brand value

I originally wrote this piece for the Harvard Business Review. It was published on HRB.org on March 28, 2014.

As a member of a start-up advisory program, I regularly hear pitches from aspiring technology entrepreneurs. My job is to sort out the companies with potential from those that need to go back to the drawing board. One way I do this is to use what I call the “-er brand” filter.

Brands continue to grow in value, according to the analyses in Millward Brown‘s most recent BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands report.

As I help companies define or re-define their brand strategies, we articulate the core values and attributes of their brands. We distill from all the things that could be said about their brands the most distinctive and defining elements.

How do you link your customer experience strategy with your corporate strategy?

As many of you know, earlier this week we celebrated the second annual CX Day, a day to celebrate both customers and the professionals who work tirelessly to improve the customer experience.

In Silicon Valley, the PayPal Mafia reigns supreme. So much so that it is hard to think of any successful technology startup in the last ten years—from Facebookand LinkedIn to YouTube and Yelp—that hasn’t been touched by it in some way.

Do we build brands based on quantitative or qualitative measures? Are we in the business of spending more time with people or making the time we spend with them that much better?

The following article is published on popsop.com.