Branding Beyond the BS
What are a few of the most common pieces of BS that people believe about branding? Watch as Tronvig Group President and Creative Director James Heaton breaks down each.read more
Branding
May / 5 / 2018
Artist Branding, Kate Nash, and a question: Can you name five women artists?
Artists don’t usually think of themselves as brands. I’m sure the idea chafes. “I am an artist” is an assertion against branding and its requisite responsiveness to customer demand. But despite all protestations to the contrary, artists are brands.read more
College Brands
March / 14 / 2018
The College Brand Personality: Matching Personal and Academic Brands
With an entire culture dedicated to what purports to be the biggest decision of your life, there is surprisingly little information on how students are supposed to choose which college to attend. People rarely discussed specific programs or opportunities; instead, you were meant to conclude from some combination of personality, party habits, and academic performance where you’d fit in. To choose a college was to determine the school that best aligned with your personal brand.read more
branding
September / 26 / 2017
When customer care doesn't care
It boggles my mind that a multi-billion dollar company wouldn’t invest what would be a drop in the bucket toward customer goodwill, which would only help to ensure and elongate the success of its brand in the long run. It’s ironic that it refers to its customer service team as Customer Care.read more
Business Consulting
August / 10 / 2017
Who is our customer? Let's look at Drucker's second question.
The second of Peter F. Drucker's five most important questions is "Who is our customer?" Like all of his questions, it is deceptively simple. The most common wrong answer, given by default, is "the people in the decision room."read more
360 Brand
May / 12 / 2017
You Should Be Paying More Attention to Internal Branding
Most think of brands in terms of how they influence the customer—those outside of the company or organization—but a brand must function internally as well. Brands play an important role in attracting top employees and retaining them over time. We advise you not to make the mistake of neglecting this crucial audience.read more
Creativity
April / 20 / 2017
On Rigor and Creative Block
What do you do when a client asks you to recreate the brilliance of a campaign you came up with years ago? That’s a lot of pressure. Illustrator Christoph Niemann cites Chuck Close saying it's about showing up and “enabling the chance for something to happen.” In other words, us professionals don’t need to count on dumb luck. What a relief.read more
Alignment
April / 14 / 2017
Do performance reviews have to suck?
Do performance reviews have to suck? It’s a question many people seem to ask. Brief answer: NO. Quite the contrary: they should be a gift and an inspiration. Performance reviews are not small tools to assess individual performance. They are large tools that impact the capacity of an organization to have the effect that it intends in the world.read more
Alignment
March / 25 / 2017
The Importance of a Small Set of Core Values
Jim Collins says, “A company should not change its core values in response to market changes; rather, it should change markets, if necessary, to remain true to its core values.” At Tronvig Group, we endorse this idea: While business strategy must be dynamic and responsive, values are meaningful only when accompanied by long-term commitment.read more
Policy
February / 28 / 2017
Unlocking the American Dream: What is the true cost of cuts to arts funding?
The arts are one key to unlock the American dream. Museums did this for me. What does it cost the government to do this for the next generation of Americans?read more
Branding
January / 30 / 2017
Jazz in Marketing (La La Land and the Brand of Jazz)
Why are marketers and advertisers keen to slap the word "jazz" on unrelated things from movies like La La Land to cologne and fruit? Let's examine the use of jazz in marketing.read more
alignment
January / 13 / 2017
Organizational Alignment
Organizational alignment allows you to complete the loop from marketing communications and your brand promise all the way through to the lived experience of your consumers.read more
Branding
December / 29 / 2016
Branding Eats Policy for Lunch: How the Trump Brand Won in 2016
Donald Trump won the presidential election by doing what we tell our clients to do every day. He rigorously stuck with the Trump brand.read more
History
November / 30 / 2016
History Brands (History and the Mechanisms of the Mind)
We like clean narratives because they are easy to hold and remember. This goes for history, and for branding. What will history make of our time?read more
Museums
October / 31 / 2016
The Experiential Museum
Are interactive features like card-making booths and ambient sounds at art museums "infantilizing prattle" distracting from the art? Or a way to engage audiences who might otherwise be lost?read more
Organizational Culture
October / 26 / 2016
Culture eats strategy for what?
Does culture eat strategy for lunch? Not really. But will a misaligned culture eat up your strategic efforts? Probably. Does it make sense to pay careful attention to an organization's culture and not just its business strategy? Absolutely!read more
Organizational Health
September / 23 / 2016
Mind the Communication Gap: Culture & Organizational Health
Are cultural practices impeding your organization's health? Are you mindful of any communication gaps that may exist?read more
Advertising
September / 9 / 2016
Exhibition Advertising: Leading with Strategy
Along with our client, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, we are proud to have won a first prize in the American Alliance of Museums' 2016 Museum Publications Design Competition.read more
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
360 brand
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
What can our strategy workshops do for you?
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
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
360 brand
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