Our Brand Thinking

Articles by Chris Lumsden

Article | 19th Jun 2025

10 Signs You Might Need to Rebrand.

Something feels off. The brand doesn’t quite fit anymore. You’re not sure what’s wrong, but you’ve started wondering, do we need to rebrand?

Article | 21st May 2025

Why Brand, Not Sales Tactics, Could Be Killing Your Conversion Rates.

Let’s get one thing straight. Sales performance isn’t just a pipeline problem. Or a training problem. Or even a strategy problem. These things matter, yes, but if your sales team keeps coming up short, chances are the real problem lies elsewhere.

Article | 6th May 2025

If a 5-to-1 ROI Isn’t Enough, What Hope Do We Have?

I was listening to The Rest Is Politics: US the other day, and they were discussing the latest round of government cuts in America. One point jumped out – federal funding for R&D is being slashed, despite the fact that for every $1 invested, the return is estimated at $5 or more.

Article | 24th Mar 2025

Brand Strategy Isn’t About a Clean Slate: Here’s What Really Works

Stop waiting for perfect conditions to fix your brand. Most branding projects don’t start from scratch. They start in the middle of the mess - while a website is already being built, a marketing campaign is in progress, or a leadership team is debating next steps.

Article | 14th Feb 2025

What Does Positioning Really Mean?

Brand positioning isn’t just a tagline—it’s about owning a distinct space in customers’ minds. Without a clear strategy, your brand risks blending into the noise. This article explains what brand positioning is, how it differs from product positioning, and how to make it work for your business.

Article | 10th Feb 2025

Why Marketing Campaigns Fail – And How to Fix It

You’re pouring money into your marketing, ticking all the right boxes, but the leads just aren’t coming. The campaigns aren’t landing, and the ROI isn’t there. Why do marketing campaigns fail?

Article | 31st Jan 2025

Why B2B Tech Branding is the Key to Unlocking Growth

In the competitive world of B2B tech, branding is often an afterthought. Companies tend to focus on technical features, leaving their brand foundations weak and messaging fragmented. But without a strong foundation in B2B Tech Branding, even the most innovative technologies struggle to resonate with customers and drive growth.

Article | 21st Jan 2025

The Outcomes of Branding: Beyond ROI

In our 20 years of working with B2B brands, we’ve learned a simple truth: branding’s impact is rarely immediate, linear, or easily captured in a spreadsheet.

Article | 11th Dec 2024

Emotion in B2B Buying

Emotion is a word that’s thrown around a lot in branding, often associated with happiness, joy, or love. In B2C, it’s easy to see why.

Article | 26th Nov 2024

Brand Bike Shedding: Why Avoiding the Big Brand Questions Costs You More

Branding often mirrors a curious behavioural quirk in decision-making: Bike Shedding. It's a term coined by British historian and writer Cyril Northcote Parkinson in his 1957 essay on organisational inefficiency.

Article | 1st Oct 2024

81% of B2B Ads Fail: Here’s How Better Branding Can Fix It

A recent study by the B2B Institute in partnership with MediaScience reveals a shocking truth: only 19% of an ad’s audience can attribute it to the correct brand.

Article | 20th Aug 2024

B2B Branding: What Happened to “Hello”?

In the rush to showcase technical prowess, many B2B brands forget the simple yet powerful act of introducing themselves. Without a proper “hello,” even the best products struggle to make an impact.

Article | 22nd Jul 2024

The importance of storytelling for B2B Tech brands

B2B Tech brand marketers must learn to step away from a technical features approach and embrace a brand-led storytelling to stand out and differentiate their products.

Article | 7th May 2024

5 signs your brand needs a simplification audit.

In our experience, B2B portfolios are too complex and create a lot of confusion. Here are 5 tell-tale signs that your portfolio needs to be simplified.

Article | 22nd Apr 2024

The Practical Side of Brand Architecture: What Theory Doesn’t Tell You

A recent uptick of enquires around specialist brand architecture projects has prompted me to reflect on the complexities these businesses face and how theoretical understanding impacts practical application.

Article | 8th Apr 2024

Navigating the AI Revolution in Brand Consulting

In a recent discussion, Sam Altman suggested a future where AI could automate 95% of tasks traditionally performed by marketers, agencies, and creatives offering instant, nearly perfect outputs at negligible costs.

Article | 13th Feb 2024

Decoding Brand Confusion: Aligning Agency Expertise with Executive Vision

We’re often brought into branding projects when things have gone wrong, or a previous branding project has run out of steam.

Article | 10th Jan 2024

The Lost Art of Brand Naming

Like deciphering coffee menus, obscure business branding can lead to confusion, affecting sales.

Article | 4th Dec 2023

Does Your Business Need a Sub Brand?

This is a recurring issue in the B2B work we do – and our answer to the question ‘should we create a new sub brand?’ is almost always ‘no’.

Article | 29th Aug 2023

From Frivolous to Fruitful: Agency Challenges in Promoting B2B Brand Characters

We recently had an agency debate about which brands had the best brand character. Over the course of a week, we voted on different options and Captain Birdseye won. (A fine choice, don’t you agree?)

Article | 10th Aug 2023

The Power of Simplicity for B2B Tech Brands: Less is More

Exploring the why and how of B2B tech's fear of simplicity

Article | 21st Mar 2023

Why do Private Equity firms ignore the role of brand in creating value?

This is the question that’s been keeping me up at night. I’m slightly scared to ask it publicly, but I’m genuinely struggling to answer it.

Article | 6th Mar 2023

Brand mistakes made by B2B Tech firms

These mistakes may not be brand killers, but they could cause yours to bleed value and equity and feed the competition's business.