Groupon recently unveiled a service that features premium deals on high-end brands and restaurants. Groupon Reserve has dining deals and will add travel, entertainment, and luxury products. It also offers a free online reservation service at top-tier hotels, salons and restaurants and offers diners discounts of up to 40%. The move demonstrates smart brand thinking as Groupon adhered to these important branding principles: Solve a problem. Groupon needed to grow beyond deals on massages and…

Bend your knees, swing your arms back and jump. No baby steps allowed. Business success in today’s insanely competitive world often requires marketers to make a bold move to differentiate themselves rather than take small steps and incrementally move forward. In other words, jump! CASE IN POINT: Georgia Tech’s recent decision to offer the first online master’s degree in computer science. Bold? You bet. The Atlanta-based University is making waves in business and higher education…

As you likely know, we’re big fans of metrics, quantitative analysis, and ROI. However, strict devotion to these tools without understanding the emotion behind decision making leads to suboptimal results. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there’s a human being on the receiving end of the ad, email or message. People make decisions based on many factors, both rational and emotional. Savvy marketers get that. Money isn’t everything. We’re in the middle of college graduation…

Kudos to Michigan and Syracuse who proudly wore their colors during last night’s March Madness final four basketball game. Typically, the visitor wears their team color and the home team wears white. Since the teams were far from their home court, they both smartly opted to wear their brand color. Michigan’s is maize and blue. The first recorded association of any color with the University of Michigan was in 1859 when a ribbon of deep…

I confess. I care more about the Super Bowl commercials than the game. So, for those of you who also like to look at the business side of sports, here are 4 lessons to learn from this year’s big game: Lesson #1: Be consistent. I’m sure the folks at Go Daddy are bored of another ad with Danica Patrick. For the rest of America, we associate the brand with her, and think of them when…

Let’s face it, we all look to our friends for tips on restaurants, hotels, clothes, and cars. 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising when making a purchase decision. Nielsen’s April 2012 Global Trust in Advertising Report It’s one thing to rely on a friend’s recommendation when it comes to picking a vacation spot or a doctor. However, it’s entirely different when you’re looking for an expert…