Most of the ads you place today hit a market that's not ready to buy. So the strength of your brand—its promise and distinctiveness—will determine if that ad spend makes an impact.

Every category has clichés—phrases or concepts that get overused. Clichés can be a strong signal to your market of followership instead of leadership.

Rather than doing the hard work of brand-building, leaders go after easy solutions, like redesigning the logo, and then wonder why results don’t follow.

When you check in with various team leaders and employees, do you hear an organizational single-mindedness?

Do you aim to build a brand that's steadfast, exceptional, and makes a significant contribution to the world? Or are you building cheap, selling quick, and don’t really care as long as customers support you?

Everything you do—who you serve, how you serve, the people you hire, the software you develop, the processes you build, everything—should build on the “value of a promise consistently kept.”

Defining and refining your brand’s promise to the customer can feel like wheel-spinning. What if you started with advertising and figured it out from there? Is there a benefit to doing the hard work first?

At the intersection of your brand, your customers, and the competition is a sweet spot where your brand voice should take root. Here’s what it takes to craft an authentic and competitively differentiating brand voice…

In 2012, Barnes & Noble was not doing well. Internally, they were struggling, and externally, they were surrounded by aggressive competition from all sides. Things looked bleak. So what turned things around?

What is the essence of your brand? What does it promise customers? Does your promise have specificity that can drive your organization forward?