STRONGBRANDS    Professor Tim Calkins, Kellogg School of Management

People are up in arms this week about Cracker Barrel’s rebranding efforts. Some people are accusing the company of abandoning its history while others claim the brand has gone woke. Here is my assessment. Brand Repositioning The world changes and brands need to change in order to keep up. As people’s interests evolve, a brand […]

In my Marketing Strategy class at Kellogg, I spend a lot of time on the critical link between finance and marketing. It is impossible to be an effective marketer and business builder without a deep understanding of financial considerations. United’s Plus Points program is a perfect example of why this link is so critical. United […]

Update: About two hours after I posted this, Sweet Green got in touch. They connected us to the gift card and added some extra funds. So the team is indeed monitoring things and that is encouraging.    Business leaders are infatuated with the potential of AI to automate interactions, expand creativity and reduce costs. There […]

It is annual report season! If you own individual stocks, your mailbox may well be filling up with mailings from companies. I am a huge fan of annual reports. In today’s post, I want to review why annual reports are important, what makes for a good one, and how some firms have done this year. […]

At some point, you have to feel bad for the people working at Tesla. I suspect these are driven, smart people working very hard. So, it is sad to see one of their biggest new products potentially heading to legendary status as one of the great innovation fiascos of all time. Cyber Truck Elon Musk […]

The key to building a successful brand is clarity. Brands are associations linked to a name, mark or symbol and the best brands have very clear associations. Rolex is associated with some things, but not with other things. The same goes for Apple, Tiffany, Patagonia and Porsche. When building a brand, it is important to […]

Elon Musk and Tesla are in the news. Musk, for leading Donald Trump’s DOGE effort, and Tesla for its weak sales and slumping stock, recently down more than 50% from its peak. Tesla clearly has a sales problem. The scarier part: it has a massive branding problem. Brand Repositioning Brands are the associations linked to […]

This weekend I had the chance to spend time at Yale and heard a terrific talk by President Maurie McInnis. I was struck by one of her comments: top research institutions are under attack as never before, in large part because they are seen as elitist and inaccessible. This perception is enhanced by the astonishing […]