Neuromarketing

As a web community guy, one of the most common problems I see is the failure to communicate emotion properly when people interact online. A remark intended as humorous can be perceived as a personal attack, or an expression of sympathy…

Why do most college branding efforts end up as meaningless pablum? I think it's because most colleges have been relatively insulated from the effects of devastating competition. In fact, historically there have been major barriers to…

The other day, Ad Age's CMO Strategy Section ran a column by Harald Vogt on scent marketing. Vogt may not be entirely impartial on the topic - he is the founder and chief marketer of the Scent Marketing Institute - but he makes some good…

This isn't great news for dieters, but sometimes sugar can be a good thing. Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University, had subjects perform a mentally taxing task - watching a video while being careful to ignore random…

In developing a brand, it's tempting to appeal to as many people as possible. We all want to be liked, and all too often organizations tread lightly with their branding message to avoid impairing their appeal to specific groups of…

I've been reading the recently released second edition of Differentiate or Die by Jack Trout, and there are some powerful (and timeless) messages there for all brands. Although the entire book is geared toward commercial brand…

Book Review: Differentiate or Die by Jack Trout (Second Edition) If someone asked you what set your product or brand apart from the competition, would you answer "quality" or "customer orientation?" If your answer is "yes," you might be in…

There's hardly a shortage of places to buy hamburgers in the US, but the restaurant chain Five Guys has opened 300 stores in the last five years, and has contracts for many more. Locally, I'd been hearing about the fantastic hamburgers…

One of my favorite chapters in How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer is The Brain is an Argument. In this chapter, Lehrer highlights how complex our decision-making process really is, and how competing options battle for supremacy.

The last time I wrote about Nabisco's Oreo brand, it was in Mega-Branding: The Purple Oreo Problem. In that post I was critical of the seemingly crazy proliferation of Oreo variations - 46 offerings, including "Purple." My criticism was…