Branding
July / 11 / 2016
Brand Names: Do I change mine?
Brand names, like all names, are crucially important. Do you keep yours when others whom you cannot control are using it?read more
Inspiration
June / 15 / 2016
Inspired by AAM2016
The American Alliance of Museums 2016 conference in DC left me refreshed and inspired: "If we are trying to solve all the problems inherent in figuring out how to do interstellar space travel, what are you doing?"read more
Marketing
June / 11 / 2016
What is marketing discovery?
Our marketing discovery process is aided by a set of tools outlined here. We believe that they are some of the best available.read more
Museums
May / 19 / 2016
Cinema and Museums
Fashion design is ancient, and the origins of that Seventh Art known as the cinema date back at least to the 1890s. In other words, U.S. museums are long overdue to recognize these vital forms of artistic expression.read more
Branding
May / 12 / 2016
The Brand of No Brand
A brand is more than marketing or empty promises and these case studies show that it really is impossible to have a product without a brand of some kind.read more
April / 28 / 2016
"She Who Tells a Story" at National Museum of Women in the Arts
While the popularity of She Who Tells a Story is undoubtedly affected by the curiosity and national climate of oversimplification and stereotyping that surrounds the Arab world and Iran, the real engine for attendance is the quality of the exhibition itself. (Also, we're proud of our advertising campaign.)read more
Museum Store
March / 31 / 2016
The Museum Store
The spectrum of content consumption that once had a clear distinction between museum and museum store is blurring. It's possible that one day in the not-so-distant future the distinction between the museum and the store will just fade away in our instagram-friendly world.read more
Identity
March / 22 / 2016
Is the new Barbie still Barbie?
Who is Barbie now if not a svelte blonde that most girls can only aspire to be? Is the new Barbie still Barbie?read more
Business Consulting
March / 2 / 2016
What business are you in?
What business are you in? I have found this question poses a challenge in almost every engagement, surprising participants. It wakes people up as they realize that they cannot answer or cannot agree on the answer. "If we cannot agree on who we are or what business we are in, how is anyone on the outside going to understand or guess right?"read more
Culture
February / 25 / 2016
Cultural Generalization
Bagels. Bagels everywhere. Savory bagels. Sweet bagels. Bagels and cream cheese. Bagels. Just. Everywhere. Tronvig Group's intern from Australia muses about cultural stereotypes.read more
mentor
February / 10 / 2016
On Jim Crane's Shoulders
Rarely does a day go by where I do not make use of what I learned from Jim Crane.read more
Mascots
February / 9 / 2016
What does Mr. Clean have to do with Tronvig Group?
Tronvig Group President James Heaton was quoted in AdWeek earlier this week giving his thoughts on the 50+ year old Procter & Gamble cleaning brand Mr. Clean.read more
Adventure
February / 1 / 2016
Mongol Rally: The Great In-Between
We drove out of London on July 20, 2014 and six weeks later, we arrived in Ulaanbaatar under our own power (although our car’s suspension was completely destroyed). Quite a bit happened in between, but here I will simply point out a few discoveries or observations relating to brands, perceptions, and cultural differences.read more
Brand Association
January / 20 / 2016
Are you in good company?
Whether music or luxury goods, it’s crucial to be in good company or the company you are hoping to attract. Your product will be perceived only as good as the company it keeps, for better or worse.read more
January / 10 / 2016
The Tronvig Group Brand Pyramid
We are developing a Brand Pyramid download that will walk you through the process and pose the questions for your organization, your company or your product. It will walk through how you can use these questions to expose strategic weaknesses and fix them.read more
Branding
December / 9 / 2015
The Beef Brand
Beef has come to be interpreted not just as meat from a cow but rather as the more generic and simplified meat; "If he does not eat beef, he must be a vegetarian." These two brands are differentiated enough and simple enough to make it easy to move between them, A to B. Where does your brand fall on this scheme?read more
Brand Choices
November / 27 / 2015
Choosing When You've Too Many Choices
How does a consumer choose when there are too many choices? Here's my experience shopping for skin care products in Korea.read more
Consumers
November / 16 / 2015
The Apple You Eat
Reason indicates that an apple and a sliced apple are equally good, but if examined through the lens of which version of an apple has greater appeal to a specific consumer group, then they are actually very different.read more
Internship
November / 7 / 2015
A Look into Tronvig Group: Honesty in Marketing
With essentially no real experience in the actual marketing business, I came to Tronvig Group with an open mind and ready to learn. My mind is stuffed now and I have learned some surprising things.read more
logos
October / 31 / 2015
City Brands: The New Seoul Brand
Seoul unveiled its new city brand mark after an open and democratic selection process. Thoughts on "I.SEOUL.U" and what it conveys.read more
Free
October / 15 / 2015
What is the downside of free?
If you are a free institution you have both a blessing and a curse. The blessing part is easy to understand—less barrier to entry. The benefits are many. Let’s look though at the curse.read more
satisfy your customers
September / 30 / 2015
If you satisfy your customers you fail.
If you satisfy your customers you fail, because in order to succeed you must deeply satisfy the customer for whom your product is most naturally suited.read more
Food
August / 18 / 2015
Food Flight from China (or How I Learned to Hate Ginger & Love Yogurt)
Tom from the UK and I met over a pile of someone else's food. We were both staying in a hostel that for some reason was underground and connected to a night club in Chengdu the capital of Sichuan Province adjacent to Tibet.read more
Story
June / 30 / 2015
What is your story?
I’ve never felt moved to support an institution like American Ballet Theatre, even at a level as basic as buying a ticket to a show. But once I heard this story and saw the face of one person in the company, it made me think that I must go.read more
Logo Quest
June / 24 / 2015
Brand Consulting: New Logo for the Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, commonly referred to as "the Met," hired a brand consultant and apparently he/she recommended that they call themselves "Met" without the article—no "the."read more
Value
June / 9 / 2015
Price and Pleasure
Does it feel better to pay a lot for something? If we pay a lot for something we need it to be good.read more
Vision
May / 26 / 2015
Strategic Plan (Carpe Diem)
We traveled safely from Washington D.C. to New York on the 7PM train Tuesday, May 12th. The 7:10PM train which could just as easily have been our train was not so lucky. On hearing the news that we were unharmed I got an email from our client in D.C. with the sign-off "carpe diem."read more
strategy
May / 14 / 2015
Strategy Primer
Strategy is a very misused word.
Marketing strategies are—if you look at how the word is used—any marketing activity that might possibly work. People talk about "strategies" such as "posting to Facebook more."read more
Visual branding
May / 6 / 2015
Visual Brand and 360 Brand: What's the difference?
What is the difference between a visual brand and a true 360 brand? How do you get your organization to think beyond just the visual brand?read more
choosing an agency
May / 1 / 2015
Bigger is better ... right?
Hiring a big and flashy agency may seem "safe." But think about what they stand to gain by working with an organization of your size and budget. You may find that you're actually sacrificing the responsiveness, energy and focus on quality of smaller firms for the false sense of security that comes from going big.read more
Product Brands
April / 20 / 2015
The "Made in China" Brand
It was only after I got home that I looked at the back label again and noticed three words that I had missed on the lower left hand corner. If you are familiar with the Face Screaming in Fear emoji, you may get a sense of how I felt when I read ”Product of China” under the bar code.read more
Decision-Making
April / 6 / 2015
The Farmyard: Decision-making in Large Organizations
If you are like most institutions the pressure to capitulate to the requests of powerful factions within your organization is likely very real.read more
Nonprofit Marketing
March / 18 / 2015
Nonprofit Marketing Return on Investment
Return on investment in a brand initiative is very important. Measuring the results of any initiative and doing proper goal-setting for a project is an essential part of good governance, of good strategic behavior. But how do you measure the return when you are not really selling widgets?read more
Digital Transformation
March / 10 / 2015
Music and Museums Undergoing Digital Transformation
As the museum world undergoes its digital transformation, it might look to the music world, a field in a relatively advanced stage of digitization, for applicable lessons.read more
Doing nothing
February / 3 / 2015
The Practice of Doing Nothing
I can think of just once where I felt bored out of my mind. Boring beyond comprehension in my current life as a hustling New Yorker, the time was a much-needed boot camp in doing nothing.read more
Exhibition Advertising
January / 23 / 2015
"Meet Mary" Doing Its Job (Picturing Mary Outdoor)
The National Museum of Women in the Arts put street-level exhibition advertising signage on the building for the first time.read more
Branding
December / 23 / 2014
Marketing, Half-truths, and USDA Organic (A Follow-up to "Tell Them the Truth")
Examining the trend of marketing half-truths to the consumer. The USDA's Organic labeling provokes the question: Has the government jumped on this bandwagon?read more
Zoo Brands
December / 2 / 2014
Zoo Brands, Conservation and the Future of Zoos
I asked my 11-year-old son if he thought zoos were good or bad. His answer was immediate and unequivocal: "Bad," he said, "I don't like the idea of animals being held in cages." If there is another side to this story, and there is, zoos need to get busy telling it.read more
Bank Brands
November / 14 / 2014
Branding and Sales: a Bank Brand Story
What happens when you attempt to take over a brand space that is already occupied by a strong competitor?read more
CIty Brands
September / 19 / 2014
City Brands: Dealing with a Lack of Control
Cities have become important actors on the global scene. Metropolitan governments are among the best ‘glocal’ players, sharpening their global influence strategy and improving the management of their brand. International city branding has its undeniable challenges, however.read more
College Brands
September / 8 / 2014
College Brands (Can colleges save millions by having better brands?)
How strong is the average college brand? How well are America's liberal arts colleges able to meaningfully differentiate themselves from each other?read more
Millennials & Museums
August / 25 / 2014
Millennials and Museums: Oil and Water?
What chance does the museum world have with millennials? Are millennials and museums really oil and water? Let's hear the story from the horse's mouth.read more
Museum Camp
August / 5 / 2014
What I Learned at Museum Camp
I flew out to California for Museum Camp last week on the power of a hunch—If Nina Simon was doing it, then I would learn a lot. That was a pretty good hunch.read more
Conversation
July / 18 / 2014
The Conversation: Do we know how to have one?
Can a group of diverse and interesting New Yorkers sit around a table for dinner and have a SINGLE sustained conversation for at least two hours—no moderator, no side conversations—just a single, contributive, collective, shall I say it ... civilized, conversation on a given topic?read more
Branding
May / 30 / 2014
Brand Power and Its Limits
"Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind." —Walter Landorread more
Museums
May / 22 / 2014
AAM2014 Sessions
Among all the things I experienced and vividly remember from the 2014 American Alliance of Museum Annual Meeting and Expo in Seattle, I would like to discuss one particular session. It was a session fascinating to me for reasons unintended by its designers.read more
Competition
May / 15 / 2014
"Competitors are stealing my ideas."
"All strategies aimed at exploiting an innovation, must achieve leadership within a given environment. Otherwise, they will simply create an opportunity for the competition."read more
UX
April / 29 / 2014
Dear Social Security Administration ... I am me.
In general, the difference between the good and the great can sometimes be a matter of how effectively you sweat the little things, the things that actually matter to people at the human level interface. We call this the tactical user-level interface. Sometimes this is the difference between a positive experience and a negative one. This difference matters for any brand.read more
Museums
April / 23 / 2014
Museum Visibility: What's the problem?
Within the museum world there seems to be some reluctance to engage with contemporary culture in a deep way. But if you take a look at the museums that are thriving, you will find a willingness to do just that. The museums that are flourishing now exhibit a conscious responsiveness to and engagement with contemporary issues and concerns.read more
brand strategy
April / 7 / 2014
Brand Strategy Basics
Brand strategy gives McDonald's a 27 billion dollar advantage over Burger King. It's important that you understand how this happened, and how it applies to your organization.read more
Museum Branding
March / 20 / 2014
Branding and Perception: Nailing Jell-O to the Wall
The better you understand how the brand of your PLACE operates in the minds of your target audiences, the more effective you can be at engaging with them.read more
Marketing
March / 11 / 2014
Find the Pain: Business-to-Business Marketing
Pain, fear, anxiety … these are strong emotions that drive behavior. This is true of life. Life is also, it turns out, the very stuff of marketing, even that most rarified and peculiar kind—business-to-business marketing.read more
Sales and Marketing
February / 28 / 2014
The Difference Between Sales and Marketing
Sales has the power to change conditions, to transform a situation through the skills of the sales person. Marketing however, generally does not possess such transformative power. Marketing needs to work with conditions as they are.read more
HHM Branding
February / 17 / 2014
What is the brand of New York? (Historic House Museums)
We don't always think of cities as having brands, but they certainly do. While some cultural institutions are actually strong enough to be active builders of the brands of their fair city, most are not, and most historic house museums are certainly not in such a position. But each institution's history and meaning in relationship with the existing brand of its city is a factor in its success.read more
Marketing Plan
February / 7 / 2014
You need a target: What makes a marketing plan strategic?
Finding out what you need to know in order to have a proper marketing strategy is not easy or cheap, but I can pretty much guarantee that what's far more costly is executing a marketing plan without a strategy to guide it.read more
Museums and Race
January / 20 / 2014
Museums and Race
Does thinking about race make you racist? No. Does not thinking about race make you racist? Unfortunately sometimes yes. These are uncomfortable issues and hard to look squarely in the eye, but they are standing right in front of you. Time to say hello.read more
Strategic Goals
January / 6 / 2014
Goals & Goats (How do you set strategic SMART goals?)
Strategy is born from deep inspection of the question Why? Why is this goal important? If I cannot get to a good answer to why this goal makes sense in the context of my strategic vision, then the goal is suspect (or the strategy is suspect).read more
Branding
December / 10 / 2013
Your Brand Idea: Who but Horton can hear it?
If your Brand Idea is succinct, meaningful and consistently and coherently expressed, it will be able to break free. It will be hearable outside of your brand bubble, outside of Whoville.read more
Marketing
November / 21 / 2013
Marketing and Desire: What can we learn from Buddhists?
The cessation of desire leads to the cessation of suffering. —Gautama Buddha (paraphrased).
The implication of this, the second of the Four Noble Truths, is that the enlightened are generally not good marketing targets. Fortunately for most marketers this is a very small group.read more
Marketing Strategy
November / 4 / 2013
What is marketing strategy?
Marketing strategy allows you to use pathways and footholds that apply your limited marketing budget more effectively (everyone's marketing budget is limited). Marketing strategy facilitates your ability to apply marketing money to the correct half of the Wanamaker equation—the half you are not wasting on audiences who do not value your message.read more
Marketing Research
October / 23 / 2013
Focus Group Testing Ban (and Some Better Alternatives)
Focus group testing is appealing. I really do get it. In theory, it's a quick and efficient way to find out what you need to know about what people think or how they use your product or service, but in fact it isn't quick or efficient, and it has a dangerous inclination to lead you down false pathways.read more
Museum Branding
October / 7 / 2013
Is the museum brand god dead?
In a postmodern world—the one we live in now—the AUTHORITY, the curator, the author, the expert—anyone whose charge it is to create grand classifications and assign meaning—has been demoted. This is our Internet paradigm, is it not? The authority is now just one voice among many.
What does this mean for museum branding?read more
Marketing
September / 23 / 2013
When FedEx Slew the Giant: Sell Value Not Price
When you think overnight courier, what comes to mind? I'm guessing FedEx is probably at the top of the list. This was not always the case.
Let me take you back to the moment when a budding company called Federal Express slew the Goliath of its industry—Emery. Let's take a look at what happened and what you should learn from Emery's horrible death.read more
Museum Branding
September / 10 / 2013
What if museums were run like successful companies?
If you are not marketing and innovating, you will be eliminated from the market place. In business this happens all the time. More than 80% of the Fortune 500 companies from 1955 no longer exist. Maybe this sounds like an entirely different world from yours.
I'd suggest that it is not.read more
Marketing Science
July / 1 / 2013
Brain Science and Marketing: Role of the Limbic & Reptilian Brains
You think you are in control. "You"—your sense of self—your highly developed, amazingly capable conscious mind, housed in the big wrinkly hemispheric thing that we most often associate with the brain: the neocortex—is not really in control as much as it thinks. It's just easier for all of us to carry on with this delusion.read more
Museum Marketing
May / 15 / 2013
Marketing of the Bronx Museum
Museums exist in particular places. The Bronx Museum exists in the South Bronx; it's a contemporary art museum located right in the middle of the poorest community in the continental United States, a community that could not be more distant from the stereotype of the whitewall, high art tradition underpinning much of the aesthetics and behaviors that permeate the world of contemporary art.read more
Marketing
May / 3 / 2013
Marketing is Not Optional
"There are only two things in a business that make money – innovation and marketing, everything else is cost."
—Peter Druckerread more
Museums
April / 29 / 2013
Museums and Motivation (Intrinsic Motivation)
Intrinsic motivation comes from inside. It is inspired by deep-seated interests or from pleasure derived directly from an activity. Intrinsic motivation is critical for long-term or repeated engagement. Intrinsic motivators are effective at supporting sustained, engaged behaviors—the kind I suspect you really want.read more
Museums
April / 10 / 2013
Museums and Motivation (Trouble with Gamification)
How can museums use motivation more effectively to engage visitors and other constituents? What are the dangers and opportunities of the "gamification" trend, and what can museums do with insights obtainable from the motivational factors within games?read more
Motivation
March / 18 / 2013
Mixing Motivation: Danger of Extrinsic Motivation
"Virtually every type of expected tangible reward made contingent on task performance does, in fact, undermines intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, not only tangible rewards, but also threats, deadlines, directives, and competition pressure diminish intrinsic motivation because, according to cognitive evaluation theory, people experience them as controllers of their behavior."
—Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deciread more
Branding & SEO
March / 12 / 2013
Tell them the truth.
"Tell them the truth. First, because it is the right thing to do, and second, they'll find out anyway."
—Paul Galvin.
Ahh the truth. That thing to be finessed if you want to succeed in marketing ... NOT.read more
Marketing Museums
February / 28 / 2013
Consumer Insight: Singles (Family Life Cycle for Museums)
Singles, age 18-35, are a very large and growing population, particularly in metropolitan areas, even relatively small ones. This makes them a very desirable consumer target. They are also important because the habits formed during one's single life are tenacious and strong.read more
SEO
January / 24 / 2013
SEO and the Art of Internet Dating
Is your content useful, timely, relevant, needed? Is it adding something valuable to the MASSIVE conversation that is the contemporary internet?
It should be.read more
Marketing
October / 3 / 2012
Customer Personas: What Sally can show you.
A persona is a kind of mental model—an imaginary person with a name, history and story who has a way of doing things. A persona should have enough psychological detail to allow you to conveniently step over to the persona's view, and see your products and services from her perspective.read more
Branding
September / 5 / 2012
Your Name is Your Biggest Brand Asset
Is it better to have a unique name like Kinko's or a more descriptive one like Staples? Is it better to have a name that's actually a person's name like Lowe's or something that really clues you in to the core business promise is such as Home Depot? International Business Machines or just a feel good symbol like Apple?
There is danger and reward everywhere.read more
Marketing
July / 24 / 2012
Consumer Insight: Find Your Trim Tab
What can you do that will be effective at getting the word out, but will not break the bank?
Is there a relatively inexpensive tactical shift can you make right now that will yield significant long term results?
The answer is yes. It's just a matter of finding it. It will not be obvious or easy.read more
Advertising
July / 5 / 2012
Marketing Mindset: Not to Market is a Crime
If your mission, your reason for being in the world—regardless of weather you are a nonprofit, a for-profit, a museum or an educational institution—is good, then you have no excuse not to market yourself.read more
Marketing
June / 26 / 2012
Optimism Bias in Marketing
The warning label which works contrary to our tendency toward optimism and self-indulgence misses the potential leverage point because the possible event of a future consequence can be set aside, rationalized away, and, most importantly, simply ignored because we (most of us) are biologically wired to pay little attention to such warnings.read more
Marketing Museums
May / 31 / 2012
Museum Marketing: Think Like a Consumer
Odds are you already deliver on what people need. The trick in museum marketing, as in any kind of consumer marketing, is to think beyond what you do or how you do it, and focus on why your target would want it.read more
Marketing
May / 25 / 2012
Call me trim tab.
So what do you call this thing that does NOT take massive effort, but has the potential for great positive effect far beyond its seeming capacity?
I think one very good answer to this question was was provided in 1972 by Buckminster Fuller when he said the following in an interview ...read more
Marketing Museums
April / 10 / 2012
Museum Marketing for Non-Marketers
Marketing is a big term. What is it in the context of a public-facing institution like a museum? What is it when you do not have a large or consistent marketing budget or even a dedicated marketing department?read more
March / 29 / 2012
Advertising in the Facebook Age: Bronx Museum Free Campaign
We launched the Free advertising campaign for the Bronx Museum this week as they announce to the world, and particularly to the Bronx, that they are going free to the public.
Museum advertising often speaks primarily to the converted. This is an attempt to start up a conversation with museum virgins.read more
Branding
January / 4 / 2012
Brand Question: Who are you?
The key question a brand must answer is, "Who are we?" The best answer to this is one that is short and clear.
The answer cannot be, "this, and this, and, oh yes, this." No matter how complex the reality is, a brand's keynote expression must be immediately graspable if it is to have real power. And it still needs to be true.read more
Branding & Marketing
December / 20 / 2011
The Difference Between Marketing and Branding
What is the difference between marketing and branding?
In a recent conversation with a very senior person at a financial institution my colleague was told, "I think private wealth managers will have a hard time seeing the value of branding—they see marketing as a cost center, not a driver of sales."
Hold it.
How did we go from branding to marketing in one sentence like that?read more
Branding
January / 2 / 2011
Brand Fatigue
My concern with brand fatigue is not that people become tired of a brand, but rather that businesses and nonprofits become prematurely tired of their own brand presentation and, as a result, push to change it before it has had the opportunity to fulfill its mission or even fully register and build power in the minds of their brand consumers.read more
Branding
December / 10 / 2010
Brand Health
A strong brand is not a luxury to be enjoyed only by companies like Nike or Coca-Cola. It is a key factor in the success and prosperity of all businesses and nonprofits, regardless of their revenues. Your brand health is guaranteed to have a significant impact on the consumer awareness of your brand AND your bottom line. It directly affects your ability to sell, to fundraise, to hire the best employees, and to grow. A healthy brand is the hallmark of a company or nonprofit that is prepared to prosper.read more
B2B
July / 26 / 2010
Invisible Consequences: How Branding Impacts B2B Sales
How do you get new clients? If you sell B2B, the short answer is probably “relationships.” Almost.read more
Branding
May / 27 / 2010
BP Brand Lesson: When Brands Lie
Much has been written and commented about the ongoing BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This story most certainly has a brand lesson. I wonder if the big companies and the agencies that market them are paying attention?read more
BRANDING, MARKETING, ORGANIZATIONAL ALIGNMENT
Strategy Workshops
Get answers to these and other key questions: "Who is our most natural consumer?" and "Why should they care about our product or service?"read more
January / 10 / 2016
The Tronvig Group Brand Pyramid
We are developing a Brand Pyramid download that will walk you through the process and pose the questions for your organization, your company or your product. It will walk through how you can use these questions to expose strategic weaknesses and fix them.read more
Visual branding
May / 6 / 2015
Visual Brand and 360 Brand: What's the difference?
What is the difference between a visual brand and a true 360 brand? How do you get your organization to think beyond just the visual brand?read more
brand strategy
April / 7 / 2014
Brand Strategy Basics
Brand strategy gives McDonald's a 27 billion dollar advantage over Burger King. It's important that you understand how this happened, and how it applies to your organization.read more
Marketing Strategy
November / 4 / 2013
What is marketing strategy?
Marketing strategy allows you to use pathways and footholds that apply your limited marketing budget more effectively (everyone's marketing budget is limited). Marketing strategy facilitates your ability to apply marketing money to the correct half of the Wanamaker equation—the half you are not wasting on audiences who do not value your message.read more
Museum Branding
October / 7 / 2013
Is the museum brand god dead?
In a postmodern world—the one we live in now—the AUTHORITY, the curator, the author, the expert—anyone whose charge it is to create grand classifications and assign meaning—has been demoted. This is our Internet paradigm, is it not? The authority is now just one voice among many.
What does this mean for museum branding?read more
Marketing Science
July / 1 / 2013
Brain Science and Marketing: Role of the Limbic & Reptilian Brains
You think you are in control. "You"—your sense of self—your highly developed, amazingly capable conscious mind, housed in the big wrinkly hemispheric thing that we most often associate with the brain: the neocortex—is not really in control as much as it thinks. It's just easier for all of us to carry on with this delusion.read more