As an editor for the highest circulated newspaper in Delaware, I aim to achieve the lifeblood of our mission, which is to provide the stories of our neighborhoods to more than 52,000 households every week. To this end, I consider my working relationship with Jessi LaCosta to the be the strongest of any public relations person I've worked with, because she knows what constitutes a story idea. Jessi has the information to support my research and interest, and she delivers the information in a timely manner and always with the most professional of attitudes. Jessi brings an uncanny ability to her talents that can never be developed in a classroom: she connects people to people, which I believe is the most valuable tool of a marketing and public relations executive."
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Food for Thought:
Brand Equity and the CEO
excerpted from Chief Executive Magazine
By Robert M. Donnelly
Brands exist in the mind and our minds are full of familiar images that we instantaneously recall when prompted by sights, sounds, smells and other stimuli.
How do these imprints get etched in customer’s mental product grids? And, what is the role of the CEO in this process of creating and maintaining these brand images or positions in the mind?
Marketing authors Reis & Trout described the mind as a dripping sponge. They maintain that the only way to build brand equity is to replace one brand value perception with another in the mind.
This is really what marketing is all about isn’t it? Creating a brand value proposition in the mind and keeping it there by constantly reinforcing that value position with the investment in the total marketing mix of promotions day-in day-out.
Once you stop investing in maintaining your brand position in the mind you are giving your competition a wonderful opportunity to replace your brand with theirs in the customers mind.
Since customers requirements are constantly changing, maintaining your value proposition and position in the mind is a perpetual challenge for any CEO. There are many examples of this, most recently with Starbucks.
When CEOs and their management teams become complacent with the status quo and start to take the customer for granted, or fail to realize that customer requirements have changed, they are surprised to find out that other brands have replaced theirs in the minds of many of their now lost customers.
Click here to read more (you will be leaving BlueRio)
Promise-Based Management: The Essence of Execution
by Donald N. Sull and Charles Spinosa
(excerpted from the Harvard Business Review)
By examining the commitments people make to colleagues and customers, executives can figure out why work stalls and how to get it moving again.
Managers have a full set of tools for translating strategy into action. They can redraw their organization charts, redesign their business processes, realign employee incentives, or build sophisticated IT systems to track performance. Nevertheless, critical initiatives stall, and important work goes undone. Emerging business opportunities fall by the wayside or, even worse, into the hands of more agile competitors.
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