Image: Harry's Shave Club

​Corporate Challenge: Assuring startup success.

Ironbound Strategy: Startups that create value for customers, employees, and society can grow their brand presence faster than their competitors.

Ironbound Action: New York based Harry’s Shave Club is a startup that vertically integrated manufacturing to distribution from the very beginning. By owning verticals Harry’s was able to provide high quality products at lower than expected prices.  Owning verticals allowed Harry’s to create a second brand, Flamingo, to provide personal care solutions for women, and double their brand presence. When a startup is vertically integrated, it has similar advantages to the competition, but with nimbleness to outcompete them.  By ceaselessly creating value for customers and society, any brand can exponentially grow, even in slow growth spaces.

Image: Salesforce

Corporate Challenge:  New startup seeks to standout in crowded market. 
 
Ironbound Strategy:  Powerful brands get noticed because they operate with meaningful purpose.  The surefire way to attract attention and resonate world changing ideas is to permeate meaningful core values across all stakeholders.

Image: Amazon Ford Delivery

​Corporate Challenge: Distinguishing your brand from the competition by challenging conventions.

Ironbound Strategy: Brands that constantly create value for customers, employees, and society are able to successfully challenge conventions.

Ironbound Action: Michigan based Ford Motor Company recently teamed up with Amazon to change the convention of parcel delivery.  Who says packages always need to be left on doorsteps? Willing customers can now allow Amazon delivery to temporarily unlock trunks of new Ford vehicles to safely deliver packages.  Amazon and Ford consistently create immense value for their stakeholders, such that they can successfully succeed at challenging general conventions.  Great brands tend to always come up with outrageously innovative ideas.  Those that relentless create value for stakeholders have the easiest time implementing them.

Image: Greg Lauren Cotton Hoodie

​Corporate Challenge:  Upcycling in response to consumer trends focused on climate change.
 
Ironbound Strategy:  Powerful brands are corporate ambassadors of social responsibility.  They appeal to their employees and customers by engaging in strategic activities that reduce waste on society.  Brands that upcycle have an opportunity to expand their product narratives, and thereby increase their appeal, by continuing the original story of upcycled materials.

​Ironbound Action:  Haute couture designer and global ambassador, Greg Lauren, focuses on upcycled high fashion.  Each garment is uniquely designed to preserve the emotional connection of the original vintage fabric, while upcycled into a completely new transformation.   Using entirely upcycled iconic American materials, with a focus on decommissioned military textiles, each collection embodies a vintage and futuristic nihilistic theme.  By unlocking past identity salience, sophisticated consumers are magnetized by unique and fascinating storylines.  Brand power is fueled by expanding stories that create value to build a better world. 

Image: Snapchat AR Experience

​Corporate Challenge: Creating new ways to promote a brand.

Ironbound Strategy: Augmented reality (AR) is a fun way of getting the attention of millennials.  Using AR to create long term value for customers, employees, and society will convert the hype into loyal customers.

Ironbound Action:  California based Snapchat is helping brands with entering the AR market space.  Recently Snapchat created a virtual 360 shopping experience for Lego’s new clothing line.  Snap users could move around a virtual store, purchase items, interact with Lego characters, and even have the Lego DJ change the in-store music.  Brands can use AR to tailor their customer experiences, and take online shopping to a more personal and technologically thrilling level.  AR is still new and exciting.  Brands that are dedicated to their customers will likely be the first to invest in AR, and dominate the space.

Image: Wegman's Employee Satisfaction Photo

​Corporate Challenge:  Building a strong and loyal fan base by being cool. 
 
Ironbound Strategy:  Being cool is attractive.  Powerful brands become cool by centering value creation around all stakeholders.  First, they focus on building a strong and independent presence in society.  Second, they confirm their coolness by creating the best value for customers.  Finally, they create exceptional value for employees so that coolness of product and service innovation continuously evolves.  

Image: Makers Mark paper straws

​Corporate Challenge: Discovering ways to optimize new trends.

Ironbound Strategy: Market spaces are constantly changing.  Avoid brand stagnation by constantly creating value for customers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action:  Kentucky based Makers Mark became one of the first brands to put their logo on paper straws.  Millennials have been seeking solutions to the 390 million plastic straws used daily in the United States, and placed pressure on companies to stop using them.  The old-fashioned paper straw (patented in 1888) has seen stellar growth as companies like the Walt Disney Company committed to ending their use of plastic straws by 2020.  Changing market spaces create opportunities for brands to attract new customers.  Brands that leverage environmental trends are viewed favorably by millennials, the incoming largest consumer demographic.
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Image: Ford GoBikes

Corporate Challenge: Managing a brand during a global crisis on the overuse of plastic.

Ironbound Strategy: Find creative ways to upcycle plastic or avoid plastic entirely. Brands that care about creating value for customers and employees, also have a responsibility to create value for society.

Ironbound Action: Michigan based Ford Motor Company recycles all of the plastic they use in their car manufacturing process, and then upcycles the plastic to use on future cars.  Since 1990, the underbody covers used in all Ford vehicles has come from their recycled plastic. Additionally, the Ford Motor Company exclusively uses 100% locally sourced renewable energy. More companies need to follow the lead of companies like Ford and become better stewards of our small planet. 

Image: Apple Watch

​Corporate Challenge: Attaining and retaining customer loyalty.

Ironbound Strategy: Brands that focus on creating the best products possible have excellent customer loyalty. By constantly creating value for employees, and society, the brand is also guaranteed exponential growth.

Ironbound Action: California based Apple Inc creates value for customers by designing the best products possible.  Last summer an Apple Watch was lost at Huntington Beach, and spent six months at the bottom of the sea.  It eventually washed ashore, was returned, and to the owner’s surprise it still worked. Millennials show brand preferences for companies that create the best products possible. Making the best products must be a priority for any brand that wants to succeed in the next decade.

Image: Mickey Mouse Graduating

​Corporate Challenge: What a brand should do to truly elevate employees.

Ironbound Strategy: Sponsoring educational opportunities creates immense value for employees, who will then create immeasurable value for the brand’s customers and society.

Ironbound Action: California based Walt Disney Company created a program to educate their hourly workers.  In the Disney Aspire program, Disney will cover tuition, books, and incidental costs up front for their 80,000 eligible employees that want to pursue a vocation, high school equivalency, undergraduate degree, and master’s degrees.  In their own description, they claim, “the sky’s the limit”.  Disney is one of the most powerful brands in the world because they never stop looking for ways to constantly create value for their employees.