2008

You don’t have to ‘live the brand’ to give the brand

February 22, 2008

Tweet “Living the Brand”, an internally-focused branding strategy  heralded by marketing gurus , is being touted in the March 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review. HBR features a case discussion about how to achieve organizational authenticity at the fictional Hunsk motorcycles. Marty, Hunsk’s new marketing manager, is intent on reinvigorating Hunsk’s brand by making […]

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It’s not that hard to recognize an organization’s authenticity. Even a child can do it.

February 16, 2008

Tweet “Mom, this company really shows their believingness.” So said my nine-year-old daughter. She had just noticed that the tag hanging from the T-shirt I gave her for Valentine’s Day was made from “100% post-consumer waste”. She already knew that the T-shirt was from a company called PositiviTee, that the graphic image printed on the […]

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The New York Junior League: To be more authentic, practice what you preach

February 9, 2008

Tweet If an organization wants to be seen as inauthentic, all it needs to do is to say one thing and do another. When an organization creates a gap between ‘who we say we are’ and ‘how we act’, it creates a common and avoidable authenticity challenge. This authenticity challenge is made even worse when […]

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An Authentic Response from Glamour Magazine

January 17, 2008

Tweet This past summer, a story about a Glamour magazine staffer who was giving a talk about ‘what to wear to work’ was making the rounds among feminists and fashionistas. During the staffer’s lunchtime talk at a law firm, she allegedly remarked that wearing an Afro at work was “a Glamour Don’t “. Those who […]

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Gilmore and Pine’s Authenticity Paradox

January 12, 2008

Tweet The authenticity paradox, as defined by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II in their book “Authenticity: What consumers really want”, contains the following axioms: If you are authentic, you don’t have to say you’re authentic. If you say you’re authentic, then you’d better be authentic. It’s easier to be authentic, if you […]

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115 Million Cups of Comfort: Kozy Shack Pudding

January 11, 2008

Tweet Have you ever been asked, as part of a personal visioning exercise, to write your own obituary? To all of those MBA students and executives who had to do just that in my leadership classes, I officially apologize. While I understand the merits of imagining what your life could have been like as a […]

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