Consumers are increasingly cynical and hard to impress, sophisticated, fickle and wary as well as well-informed, with instant access to online informal reviews and comments about just about any product in the world. So how do you impress?

What does it mean for a brand to be emotional, to connect with customer passion, to create devotion and loyalty?   It means that we feel good when use the brand or when other people associate us with it. Brand loyalty can run deep – even when we are disappointed in our recent experience. Our own identity can be tied intimately to branding:  the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the corporation we work for – all these things help shape our personal image. 10 steps to warm up your brand...

How to warm up your brand. What if we could add 10% to the impact of every global brand, 20% to the power of every mission statement? Too far fetched? Every month we are exposed to $1 billion in advertising, and 30,000 brand names are clamouring for our attention.  The result is market fatigue, caused by overload.

All large businesses get hit by crises on a regular basis.  It is a fact of life. And the larger the organisation, the more frequently they happen.  Every employee is an ethical risk of some kind.  Every business unit contains perhaps hundreds of risks. Combinations of risks are far more common than most people imagine.  Risk management means taking steps to reduce impact of future events, contingency planning, thinking ahead. A crisis provides an ideal opportunity to re-focus on what you are doing across the busines. Here are 16 steps to take when crisis occurs…