It’s an interesting time to be a founder. It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been an entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter how far you’ve come, and it doesn’t matter where (or if) you went to business school. There is little that could have been done to prepare us for the economy grinding to a halt… Continue reading Your “Note From Our CEO on COVID-19” Email Went Out — Now What?
Author: Brett
Why Your Brand Should Become a Media Company
What type of company is Red Bull? The answer is obvious, right? They are an energy drink company, duh. Except they’re not. Red Bull isn’t really an energy drink company, or at least they certainly don’t act like one. Red Bull is a media company. They create TV shows, magazines, movies, music, and host hundreds of events… Continue reading Why Your Brand Should Become a Media Company
10 Companies Dominating Brand Publishing (And How They Do It)
Marketing used to be all about interruption. Commercials, pop-up ads, and in-your-face billboards. Advertising takes advantage of our attention with hope of converting it into action. But that’s all changing lately. People don’t want to be interrupted and they don’t want to be sold something. They want education, inspiration, and community. This shift has lead… Continue reading 10 Companies Dominating Brand Publishing (And How They Do It)
A Founders Guide to Category Creation
In 1953, Swanson Foods had a 520,000-pound problem. The company over-ordered turkeys for Thanksgiving and were now stuck with a massive supply of turkeys they couldn’t sell. They loaded the excess meat onto frozen railcars and moved it back and forth across the country, expensively buying time until they had a solution. Management sent out… Continue reading A Founders Guide to Category Creation
Why Your Company Needs an Enemy
Last week, Apple removed Fortnite, the world’s most popular video game from its app store. This removal meant a chunk of Fortnites 350 million-plus gamers would no longer be able to access the game through iOS. Shortly after Apple’s removal, Google removed the game too. The companies said Epic Games (the developers of Fortnite) had… Continue reading Why Your Company Needs an Enemy
Break Through the Noise By Declaring War on the Problem You Want to Solve
Our client was fed up with PR firms and consultants by the time he came to us. He was a highly successful businessman who passionately despised the influence of money in politics and had bold political ambitions. For the past few years, he had been trying to drum up awareness around his political ideas. He… Continue reading Break Through the Noise By Declaring War on the Problem You Want to Solve
How and Why to Build a Challenge Brand
Dollar Shave Club launched in 2011 with a mission to change the way men buy razors. The $3.5 billion dollar male shaving category had been dominated by the Gillette-Schick duopoly since the early 1900s. Their model was to wholesale razors to retailers who then sold them to customers. With no pressure from competitors, there was no major… Continue reading How and Why to Build a Challenge Brand
How to Use Original Research to Break Through the Noise
The average journalist is bombarded with over 200 emails per day from startups and PR firms hoping to catch their eye and land a story. Nearly 3 million blog posts are published every single day by companies who understand that “content is king,” as Bill Gates famously predicted in a 1996 essay. All this means it’s harder than ever… Continue reading How to Use Original Research to Break Through the Noise
Founders: It’s Time to go on the Offensive and Lead Your Industry into the Future
Our SWOT analysis this year didn’t include a crippling global pandemic that put the entire world on hold. Yours probably didn’t either. If you told me in January that we would be where we all are now, I would have legitimately thought you were out of your mind. Yet here we are. Ordered to stay… Continue reading Founders: It’s Time to go on the Offensive and Lead Your Industry into the Future