement retailer is trying to build a new brand image and distance itself from its troubled past. And what do you do when you want to...
Well, another Super Bowl is behind us, and with it are all of the over-thought, dubiously strategic, creative-for-creativity’s-sake commercials. As with every year, the time between the on-field action (such as it was) was filled with gems and duds in almost...
Dunkin Donuts could have been years ahead of Starbucks, if they had only asked me It was many years ago (before I became committed to the building products marketing world) when I got my first lesson in sales & marketing alignment. I was 13 years old, and as many...
If there’s one thing we find especially irksome, it’s when companies issue press releases announcing the unveiling of “a new branding campaign.” Outside the marketing and advertising industry, nobody cares about these announcements. Yet...
A long-admired model in the CPG business has been refillable razor blades. The basic idea is that brands like Gillette don’t make their money on the handles, but on the refillable razor cartridges that need to be replaced every week. It’s a model worth...
