Antifragile brands
Some brands survive a rough quarter. A rarer kind comes out of it sharper than they went in. The difference isn't luck,…
Strategy
37 Articles
Earn the right to scale
Scale is a multiplier, and multipliers don't care what they multiply. Prove it small first, because whatever's broken is coming with you.
And then what
Every brand decision has a first result and a second one. The second one is where the bill arrives.
The inverse of noise
Noise-cancelling headphones don't block anything. They listen first, then answer. Most brand problems want the same treatment.
Small brands, big rooms
The big-budget competitor has more of everything except the things that actually decide the room. Here's what money can't buy and committees…
Repositioning without whiplash
Changing your story without losing the people who bought the old one. Mostly a matter of sequence, and of saying the quiet…
The holiday campaign you don’t need
An unpopular suggestion for the loudest month of the year: maybe don't. The brands that win January are the ones that didn't…
Word of mouth is a product feature
Referrals aren't a channel you switch on. They're exhaust from work worth mentioning, and you can design for that without a single…
The founder is the brand until they aren’t
A letter to the founder whose face is on everything, about a handoff that should start earlier than it feels natural to…
Growth plateaus are information
Flat numbers aren't a verdict. They're a message, and it's usually one of three. The trick is reading it before you start…
Your homepage headline is a mirror
Most headlines are the company describing itself to itself. There's a ten-second test that catches it, and it stings a little.
Brand guidelines nobody follows
Eighty-eight beautiful pages, opened approximately never. Guidelines fail when they're written as law instead of built as tools.