What are your marketing resolutions for 2016?

The New Year gives us a clean slate and an opportunity to make resolutions to improve our lives. Typical goals and resolutions include losing weight, exercising more, improving finances, getting a new job or procrastinating less. Which, I’m sure we’ll all fully accomplish this year.

Yeah, right.

According to recent research published in the University of Scranton Journal of Clinical Psychology, while nearly 45 percent of us make New Year’s resolutions, only 8 percent actually keep them.Read full post...

You have three approaches to choose from when deciding on media planning and buying for your organization: centralized, decentralized or a hybrid.

Reorganization. If your organization is going through it, you’re also going to have to deal with reorganizing a very important marketing function: media buying.

You have three approaches to choose from, each with merits and disadvantages: centralized, decentralized or a hybrid.Read full post...

Almost 400 people took the Business and Labor Resources Employment Branding Survey this past June. The results highlight the importance of marketing and human resources professionals working together to build and maintain an employment brand.

Slightly more than one quarter (26.6%) of survey respondents said their organization has an employment brand program—i.e., “a program directed at employees and potential employees as opposed to a general brand program directed at the population at large.”

Of those who don’t have a brand program, 40.5% said they plan to implement or are considering one, and 50.7% said they may consider one in the future.Read full post...

Brands don’t happen over night.
image credit: Latimre Appleby

In my career I have built, enhanced and even created numerous brands for multiple organizations in healthcare, higher education, and other industries. And people always ask me, “How long does it take to establish a brand?”

My answer: five years.

In the first phase, you’ll develop your brand. This requires qualitative and quantitative marketplace, stakeholder and competitor research; positioning and brand platform formation; and creative execution, messaging, and brand guideline and internal collateral development. You’ll need careful planning and patience—and about 18 months.Read full post...

I would be wealthy if I had a nickel for every time a member of the faculty, staff, administration or board said, “I didn’t realize you could help with that.”

Far too often, the marcom (marketing/communications) and public relations office is brought into a situation requiring communication to internal and external stakeholders late in the process. I have learned through experience that the more people understand what marcom professionals do, the better the outcome.Read full post...