Will enlightened consumers stop buying your brand promise?20211221184049
Will enlightened consumers stop buying your brand promise?
December 21, 20210 comments
Consumers have relationships with brands. But if they stop buying into the brand promise, it’s bad news for the relationship. Brands were created to make us happy – for a fleeting moment, ...
Brand attraction: Does your brand have an awesome but?20211020150614
Brand attraction: Does your brand have an awesome but?
October 20, 20210 comments
Could an awesome ‘but’ be the secret to creating brand attraction? Let’s find out. Consumers don’t care about your brand’s terrific features. Most of them wouldn’t ...
Want powerful brand communication? Just ask.20210823181134
Want powerful brand communication? Just ask.
August 23, 20210 comments
Here’s my deepest, darkest secret. I’ve never actually created brand communication for a client. They do all the work themselves. No, they don’t mail in sketches and taglines. I just chat with t...
Evaluating creative ideas20210823041612
Evaluating creative ideas
August 23, 20210 comments
When it comes to developing breakthrough brand work, evaluating ideas is crucial. After all, what might seem like a brilliant creative idea at first blush could turn out to all flash and no persuasion...
Brand power: building it in a lowest-bid-wins world20201207002943
Brand power: building it in a lowest-bid-wins world
December 7, 20200 comments
Building brand power. Easy? No. Possible? Absolutely. Brands have been with us since the dawn of humanity. Even in prehistoric times, things like face paint and feathers in our hair identified our tri...
Getting your brand story right… finally!20200916184240
Getting your brand story right… finally!
September 16, 20200 comments
A great brand story is pure voodoo. It ‘sticks’ in the listener’s mind better than any brand features or benefits. In fact, this makes the brand story the perfect vehicle for conveyi...
Consumers are humans. To sell to them, get to know them.20200815213121
Consumers are humans. To sell to them, get to know them.
August 15, 20200 comments
Funny thing about consumers. The more distant they get from a marketer, the more they tend to look like research statistics. But the thing is, consumers are humans. They’re not numbers. ThatR...
Bootstrap Marketing and The Beautiful Idea20200511190339
Bootstrap Marketing and The Beautiful Idea
May 11, 20200 comments
Bootstrap Marketing and the Beautiful Idea is one of the keynote addresses I give on a regular basis. It resonates particularly well with startup audiences – although I’ve seen a fair numb...
I don’t give a damn about your story20200119224124
I don’t give a damn about your story
January 19, 20200 comments
Storytelling is a powerful messaging tool. But storytellers need to remember what their audience really wants to hear. If you’ve been invited to speak about yourself, it’s natural to presu...
The media revolution. Who saw it coming?20200107230804
The media revolution. Who saw it coming?
January 7, 20200 comments
Ian Gill is the author of No News Is Bad News, and an expert on the current media revolution. He’s an experienced journalist, documentarian, entrepreneur and catalyst for boundary-breaking media...
The trouble with origin storytelling? The origin.20200101210101
The trouble with origin storytelling? The origin.
January 1, 20200 comments
Storytelling is de rigueur in marketing today. And origin stories (those describing a founder’s or product’s origin and journey to success) are the most popular of the genre. There is an a...
Effective outdoor advertising: the art of constraint20190710005447
Effective outdoor advertising: the art of constraint
July 10, 20190 comments
Alright, I’ll say it – this story on creating effective outdoor advertising is entirely self-serving. I’m writing it is because a partner and I are launching a new outdoor ad offerin...
Pushing past your comfort zone: my University of Adversity interview20190705181557
Pushing past your comfort zone: my University of Adversity interview
July 5, 20190 comments
My journey through the world of marketing has had its fair share of ups, downs, goods, bads and uglies. So when University of Adversity podcast host Lance Essihos dialled me up to relate my stories to...
Your most powerful marketing tool is the humble testimonial video20190503004400
Your most powerful marketing tool is the humble testimonial video
May 3, 20190 comments
Nobody wants to buy what you’re pitching. It’s simple psychology. You’re making a pitch. Thus, you have a vested interest that makes your pitch partisan, and your audience cynical. But what happ...
Fear, Halloween, and Brand Thinking20181101222311
Fear, Halloween, and Brand Thinking
November 1, 20180 comments
I love connecting tangents that don’t obviously belong together. That’s why, in honour of Halloween, I did a bit of research into the correlation between fear and brand thinking. Crazy? Ac...
Is your advertising newsworthy?20180926191708
Is your advertising newsworthy?
September 26, 20180 comments
The problem with most advertising is that it’s done the same way doting parents describe their kids – with the mistaken belief that everyone cares how pretty / smart / really good at banal...
Could you successfully market yourself on a plane? (The secret of the unique selling proposition)20180822004229
Could you successfully market yourself on a plane? (The secret of the unique selling proposition)
August 22, 20180 comments
I met an interesting gentleman a short time ago, who was also a master of the unique selling proposition. He walked up to my desk at the client office, and politely asked what I was doing. I explained...
Make your landing page your hardest-working brand tool20180604201950
Make your landing page your hardest-working brand tool
June 4, 20180 comments
Long, long ago, in a time before landing pages, I used to build brand bibles for my clients. These ‘bibles’ were repositories of everything great and good about their brand, including: The...
How to brand in the gig economy20180528045157
How to brand in the gig economy
May 28, 20180 comments
A brand is, by definition, the equivalent of reputation – and in today’s gig economy, reputation is what enables solopreneurs and entrepreneurs to survive and thrive. But there’s a f...
Why you don’t need to be the product expert to be the product marketer20180219041325
Why you don’t need to be the product expert to be the product marketer
February 19, 20180 comments
My job as a product marketer is to find the core truth in the brand we’re selling. The core truth is what people say about our product, unprompted and off the cuff. If we can capture that truth ...
Let your competitors do your brand positioning for you20180208055612
Let your competitors do your brand positioning for you
February 8, 20180 comments
Brand positioning isn’t an esoteric term. It’s all about my mom. My mom was looking for a new mini-SUV. I took her shopping, intent on impressing on her the infinite superiority of my cl...
The power of a visual brand20180118000309
The power of a visual brand
January 18, 20180 comments
There simply is nothing more powerful than a visual brand – a brand you can identify without words by simply seeing a powerful icon. That’s why, as part of virtually every brand project, I...
What Bill Bernbach would say about data driven marketing.20170829005842
What Bill Bernbach would say about data driven marketing.
August 29, 20170 comments
I love tech. Most of my clients are launching or growing the next generation of wizardry that will make the world a better, more facile, happier place. My job is to tell audiences exactly what it is m...
Brand backcasting – envision the future, then plan how to get there.20170718005129
Brand backcasting – envision the future, then plan how to get there.
July 18, 20170 comments
Over the course of 25 years of helping clients build effective brands, I’ve discovered a huge, yawning gap in the market: commonsense brand building techniques aimed at entrepreneurs who want to...
Advertising engagement, without the annoyance factor20170606005641
Advertising engagement, without the annoyance factor
June 6, 20170 comments
Advertising engagement is a polite way of defining the raison d’etre of ads… you advertise in order to engage your audience. There are a number of ways to create advertising engagement. Yo...
Brand betrayal: the tale of Tim Hortons20170418004212
Brand betrayal: the tale of Tim Hortons
April 18, 20170 comments
A recent Globe and Mail story described the ‘brutal’ brand betrayal of beloved Canadian restaurant Tim Hortons. The cause of the messy shift? Budget cuts by Tim’s new owners – ...
Does branding Christmas ruin the spirit?20161221005501
Does branding Christmas ruin the spirit?
December 21, 20160 comments
Every year, it’s the same – companies branding Christmas assault us with terrible ads, grating songs and depersonalized cards only make things worse. In the spirit of the season, I went on...
Christmas advertising, and the death of sincerity20161220004544
Christmas advertising, and the death of sincerity
December 20, 20160 comments
It’s Christmas. I should be feeling charitable. But “Coca Cola – Top of the Christmas wish list.” Really? Who approved that Christmas advertising campaign? Do they really, real...
Instead of selling cereal, OWN cereal.20161207231925
Instead of selling cereal, OWN cereal.
December 7, 20160 comments
Yesterday, I had a terrific conversation with Spring Advertising founder and Creative Director Rob Schlyecher. Like myself, Rob believes the classic ad agency model is flawed. His ‘a-ha’ m...
Has advertising lost its focus on innovation?20160718184312
Has advertising lost its focus on innovation?
July 18, 20160 comments
Leading North American advertising agencies used to be headed by creatives and innovators. Today, managers and accountants hold the reins. The result? Less focus on innovation, and more on efficiency ...
Saving advertising, one dollar at a time.20160707053212
Saving advertising, one dollar at a time.
July 7, 20160 comments
Advertising is in decline. Pundits and observers blame it on everything from the million channel universe and digital-era tilting of the scale from persuasion to information, to the muscle of consulti...
Turning Ugly Constraints into Beautiful Innovation.20150723160409
Turning Ugly Constraints into Beautiful Innovation.
July 23, 20150 comments
I had the opportunity to interview ‘A Beautiful Constraint’ co-author Mark Barden a short while back (if you’d like to hear the interview, click onto the podcast here). The interview...
What the Heck is an Authentic Brand, Anyway?20150630100009
What the Heck is an Authentic Brand, Anyway?
June 30, 20150 comments
I should know this. I’m a brand specialist. But again and again, I find myself throwing authentic brand around in conversation, enjoying the feeling of gravitas it lends, without actually understandin...
Social Media, Brand Strategy and Storytelling. The Didn’t See It Coming Podcast20150528100041
Social Media, Brand Strategy and Storytelling. The Didn’t See It Coming Podcast
May 28, 20150 comments
In this program, host Ian Jessop and I discuss how brands often leapfrog brand strategy and story to arrive at social media tactics…with disastrous results. Inspired by my keynote at this month&...
Didn’t See It Coming 1: The Podcast20150417203914
Didn’t See It Coming 1: The Podcast
April 17, 20150 comments
For those of you unfamiliar with my book Didn’t See It Coming, this podcast should help. It’s the first in an ongoing series, pulled from my monthly radio appearances on CFAX radio....
Why marketing is averse to new thinking.20150303051155
Why marketing is averse to new thinking.
March 3, 20150 comments
I had a fascinating conversation this morning with Guy Dauncey, a futurist and big brain in the sustainability field. Guy is writing his latest book, a novel that projects us into the Vancouver of 204...
