Vanilla cupcake at Magnolia Bakery, NYC (Flickr: vicenakina)

I believe many marketers and agencies have a more difficult time defining their brand than their clients’ brands. They truly believe that if they create a “vanilla” brand or go the “non-brand” brand approach that they can attract any clients of any size with any products/services. I challenge [...]

When I first began as a brand planner at DDB in Seattle some 10+ years ago, I spent months collecting insights into what consumers thought about brands - at the most elementary form was word-association. This type of impromptu visceral reaction gave an interesting glimpse into how the brand fit into the target’s life (or [...]