Branding.
Practical writing on brand, growth and technology — and on the connections between them, which is where most of the value hides. No trend-chasing, no filler; frameworks and honest trade-offs, written by the team that does the work.
Do You Have a Brand Problem or a Marketing Problem?
Awareness, comprehension, preference and conversion fail in ways that look identical on a report. Naming which one is broken before you spend is the difference between a fix and a larger budget.
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Four Things That Get Sold When a Brand Stops Working
Refresh, reposition, rebuild, rename. Four different interventions get sold under the word rebrand, they cost wildly different amounts, and only one of them fixes what you actually have.
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Branded House or House of Brands: Can You Carry a Second Brand?
Three architectures, three carrying costs. A small company can rarely fund a second brand’s name, site, voice and audience at the same time, which is why the endorsed model is usually the honest answer.
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What Makes a Name Worth the Trouble of Changing?
Four reasons make renaming a company worth its cost. Most of the reasons people give are not among them, and the name is rarely what the market is confused about.
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Positioning: Choosing a Territory You Can Actually Defend
Brand positioning that excludes nobody decides nothing. The work is picking a frame of reference, naming a difference that costs you something, and carrying proof for both.
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Why Do Rebrands Fail in the Second Year?
The launch is the easy part. Rebrand failure in year two comes from asset decay, exceptions nobody wrote down, and the quiet fact that nobody owns the identity once the agency leaves.
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Identity as a System, Not a Logo File
A brand identity system is not a folder of artwork. It is a set of named values and rules that answer the design questions nobody thinks to ask, on the pages nobody will ever design.
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Messaging That People Can Repeat Without Reading It Twice
Internal agreement and external clarity are different tests, and passing the first usually costs you the second. Write the sentence a customer will repeat, then rank everything else beneath it.
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How Do You Know It Is Time to Rebrand?
Boredom is the most common reason a company rebrands and the worst one. Four kinds of evidence justify the work, and every one of them has a cheaper intervention worth running first.
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Brand Guidelines Nobody Follows: What to Write Instead
Nobody reads the PDF. Brand guidelines get followed when they are shaped like the decisions people face, show the wrong version beside the right one, and live inside the tools where the work happens.
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What Brand Decisions Should Freeze Before a Website Build Starts?
Four things belong on the frozen list before a build begins: who you are for, what you are called, what you say first, and how you look. Everything else can run alongside it.
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Distinctiveness Beats Differentiation: Why Looking Different Pays
Differentiation is a claim about what you do. Distinctiveness is whether anyone can tell it is you before they read a word. Most brands fund the first and stay invisible on the second.
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How Much Brand Does an Early-Stage Company Actually Need?
Brand is not one purchase. Settle a name, a claim and a working look before launch. Rewrite once real customers have answered back. Buy the full identity system only when repetition starts costing money.
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The Tone of Voice Document That Actually Changes Copy
Most tone of voice documents are three adjectives and a mood board, and not one sentence on the website changes because of them. A useful one is built from rewrites, bans and decisions.
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Personal Brand or Company Brand: Which Should Carry the Business?
A founder’s name travels further and faster than any logo. It also cannot be sold, delegated or put on leave. Decide which brand carries the business before the market decides for you.
Read15 articles in Branding.
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