The 3 Critical Relationships that Determine the Customer Experience
DOES MY BRAND LOVE ME BACK?
Today there is a lot of focus on the customer experience. How do your customers feel about their experience with your product? Are they satisfied, confident, and pleasantly surprised? Or are they frustrated, confused, and disenchanted? What are the main elements that determine your customers’ experience?...
5 Threats That Can Kill Your Brand in the New Year! – Part 5
Distribution
In this series we have been examining threats from inside your own organization that can kill your brand in the New Year. Now is the time to be on guard against them. As we like to say, brands are not murdered by the competition, but die...
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 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...
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...
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...
Flawed Heroes Are Still Heroes
The Imperfect Buddha is the Perfect Buddha
Why do we take such exception to authority figures who are less than perfect on the one hand, and find thought leaders who admit to their mistakes more credible on the other? It seems counter intuitive to expect perfection in all areas from those we consider...
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...
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...
VinoPro Reinvents Itself and the Wine Sales Business in the Process
THE BRAND BEHIND THE BRANDS
For the second year in a row, our client VinoPro again made the Inc. 500 list, showing 190% growth over last year. In 2013, they hit the ultra-prestigious Inc.500 list where they ranked No. 238 with a whopping 1,810% growth. Now, that is something to cheer...
Alan Mulally Remortgages, Repositions and Saves Ford
FUN – A THREE LETTER WORD
About to retire after eight years Alan Mulally, Ford Motor Company’s CEO, is leaving on a high note. When he was passed over to run Boeing after taking a big part in the reorganization of that company, he accepted Bill Ford’s offer to become CEO. At...
National Brands are Built from Strong Regional Brands
WALK BEFORE YOU RUN
There’s something romantic and powerful about the aspiration to own a big national brand. When our clients say they want to build a national brand, we respond with, “You have to walk before you can run.” Building a strong regional brand is hard enough, and this...
Crystal Ball Says: Mobile Payments Are Taking Over in 2014
READY TO JOIN THE FUTURE YET?
Mobile payments are exploding in growth and popularity, and plenty of evidence supports this claim. The NBA's Sacramento Kings, for example, will begin accepting Bitcoin, an exclusively digital currency, as a payment method starting March 1, 2014. A state of the industry report released by Mobile...
Consumer Brands Live or Die with the New Year Sets
DID YOU MAKE THE CUT?
Consumer brand builders’ angst is over the top every year at this time. As the New Year begins to unfold, so do the corporate retail decisions about what products will remain in their stores and what the new shelf schematic (also known as the “official set”)...