While Professor Joe Plummer and I may not see eye to eye on everything (see my post on the definition of engagement), there is one thing we definitely agree on: an enterprise can achieve optimal results only when its business and its brand are aligned to work in synergy. When business and brand are out of synch (as happens all too often), the return to the company and shareholders is compromised.

Joe and I participated in a panel discussion on global branding at the NY AMA’s session last week. The third panelist was Trena Blair, vice president at American Express. The session was hosted by Randall Ringer, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Verse Group, whose coverage of the event can be found here.

Twelve months of writing business articles have confirmed that the Americans and the British are divided by more than a common language. Adding or subtracting vowels from a word is easy. Finding suitable brands to illustrate points in an article is hard—not just because the relevant details need to be in the public domain, but also because our experience of brands is still very parochial.

Every now and again I find a great case study, one that illustrates a key point. Usually the most important element of such a case is evidence of a sales effect. While a case study without sales data is nice to know about, a case study with  sales data is a compelling demonstration.

We live in interesting times. That statement could be taken either at face value, or, if you work for a TV network or cable company, as a reference to an old Chinese curse. Either way, it’s true. Life is interesting—not least because, as TV viewing morphs into online viewing and goes mobile, it is becoming really difficult to predict the implications for advertising.

Yesterday I listened in on the meeting of the ARF’s Engagement Council. A faulty microphone made the first speakers impossible to hear, so I missed the introduction and initial discussion about the definition of engagement (a topic Gordon Pincott will address in an upcoming Point of View). However, the subsequent presentations, which I did hear, proved interesting.

I was listening to the radio in my Manhattan hotel room last week when I heard an ad for the Tristate BMW dealers. Unlike many other ads I’ve heard recently, this one did not tout massive price reductions but rather sought to reframe value perceptions. Citing BMW’s heritage as a maker of performance cars, the ad alluded to what has made the brand a success. Then it delivered the value message: By buying a BMW instead of another luxury make, auto buyers can save $50 a month in maintenance. Emphasizing value is what any premium brand should be doing in recessionary times but will it be enough this time around?