Brand Senescence: When Old Brands Don’t Age Gracefully

Another year passes into the maw of an onrushing new year. For those of us who have seen one too many, thoughts inevitably turn to aging. Applying a professional lens I examine why some brands don’t age well while others do just fine.

Narrative Coherence: The Extant Measure of Brand Equity (2025 Edition)

Back in 2019, when I first wrote about Narrative Coherence as a brand equity dimension, social media, influencer and performance marketing were beginning to push traditional advertising to the margins. In 2025, as the transition is almost complete and another transition – the age of AI – looms, I revisit the topic

From Recall to Rasa: Toward a New Theory of Advertising

Over my four decades in advertising, the last decades have seen the most change. The mean constraints of performance marketing, the obscurities of Big Data and soon the uncharted territory of AI. To regain its mojo, advertising needs to be more creative — not less —more in touch with the human side of the consumer, and move towards realising its potential as an art form. This fortnight, my MxMIndia column cloaks this thought in the form of a new theory of advertising. Sort of.

The Three Immutable Laws of Brand-Building

Much has changed over the four decades in my career as a brand and communication strategist. From the certainties of mass-media to the flux of the digital world. From the world of product UPSs to psychographic segmentation. However I find that the fundamentals of brand-building remain much the same. This post outlines three.

The Four Sort Of Fundamentals of Maybe Going Viral

Making a video or post go viral is the holy grail in digital marketing.
Today’s post on my blog lists some pointers emerging from a recent exhaustive study in the US market and leads from there to a couple of larger questions regarding the science and art of advertising.

Decoding Creative Advertising – Addressing The Highest Common Denominator (HCD)

Here is the second of the series “Decoding Creative Advertising” where I reference Apple’s advertising over the decades to discern a greatness-making creative strategy driving some of their campaigns. The first of this series was published on my blog on June 3 where I examined the creative strategy driving the Volkswagen Beetle campaign of the 50s.

Decoding Creative Advertising – Mining The Gestalt

Today’s post is the first in a new series titled “Decoding Creative Advertising” In my experience the sobriquet “creative” applies to a very small number of advertising campaigns. Campaigns that are created by people who break the rules of advertising not because they can but because their mastery of them allows them to transcend them. I undertake the decoding of some such campaigns as an exercise in refreshing the sense of possibilities inherent in the art of advertising.

Marketing to the Heart: The Science of Consumer Emotions

Building emotional equity is a keystone of brand-building. Today’s post takes a look at processes that can inject some science into the art of building emotional connections with consumers.

BGO: MR’s PME problem

Market research can do with a overhaul. This post briefly examines why, what and how.

Of Milk, “Lab Rats” Research and Deprivation Marketing

This post examines a rarely used advertising strategy in the context of the 25th anniversary of a world-famous advertising campaign. It also highlights an unusual research strategy that was causal in creating the iconic campaign.