The Brand Algorithm (Page 2)

How to Measure Brand Equity So It Holds Up in the Boardroom

Most brand equity dashboards get politely ignored by the CFO. The problem is credibility. Here are the frameworks that translate brand value into language the board understands.

AI + Brand

Your First AI Marketing Investment Shouldn't Be a Content Factory

Faster content is the AI gain every rival can buy. Sort AI marketing projects by whether the work shapes how customers remember you and whether it runs on data only you have, then fund customer insight before a content factory.

AI + Brand

Google's Ad Automation Is a Brand Governance Problem

Google's automated campaigns now choose audiences, budgets and even ad copy. Leaders need written rules for what the machine may decide, a deliberate choice between Search, AI Max and Performance Max, and a real baseline to judge results against.

A pipe narrows to a single pink drop while the pink price tags above it shrink.

Marketing Leadership

Why a Falling Cost per Click Can Mean a Shrinking Pipeline

A falling cost per click can hide a shrinking pipeline. Here's why blended CPC misleads, what to report instead, and the few cases where CPC still tells you something useful.

Brand Strategy

Seven Strategy Books That Hold Up Against a Real P&L

Seven strategy books that hold up under real budget pressure, from Byron Sharp to April Dunford: what each one gets right, where it breaks down, and which to read for the problem you have now.

Brand Systems

Brand Voice Guidelines Don't Work With AI. Here's What Does.

Voice guidelines describe outcomes. AI needs mechanics: sentence length, banned constructions, and scored examples taken from your own best work. How to turn a brand voice into a spec a model can follow.

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Marketing Leadership

The Numbers Your CFO Wants From Marketing, and How to Present Them

CFOs cut marketing when it reports activity instead of returns. Learn the few numbers finance trusts, such as CAC payback and contribution margin by channel, and how to build a budget proposal that survives a CFO review.

Brand Strategy Featured

The Real Crisis in Creative Isn't AI

Generative AI produces the statistical middle of every category, so brands that use it without a creative strategy become harder to tell apart. Five audits show whether your work is still distinctive.

Brand Strategy

Ohmae's 3 C's Still Hold in the AI Era. Only the Inputs Changed.

When the board asks for an AI strategy, the reflex is to chase the newest tool. Kenichi Ohmae's 3 C's (customer, company, competitor) are a better place to start.

A small blue gear and a grey gear mesh together, while a large pink gear stands apart and does not turn.

Marketing Leadership

Why Your Campaign Hit Its Targets and the Business Didn't Move

Most campaign goals stop at clicks and impressions. Learn to set three linked objectives, from business result to buyer behavior to media signal, so you can see where a campaign broke instead of hearing that it didn't work.

Brand Strategy

Why Nobody Reads Your Competitive Intelligence, and What to Send Instead

Most competitive intelligence reports are rearview mirrors nobody opens. Match four kinds of intelligence to the decisions and schedules they serve, and add a quarterly red team.

AI + Brand

The Content Inversion: When AI Makes Everything Abundant, Strategy Becomes Subtraction

AI removed production as the bottleneck. When competent content costs nothing, volume stops being an advantage, and the job of content strategy becomes deciding what to cut.

Marketing Leadership

The CMO's AI Mandate: Why Marketing Should Own the AI Strategy (Not IT, Not the CEO)

Customer-facing AI shapes how the brand shows up in every interaction. That makes AI strategy a brand decision, and the CMO the executive who should own it.

Brand Strategy

Why Startups Should Publish 10 Great Articles Before Anything Else

A startup's first marketing leader should publish ten definitive articles tied to real buying questions before scaling content volume. Here is how to choose the ten, sequence them and measure whether they work.

Brand Strategy

A B2B Brand's Real Job Is Making You the Safe Choice

B2B branding is not a louder version of consumer branding. Its job is to make a committee of skeptical buyers feel safe choosing you, and the results show up in your pipeline.

Brand Systems

How to Tell Which of Your Brand Assets Actually Work

Most brand assets are familiar but not distinctive. Jenni Romaniuk's distinctive asset grid shows which of yours actually point buyers to your brand, and what to do with the rest.

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Marketing Leadership

Five Questions to Answer Before You Buy Marketing Software

Most marketing software fails because the buying decision starts at the demo. Five questions to answer first, and a buying process that kills bad pilots early.