The Minder

The creative brief. What a curious way to cap off a brand strategy initiative. You mean you’ve spent months asking yourselves and others who you are, how you are different and what your unique opportunity is in the market, and the ribbon you tie around it is a creative brief to inform the design of the visual identity? What about the 900 other ways in which your brand will be experienced, expressed and supported? What about the Organizational Brief™? (Read on …)

Corporate values are sets of beliefs that shape behaviour in organizations, and they strongly determine internal and external perceptions. In several projects linking corporate values to brand and organizational change, I’ve been working with a three-tiered model of values, which is helping to make the job of managing values a bit easier.  (Read on …)

If you’re part of even the most average organization, you probably know a fair amount about your customers. You probably know a lot about what matters to them, what they think about you, and how much they are willing to pay to buy to what you sell. But how much do you know about what your employees think, what matters to them and how far they are willing to go to defend your brand? Chances are you’ve got an employee satisfaction survey that HR does every year or so, and you’ve got a few programs in place to communicate more openly; but do you really know the effect that implicit corporate values are having on your ability to deliver on your brand promise, or for that matter on your basic corporate responsibilities? (Read on …)