With consistency and progression comes change. As you spend more time consistently delivering on what you say your brand is and find your career progressing in the right direction, you are going to reach a point where new challenges and opportunities arise. New skills are developed and new ways to communicate your uniqueness present themselves. This week see's the 100th edition of the Tuesday Toonie weekly e-tip, which I feel… Read More »100 Toonies Worth
No doubt the business school case studies in years to come about the sad demise of Kodak and it's brand will raise many questions about the effectiveness of it's leaders. The filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy by Kodak this week has many lessons for all businesses, but what can you learn from this and be sure that you are not facing the same in your career? 1. Don't underestimate the… Read More »Is your career facing a Kodak moment?
For those of you that have heard me speak you know that coffee is one of my popular brand examples. After all why drive past five Tim Horton's to get to a Starbucks black coffee – especially now that you can get 4 oz of extra liquid for at least 60 cents less in Tim's new Extra Large cup versus a Venti? The answer is it's not just about the… Read More »Does Size Really Matter? It’s not just about the coffee
Sometimes one of the hardest parts of the work in defining your personal brand is identifying your purpose. Mother Theresa was a great example of someone with a purpose- to help the poor in Calcutta. Another is Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, with his dream of providing water to the third world with his One Drop- see the video at the Globe and Mail. But we may… Read More »Have you found your purpose?
The passing of Steve Jobs resulted in an outpouring of emotion and praise that I would suggest was almost unprecedented. A Google search shows over 234,000,000 web pages – 70,000,000 more than Obama! Now part of that visible reaction was due to the fact that we have so much more ability to communicate to many more people – ironically in many cases using the very tools that Jobs helped develop. … Read More »The Brand That Was Steve Jobs
Many people know me for driving past a Tim Hortons (or three!) to get to a Starbucks! As I only drink black coffee the connection I have to Starbucks is more than just the coffee – its the other emotional connections I make with the brand. Starbucks marketing team has been held up as a great example of using social media to engage consumers and they have… Read More »Which came first the coffee, the cup or the store(y)?
Last week John Baird, Foreign Secretary and one of the Canadian governments leading figures, caused a bit of storm with a recent business card re-design. He seems even to have strayed from the 'brand standards' that are recommended and his Chief of Staff even had to sign a disclaimer to formally acknowledge that his office was advised against the changes. There is always the challenge of wanting to have a… Read More »What does your business card communicate about your brand?
The appointment of Meg Whitman as CEO of Hewlett Packard this week brought immediate doom and gloom predictions from analysts and market experts – unfortunately this comes as no great surprise. Regular surveys including yearly studies by Catalyst find the following: Companies with the greatest number of women on their boards performed significantly better financially than companies with fewer female board members. Women in high-ranking corporate positions offer their companies… Read More »Are markets too quick to judge female CEO’s?
These are not always the words you would expect to hear from a leading CEO when admitting that a move they made in the market was the wrong one, or at the very least one that should have had a more considered approach. They are certainly not the words that Jim Balsilee the Co-CEO of Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry, has uttered (well at least not publicly). The… Read More »“I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation.”
McDonalds Canada is investing over $1 billion on its 1,400 stores to rip out the plastic seating and replace it with leather seating, plasma TV's and fireplaces in a bid to woo more customers. But does a comfy chair or two change the perception of the brand? Starbucks has comfy chairs and wi-fi, but then I expect that, it's an integral part of their brand – but wi-fi and fireplaces… Read More »Oh no…….not the comfy chair!