Selling the category rather than selling your brand is brand-business mismanagement. Selling the category means the brand-business leadership does not know what is relevant and differentiated about its brand. Selling the category when your brand does not know what is its relevant differentiation plays into competitors’ hands.
I am a loyal Delta Airlines customer and have always been a points junkie. So when Delta Airlines recently announced a major overhaul of their SkyMiles loyalty program, I paid close attention.
Some things just never work. At least not for building brands or value propositions. Yet, over and over again, we keep trying to make a go of these things. So, today, I want to share my list of things that I believe are dead-ends for brands—things that seem promising but turn out mostly to be yea-saying by consumers, not deeply felt convictions that brands can use to differentiate themselves and create value for the bottom-line.
Not even COVID-19 changed the trajectory of demographics. And, although data in The New York Times indicates that global population growth may end in 2080’s, we are currently living in a world that is getting older and younger at the same time. Demographics are a marketing reality. And, brands, such as iconic Southern fare restaurant Cracker Barrel, now face a strategic conundrum.
When my wife and I moved cities in 2018, I purged some of the stuff I’d been keeping for years, and in the process, I ran across an essay that my 16-year-old self had written for a college scholarship application (which I did not get). It read in part, “I am interested in the art of persuasion…[W]hat conditions and evidence will convince one person and not another. I think that this is a very important...
