Our thinking is appearing in publications around the world

This ANA Insight Brief shares the five steps that marketers can take in order to lift their marketing capabilities to the next level. *Please note, you must be an ANA member in order to access this content.

David Aaker applies concepts from his new book: Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant, to the retail industry.

Jay Milliken and Andres Nicholls discuss how strategy-led design and understanding customer behavior are the key elements for the success of Emart.

This blog post, written by Dan Schawbel, features an interview with David Aaker discussing his new book, "Spanning Silos: The New CMO Imperative."

Insights into the rise in Executive Brand Councils and the strategic role they play in decision-making.

This executive summary outlines the main concepts from Scott Davis' book, The Shift.

A serious threat facing most brands in dynamic markets is the loss of relevance because the category or subcategory that they are serving is declining. Customers are no longer buying what the brand is perceived to be making. New categories or subcategories are emerging as competitors’ innovations create “must haves.” Remarkably, this dynamic can happen even if the brand is strong, customers are loyal and the offering has never been better, thanks, in part, to incremental innovations.

When marketers map customer experience, we start by defining a beginning and an end. To improve the experience for a particular brand, we typically look at the customer’s touchpoints with the brand on that continuum, not acknowledging that our customers live in an ecosystem, transcending any single brand.

Applying a brand lens on post-merger integration can significantly increase chances of success. This article outlines five key lessons, and includes several examples from the pharmaceutical industry.

Walmart’s Stephen Quinn has it. Steve Meyer of Dell services and Cammie Dunaway of Nintendo have it, too. “It” is a P&L mind-set.  It’s a mind-set critical for senior marketers to develop or sharpen if they expect to advance from being order takers or sales supporters to enterprise-wide, visionary leaders.

Growing a business and brand is never easy – especially when consumers are fickle and the economy uncertain. But look on the bright side: while consumer and business spending are tenuous, major confidence indices are at a five-year high and still climbing. We’re at an economic inflection point that historically has created tension for marketers: Should they tightly manage spending, riding out weaker economic times, or invest more to help drive growth in new areas?

It has become obvious that neither consumers nor businesses can evade the new digital world. As digitalization accelerates, its impact shows up not only through big players like Facebook, eBay, and Google, but also through digital media’s effect on the relationship between companies and customers.

Roland Bernhard talks about the importance of the new networked era based on social media and how marketers should be communicating more transparently about their brand.

David Aaker's autobiography details the intellectual journey that led to a focus on brands and chronicles his attempts to influence management practices.

Positioning your brand represents the short-term communication objectives, what it is you want to communicate, enhance or reinforce about your current brand. It is about your brand and how it differs from and is better than other brands. Jaguar isdifferentiated, in part, around design. Dove provides moisturizing. 3M offers innovation. Whole Foods Market has sustainable seafood. Framing has a bigger agenda.

The existence of functional silos is a serious challenge for CMOs. This article, based on David Aaker's latest book, "Spanning Silos: The New CMO Imperative," discusses ways to combat silos to advance marketing and develop stronger offerings and brands.

This article examines the Employee Value Proposition as a potential strategy for attracting and retaining the best people in tough times.

Prophet Vice Chairman David Aaker argues that to succeed in today’s global arena, marketers must learn to appeal to consumers whose interests transcend individual products and regions.

For a few years now, the shiniest new toy in the digital marketplace has been the mobile app.

The proliferation has been amazing: The 1-millionth app went live as 2011 came to a close, and the pace has continued through 2012. The trend, Mobilewalla told theNew York Times, has been 15,000 mobile app releases per week.

Everyone wants to get a piece of this pie. And why not? The thing is that for all the really cool, highly successful apps there are hundreds, (thousands?) of others that are dumb, useless, or a joke.

In this interview published in M&K, the leading Swiss marketing communications journal, Roland Bernhard addresses some of the most challenging topics marketers face today. Roland talks about customer experience, innovation and marketing accountability and explains how commanding these topics help marketers gain a competitive advantage, even in difficult times. *Please note, this article is in German.