Do you know what it takes to make your business stand out from the crowd?If you are a business owner with an established product or brand, this is the proverbial "must read." Why? Because you will either discover your existing brand is on point, or Your Brand Sucks will not only tell you why it sucks, it will tell you how to fix it and give you the confidence to go ahead with a rebrand, especially if you're already considering it. Whether you're a seasoned company that needs a brand course correction, or a small business startup that needs to establish a brand, this book is for you. It will reveal the most efficient, comprehensive, and effective approach you can adopt to establish a solid brand foundation and create the most fitting visual and verbal language to express it. Ernie will guide you through the universal building blocks of effective brand development and take you, step by step, through a proven, successful, and effective process to create a brand that is authentic to your organization and, more important, is remarkable to your customers. Ernie Harker has spent the last 25 years building brands as a creative producer, consultant and corporate marketing executive. He knows what it's like to get his hands dirty in the trenches of design and leading marketing teams as a brand architect. One of his greatest success stories was helping turn an old western themed convenience store brand into a $3 billion dollar adventure brand. Ernie condenses a careers worth of experience to bring you Your Brand Sucks. In Part I, you'll learn the basics of branding and some common mistakes to avoid. It will be a crash course in brand development that will open your eyes and mind. In Part II, you will be guided through the four steps of FIRE-ing up your brand strategy. You'll be asked to Find Your Brand Spark, Identify Your Target Customers, Realize Your Core Belief, and Establish Your Brand Adjectives.When these questions have been answered and the key leaders of your company are in agreement, the decisions are documented in the form of a brand strategy. In Part III, you will use your brand strategy as the background and rationale to design your brand blueprints in the form of colors, patterns, textures, fonts, image, vocabulary, and sound. These are the ingredients in your branding recipe that you'll use to create all of your advertising and marketing materials. You'll also learn the secrets and strategies to help you design a logo, write a snappy tagline, create a comprehensive Brand Bible, and learn how to use it to maintain brand consistency, ensuring that your amazing new brand will grow stronger and increase its focus with every decision you make. In Part IV you'll put your brand blueprints to work, to guide the production of all of your sales and marketing tools like websites, brochures, packaging, interior and exterior design, uniforms, dress codes, charities, product names, and more. This book intends to provide you with an effective tool to help you create a powerful, memorable, and highly effective brand that will stand the test of time. It will ignite your brand by helping you develop a solid foundation for your company's personality and guide you through the selection of the verbal and visual language needed to help bring everything to life. You'll create a brand that your customers will love, and your competitors will envy. - A brand that doesn't suck.

Go beyond PR spin! Master better ways to communicate honestly and regain the trust of your customers and stakeholders with this book.

Are you happy? Like your job? Most people report low engagement and enthusiasm in their careers. And point their finger at a negative work culture, a mean boss... co-worker... or customer. Mean people suck. Some leaders believe that they need to be mean in order to be effective. Their lack of compassion creates negative relationships that lowers performance and profits Michael Brenner's Mean People Suck uses real-life experience and proven research to show why instead of blaming others, we can look inside ourselves, and learn how to use empathy to defeat "mean" in every situation. This insightful guide shows leaders, and employees how more emotional communication increases profits and enhances lives. You'll learn: Why employees are unhappy and the power of empathy to turn things around. How organizational charts disengage employees by neglecting the human element. Why empathy seems counter-intuitive to success. The secrets to a happy, meaningful and impactful career. If you're ready to enjoy a more gratifying professional and personal life, this book's stories and proven tips will help get you there - even if Mean People Suck.

Foreword By New York Times Best-Selling Author Jay Baer

Drive more value from all your marketing and communications channels--together! Demolish your silos and sync all your messaging, strategies, and tactics (really!). Optimize every medium and platform, from iPad and Facebook to TV and direct. This book is a must-read for every senior marketing, communications, and PR decision-maker. It’s not about social media. Or new (or old) media. It’s about results—and there’s only one way to get results. You must finally bite the bullet, tear down your silos, and integrate all your marketing and communications. That’s how you choose the best platforms and messages for each customer. That’s how you make research and metrics work. That’s how you overcome today’s insane levels of complexity and clutter. You’re thinking: Oh, that’s all I need to do? “Just” integrate my whole organization? Are you nuts? No. We’re not. It can be done. This book’s authors have done it. They’ve shown others how to do it. And now they’re going to show you. Step by step. Strategy. Tactics. Research. Metrics. Culture. Social. Mobile. Direct. Broadcast. Print. All of it. With you, the marketing/communications decision-maker, right at the center...right where you belong! Even now, organizational silos prevent most companies from conversing coherently with customers, delivering the right targeted messages, and building real synergies across all their marketing and communications programs. Now, Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston show how to finally break down those silos, bridging traditional and newer disciplines to drive more value from all of them. You’ll learn how to create a flexible marketing hub with integrated spokes including sales, PR, advertising, customer service, HR, social media, and the executive team. Then, you’ll learn how to use your hub to speak cohesively with each customer through the tools and platforms that deliver the best results at the lowest cost. Dietrich and Livingston guide you through hands-on strategic planning, illustrating key points with real case studies and offering practical exercises for applying their principles. You’ll learn how to perform baseline analyses of media from iPad apps to radio, optimize resource allocation, change culture to overcome siloed behavior, use measurement to clear away obstacles, and gain more value from every marketing investment you make. Pull it all together--finally! How to successfully integrate your tactics, tools, messages, and teams Better goals, better results: beyond “SMART” to “SMARTER” Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound, evaluate, and reevaluate Better listening: stakeholders, customers, and research that works How to make sure you hear what really matters Four powerful ways to market in the round When to go direct, come from above, use the groundswell, or execute flanking maneuvers

If you’ve ever felt like you suck at marketing, you’re not alone. Survive and thrive in today’s digital world. Let’s face it, marketing today is really, really hard. From the explosion of digital advertising options to the thousands of martech tools out there on the market, it’s virtually impossible to stay on top of it all. Even more challenging is the deluge of analytics available, leaving marketers swimming in data but thirsting for knowledge. But you don’t have to feel like you suck at marketing. Join award-winning marketing leader Jeff Perkins as he examines how to avoid the pitfalls and survive in today’s ever-changing marketing landscape. Focusing on essential skills for modern marketers, How Not to Suck at Marketing prepares you to: - Create a focused marketing program that drives results - Collaborate effectively with the key stakeholders - Assemble a high-performing marketing team - Define and nurture your company (and personal) brand - Build a focused career and find the right job for you Digital tools allow us to track immediate results, but marketing has always been about the long game. Tackle your marketing strategy and build a focused career with this practical guide.

Capture their attention-and keep it! With the rise of digital media, you'd think it would be easier than ever to be heard. Yet, most messages fail to cut through the clutter. Consumers are overwhelmed. Ads alone aren't effective. And you can't just churn out content and connect on every social network. To stand out today, you need to start with your brand. Brand Now uncovers the new rules of branding in our complex and chaotic world. Written by the author of Get Scrappy, the digital marketing bible for business, this latest book explains how to build brands that resonate both online and off. The book helps you: Create a brand with meaning * Reinforce it with the right touchpoints * Hone your brand's unique story * Share it through engaging content * Cultivate a sense of community * Craft a coherent experience * Stand out with simplicity and transparency The world may be growing louder, but with Brand Now's big ideas and practical toolbox, you can break through the noise-and win a place in the hearts and minds of your customers.

Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues--Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

A provocative look at social media that dispels the hype and tells you all you need to know about using the Web to expand your business If you listen to the pundits, Internet gurus, marketing consultants, and even the mainstream media, you could think social media was the second coming. When it comes to business, they declare that it's revolutionizing advertising, PR, customer relations—everything. And they all agree: it is here to stay. In this lively, insightful guide, journalist and social critic B.J. Mendelson skillfully debunks the myths of social media. He illustrates how the notion of "social media" first came to prominence, why it has become such a powerful presence in the marketing field, and who stands to benefit each time it's touted in the press. He shows you why all the Facebook friends and Twitter followers in the world mean nothing to you and your business without old-fashioned, real-world connections. He examines popular tales of social media "success," and reveals some unsettling truths behind the surface. And he tells you how to best harness the potential of the Internet—without spending a fortune in the process. Social media is bullshit. This book gives the knowledge and tools you really need to connect with customers and grow your brand.

Marketing is changing rapidly, so sometimes it’s hard to keep up. Don’t get frustrated, get scrappy. It’s an exciting time to be in marketing, with an array of equalizing platforms from the Internet to social media to content marketing, that have reset the playing field for businesses large and small. Yet, it's also a challenging time, with much work to do and an ever-changing array of platforms, features, and networks to master--all on tighter budgets than ever before. In Get Scrappy, chief brand strategist Nick Westergaard weaves hacks, tips, and idea starters together to provide a plan of attack for businesses of any size to: Demystify digital marketing in a way that makes sense for your business Do more with less Build a strong brand with something to say Create relevant and engaging content for your social media platforms Spark dialogue with your community of customers Measure what matter The result will be a reliable, repeatable system for building your brand, creating engaging content, and growing your community of customers. Don’t wait for marketing to reinvent itself. Instead, proactively reinvent your company’s marketing to maximize its reach!