Recap: Top 5 Newsletters of the Year

Five newsletters to help you become the preferred choice and win market share

Author

Aaron Shields
December 24, 2024 • Reading Time: 6 minutes

As the year comes to a close, I wanted to thank you for the time you took to read this newsletter.

I know there’s a lot of ways you can spend your time.

With that in mind, I wanted to highlight my picks for the top 5 most useful newsletters I published this year.

In no particular order:

1. 7 Strategies from 4 of the World’s Most Valuable Brands

In June, Kantar released its annual Most Valuable Global Brands report.

Along with the report, they released a presentation with leaders from some of the brands represented in the report.

And during the presentation, leaders from some of the most valuable brands offered critical branding strategies that most companies miss.

This newsletter covers 7 brand building strategies from Pepsi, Corona, Infosys, and P&G:

  1. Valuable Brands Are Consistent (Pepsi)

  2. Integrate Functional and Emotional Dimensions (Corona)

  3. To Deliver on Your Promise, Stay Up to Date (Infosys)

  4. Solve Real Customer Tensions at Every Touchpoint (P&G)

  5. Figure Out Where Your Brand Is Most Relevant (Corona)

  6. Be Available Physically and Mentally Wherever Your Customers Are (P&G)

  7. Shape Your Category by Predicting the Future (Pepsi)

In the newsletter, I cover how each strategy works with examples of how brands apply it.

I broke up the piece into two newsletter issues:

2. 5 Strategies To Build Brand Consistency

Most companies end up with marketing saying one thing, sales another, and customer support hasn’t even heard of branding.

It’s a mess.

Your brand becomes fragmented. Customers don’t know what to expect. Confusion sets in. And customers can’t prefer something that confuses them.

Aligning every department is the only way to make your brand clear, consistent, and trusted at every touchpoint.

In this newsletter, I covered five strategies with actions you can take to create brand consistency across your organization.

The 5 strategies:

  1. Understand That Branding Is Company-Wide, Not Departmental

  2. Get Buy-In From Department Heads Early On

  3. Keep Communication Simple: Don't Overload Staff With Details

  4. Clearly Align Business and Brand Goals for Every Team

  5. Hold Regular Meetings With Department Heads To Maintain Alignment

3. Answer these 3 questions to BOOST brand preference (and market share)

Questions force us to take different perspectives.

They stop us from automatically reacting.

But not all questions are created equal.

And it’s necessary to ensure we’re asking the right questions.

This newsletter focuses on three branding questions that I’ve found are critical for increasing preference—and market share—for your brand.

The 3 questions:

  1. Where Is the Market Moving?

  2. What Should We Be Trusted For?

  3. How Will Customers Respond?

4. 7 Proven Ways To Win Customers and Gain Market Share

Every marketer believes they know their customer.

But many work with distorted versions of reality. They combine some data with assumptions. And start blurring the lines between the two.

They forget the difference between who their customers really are and who they think they might be.

Aligning what you think about the customers with who the customers really are is critical for continued growth.

In this issue, I cover 7 ways to uncover deep customer insights so you can create products and messaging that resonate with customers and win market share.

The 7 ways:

  1. Ask open-ended questions

  2. Analyze behavior, not just words

  3. Understand their why

  4. Segment for specific problems

  5. Talk to passionate fans

  6. Test, test, test

  7. Plan scenarios

5. Unlock Creative Results Using the SPARK Method

I developed the SPARK Method based on proven creativity research and my 20 years of experience helping companies build constantly evolving brands to stay relevant to their customers.

The SPARK Method is a 5-step process for consistently delivering creative results.

It helps you avoid common pitfalls of creative meetings

The 5 steps of the SPARK Method:

  1. Scope: Define the playing field.

  2. Produce: Generate ideas without evaluation.

  3. Assess: Evaluate the ideas.

  4. Review: Check the ideas against the scope.

  5. Kickstart: Create a plan to bring the idea to life.

Four Other Useful Pieces

Although the whole issue they’re in didn’t make my top five newsletters of the year, I thought these four pieces were worth revisiting:

One Article

This year, I finally finished an article I started two years ago on how designer Virgil Abloh used his backstory to power his career and how brands should do the same.

It’s a 13-minute read but a comprehensive analysis of Abloh’s career. And it’s packed with information on the importance of backstory in building a brand.

Onward

This year, I read 51 books.

It was packed with some really great reads that I want to share.

So, next week, I’ll conclude the year with a recap of the top 10 most useful books I read for marketers this year.

Until then, happy holidays.

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