Brand strategy is entering a more demanding era. For CEOs, CMOs, and CFOs, the question is no longer whether brand matters. The question is whether brand can help solve the organizational problems that determine growth, profitability, customer trust, internal alignment, and enterprise value.
For more than twenty years, The Blake Project carried the same identity into the world. It was there when we opened our doors in 2003. It appeared on our first proposals, our first client deliverables, and our earliest expressions of a point of view that has never changed: brand is not decoration. Brand is a source of meaning, preference, trust, differentiation, and economic value.
AI has put an end to emotions in marketing, we are told. Just look at what LLMs rely on in making brand recommendations. It’s all about facts. Not about emotions.
My mother had many opinions on many issues. As a female lawyer in the 1950s, she expressed these opinions assertively. Although not a cook, she opined that a complete kitchen needed Pyrex baking pans and a set of CorningWare casserole dishes.
The invocation of values is a hallmark of enterprise positioning. Yet on its own, a values statement means very little — and can actually do harm to a brand’s reputation and thus its worth. Without an ethos of integrity, the values statement is a mere device, not a system — instead of a way for an organization and its stakeholders to connect — instead of serving as the driver of product or service design and...
