Our thinking is appearing in publications around the world

Your customers—current and intended—have certain expectations of both your brand and your category. There's a fine line between outrageous and offensive messaging, and the risk of crossing it and alienating more customers than you entice must be evaluated.

Despite its promise as a primary source of organic business growth, capitalizing on innovation’s potential is an elusive goal for many businesses. Our 2008 Best Practices Study, developed in collaboration with Play, reveals how “model” innovators do it — with approaches that point the way toward better innovation success for others.

In this opinion article published by the financial daily Cinco Días, Joseph Gelman argues that the concept of bank branches is still alive, despite claims to the contrary. Banks should therefore take advantage of this situation to transmit the essence of their brand to clients at all points of interaction, particularly in light of the current cash crisis. *Please note this article is in Spanish.

Brand extensions are often seen as a silver bullet to all that ails maturing brands and business categories. Succeed and you may be on the path to substantial organic growth. Fail, and you join the ranks of some 90% of all new market entrants that prove irrelevant to customers.

Web 2.0 is doing a lot more than simply facilitating exciting new ways to establish a brand’s relevance with customers. On the marketing science side, it’s driving an equally exciting morphing of methodologies and the ways we use them. In short, we’re seeing a redefinition of the capabilities in the traditional analytics toolbox.

In this article, David Aaker argues that brand strategy is crucially important to an innovation. Without it, the strength of an innovation will be short-lived. 
*Please note, there is a fee to obtain the full text of this article.

In this article, Scott Davis answers questions about customer control: Does the customer really want to be your co-pilot? Does the customer want to do the marketer’s work in building the brand? Make your ads? Design your products? Distribute your message? Maybe not, he argues.

This article discusses the test-and-learn approach to marketing investment and how it helps build marketing credibility while providing a platform for continuous optimization of the overall marketing mix.

This article was co-authored with our client, UBS, and has been translated into English from the original German text. It illustrates how active touchpoint management can help in converting prospects to clients, extending relationships to existing clients and therefore driving business results.

In the environment where you can reach your customers 24/7, success at building a brand—at solidifying and growing your relationship with customers—is really all about being selective. You need to pick the right time and place or, better yet, let the customer pick for you.

This article in the special supplement on brands published by the advertising and marketing magazine El Publicista highlights how certain brands have been able to ignore the current trend in advertising towards politically correct messages. Prophet's Joseph Gelman and Bernhard Schaar use examples such as Burguer King and Direct Line insurance to illustrate their argument. *Please note this article is in Spanish.

In this article, Andrew argues that the question for most companies is not if they will take action to make their brands environmentally friendly, but when and the extent to which they will do so. He then discusses what it takes to successfully make green work as a business and brand builder.

Kevin O’Donnell believes innovation’s role as a driver of organic growth and a differentiator that adds substantially to a brand’s value remains as critical as ever. In his inaugural column in the newly relaunched Marketing News, a publication of the American Marketing Association, O’Donnell spells out one solution: Creation of innovation “systems” that foster actionable creativity.

In this article that appeared originally in the Wall Street Journal, Dave Aaker argues that to win market share, don’t try to influence what brand of product people buy. Change how they use the product in the first place.

In this article, we discuss how single-brand companies can utilize brand portfolio and architecture to maximize business results.

This op-ed article highlights how certain brands have been able to ignore the current trend in advertising towards politically correct messages. Prophet's Joseph Gelman and Bernhard Schaar use examples such as Burger King and Direct Line insurance to illustrate their argument.

In this article, Michael Dunn argues that in order to be effective, marketers need to up their game, take on the new media, and be prepared to be adventurous, extending their influence over many of the critical business growth drivers.

Innovation is now a priority in most firms around the world just as quality was two decades ago. The challenge then was how to transform a quality program and results into a quality image. Today the need is to gain image credit for developing an innovative organization and a flow of innovative products.

Color today’s marketers dazed and confused. It’s an understandable reaction to an environment that has become almost impossibly complex, making it difficult for them to figure out where to start (or much less how to go about) meeting management’s escalating demands for demonstrable returns.

Joseph Gelman analyzes how BBVA's offering of new products and services might affect the financial entity's brand. *Please note, this article is in Spanish.