Argentum Blog

Argentum's blog, Marketing Op-Ed, highlights interesting, real-world examples of marketing with a little bit (okay, a lot) of opinion thrown in. It's written by Susan Silver, President of Argentum Strategy Group, with the occasional guest blogger added to the mix.

Pricing Research: How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?

Determining how to price your product or service appropriately is always tricky, but it can be especially difficult for companies with limited or non-existent market research resources. ADVANCED TOOL A team of professors at Kellogg recently identified a new methodology that can provide more accurate data about the maximum price a customer would...

Is It Time To Exhibit At That Tradeshow?

For B2B businesses, trade shows can present powerful sales and marketing opportunities. Exhibiting at one of these target-rich events can facilitate invaluable lead-generation and accelerate awareness-building for companies of all sizes and life stages. For the 60% of Argentum clients that are B2B, trade shows are typically a hot topic during...

Beers With Peers: Identifying the Unmet Need

In the 18 years since Argentum’s founding, I’ve been invited to judge dozens of pitch competitions. When listening to founders pitch their ideas, nothing makes my heart go pitter pat more than hearing a passionate, visionary founder talk about the real unmet need that they have identified and then figured out how to solve better, faster,...

Tools: ChatGPT for Marketing

Since the fateful day in early December when I first learned about ChatGPT (CGPT) from a cutting-edge colleague, the topic has exploded. It feels like every day, everywhere we turn, there’s a new article or interview or discussion about the technology. There’s even a new South Park episode about it! When my colleague initially confessed to me...

Marketing Audits: Best Practices

A marketing audit is a great way to assess the health of your current marketing efforts against two separate benchmarks: 1) How you compare to your industry peers and 2) How your marketing does or doesn’t align with overall best practices. While we always do a mini audit as part of any project, sometimes we have clients who want to start with a...

Food Pantry Rebrand

Every so often, we get the opportunity to work on a passion project. As a longtime board member, co-leading the rebranding efforts for Nourishing Hope (formerly Lakeview Pantry) definitely qualifies. Even prior to the pandemic, Lakeview Pantry, Chicago’s largest food pantry, was outgrowing its name from a geography served and services standpoint....

Backing Off Buzzwords – Case Studies

Every company has internal jargon that has evolved to speed conversations, including those about the benefits of its products and services. At its extreme, this might mean using inscrutable acronyms like those Kraft Foods used to use (anyone out there remember CIS, STOC, DRF). In fact, in the early 90’s, every new brand management employee was...

Reasons to Believe – Not Just Blowing Smoke

In a positioning statement, the Reasons to Believe (RTB) provide the evidence to support the Point of Difference. They’re what stand between your message being a puff piece and being authentic. However, as with so many other things in marketing, people are often tempted to throw the kitchen sink into their RTB’s rather than remaining strategic...

Evolving Value Propositions

When you position your product or company, the value proposition is typically grounded in brand fundamentals that are expected to remain core to the business across multiple years. So how and when do you adjust your positioning for normal evolution and growth? What happens when market conditions change so dramatically that they impact your...

Diving Into Cannabis Beverages – Wynk™ Case Study

Background: Two successful serial entrepreneurs wanted to enter the cannabis space with the category’s first nationally branded THC beverage. They had developed a ground-breaking mobile, co-manufacturing plant to work around the category’s state-by-state legal complexities, but they had no experience building a CPG brand. Although we recommended...

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