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Larry Light: Brand Insights on Pandemic Impacts & More

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Take These Actions Now Or Lose Your New Customers Post-Pandemic

Packaged goods food companies are performing beyond expectations. Will this sales lift last into the future? For enduring profitable growth, brands must not only build their quantity of sales but the quality of their sales. Here are four actions to help the fortunate sales lift endure post-pandemic.

Personalization Will Change Your Car Dealership Experience Forever

Hyper-personalizing the car purchase experience will be a path to auto dealer success. Personalization is about making the customer feel special. Hyper-personalization is focusing on an audience of one for each and every customer, each and every day.

Harley-Davidson: Adore Your Core

A turnaround strategy is different from a growth strategy. When a brand is in trouble, the priority is to stop the hemorrhaging of the customer base. CEO, Jochen Zeitz is making a radical strategic shift to put Harley-Davidson back on the road to enduring profitable growth.

Coronavirus Spurs Brand Innovation

As a result of the Covid crisis, there are a lot of innovative ideas being tested in the restaurant industry to keep businesses alive. For example, many restaurant brands now provide meal boxes that offer more than just meals – they are cooking lessons.

Guitar, Pet, Bicycle: Our Need For Therapeutic Experiences

Home-based therapy experiences that help us feel better are the new normal. Loving a pet overcomes loneliness, which has been exacerbated by being stuck at home, away from friends and sometimes away from family. Financial Times calls this feeling “lockdown loneliness.”

Environmental Decency Makes Money

Sustainable leadership and business practices influence customers’ brand decisions. In today’s environment, data show that environmental decency “significantly impacts” brand preference and purchase.

Marketing Industry Insights From Larry Light

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We’ve rounded up some of Larry Light’s recent contributions to his Forbes column. Read a short blurb below and continue on the the articles to read more.

Ford CEO Retires: Unable To Articulate A Clear And Consistent Vision

It just took three years. Ford’s CEO Jim Hackett is retiring. In May 2017, Ford hired Jim Hackett to be CEO. Mr. Hackett had been CEO of Steelcase, the office furniture company. While at Steelcase, Mr. Hackett joined Ford’s Board of Directors. Mr. Hackett oversaw Ford’s Smart Mobility unit.

Read more.

Levi Strauss And Its Good-Better-Best Strategy

Levi Strauss, the 167-year-old blue jeans company, is fast-tracking its brand-business strategy to address our changing retail habits. The venerable brand has a great deal of incentive to do so, as many retail establishments are struggling or are facing Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Levi Strauss has several plans that focus on how we will be shopping from now on into the future. 

Read more.

Coca-Cola’s Brand-Business Rationalization

An unfortunate business outcome of coronavirus is the disappearance of some of our favorite big brands due to bankruptcy. Another outcome is the deliberate, disciplined disappearing of small or local/regional brands or single country brands.

Read more.

Keep Nespresso’s Vision Alive

There is a very interesting story from The Guardian about Nespresso, Nestlé’s espresso machine with its colorful, elegant foil coffee capsules. The detailed article tracks Nespresso’s history from its innovative origin to its current situation that is described as “trundling on” without the sophisticated swagger of its early days.

Read more.

Larry Light in Forbes: “Instagram And WhatsApp Will Not Be Able To Fix Facebook’s Image”

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Facebook can’t rely on Instagram and WhatsApp to fix it’s image problem. Read why in Larry Light’s latest piece in Forbes. Click here.

Larry Light Discusses The Boeing 737 Max Brand in Forbes.com

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In his latest Forbes piece, Larry light asks the question “Can the Boeing 737 Max brand reputation be repaired?”.

Read his thoughts here: Can The Boeing 737 Max Brand Reputation Be Repaired?

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Photo Credit: pjs2005 from Hampshire, UK

LARRY LIGHT BECOMES FORBES CMO NETWORK CONTRIBUTOR

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Arcature CEO Larry Light has been tapped as the latest Forbes.com Contributor within their exclusive CMO Network.

From his Forbes Contributor Bio:

My focus is building brands as the basis for enduring profitable business growth. I have won a variety of marketing awards. In its report on Best Marketers of the Decade, AdWeek reported that “Larry Light, who turned around McDonald’s as CMO from 2002 to 2005 finished second to Steve Jobs.” In summarizing the top ten ideas of the decade, Ad Age selected “Brand Journalism,” “introduced by Larry Light as arguably the most realistic description of marketing today — perhaps ever.” And, I was the first Chairman of the Coalition for Brand Equity – a group founded by advertisers, agencies, and media. I authored articles accepted in peer-reviewed professional journals and other well-known publications such as the Journal of Brand Strategy, Journal of Advertising Research, Harvard Business Review. Along with Joan Kiddon, I have published four books on marketing, brand management and organization for brand-centricity. Two of the books are focused on the successful turnaround of failing brands.

Read his first piece in Forbes.com, Financial Engineering Damages Brands.