Building Strong Brands

This episode outlines how to perform a brand audit to evaluate strengths, uncover opportunities, and address performance issues. It explains the four main types—planning, implementation, customer impact, and company value audits—and their role in understanding brand effectiveness. The conversation highlights the importance of audits being systematic, comprehensive, periodic, and unbiased.

This episode details how to create a comprehensive brand-management plan that integrates strategic goals, target market definition, value proposition, and tactical execution. It emphasizes alignment between brand design, communication, and long-term objectives. The discussion also addresses the importance of adaptability in responding to market changes while maintaining brand integrity.

market strength and financial value. It outlines methods for assessing how well a brand drives customer choice, usage, and advocacy, and how these behaviors translate into economic returns. The conversation underscores the need for consistent, comparable metrics to track brand performance over time.

This episode explains how to assess the influence of a brand on both customers and the company. It covers frameworks for evaluating strategic and monetary contributions, ensuring brand performance aligns with business objectives. The discussion also emphasizes ongoing measurement to guide brand-building investments and improve effectiveness.

This episode delves into how companies lease their brand assets to others in exchange for compensation, enabling both licensors and licensees to create value. It covers the advantages, such as expanded market presence and revenue, as well as risks like loss of control and potential brand dilution. The discussion emphasizes the need for clear guidelines to maintain brand integrity across licensed products and services.

This episode focuses on subtle updates to brand identifiers and associations to keep them aligned with the brand’s core value proposition. It explains how changes to logos, names, mottos, and packaging can refresh a brand without altering its underlying meaning. The episode underscores the role of realignment in adapting to local markets, new communication formats, and legal requirements while preserving brand essence.

This episode examines how brands change their target audience or value proposition to shift customer perceptions without fundamentally altering the product itself. It highlights common drivers of repositioning, including evolving customer needs, new competitive pressures, and broader market changes. The conversation also addresses the balance between making a meaningful shift and preserving the continuity of the brand image.

This episode explores how companies expand their brand’s reach by introducing it to new products, services, or markets. It outlines the strategic benefits of brand extension, such as leveraging existing equity, alongside the risks of diluting the brand’s meaning. The discussion emphasizes the importance of aligning extensions with the brand’s core promise to maintain relevance and credibility.

This episode explores three primary portfolio structures—umbrella branding, house-of-brands, and hybrid approaches—detailing their strategic implications. It discusses how each structure balances brand independence with shared equity to address different market needs. The episode also considers how portfolio design supports brand growth and protects against competitive threats.

This episode introduces the concept of a brand portfolio as a coordinated set of brands serving different roles within a company’s overall strategy. It covers key considerations in defining the portfolio’s scope, roles, and structure to maximize market coverage and minimize overlap. The conversation emphasizes aligning portfolio decisions with long-term business objectives.

This episode examines how to measure the impact of brand communication efforts by tracking changes in awareness, attitudes, and behaviors. It outlines methods for assessing both short-term campaign results and long-term brand performance. The discussion also highlights the importance of linking communication metrics to strategic goals for ongoing improvement.

executions tailored to different media types. It explores message sources, including company voices, independent experts, and public endorsements, as well as message appeals based on information or emotion. Key principles such as strategic focus, consistency, and synergy are emphasized to ensure the creative work aligns with brand objectives.

This episode breaks down the main types of media—paid, owned, and inbound—and how each serves brand communication differently. It analyzes their advantages, limitations, and cost-effectiveness in reaching target audiences. The episode also highlights strategic selection of specific channels to maximize impact and efficiency.

This episode examines how to set clear communication goals by defining focus, quantitative targets, and timelines. It explains the three primary objectives—creating awareness, building preference, and prompting action—and how they interrelate. The discussion also covers budgeting considerations and the importance of identifying the right target audience for effective brand communication.

This episode explores how brand communication connects brand identifiers and associations to target audiences to create a distinctive and lasting image. It introduces the G-STIC framework—goal, strategy, tactics, implementation, and control—as a systematic approach to campaign planning. Listeners will learn how different agencies contribute to brand-building efforts and how coordination ensures effective messaging across channels.