COAL & ICE Branding

02/03/2026

The Most Common Branding Roadblocks (and How to Move Past Them)

For those involved with building a brand, there are certain challenges to keep in mind that are essential to your success.

After writing my latest book, Aaker on Branding, a book that contains an overview of 20 key branding principles, I included an epilogue that identifies 10 additional branding challenges to keep in mind as you work to build your brand. If you are involved with building a brand or brand portfolio, you will benefit from appraising how you are facing each of the challenges below:

1. Treating brands as assets
The ongoing pressure to deliver short-term financial results coupled with the fragmentation of media will tempt organizations to focus on tactics and measurables and neglect the objective of building assets.

2. Possessing a compelling vision
A brand vision needs to differentiate itself, resonate with customers and inspire employees. It needs to be feasible to implement, work over time in a dynamic marketplace and drive brand-building programs. Visions that work are usually multidimensional and adaptable to different contexts. They employ concepts such as brand personality, organizational values, a higher purpose and in general they simply move beyond functional benefits.

3. Creating new subcategories
The only way to grow, with rare exceptions, is to develop “must have” innovations that define new subcategories and build barriers to inhibit competitors from gaining relevance. That requires substantial or transformational innovation and a new ability to manage the perceptions of a subcategory so that it wins.

4. Generating breakthrough brand building
Exceptional ideas and ex*****ons that break out of the clutter are necessary in order to bring the brand vision to life. These ideas and the ex*****on of them are more critical than the size of your budget. “Good” is just not good enough. That means making sure you get more ideas from more sources, and that you make sure you have the mechanisms in place to recognize brilliance and bring those ideas to market – quickly.

5. Achieving integrated marketing communication (IMC)
IMC is more elusive and difficult than ever in light of the various methods you have to choose from such as advertising, sponsorships, digital, mobile, social media and more. These methods tend to compete with each other rather than reinforce because the media scene and options have become so complex, so dynamic, and because product and country silos reflect competition and isolation rather than cooperation and communication.

“A brand vision needs to differentiate itself, resonate with customers and inspire employees.”

6. Building a digital strategy
This arena is complex, dynamic and in need of a different mindset. The reality is, the audience is in control here. New capabilities, creative initiatives and new ways to work with other marketing modalities are required. Adjust the digital marketing focus from the offering and the brand to the customer’s sweet spot, which is to say the activities and opinions in which they are interested or even passionate about. Develop programs around that sweet spot in which the brand is an active partner, such as Pampers did with Pampers Village or what Avon did with their Walk for Breast Cancer.

7. Building your brand internally
It is hard to achieve successful integrated marketing communications or breakthrough marketing without employees both knowing the vision and caring about it. The brand vision that lacks a higher purpose will find the inspiration challenge almost impossible.

8. Maintaining brand relevance
Brands face three relevance threats: Fewer customers buying what the brand is offering, emerging reasons not-to-buy, and loss of energy. Detecting and responding to each requires an in-depth knowledge of the market, plus a willingness to invest and change.

9. Creating a brand-portfolio strategy that yields synergy and clarity
Brands need well-defined roles and visions that support those roles. Strategic brands should be identified and resourced, and branded differentiators and energizers should be created and managed.

10. Leveraging brand assets to enable growth
A brand portfolio should foster growth by enabling new offerings, extending the brand vertically or extending the brand into another product class. The goal is to apply the brand to new contexts where the brand both adds value and enhances itself.

03/19/2025

“The Power Of Brand Management: Unlocking Success In The Modern Business Landscape”

By Michael Shribman, Forbes Councils Member.

In today's fast-paced and highly competitive business environment, brand management has emerged as a crucial discipline for organizations across industries. A well-crafted brand strategy and effective brand management practices can propel a business to new heights, creating a solid and enduring connection with customers and fostering loyalty, differentiation and long-term profitability.

As the founder of a business consulting company, I have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of brand management; and in this article, I will delve into its fundamental principles and share some enlightening examples from my and others' experience.

Read full article on Forbes https://bit.ly/3FC9Llb

02/03/2025

Sizzling style meets mouth-watering BBQ! Dive into the rustic charm of Ron’s Famous Style BBQ Pit. From the streets to your plate, we serve up flavor with flair! View full project coalandicebranding.com/work/ronsfamous

02/03/2025

Beautiful package design work as part of Branding the Ultimate Beauty Experience for Luxe Beauty coalandicebranding.com/work/luxebeauty

02/03/2025

Transforming visions into reality, one design at a time. Meet Cruz Global—where your support solutions come with style. www.coalandicebranding.com/work/cruzglobal

02/03/2025

09/12/2023

4 Elements of a Successful Brand Refresh
by Ana Andjelic for Harvard Business Review

To successfully reinvent your brand, you must rethink your approach to product, story, culture, and customer. Brand rebounds often seem simple, logical, and inevitable when they are taught in business school courses and cited in the media. But few revival attempts are successful, and in the uncommon event that they do succeed, they usually take years or decades to yield significant results.

Notable brands, such as Apple, Gucci, and McDonald’s refreshed their marketing strategy and successfully renewed customer interest. Each of these companies succeeded by focusing on a new approach to product, story, culture, and customer. Powered by organizational and operational changes, these four elements have become the pillars of sustained brand turnarounds.

Start with the Product

Throughout Gucci’s 101-year history the fashion retailer’s popularity has waxed and waned, and its business results have faltered and rebounded. Today, Gucci is the second largest luxury brand in the world. Its most recent revival began in 2015 with the appointments of CEO Marco Bizzarri and Creative Director Alessandro Michele. The changes they made that first year — notably a new creative vision, store refurbishments, and improved digital offerings — resulted in an annual revenue increase of 7.8%, an annual operating income increase of 21.7%, and an 86% increase in first quarter online sales compared to the same periods in 2015.

Read full article on Harvard Business Review http://surl.li/lbfik

08/24/2023

Elevating Cleanliness through Mindset-Driven, Peer-to-Peer Services
Tidy, an innovative peer-to-peer app that reshapes the cleaning and organizational services landscape. What makes Tidy unique is its unwavering focus on the distinctive mindset of its network of professional cleaners and organizers, diving deep into the psychological and philosophical aspects of cleanliness to curate a community of the most dedicated individuals. Read more at www.coalandicebranding.com/our-work/tidy

08/21/2023

Designing an Innovative Packaging Solution for the Common Bean

Setting out to revamp Peak Beans' packaging, our team drew inspiration from our newfound commitment to sustainability and aesthetics. Acknowledging the humble bean's importance as a vital protein source, we noticed the ignored sacks of beans on store shelves, a stark contrast to the meticulously designed packaging of premium coffee beans. This spurred a clear goal: crafting an eco-friendly bag that not only looked great but also held double the beans compared to standard packaging.

See more work here: www.coalandicebranding.com/work

06/29/2023

Brand Identity: Discovering Who You Are Is The Point

By Jonathan Hanson, Former Forbes Councils Member via www.forbes.com

Your brand is an ecosystem. Everything—from your foundation and products to your partnerships, social media, marketing and customer service—plays its individual role. While your product is vital to your brand, it still needs to live cohesively within the rest of the ecosystem in order for you to find success.
Brand identity is so much more than a good aesthetic and a well-written narrative; it is the window to the core of this ecosystem, sharing with the world why your brand exists and what problems you are here to solve. Built directly off your mission, vision and values, it drives your purpose from the heart of your organization into each and every vein—from communications and decision-making to hiring. And much like an individual, a brand that carries itself confidently, that’s assured in who they are and carries a cohesive message across every interaction, will find greater success in building trust and making connections with those around them.

It’s vital to have a solid foundation built on a meaningful mission, vision and set of values. This takes a lot of strategizing, which starts with digging into stakeholder interviews. Aligning both your brand’s purpose and the needs that you are solving for your community is paramount. It develops a road map for creating and meeting goals and ensures you don’t get caught up in trends or partnerships (no matter how seemingly lucrative) that aren’t true to your brand.

Take Nike, for example. Its mission is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. In the early ’80s, they decided to dip their toes in the casual shoe business. Naturally, it was disastrous. It didn’t align with their core mission nor what consumers expected (or wanted) from them. After a few months, this new venture was scrapped and Nike was back to delivering only the innovative athletic gear their core audience knew and loved.

Read the full article on Forbes bit.ly/3JBIMpk