The Talarico Brand: Targeting An Emerging “Silent Majority”
Branding is strategic, so a basic promise should stay focused on the distinct desires of a target audience. However, market dynamics often require brands to tweak their promise or competitive edge to address changing attitudes and values of their customers. These principles are especially relevant in today’s chaotic world of politics, characterized by extremism, divisiveness, hateful speech and even violence. Fringe activists from both the Republicans and Democrats are guilty of vitriolic rhetoric and misinformation to castigate their opponents. Unfortunately, our leader has offered...
Read MoreMinneapolis-Olympics: Re-Discovering Key Brand Values
In today’s chaotic and divisive world, it can be difficult to identify many new happenings that make us feel encouraged and optimistic. Two events that are currently dominating our news are the I.C.E. driven protests in Minneapolis and inspiring heroics at the Olympics in Italy. The juxtaposition of these disparate experiences reveals some heartwarming values, however, that most people genuinely crave. And these values are also critical for successfully positioning and marketing a brand. The Power of Emotions Neuroscientists have proven that emotions are the most influential ingredient...
Read MoreHow Politics Are Now Undermining Environmental Car Brands
A fundamental challenge for the development of a strong brand positioning is to create a distinctive “reason for being” that is highly relevant to target customers and different from competition. In 2001 Toyota introduced the market’s first gas-electric hybrid, Prius, and it quickly became the global leader in green cars. Its core “reason for being” was the environmental benefit of “saving the planet”. In comparison to gas driven cars, driving a Prius would also cost much less and would make Toyota more competitive around the world. The timing of this brand’s debut 25 years ago was...
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Deviating From Core Brand Promises Can Be Risky – In Business & Politics Successful branding requires extensive research, creativity and credibility. It is strategic, so the goal is to develop a relevant promise and image that will captivate an audience, and over time establish a trusting relationship with the brand’s customers (or voters). However, when a brand changes course and leaves its original message and values, it risks a significant decline in popularity, including political brands (i.e. Biden and Trump). Business Examples Ideally a brand’s core promise should inspire...
Read MoreHow Ken Burns’ “American Revolution” Undermines The Trump Brand
On Sunday, November 16, the latest Ken Burns documentary, “The American Revolution” will premiere on PBS. After 9 years in production, Burns considers this his most consequential public-spirited program ever. It’s vision of America is an ongoing moral experiment, defined by Enlightenment ideas and values that inspired the Revolution: reason, civic duty, truth and shared humanity. These ideals contrast with the Trump brand values of dominance, loyalty to the leader and his view of democracy as transactional and populist. For Trump, power is validated by personal loyalty and electoral...
Read MoreHow The Dutch Shaped New York City’s Unique Brand
This year is New York City’s 400th birthday. However, there will be no big celebration as promised by Mayor Eric Adams earlier in the year, due to all the controversies leading to his departure as a candidate for mayor, plus the endless chaos from Trumpism. Furthermore, New Yorkers are not as wistful about their history, compared to other cities like Boston. Instead, most attention has been focused on the mayor’s race between the 34-year-old Islamic outlier, Zohran Mamdani (originally from Uganda), and the older (67), establishment candidate, former Governor Andrew Cuomo. These occurrences...
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