Viva La Brand

05/05/2026

You can learn from anyone anywhere. Here are marketing lessons from Pim, an Amsterdam bike tour guide:

Last week, I met Bill Meeus, better known as Pim, the owner, operator, and entire staff of Bill’s Bike Tours in Amsterdam. His official title might be “guide,” but that undersells it. He’s quietly running a masterclass in marketing from the front of a bike. Here are four lessons Pim gets rig...

01/15/2026

AI can generate content at scale - but there's one thing it still can't fix in your marketing. That's what this 3-minute read is about: https://vivalabrand.com/one-thing-ai-cant-fix-in-your-marketing/

11/25/2025

It's that time of the year. Time to reflect on the past - what's worked and what hasn't. I created this marketing checklist to help:

This time of year always pulls me into reflection mode – what worked in 2025, what didn’t, and what surprised me. It’s a reminder of how grounding intentional planning can be, and how a little reflection now can help set the direction for the new year. Here’s a checklist for your 2026 market...

09/05/2025

WHY DO IT? That's what Nike is asking after 35 years of JUST DO IT! Yes, Nike has changed their tagline - a rallying cry to the next generation.

The new tagline rolled out yesterday - with the start of many sports seasons. The ad features athletes from various sports spanning basketball, football, baseball, soccer, tennis, diving, and racing.

The diverse, global group of athletes includes Caitlin Clark, Carlos Alcaraz, Saquon Barkley, LeBron James, Rayssa Leal, and Qinwen Zheng. Each is wrestling with their own purpose and must answer, “Why Do It?”

Pretty exciting for us brand strategists! Can't wait to see the tagline in action.

Which tagline connects with you?

09/03/2025

I’m inspired by communication that has both clarity and soul. This letter from Charlie, the founder and owner of Stir Studio Kitchen (Hudson, Chagrin Falls, and Ohio City), is a fantastic example. It's warm, genuine, and straight from the heart.

Hello friend,

This is Charlie. Some of you know me. Most of you know just our instructors. And many of you signed up for our email list only because you thought you’d get a discount for a class and now you’re receiving this letter from me instead. How awful that must be.

Anyway, I started Stir over six years ago, and back then I got to know almost every guest. But over the past few years I’ve largely faded into obscurity, replaced by a very talented team of colleagues. That’s certainly a good thing for you as a guest, but it means that I don’t get to thank you in person the way I used to. So I guess I came here to do that today.

I’m very proud of what we’ve created at Stir and I very much enjoy helping create it. Pretty much every day I get to work on interesting things with people I like. We work harder than you’d probably think to make this business great, and I genuinely believe an evening spent at Stir right now is better than it’s ever been.

We’re going to keep doing this stuff for a long time and we’re going to get even better at it. I don’t know exactly what Stir will look like in 2, 5, or 10 years, but that’s the way I like it. We got this far simply by doing “the next cool idea”, so that’s what we’ll keep doing. That is, however, how lots of people end up in prison.

I think I’ll write these letters once a year around this time. Maybe in a few years you’ll begin to observe my sudden but rapid cognitive decline, and within a decade or so these letters will simply be an incoherent mess of vulgarities. Wouldn’t that be something.

So for the three of you folks still reading this… thank you being a part of this whole thing. I feel incredibly fortunate to be responsible for Stir, and even more fortunate to have loads of fun memories from the past six years. I sincerely hope you come to one of our cooking classes soon. I think you would really like it. But even if you don’t, I hope you spend your time doing other things you like to do.

That’s all for now.

Charlie

03/27/2025

Leah, my 2-year old sidekick, is forever reminding me about marketing fundamentals! Check out marketing lessons from Leah!

Leah, my fearless little sidekick who is two, slept over Saturday night. She may be small, but she delivered big lessons. Who knew a toddler’s antics could serve as a crash course in marketing? Leah’s Lesson #1: Repetition + Consistency = Results Leah doesn’t just tell her dog Sunny Bunny to ....

01/07/2025

Survey firm YouGov asked more than 19,000 Americans about their opinions of more than 2,000 major brands, including their value for the money, their quality, and whether they'd consider purchasing those brands. A surprising 1,936 brands received a positive score for quality and value.

Click on the chart to enlarge it. The gist of the story is that Amazon wins by a long shot! It's the blue dot in the right corner. Highest in terms of quality and value!

Dollar Tree and Dollar General have a reasonably high value and low quality - which is pretty much their strategy. Rolex is the dot that's high in the middle. It's quality is high. It's value is slightly to the right of neutral.

Here's a link to the full article: https://sherwood.news/culture/from-amazon-to-ozempic-the-brands-americans-think-are-the-best-and-worst/

Makes you pause and think about where your brand would fall on the chart.

11/12/2024

It's 2025 planning time! Here's some practical advice to ease the planning burden:https://vivalabrand.com/2024-year-end-marketing-checklist/

11/07/2024

It's still warm in Cleveland and yet holiday decorations and promotions are out full force. Lego just introduced Cataclaws, a new holiday hero who replaces stress with playful fun in a campaign featuring activations around the world. The campaign launch includes a film with six kids at a holiday gathering who assemble Cataclaws, a black and white Lego cat wearing a winter hat, while watching the adults struggle to prepare a meal. In a magical twist, the feline springs to life to the music of 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready", sending a truck of bricks crashing into the home where everyone starts playing together.

09/19/2024

PayPal has a new logo. Very 2024! Clean, sleek, type-only - no images, shapes or fancy color treatments. I like it! You?