Positioning
Let’s face it. Naming new technology products can be a painful experience. If you’ve spent time leading a technology marketing team, you are probably familiar with at least one of the following naming scenarios: * The lead engineer of the team building the product comes to you with a
Brand Community
A few weeks ago at DockerCon in Austin, Solomon Hykes introduced the Moby Project, “a new open source project to advance the container movement.” This announcement essentially split Docker (the company and product) from Moby (the open source project formerly also known as Docker). The communication challenges around how the
Identity Design
About eight months ago, Mozilla (the nonprofit organization behind the Firefox web browser) announced the intent to update its visual brand using an open, collaborative process. Since the project kicked off, the process has been playing out in the open, with regular opportunities for the Mozilla community to provide input
Positioning
At one point last year, and for the first time in history, the five largest companies by market capitalization were all technology companies: 1) Apple 2) Alphabet (parent company of Google) 3) Microsoft 4) Amazon and 5) Facebook. This is a staggering shift from a few short years ago, when
Identity Design
Should your company be doing its branding work in house? Or should you hire an external creative agency to do the work for you? This decision can be one of the most important strategic decisions a marketing leader will make. Both internal and external branding investments can be very large.
Company Culture
Last week I finished Phil Knight’s new autobiography about his life building Nike into the world’s leading athletic brand. It made me realize that I’ve developed a bit of a habit over the past few years. I love reading startup stories. I find myself voraciously reading as
Brand Community
Here you are at yet another corporate after work meet-and-greet—you're third in line to fill your plate with inoffensive cubes of cheese (your choice, "orange" or "white"), crackers, and crudités, maybe have a glass of refreshingly bland chardonnay to savor as you begin
Brand Community
Picture this: You’re sitting in Yet Another Quarterly Global Company Meeting, listening to the executive team prattle on about its most recent Important Global Initiatives. Next topic on the agenda, says the CEO, is our new company mission. “The executive team got together at the recent board retreat, and
Identity Design
Are you in full-on startup mode? Maybe a little overwhelmed by everything you need to do to before your company greets the world? Is “company branding” one item on your checklist that you aren’t sure how to tackle? We feel you. And we have a good sense for the
Brand Community
One of the most common questions I get from people interested in taking a more open, collaborative approach to building their brand and culture is “Where should we start?” In our work at New Kind, we often help technology companies open up their brand and culture by including employees, customers,
Positioning
This is the final post in a series designed to help startups and people in the technology industry learn to position their brands more effectively. In this post, we’ll cover the brand mantra—where positioning all comes together. For a quick refresher, check out the previous posts about how
Company Culture
This past week I read the new book by Dan Lyons (former Newsweek technology editor and, more famously, Fake Steve Jobs) entitled Disrupted: My Misadventures in the Startup Bubble. I’ve been looking forward to reading the book ever since I got a first look at the promo copy last