Our thinking is appearing in publications around the world

On October 1, the digital doors of the health insurance exchanges open for business; and, the individual mandate will leave the entrance overflowing. No matter the depth of meticulous planning and preparation, nor the painstaking journey through security clearance, most health insurers are in a mad dash to the boarding gate.

Unless your brand is one of the exceptions, it needs energy. a brand that has insu? cient energy has two potential liabilities. first, it will lack visibility and it will no longer be among those that come to mind when customers consider a purchase. it will be lost in the noise of the environment and will no longer be relevant. Second, and perhaps worse, it can see declines in key image items such as perceived quality and trust. in addition, it could see the degradation of its ability to drive diff erentiation and loyalty.

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?

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.

Companies often engage in an analytical and creative process to develop or review their brand positioning, an exercise often triggered by the need to support a revised business strategy.

One of the risks they may encounter, however, is embarking on positioning development that lacks a strong enough strategic foundation. One way to offset this is by employing a “Brand Archetype” model, which helps define the space in which brands should play, providing strategic direction for the brand positioning.

The Brand Archetype model was inspired by the understanding that brand positioning is dictated by a company’s assets, business situation, and future strategy, as well as the “appetite” for category disruption. 

Look at any product category and the answer is the same. All of the meaningful changes in market position and sales of individual brands occur only when the brand creates a “must have” for which competitors lack visibility and credibility to be considered. However, most fi rms seldom foster such innovation and bring it to market—and in most cases, it is not because there is a lack of resources. Firms that are profi table and successful are actually less likely to fund market-changing innovation than fi rms that are struggling or in crisis. Why? One answer is the curse of success, which can take several forms.

The only way to grow, with rare exceptions, is to engage in substantial or transformational innovation that will be a game changer, that will create new categories or subcategories defined by qualities that customers deem “must haves” and protected by actively managed competitive barriers. Healthy organizations often have plenty of ideas that potentially qualify but get killed off before reaching the market. As a result, an opportunity to create a platform for real growth is lost.

Out of Aaker's five brand books, what precepts stand out as one of the top ten? Which are most critical “to do” tasks for someone charged with creating or managing a business? What do you need to know to excel at building a brand? 

David Aaker was profiled by Techronicle, the biannually published Business and Technology magazine for senior business leaders.

We hear it all the time among clients, within companies and at meetings. Everyone understands that if you stand still in today’s rapidly changing environment, then you’ll be choking on the other guy’s dust as you fade into irrelevance. The ability to get ahead, much less to transform, is today’s business imperative. But it takes change agents to lead the charge.

All too often, though, stuff gets in the way. The barriers of silos. Resistance to change. A shortage of the right skills for the challenges. The fact is that transforming a business is really hard work.

JCPenney will be the retailer to watch this year. The company has launched a major rebranding effort with a full overhaul of its merchandising strategy, and Forbes is already touting it as the most interesting retailer in 2012.

Winning the brand-relevance war involves engaging in substantial or transformational innovation to change what customers buy, to manage perceptions of the resulting new subcategory, and to build barriers to prevent competitors from overcoming their visibility and credibility barriers.

Aaker details one of the growth paths described in his book, Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant: Removing negatives, and reasons that people use when deciding to exclude your brand from consideration.

2011 was a year filled with great partnerships. Who could forget William and Kate’s grand wedding watched by billions around the globe, or the unions of Reese Witherspoon, Daniel Craig, and Nick Lachey? There was also the 72-day marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries -- okay, so maybe not all partnerships are meant to be.

In this article, Fred and Chiaki outline the concept of Signature Touchpoints, the third dimension of marketing, which is just as important as new product development or campaign development to achieve breakthrough in both B2B and B2C markets.

David Aaker tells the story of Nintendo's business strategy that led to five years of brand and market success.

In this article Roland and Tobias talk about the impact of social media on companies' marketing strategy and show how customers should be at the center of communication in this new networked era.
* Please note this article is in German.

In this article, Joseph explains why it is important for companies to pay attention to trends and understand if they are relevant for their category and brand.

Aneysha Pearce explains why the Commonwealth Games fiasco has left the reputation of India’s government and the country in general in serious jeopardy.

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.