Why Business is Different Now

People toss around the terms “thought leader” and “social media expert” lightly these days, but Brian Solis is one of the few people who actually lives up to those names. In The End of Business as Usual, Solis shows how the widespread use of social media is fundamentally changing the business environment.

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Branding: Avoiding Bad Neighborhoods

Are you placing your brand in a “bad neighborhood?” The other day, I was contacted by a BBC reporter, Daniel Nasaw, working on a story about highway naming. At first I thought he had contacted the wrong person, but it turned out there was logic behind his query. The core question, sparked by a move [...]

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A Tight Brand Focus

Most companies think about extending their brand to maximize their exposure and value. That’s why we have HUMMER cologne (at least while the vehicles were in production), and Purple Oreos. In many cases, these brand extensions makes sense: if a brand’s primary product has entered a phase of slow or low growth, extending the brand [...]

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Trade-Off by Kevin Maney

Marketable business ideas often have two key characteristics: simplicity, and a way of categorizing products, brands, or companies. The Boston Matrix, for example, launched armies of strategy consultants who neatly fit businesses into buckets labeled, “cash cow,” “star,” “dog,” etc. Kevin Maney’s book Trade-Off has those characteristics as well.

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