The key to branding, especially for smaller firms, is to focus on a limited number of issue areas and develop superb expertise in those areas.

It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers. You must delight them.

Many great ideas need refreshment and deeper analysis. "Freedom," for example, is a great idea but it has become a cliché.

Marketing is the set of human activities directed at facilitating and consummating exchanges.

Too much of the income gains go to too few people, even though all of the stakeholders worked together to make their companies successful. By failing to put enough income into more hands, the GDP grows slower and consumers manage to meet their needs by incurring high levels of debt.

I admire companies that have a purpose, passion, and performance. I am a fan of Unilever under its CEO Paul Polman, not only for the company's insights into women and men when they buy beauty products or skin products (the DOVE woman, the AXE man), but also as a company seeking to achieve both growth and practicing social responsibility.

Strategy is indeed about choosing what not to do as well as what to do. A business unit needs to decide what need it aims to satisfy in what group of people and with what value proposition that distinguishes the business from its competitors.