Our thinking is appearing in publications around the world

A variety of factors – the rise of healthcare consumerism, healthcare reform and all its implications, and an increasingly informed public – are combining to force healthcare providers to take a hard look at something they once may have taken for granted: their “customers,” by which we mean their patients.

The healthcare interaction model was traditionally defined by the patient-doctor relationship, with the physician “brand” the source of decision-making, short- and long-term care planning, and also the foundation for patient loyalty. Patients went to the hospital that their physician recommended, whereas healthcare systems relied on hard facts to help physicians and patients make decisions. They weren’t actively managing their brands.

Prophet's James Walker and Joerg Niessing presented at London Business School and taught a brand valuation class as part of the MBA program’s core Marketing course. The lecture highlighted the paradoxes of valuing brands but also created a clear roadmap of do's and don’ts and illustrates the power of brand valuation as a brand-management tool.

The Future of Pharma Profitability Lies in Building Corporate Brands

Corporate board members have a long list of responsibilities and concerns: succession planning, executive compensation, regulatory compliance and business growth strategies -- not to mention shareholder interests and value.

One topic that gets less attention is brand, often because many senior marketers have not mastered the art of turning marketing-speak into the financial language that resonates with directors. If brand value and the benefits of brand-building investments are not translated into the language of numbers, marketing will always be at a disadvantage in winning over the board.

It’s no secret that brands are constantly in search of ways to build connections and loyalty with their customers. However many brands are tackling this challenge by blasting meaningless messages into the ether, hoping to gain a committed following. It's a sure-fire way to turn people off and eventually leave your messages falling on deaf ears. Strong brands engage consumers with authentic and consistent material that reflects an understanding of their interests and gets the dialogue going.These days, great content makes for great brands.

Loyalty programs have become all about earn and burn: customers spend money, earn points and then redeem them. It's time to rethink this concept.

A look at the top 10 things that are different about marketing mix modeling in 2013, and why it is a more effective business tool than ever before.

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?

The “human library” has its roots in the city library in Malmö, Sweden, which allows curious visitors to check out living people for a 45-minute conversation. Th e experience is designed to confront prejudices and promote understanding. Th e people available to be “checked out” at one point included a gypsy, a transvestite, a blind man, a journalist and an animal rights activist. The conversations are intended to allow people to learn about the life and beliefs of an individual who has been misunderstood, stereotyped and often avoided.

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 word, innovation, is so over used that it’s almost lost all meaning. Yet, as with all aspects of business, innovation evolves. Innovation will remain the process by which newness comes into the world, but the how of innovation is in flux. New business landscapes, new technologies, and the wearing out of old models require us to reimage how we innovate.

It’s the time of year to assess what stories stood out for better or for worse, for richer and, for some, poorer and those that just left you scratching your head. 2012 did not disappoint from a brand perspective. From the BBC to the NHL. From HP to Lance. From Blackberry to Newsweek. From Tom Cruise to JC Penney. From Hostess to Red Bull and from the London Olympics to Detroit. This was a brand year we will not forget any time soon. There were brands that inspired, influenced and compelled and there were those that just, well, continued to disappoint…think Sears and MySpace again and yet again.

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 your company is expanding rapidly and experiencing double-digit growth, evaluating your sales force performance, in most cases, becomes a low priority. But growth will inevitably slow down due to change. Internal changes (mergers, new product launches, entries into new markets), competitive changes (loss of market leadership, price competition, lower barriers to entry, lower share of voice), or environmental changes (deregulation, new infrastructures, economic cycles) should all prompt you to reassess your sales force. 

While the role of the ideation session, in its myriad guises, holds a place in the innovation firmament, and while the role that inspiration plays in such sessions is hardly to be questioned, we challenged ourselves to think more broadly about the role that inspiration plays throughout the innovation process. Ultimately, we determined that an inspiration-driven approach to innovation fundamentally changes how each process step looks, feels and, most importantly, the value it delivers.

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. 

When thousands of people lost their jobs during the Great Depression, many of them started riding the rails across the country in search of work and food. Hobos, as they were called, had been hopping trains since the 1870s, working as migrant laborers wherever they could find a job. They often traveled by themselves, leading to the inevitable problem of knowing what to expect when arriving in an unfamiliar place. Some cities might be welcoming while others might be less hospitable. A farmer might feed those who worked his fields while others might turn you into the police. A secret language of signs was developed that informed hobos about what awaited them. To the casual observer, the signs were gibberish or graffiti; but to the hobo, they could mean the difference between a hot meal and a night in jail. And therein lies a key question for today’s companies to ask themselves: