5 Threats That Can Kill Your Brand in the New Year! – Part 3
ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL
In this series, we have been discussing how to recognize the various ways your own people can inadvertently hurt your brand. Your company is ultimately only as valuable as your brand equity. Your brand equity is based on the likelihood that your branded products and services...
5 Threats That Can Kill Your Brand in the New Year! – Part 2
PRODUCTION
It’s hard to believe that your own team can damage your brand, but most brands are killed from self-inflicted wounds, not murdered by the competition. As you start out the New Year, be vigilant that your own people don’t take action that inadvertently hurts your brand....
5 Threats That Can Kill Your Brand in the New Year! – Part 1
MARKETING
We learned a lot about building an international brand during the two decades we grew Barefoot Wines. Most of it we learned the hard way, and that is why today we share our lessons in this blog devoted to brand building. Although we were successful, we...
Renew Your Brand Promise for the New Year
Renew Your Brand Promise for the New Year
This is a great time of year to renew your brand promise. Just like renewing vows in marriage, you recommit yourself to your brand promise. But unlike marriage vows, the promises are not yours. They’re the sum of your customers’ perceptions, expectations and beliefs about your...
The Brand Name That Says It All! Barefoot Bubbly Sells One Million Cases!
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
It was storming that night in 1996 when Michael slowly drove up the long dirt road that lead to his humble farmhouse in the rural hills of western Sonoma County. He was careful not to spin out in the mud nor get grabbed by the treacherous...
Brand Image Suffers When Products are Out of Stock
DON’T PLAY HARD TO GET
We are often asked, “What was the biggest challenge you faced growing the Barefoot Wine brand?” People are always surprised by our answer, “out-of-stocks.” It’s the biggest problem facing any new brand. Some purists try to make a distinction between brands and products, often because they...
Customer Experience Creates the Brand Promise
KNOWING AND EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS
At the heart of brand building is exceeding your customers’ expectations. But who is your customer and what do they expect? It may not be as simple as it sounds. If you have a business to business (B to B) model, the way your B to...
Know the Metrics that Make Your Brand an Acquisition Target
WHERE AM I GOING AND WHY
We’ve often said that entrepreneurs are brand builders. Unlike sole proprietors, or even those creating a legacy, most entrepreneurs, sooner or later, want to have a capitalization event. That may take the form of a merger, IPO or cash infusion by a new partner, but it...
How to Recognize Opportunity (and Make It Sustainable)
KNOCK! KNOCK!
We often hear, “Follow your passion” as the universal prescription for happiness and success. But we say “Follow your opportunity, passionately” as a more plausible road to success. Opportunities abound! The key is to find a way to take advantage of them using your passion. So...
Successful Brand Builders Use Representatives to Insure Program Execution at Every Level
SEND MORE MERCHANDISING MATERIAL!
The best brand building signs and merchandising materials we ever saw were in the dumpsters of the very distributers who were expected to use them to sell the products of the brands they represented. What were they doing there? Because the distributers only had a limited...
The Norwegian Brand Promotes a Culture of Environmentalism
NORWAY IS THE CLEAN WAY
We are posting this blog from Norway where we came to support and present at the annual “Mixer” which supports entrepreneurialism at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. This is the largest technical university in Norway and has a robust entrepreneurial program...
Food Scores, a Game Changing App for Grocery Shoppers
THE GENIE IS OUT OF THE BOTTLE!
A non-profit called Environmental Working Group (EWG) has recently unveiled “Food Scores,” a soon-to-be-released app consumers can use to scan bar codes on packaged food items with their smart phones. Beyond the mandatory labeling on the package, consumers can, for the first time, have an easily...
Purple Sunrise A Brand That’s Coming to your Breakfast Table Soon
DON’T CALL IT MUSH!
Hot cereals have long been part of the healthy breakfast. Most doctors recommend them as essential for good health, and a tasty alternative to the American standard of bacon and eggs. There are a variety of hot grain cereals to choose, from iconic Quaker Oats and the...
Domestic Solar Brand Needs Repair
BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
Orders for domestic solar roof installations are, well, “through the roof!” As solar power finally becomes mainstream, we thought we’d share our experience with solar. We were early adopters. We put in our first solar array in 1998 and have been using solar to produce both...
The Mob Museum Adds History, Color, and Character to the Las Vegas Brand
PROHIBITION GAVE PERMISSION
It's ironic that the same former federal courthouse in downtown Las Vegas that was the site of hearings and criminal proceedings against so many mob members wound up being a tourist attraction in the very town that was, in large part, originally built up by the...
Rebranding a Commercial Neighborhood with Paint and Sensibility
BARIO TO BRAVO
We all have them in our towns: 50s-era strip malls with parking in front, originally designed to be convenient to an automobile-oriented society. Simply drive in, get your products and services, and drive out. Not much walking, not much community feeling, and not much fun. These...
Most Microbrew Brands will Remain Regional
WEIGHT, WEIGHT – DON’T TELL ME
A microbrew, also known as a craft beer, is produced in a small commercial brewery that produces no more than 15,000 barrels (or just under half a million gallons) of beer per year. Exact definitions vary, but the terms are typically applied to breweries that are independently...
Brand Equity Requires Constant Reinvestment
GROW OR DIE!
There's no treading water in the market stream. Some say, “Sink or swim.” We always like to say, "Swim upstream or get washed out to sea!" What really distinguishes so-called serial entrepreneurs from their cousins, the merchants, brokers, and individual service providers, is their constant reinvestment...