http://lamaisonpeters.com/, https://www.linkedin.com/company/la-maison-peters/

Maison Peters, Chicago, IL (2026)

07/02/2026

Mid-year check-ins can sometimes feel like routine administrative work, but if you do them intentionally, they're actually a strategic reset that ensures you're on the right track to hit your goals.

Think about it like this: The purpose of the first half of the year is to set your strategy and plans in motion. The second half is where the results actually happen, and you use a mid-year check-in to facilitate those results. It serves as a course correction and a chance to step back, review the actual data from the first six months, and adjust before Q4 planning locks everything in.

Markets shift, competitors move, and internal priorities change over six months. The plan built in January doesn't always keep pace with those shifts, even when the underlying strategy still holds. That gap between what's changed and what the plan accounts for is exactly what a check-in is meant to catch.

The stakes are real, too. Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey found 62% of CMOs said missing this year's growth targets would trigger further budget cuts. Catching what's off track now realigns growth targets and helps protect next year's budget.

All month, we're breaking down what that check-in actually covers: the KPIs worth revisiting, where budget quietly leaks, whether your content and audience personas still hold up, and how to turn it all into a plan for H2.

If your team could use outside support conducting a mid-year check-in, our VIP Strategy Sessions and Strategic Planning Workshops are built for exactly this kind of focused, high-stakes review.

06/25/2026

If you asked a brand expert to evaluate your brand health, everyone seems to have their own way to assess it. There are many models that examine brand health, including the Brand Health Index, the Brand Asset Valuator (BAV), Keller’s Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) Model, and Aaker’s Brand Equity Model. The question becomes: which model is right for your organization to understand your brand health?

We examined several academic and industry perspectives and methodologies to uncover what they have in common and came up with a brand health journey consisting of four progressive stages:

𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟭: 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 & 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 (Cognitive Presence) - We found that every model starts with whether the consumer knows you exist, but modern models also emphasize "mental availability" and "category entry points" (CEPs), i.e., are people aware of your brand, and does your brand come to mind in the specific moment you need a solution?

𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟮: 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 & 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 (Consideration & Associations) - The next stage is all about brand associations, perceived quality, the functional brand performance, and brand imagery that make up brand meaning, UVP/differentiation, and brand relevance, i.e., once people know you, what do they think of you?

𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟯: 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 & 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 (Emotional Evaluation & Preference) - This stage represents the shift from simply understanding what your brand does to actually liking and trusting it. It includes brand response, capturing the consumer's judgments and feelings toward the brand, and measuring the respect, reputation, and esteem of the brand.

𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟰: 𝗟𝗼𝘆𝗮𝗹𝘁𝘆 & 𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗰𝘆 (Action, Devotion, & Retention) - The final stage addresses the ultimate goal of every framework, securing long-term commitment. This includes resonance, psychological bond, active brand advocacy, and brand loyalty, which drives future revenue and lowers marketing costs.

If you haven't assessed your brand health in a while, use these 4 stages as a diagnostic, like you would a SWOT analysis, to see where your brand stands, which areas need improvement, and how this affects revenue. If you can only track a few of these signals, start there. Consistency over time tells you more than any one snapshot.

06/22/2026

Unpopular opinion: you probably don't need a rebrand.

When branding feels off, we see a lot of advice that the fix is a rebrand or a refresh: a new logo, new palette, new tagline. With AI, you can rebrand in an afternoon. This is why so many brands are starting to look and sound alike, which defeats the purpose. The entire point of a brand is to be unique and stand out amongst competitors, but AI (without human experts to check the work through a design and marketing lens) is making brands disappear in the crowd.

The real starting point for troubleshooting brand issues is to get back to the fundamentals and align. Is your positioning clearly defined? Has the messaging drifted as the company has grown? Are internal teams describing what you do three different ways because no one aligned them? Are your mission and values actually being implemented across touchpoints? If any one of these is off, your branding will be off, and a rebrand won't fix the problem.

Don't get us wrong. There's absolutely a time and place for a rebrand or refresh, but don't start there. Start with the strategy.

Strong brand work is strategic work. Your brand is the public perception of your business, shaped by everything you do and say, and it starts with mission, values, and positioning. Get those fundamentals wrong, and everything built on top, your messaging, visuals, and voice, inherits the misalignment.

We work with marketing leaders and decision-makers to get the brand fundamentals right, whether that means starting from scratch, aligning brand and messaging across teams, repositioning for growth, or unifying a fragmented brand under a single voice.

Our Brand & Messaging solutions are built around where you are and what you actually need. Swipe through to see what that looks like at every level:

𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘀: Fast-track solutions on a specific brand or messaging initiative in 6 weeks

𝗜𝗻-𝗗𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆: Comprehensive brand audits and 90-day integration to align your brand across the organization

𝗟𝗼𝗻𝗴-𝗧𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀: 6-12+ months of interim leadership to rebuild your marketing and brand from the ground up

If your brand feels off but you're not convinced a rebrand is the answer, that's worth a conversation.

𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝟯𝟬-𝗺𝗶𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 and we'll talk through where your brand and messaging stand: go.lamaisonpeters.com/Strategy-Consult?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=Maison+Peters&utm_campaign=publer

06/15/2026

✋ Raise your hand if you see people use the words "brand," "business," and "product" interchangeably. We see this all the time because the definition of a brand isn't as clear as we think it is. It's easy to understand why this happens when we look at the history of branding.

Long story short, the term "brand" has evolved from the literal meaning of a burning piece of wood, to branding cattle and goods, to a trademark during the Industrial Revolution, all the way to the modern-day understanding that a brand needs to stand out among the competition, with perception and reputation driven by internal and external stakeholders.

When we talk about brand today as marketers, we are referring to ensuring that the promise we make through look, feel, delivery, and service matches what is actually experienced, and that the business, product, or service the brand represents has a unique place in the market to make it recognizable against competitors.

We thought it would be fun to pull definitions from dictionaries, textbooks, and some of the most respected voices in marketing to show how the meaning has shifted over time, from a name that identifies a product to the gut feeling someone has about a business, product, or service. As a bonus, you can see how we define it at Maison Peters on the last slide.

Swipe through and see which one lands for you.

06/12/2026

Every budget cycle, marketers need to defend spending on brand building against performance marketing. Performance is easy to measure. The clicks, conversions, and cost per acquisition data make a clean case for performance. Brand building takes longer to prove and might not be as easily measurable. When the pressure is on and budgets are tight, it's often first on the chopping block.

But that's the wrong choice to make. Research calls this divide value-destroying, and the data backs it up. In 𝘌𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵, Les Binet and Peter Field studied marketing effectiveness across hundreds of campaigns and found the most effective budget split is roughly 60% brand building and 40% sales activation (performance), depending on context. Activation drives the immediate response, but in their analysis it accounts for only about 40% of the payback. The other 60% comes from long-term brand building.

In essence, a strong brand makes your performance campaigns more efficient because your audience already knows and trusts you before they ever see the ad. Pull funding from brand and your performance marketing quietly starts working harder for less.

The reality for anyone managing marketing budgets is that brand building and performance work as one system and you need to understand the factors that go into finding the best mix for effectiveness.

If your budget conversations keep pitting brand against performance, it may be time to step back and look at how the whole system fits together.

06/09/2026

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘀?

Our research found that many branding experts recommend a brand audit at least once a year. In our experience, that seems a bit excessive (and this is where the confusion around branding & marketing comes into play). Brand foundation should be built to last longer than a single year. The brand still needs to be monitored for consistency and listening to the audience and market, but a solid brand foundation should hold up over time. When done well, it gives you something durable to operate from while markets and audiences shift around it.

Take Coca-Cola for example. In nearly 140 years, they've run through more than 50 slogans (the promotion pillar) while their core logo and their positioning around happiness, refreshment, and togetherness have stayed remarkably consistent. The one real attempt to break from that foundation, New Coke in 1985, was reversed within months because they listened to the audience and market and found the perception didn't match what was intended. It was in the brand's best interest to reverse it.

We like using a similar approach to Coca-Cola and recommend a brand audit every 3-5 years centered on the 5 Brand Pillars framework. It works well as a diagnostic tool and to make sure you have a solid brand foundation in place. If you haven't audited your brand in a while or aren't sure if you have all 5 pillars covered, run your brand through each pillar and see what works:

⚫ Purpose: Is the reason you exist still driving decisions, or has it become a line on a wall no one references?
⚫ Positioning: Does your positioning in the market still set you apart, or has the category caught up?
⚫ Personality: Is the visual identity and voice your audience sees and hears consistent across every team and touchpoint?
⚫ Perception: Do you actually know how your audience sees you, or are you guessing?
⚫ Promotion: Are your channels and messaging still reaching the people who matter most?

This doesn't mean you stop managing the brand day to day. Promotion shifts more often than Purpose, Positioning, and Personality, and Perception needs regular monitoring to inform the rest. Think of it like a sponsorship deal: the value shows up over a 3 to 5 year commitment, not in a single year. Your brand foundation works the same way.

If any of this gave you pause, it might be time to revisit the foundation. We help senior teams audit their brand and rebuild what is no longer holding.

Start the conversation: go.lamaisonpeters.com/Strategy-Consult?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=Maison+Peters&utm_campaign=publer

06/03/2026

Brand strategy is only as strong as the organization's ability to execute it consistently. And that's where things get complicated.

Consistency sounds straightforward until you're actually trying to maintain a brand across an entire organization. Even when your strategy is strong, the ex*****on part is where most organizations lose ground.

Check out three common brand challenges that we've seen organizations face, regardless of size or industry:

1) Getting everyone to follow brand standards
2) Rogue communication & channels
3) Brand knowledge gaps across teams

If any of it resonates and you're ready to work on it, book a free 30-minute call with us. We can help: go.lamaisonpeters.com/Strategy-Consult?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=Maison+Peters&utm_campaign=publer

06/01/2026

Branding might be one of the most talked-about topics in marketing. Everyone has a take or a framework, and yet it's one of the easiest things to drift from when you're deep in ex*****on mode. Branding isn't just a concern for the marketing department. Every department needs to be on brand through values, visuals, and communication. Who you choose to partner with and hire also represent your brand.

That's why, this month, we want to go beyond the surface-level conversation about brand of what a brand is and talk about what it actually takes to develop a brand with intention and stay consistent with it over time. That means we're looking at mission, values, positioning, messaging, and the visuals that shape how your stakeholders see and interact with you.

In the meantime, check out our Brand & Messaging Solutions to see how we can help you show up in the market: https://lamaisonpeters.com/marketing-consulting/brand-messaging/?utm_source=fb_page&utm_medium=Maison+Peters&utm_campaign=publer

05/29/2026

Last week, we had the honor of attending A Concert for Justice, the annual benefit concert for our client, the Moran Center.

For more than 40 years, the Moran Center has provided community-based legal, social work, and restorative services to youth and families in Evanston, IL. Their work is holistic, healing-centered, and deeply rooted in the belief that every young person deserves access to justice.

This year's event featured a performance by the one and only Danielle Ponder, a soul and R&B artist who spent years as a public defender before stepping into music full-time. Her background and story resonates deeply with everything the Moran Center represents and made for a powerful evening where community came together in support of restorative justice and the work the Moran Center and its volunteers do every day.

Congratulations to the Moran Center on a beautiful evening and another year of extraordinary work in the community!

05/27/2026

Behind every program, campaign, or event is a story worth telling. Your data is how you tell it.

Our client, ETM Foundation, is doing something remarkable in Chicago. They operate Chicago's first and only free mobile vision clinic through their 2020 Perfect Vision Campaign, bringing eye exams and prescription glasses directly to Black and Brown children in communities where vision care has historically been out of reach.

We worked with their team to build an Impact Dashboard in Google Data Studio to recap their inaugural season running the mobile vision clinic. The goal was simple: give them a cleaner, faster way to answer the questions that kept coming up from community partners, grant funders, and the volunteers who helped make the tour happen: How many patients were seen? How many glasses were prescribed? What communities do they serve? This dashboard has made it easy for them to answer all of the questions and get themselves ready to make an even bigger impact in the community this year.

When your data is organized and accessible, it becomes proof of what your work is actually doing. That's what the right analytics infrastructure makes possible for any organization.

Interested in turning your marketing or program data into something your team can actually use? Start the conversation: go.lamaisonpeters.com/Strategy-Consult

Maison Peters

07/02/2026

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06/22/2026

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