Growth Consultant & Fractional CMO

Articles in the "Marketing" Category

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Simplify Your Logo to Amplify Your Logo

It's tempting to jam your corporate identity full of bells and whistles, but the strongest identities are still the simplest ones. When designing a logo, it's easy to go overboard. There are so many great elements you can work with (colors, textures, patterns, shapes,...

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What Makes Videos Go Viral

The basic elements of highly successful online videos are really just fundamental principles of human interaction, and you can apply to nearly any form of communication (especially marketing). While there's no way to guarantee that anything will "go viral," studying...

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Logos Are Getting Simpler

When designing a logo, it’s easy to go overboard. There are so many great elements you can work with (colors, textures, patterns, shapes, borders, typography, gradients, icons, etc.) that it’s tempting to include a little bit of everything to get your point across. In...

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Crowdsourcing Your Brand: The Math Doesn’t Work

As much as our work at Forty is about “touchy-feely” stuff (psychology, emotion, metaphor, experiences, etc.), I’m still a numbers guy at heart. That’s why I get so frustrated every time I hear someone recommending crowdsourced design services like 99designs. The...

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“It’s All About You” Doesn’t Work

We’re naturally attracted to people and brands that stand for something, and we’re suspicious of those that try to mold themselves around our preferences. Imagine this. You’re on a blind date. You: “So, where do you want to go?” Date: “Wherever you want to go.” You:...

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Two Powerful Examples of Cultural Marketing Metaphors

A cultural metaphor is strong because it references cultural icons shared by a brand’s consumers. Of the three types of brand metaphors, this one has the most potential to slide into “themeiness." But when it’s executed well, it can also be the most useful as a source...

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The Incredible Power of Metaphors in Marketing

Once you’ve sorted out your company’s roots (purpose, values, style, etc.), you’ll find yourself faced with the challenge of trying to hold all that information in your head when making a decision. One of the best tools for dealing with this situation is a metaphor: a...

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The Battle Between Market Research and Gut Instinct

One of the great dilemmas in marketing is whether to trust your instincts over what the research is showing you. Both the agency (“we know how people think”) and the client (“we know our clients”) have important insights that might not show up clearly in the research,...

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Is Business 2.0 Fundamentally Feminine?

Business is historically a male-dominated endeavor, so it’s no surprise that the stereotype about what it takes to succeed in business involves traditionally masculine characteristics: aggression, tactical thinking, bravado, ruthlessness, objectivity, ego, pride,...

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Nobody Knows Anything About Branding

Screenwriter William Goldman once wrote of the movie industry that “Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out, it’s a guess…nobody, nobody–not now, not ever–knows the least...

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3 Essential Elements of a Rock-Solid Brand

Over the years, we’ve found that there are three foundational elements to almost any brand: purpose, values, and style. BRAND PURPOSE Research cited in Built to Last (by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras) indicates that purpose-driven companies can outperform the...

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Getting Back to Reality

We now live in a world where almost everything is abstracted and over-processed to the point of barely being real. Take hamburgers, for example. What once referred to a thick, juicy slab of minced beef flavored with regional spices now typically refers to a thin,...

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Special K and Wheaties: A Lesson in Positioning

Cereal is great. You throw some milk on it, and you’ve got a tasty and relatively nutritious breakfast. Theoretically, cereals–at least the basic, unadorned ones–should be relatively universal. There’s not much about them that predisposes them to any particular...

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ROI is What Actually Happens

Executives tend to be short-term thinkers. Their career has grown through easy-quantifiable successes, and they’re constantly pressured — by other short-term thinking executives — to base their actions around short-term metrics. It’s all about what happened last...

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What Happens After Your Revolution

Revolution is easy when you don’t have anything to lose. You say the things everyone’s afraid to say, kick in some doors, fire your guns into the air, depose some tyrannical leaders, and declare your way to be the new way of doing things. When you’re a startup, it’s...

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