Since 2009, we've written about brand strategy, positioning, identity and the occasional teardown — around 700 essays at last count — for the partners, marketers and designers who'd rather understand why something works than copy how it looks. Written by Stuart Crawford and the Inkbot team, drawing on 300+ brand builds across 21 countries.
Most cross branding is a waste of time. It’s a strategic-looking activity that produces zero results. It’s a fast track to diluting your brand and looking desperate. Here’s a brutally honest guide to doing it right, from picking a partner to executing a successful campaign.
Most businesses are obsessed with finding new customers, but the absolute fortune is hiding with the ones you already have. This guide breaks down Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) in brutally honest terms for entrepreneurs, showing you why it’s the only metric that truly matters for sustainable profit.
Forget design-speak. This is a brutally honest look at the best sportswear logos and the real lessons you can apply to your business. We explain why Nike, Lululemon, and Patagonia succeed, and the mistakes you must avoid.
Your website might be stunning, but it could also be utterly useless. Too many entrepreneurs get sold that a “great website” looks good. They burn through cash on fancy graphics, then wonder why nobody buys anything. This is the expensive confusion at the heart of user experience (UX) design.
An airline logo has nowhere to hide. It’s the ultimate test of high-stakes branding. We review the top 10 most famous airline logos and extract the brutally honest, practical lessons every entrepreneur and business owner needs to learn about creating a truly effective brand identity.
This guide provides brutally honest, practical advice for entrepreneurs on how to create a value proposition that is clear, specific, and works in the real world.
Most branding wastes money because it ignores the one place a brand exists: your customer’s mind. This guide breaks down the core principles of branding psychology—cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and the hard truth about colour—to explain why your ‘great’ brand might fail to connect.
That one-page PDF with your logo and two colours isn’t a brand guideline—it’s a cry for help. Ambiguity in branding is the silent killer of credibility. This shows you how to create and use brand guidelines that ensure consistency, build trust, and save money.
The business world is obsessed with ‘authenticity’. It’s a performance, and your customers see right through it. Absolute brand trust isn’t built with feelings; it’s forged in the cold, complex reality of your actions. This is a no-nonsense guide for entrepreneurs to stop talking about trust and start earning it.
Most brand personas are a waste of time—a list of adjectives that don’t help your business. This guide explains a brand persona: a functional tool that defines your brand’s voice and character. Learn the common mistakes, see real-world examples from brands like Nike and Apple, and follow a step-by-step process to build a persona that drives real-world results.
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