I spent the weekend in Scotland, where one cannot escape RBS’s logo, RBS standing for The Royal Bank of Scotland. Its brand imagery stands out exiting the airplane, passing city billboards, and reading or listening to local media.
Today, the people of Scotland own close to 70 % of RBS because the former (duly fired) CEO [...]

A new client asked me a good question today. “You talk Kay about helping us find our value promise, but my communications agency is totally focused on our brand platform. What’s what and why does it matter?”
The answer rests in understanding communication challenges.
The internal communication challenge
Employees need a shared and actionable aim that [...]

“You’ll find the style you want at the optometrist store on State Street,” my most stylish girlfriend advised. Sure enough, I walked into rack after rack of brands and styles upon entering the shop. While the amount of choice was reassuring at first glance – surely there is a look here for me – I [...]

From Oslo
I attended an economic briefing from the Chief Economist of a major European bank yesterday. It was fascinating to hear the financial crisis and recession described from the perspective of the OECD, where the recession has been much worse than in North America. For example, Germany’s GDP fell 6.5% from its peak, [...]

If P&G can’t get it right, what will the rest of us do?
P&G the master of consumer branding recently reported a 11% year-over-year revenue decline, more than analysts expected. The maker of Tide, Pampers, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, and Olay blames market share losses for part of the drop as more consumers switch to lower-priced products [...]

One window into the nature of the current recession and the uncertainty that it’s causing is through the fancy curtains at the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. The revenue per available room (the hospitality industry’s key financial measure) is down 25% year-to-date and for the first time in its history, the hotel management company has [...]

I had occasion yesterday to be on The Call, a CNBC television show hosted by economist Larry Kudlow. Like other supply-side economists, Kudlow follows Milton Friedman in assuming that the inflation rate is driven solely by monetary policy.

My topic as a talking head: Where is inflation headed in the US? Inflation matters because it [...]

“What is your bank trying to sneak by you?” appeared in bold letters on my computer screen. The screen was then filled with the complex and confusing words we’ve all seen in small print documents communicating our banks’ fees and financial charge practices. I hate those documents, don’t you?
In one of the cleverest business model [...]

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All customers buy on perceived value. Unfortunately, Walmart’s advertising has led us to define value as lowest price. We’ve forgotten that there are value promises beyond lowest price in today’s recession.
Value is a mental scale with benefits on one side and costs on the other. Both sides contain tangible and intangible, emotional, functional [...]

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Many business leaders debunk strategic planning.  “The external environment is too uncertain,” they argue.  Or, “Strategy is decided at the point of contact with our customers and markets.”
I also hate strategic planning because the decisions from strategic planning are strategic in name only.
We delude ourselves into thinking that we’re planning strategically, when really [...]