Monday, September 21, 2009

Strong Brands Recover from Recession Faster

Analysis released today by Millward Brown Optimor reveals that the BrandZ™ Portfolio, created from the world's Top 100 most valuable brands, is recovering faster than the S&P 500 as a whole. The BrandZ Portfolio is now worth 28 percent more than the S&P 500, and it has returned to profit ahead of the market.

The BrandZ Top 100 is based on the world's largest brand equity study. It is the only brand ranking that combines financial data with research among 1.5 million consumer and B2B customers in 30 countries.

Joanna Seddon, CEO Millward Brown Optimor said: “The recession has provided fresh evidence of the tremendous value of brand assets. Over the past year, even when things were at their worst, the BrandZ Portfolio outperformed the market. Our new analysis reveals that as the stock market recovers, the share prices of companies who have invested in developing strong brands are recovering fastest. Companies that continue to invest in their brands in a recession emerge with a sustainable competitive advantage.”

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Brand Called YOU (And what to name kittens)



This month I have done three presentations on The Brand Called YOU. The first one was in Iceland to the women entrepreneur association and the second one to NAWBO in Sedona, AZ. Yesterday I did a free teleseminar on the topic to about 70 women who signed on through www.connected-women.com.
I want to highlight two things that have happened the last two days:
1) I just adopted two rescue kittens. One is a tabby (orange) and is five weeks old. The other one is all white and is three weeks old. They are ADORABLE. My daughter is really the big cat lover and she no longer lives at home but her roommate does this rescue work and these kittens were irresistible!
So we came up with the names Tiger and Snowflake. And then I realized that these were the most typical, unimaginative names we could have come up with. I told my daughter--we have to have better names. She loves Winnie the Pooh and wanted to change Tiger to Tigger and she wanted Snowflake to become Anna Bella. I said OK to Tigger and no to Anna Bella. A few hours later, I said OK to Anna Bella because I can call her Bell.
I really didn't think this through at the time that these cat names might affect my personal branding. I hope that part of my branding is that I am a creative person and I guess that kicked in, even subconsciously, as there was NO creativity in those original names. It's only after the fact (last night in bed) that I realized this WAS a branding issue for me!
(Plus--if you don't think Anna Bella and Tigger are very creative--I can just say, "My daughter named the kittens." That solves the branding issue for me, too!)
2) As I said, I was just in Iceland. I LOVE Icelandic fashion designers so someone sent me a link to where the founder of Steinunn, Steinunn Sigurd, one of my favorite Icelandic designers, has a Small Business Makeover by Fortune.
http://money.cnn.com/video/smallbusiness/2009/08/26/sbiz_mak_steinunn.smb/ and
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/1/smallbusiness/icelandic_fashion_business_makeover.fsb/index.htm
In the interview, Steinunn said she one of the things she learned through this process is to “Profile myself more so people can get to know who I am.”
Does this sound like “The Brand Called YOU”? I love having my messages reinforced in other places.
So--how do you profile yourself to carry out your brand?

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

International Women Business Associations

I arrived in Iceland yesterday and joined a meeting of the International committee for the FKA (the Icelandic women business association). I am past Chair of the International Forum of National Association of Women Business Owners (U.S.)
The points of discussion at the committee meeting were:
1) what do we get out of our alliances and what organizations should we be looking at?
2) can we do a survey of members and learn more about them--including whether they do business internationally
3) we need to re-do our organization website, particularly to add more about members and about international
4) we have members that import, etc., but say they don't do business internationally!
I kept feeeling like I was at a NAWBO meeting. ALL of these topics are discussed--and discussed and discussed-- by NAWBO as well. It is just another example of how similar we are throughout the world!

AN ARGUMENT NOT TO CHANGE YOUR NAME WHEN MARRIED

AN ARGUMENT NOT TO CHANGE YOUR NAME WHEN MARRIED
About 3 weeks ago Eunice Shriver died, the founder of Special Olympics. Many articles on her after her death stated she was perhaps the Kennedy sibling that left the biggest legacy. Yet when Senator Ted Kennedy just passed away, she was barely mentioned--but his two brothers were. Is this because:
1) Her last name was no longer Kennedy?
2) She wasn't a male?
3) She was never a Senator?

My vote would go to the first two choices!