Marketing with Smart:ROI

Tail wags dog

Reputation management

Fusing business model with brand strategy

Brand management in higher education

1 + 1 = 3

The best of both worlds

Engaging and embedding internal communications

Enhancing the brand through the IPO maze

Brand Architecture: considerations

Fusing business model with brand strategy

Perhaps one of the greatest crimes that the dot.com era perpetrated - beyond the majority of fundamentally flawed business plans published at the time - was to encourage the belief that the term 'brand' equated principally to 'name and logo'.

Was it any wonder? With the almost daily emergence of ever more wild new-tech/new-era names and visual identities, you had to be a saint not to be sucked into the 'name-&-stamp-it-quick' frenzy that prevailed. Despite luddite protestations from the senior ranks, the branding industry could (and did) do little to alter this mindset as it rubbed its commercial hands with glee at the multitude of start-ups all clamouring for ground-breaking branding solutions with apparently limitless budgets in support.

It was also at this time that many design consultancies, brilliant at creating award-winning packaging solutions and corporate graphics but looking to move up the client value chain, spotted an opportunity to re-invent themselves as 'brand consultants'…even though the majority continued to ply their old trade, albeit under a new, more added-value banner.