The McKinsey Quarterly

2006

• June 2006 

  Profiting from Proliferation

  An explosion of new customer segments, sales and service channels, media, and brands is challenging marketers to reinvent themselves so they can simultaneously prioritize opportunities in a more sophisticated way and increase the consistency and coordination of their marketing execution.

  Includes:

2005

• August 2005 

  Using branding to attract talent

  To win the best recruits, a company must know how they perceive its brand.

2004

• December 2004 

  Marketing to China's consumers

  Chinese companies have learned a great deal from multinational ones operating in China. Now the foreigners could learn from them.

• November 2004 

  Making brand portfolios work

  Brands are proliferating rapidly. Companies must now bring them under control.

2003

• December 2003 

  Branding cars in China

  For consumers in China, the meaning of a car’s brand can be as important as tangible performance characteristics, if not more so.

• December 2003 

  Can Chinese brands make it abroad?

  The answer is yes, but it won’t be easy.

• November 2003 

  Better branding

  Marketers rely too much on intuition. The key to building brands more scientifically is to combine a forward-looking market segmentation with a better understanding of customers and a brand’s identity.

• November 2003 

  Branding's new math

  Growth is back. Achieving it will require a smarter approach both to marketing and to managing risk.

2002

• February 2002 

  Branding electrons

  The retailing of electricity is often considered a business trading solely on price, but a study of consumers in three European countries shows that more profitable offerings have an audience.

• February 2002 

  Do retail brands travel?

  In presenting one face to the world, a company risks presenting the wrong face to entire nations.

• February 2002 

  Revving up auto branding

  Why do two almost identical cars experience radically different fates in the marketplace? Think brand equity.

2001

• August 2001 

  Paying a green premium

  Consumers may distrust their utilities’ green credentials, but effective branding—through alliances with green brands like Greenpeace and the Worldwide Fund for Nature—may help overcome their skepticism.

2000

• August 2000 

  Building retail brands

  Establishing and communicating a brand may be harder for multibrand retailers than for their single-brand counterparts, but brand building is essential for both.

1999

• May 1999 

  Brand leverage

  A brand can grow quickly if its owner builds on the foundation of performance, personality, and presence to create innovative strategies for expansion through focus or diversification.

1998

• May 1998 

  The end of voodoo brand management

  Little is learned from debates about brand investments. Think about brands as webs of resources. Generating feedback loops that increase rather than deplete those resources.

1997

• November 1997 

  Brand consolidation makes a lot of economic sense

  The explosion in mergers and acquisitions over the past decade and the consequent ballooning of brand portfolios have made brand consolidation an unavoidable strategic challenge. Yet most brand consolidation efforts fail, and fail expensively. To beat the odds, the authors suggest, it is crucial to choose the right branding endgame.

• August 1997 

  If Nike can “just do it,” why can’t we?

  Investing in your brand makes sense. But trying to build a “power” brand, that’s another story. Industries and marketing capabilities play a key role.

1996

• November 1996 

  Rolling out the red carpet

  Prithvi Raj Singh ("Biki") Oberoi, then (1996) the Oberoi Group’s managing director, explains how his family built a global hospitality business.

• November 1996 

  Uncovering the value of brands

  Many marketers believe brands are important because they shape customer decisions and, ultimately, create economic value. Few, however, would be able to back up their beliefs with facts and figures.

• May 1996 

  Nestlé: The visions of local managers

  Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, then (1996) Nestlé’s CEO-elect, talks about his long-term views on globalization. And chocolate.

1995

• November 1995 

  How profitable are own brand products?

  European retailers have been working to develop own brand product lines in recent years, but experience suggests that they seldom have the necessary information systems to monitor product profitability in an accurate and timely manner.

1993

• November 1993 

  Solving the brand leader’s dilemma

  A decision maker’s guide to the risks and rewards of private label.

• May 1993 

  The brand leader’s dilemma

  The growing appeal of private label in many product categories poses a difficult choice for today’s brand leaders.