thebrandgym

Jordans is one of the nicest brands I've been lucky enough to work on. Its pretty rare that you get to work on a big brand where the founders are…

Leading chocolate company Cadbury made a pretty amazing announcement last week. By this summer all the cocoa beans and sugar in its chocolate will be fair trade. Yup, that's right.…

Andy from Pump, a great ad agency I'm working with in South Africa, is a source of great stories on brand growth. Here's one such story, about the power of…

There are a few silver linings to the dark clouds of recession that hang over us. One of them is very early signs of an end to what I call…

We believe that this is the year when growing the core finally gets the profile it deserves. Today's tough times will force us to spend more time growing the profitable…

I am in awe of successful service businesses, like Pret a Manger and Amazon. Delivering great service consistently is mind-bogglinlgy difficult. And inevitably, shit happens. One of the lessons I…

Almost 2 years ago, back in June 2007, a post here called "Is innocent about to lose its way?" made the following prediction:"The real risk for the brand is of…

The KitKat team have been brave enough to "kill the dwarves" in their range, those little line extensions that eat up money and time, and bring little in the way…

In previous posts we outlined our thinking on "recession-proof branding", here and here. The headline from the research we did with top marketing directors was that for well mangaged brands,…

The Knorr brand has had a hard time of late, as it is associated with dry packet soup and sauces, out of line with the trends to fresher food. However,…