A little about the SBA Blog

Ed BurghardThe Strengthening Brand America blog category is to be a forum where economic development professionals and marketing professionals can share their experience with and thoughts on place branding so as a community we have a better appreciation for how to successfully apply the principles for job growth and economic prosperity.

The From the CEO category is to be a forum where I can share thoughts on successful reapplication of private sector product and corporate branding principles in place branding.

Measure From The Inside Out

May 15, 2012 at 7:17 pm, by Edward | No Comments | Tags: ,,,,,, | Category: Measures, Place Brand Building, Promotion

One of the big challenges every marketer faces is how to measure the impact of your promotional investment when you have a limited budget to begin with. Comparative heavy-up tests where effort in a region of the country is doubled and the results compared with a comparably matched region are simply not a cost feasible [...]

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Three Classic Reasons Branding Efforts Fail

May 14, 2012 at 9:47 pm, by Edward | No Comments | Tags: ,,,,,, | Category: Place Brand Building, Strategy

My observations suggest that while there are a lot of different reasons a place brand effort fails, three tend to consistently rise to the top of the list. Learn what they are.

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Keeping Your Message Straight

May 13, 2012 at 11:26 pm, by Edward | 1 Comment | Tags: ,,,,, | Category: Place Brand Building, Promotion

One of the challenges in branding is making certain your core promise is consistently communicated across your various target audiences. The downside of having your message go off strategy is that it gets diluted and contributes to the background noise rather than helping build your brand equity. But, if your target audiences have unique needs, [...]

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Evaluating Your Advertisement

May 7, 2012 at 8:12 pm, by Edward | 5 Comments | Tags: ,,,, | Category: Promotion

The blog post on features versus benefits received a lot of attention, so I thought I’d follow it up with a little exercise and a reprise of an earlier blog post on assessing advertising. 10 Questions to Evaluate Your Advertisement In that post I identified 10 questions to ask about any print advertisement. Is the advertisement [...]

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Problem Solving Process

May 6, 2012 at 8:04 am, by Edward | 1 Comment | Tags: ,,,,, | Category: Leadership

I am often asked to help teams think through solutions to their problems.  My go-to model is gap analysis.  Over the years, I have found it to be a very reliable process for organizing people’s thoughts and minimizing the amount of wheel spinning that typically occurs when a team engages in problem denial and solution [...]

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Selling, Marketing and Branding Defined

April 30, 2012 at 11:22 pm, by Edward | 2 Comments | Tags: ,,,, | Category: Place Brand Building

When I started exploring place branding, it quickly became evident that the concepts of selling, marketing and branding were often confused and used interchangeably. As a consequence, many communities experienced failed attempts at “branding” when the better solution may have been to focus on developing a more effective selling effort. When I was working at [...]

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Coal And The Economy

April 29, 2012 at 11:07 pm, by Edward | 1 Comment | Tags: ,, | Category: Strategy

Reliable, low cost energy can be a competitive advantage in attracting capital investment to a community. Energy availability is key to the economic growth and prosperity of both our communities and our nation. So much so, that ensuring an uninterrupted supply of energy can easily be (and is) viewed as a matter of national security. [...]

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Presentation Tips

April 26, 2012 at 11:04 pm, by Edward | 11 Comments | Tags: ,, | Category: Leadership

It is hard to be an excellent marketer if you have trouble presenting your thinking. After all, ideas are our product and the presentation is our packaging. You want your brilliant idea to be delivered in an equally brilliant package. So, how do you deliver a great presentation each and every time you are required [...]

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Features Versus Benefits

April 26, 2012 at 9:57 am, by Edward | 13 Comments | Tags: ,,, | Category: Promotion

One area many marketers struggle with is translating features into benefits. I recently gave a talk to a group at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio and the organizers requested I include some comments on this topic in my presentation. “Features Tell and Benefits Sell.” I learned this easy to remember phrase early in my [...]

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