Brand Narrative

How Buff is Your Brand Narrative?

September 1st, 2010

Everything that you say says something about you. Your brand narrative is how you tell your story. It runs deeper than a marketing rollout or an advertising campaign.  Your brand narrative is told in and through newsletters, press releases, promotions, CRM, sales, programming, products, annual reports, and internal communications- day […]

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Crafting Content out of Fingerprints

January 28th, 2011

“If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.” Tennessee Williams The hardest part of crafting an authentic brand narrative is excavating who you really are, what you really do, and why you really matter. It’s easy rattle off a check-list of standard, homogenized, […]

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Top Shelf: Communications Reads We Recommend

February 2nd, 2011

“Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath Why do some ideas make powerfully indelible impressions and others just don’t seem to stick at all? Chip and Dan Heath have the answer to what makes some ideas “stickier” than most. The official how-to guide on crafting and conveying ideas that […]

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Narrativity: You’re Too Good For Boring

August 3rd, 2011

Narrativity: [nar-uh-tiv-uh-tee]: 1.) the degree to which your brand spunk, funk, credibility, attitude, and vibe shines through your messaging. 2.) Your voice, your verbiage, your tone. While preparing for a wine-touring camping trip to Watkins Glen, I began perusing the websites of the nearby Seneca Lake wineries and plotting my […]

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Top Shelf Redux: Communications Reads We Recommend

August 15th, 2011

Our top-rated book recommendations on purpose-driven messaging that’ll illuminate your Big !dea…

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Owning your piece of the “pinch”, explicitly

August 25th, 2011

The hardest thing about Brand Development isn’t the time intensive research…. It isn’t being consistent yet flexible… innovative yet timeless. The hardest thing about Brand Development isn’t creativity, charisma, social media, new marketing, old ideologies, fierce competition, or even too many cooks in the kitchen (although that is a much […]

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Solving Your Upstart Brand Woes

December 15th, 2011

Everything you need to know to get your brand new brand up and running… from writing your business plan to choosing your brand name, creating differentiators, identifying your customer….

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Give Em Something To Talk About: What’s in a Good Press Release?

February 17th, 2012

12 tips for writing a rockin press release that captures your brand and conveys your relevance

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The Website is Dead, Long Live the Website

October 9th, 2012

When it became clear that it was time to retire the “flashy” BlackDog website, we did what we always do around here. We started looking around, asking questions, and reading the facts and findings of the guru’s that write the research. What we gathered was informative, most of it was […]

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Giving Like A Wise Man

December 20th, 2012

It’s difficult to make a difference or solve an issue when you are spreading limited resources across a long list of worthy causes. Sometimes less really is more. It should come as no surprise that “just” giving money, without thoughtful coordination, doesn’t produce significant change. Nor does it cultivate any […]

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