Publishing

Branding success requires more than simply crafting a distinct market positioning and matching image, it requires going beyond expressing “Who are we?” Your value hinges on whether people trust what you say. The brand rooted in leading ideas – sustained by your intellectual leadership – will be the catalyst for success: the most effective way to be understood, to be authentic and credible. THat’s how to build a brand that says leadership.

Between 2017 and 2019 we wrote a series of articles about the reshaping of “the story:” how content has gone wrong, and how to change it. We wanted to know how organizations were telling their story, what was their strategy for communicating and entrenching a leadership brand? The articles in this special collection have been combined with some earlier articles published in our first two volumes of essays, Contrabrand and The Alchemy of Content, as well as later blogs posts and writings

A PDF of Leadership Branding can be downloaded by clicking on the cover image.

The essays in this collection make the case for reinvigorating museums’ leadership by making publishing – in all its various forms – a core capability and a central part of the museum branding process.

Museums must be as innovative in thinking about how to connect and engage with audiences as they are at designing new logos, launching new advertising campaigns, or building new gleaming monuments. Proprietary content is the right catalyst for generating a perception of leadership because it creates a believable narrative that persuades people a museum is worth supporting. By broadening the standard notion of publishing, they can reframe it as an engagement channel capable of effectively communicating organizational identity.

A PDF of The Alchemy of Content is available upon request.

The articles in this collection were written between 2001 and 2008 to help nonprofits organizations reflect on the sector’s ineffective branding culture. Recognizing that nonprofits needed (and still need) to develop their capacity for thinking critically about the branding imperative, the intention was to produce a series of short, provocative articles describing more appropriate and effective practices.

These essays are meant to provoke, challenge thinking and inspire action. The essential message of this anthology is straightforward: By increasing their ability to engage minds and keep people captivated, organizations can redefine their financial prospects.

A PDF of ContraBrand is available upon request.

John Warrillow had something to say to Fortune 500 companies: “Get inside the head of a small business owner.” He had a pool of unique research and insights from Fortune 500 marketers like American Express, Dell, Federal Express, IBM, and many more that he wanted seen by new audiences of marketers who were failing to capitalize on the small business market.

The result was a book, Drilling for Gold: How Corporations Can Successfully Market to Small Businesses that takes readers through a four-step action plan for profiting in the small business market. Drilling for Gold is based on the author's experience interviewing thousands of entrepreneurs, overseeing small business market research for the world's largest corporations, and moderating hundreds of focus groups with business owners.

We worked with John to develop his ideas into a book concept, helped him craft a winning proposal, and helped him navigate the process of approaching publishers.

We brokered an arrangement between the UK-based and world-leading museum publisher. SCALA ARTS & HERITAGE PUBLISHERS and the CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to publish a book in Scala’s popular “Director’s Tour” series. This book offers a tour of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights – its stories, its architecture and its artifacts – just as if the reader is walking through each gallery with the director on a personal tour. It draws from the collective experience of many different visitors he has accompanied through the Museum, and references many of the questions and comments those guests raised.

Our public memory is fluid and dynamic, complex rather than singular. It is the sum of disparate shared experiences, but it is the sharing that creates that sum and is part of our ongoing common responsibility and common identity. That is why Canadians need to know these stories. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights seeks to play a meaningful role in sharing our lived experiences in order to expand our public memory and cultivate our national identity.

When business people are looking for insights they reach for Harvard Business Review, The Economist…and McKinsey Quarterly. Written primarily by McKinsey consultants and alumni to promote the firm’s leadership brand, the Quarterly is a business magazine for senior executives focused on management and organizational theory that has been “Separating the signal from the noise since 1964.”  

When McKinsey celebrated the opening of its new Toronto office in 1997, it wanted to showcase the thinking of the firm: we worked with McKinsey Toronto’s leadership and the Quarterly editor to edit and produce a special collection of articles published over the years in the Quarterly by the firm’s Canadian consultants.

During the First and Second World Wars some of Canada's finest artists were commissioned to capture history in the making, and many of those pieces have found a home in Canada’s national museums. Canvas of War was published to support an exhibition of war art, held at the then-Canadian Museum of Civilization, which helped raise money for the building of a new War Museum. We were brought in by the CEO of the War Museum to advise on the publication of book based on the extensive comments that resulted from the Canvas of War exhibition. 

We were asked to choose the selection of comments from the thousands left behind, worked with curators to select representative artwork, and advised designers and production staff on style and format of the book. What was to have been a small print run to assist with fundraising for the building of the new war museum became a small glossy book that was put on sale at the museum gift shop.

We initiated then developed the concept of a book to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Urbanism Lab – a forum devoted to the public debate and discussion of urbanism – and promote the NCC’s thought leadership in urban planning. It was conceived in collaboration with \ the NCC’s then-CEO, who then asked us to write the publication. Initially scheduled for publication with SCALA ARTS & HERITAGE PUBLISHERS, Capital Building: The NCC’s Urbanism Lab Discussions, 2014–2019 was ultimately released as a digital publication in September 2019 to launch the Urbanism Lab’s sixth season and to help celebrate the NCC’s 120th Anniversary.

As a forum for public engagement in the building of the Capital, the Urbanism Lab has been an unparalleled triumph. It has become indispensable to the success of the NCC as the organization executes its roles as chief planner and steward of federal lands and assets in Canada’s capital. As an incubator of ideas, the lab’s panels and presentations have heralded projects that have gone on to become material elements of the Capital Region’s character and identity: illuminating the Capital at night and the National Holocaust Monument are but two striking examples. Over its first five seasons the Lab has become a vital part of the Capital community—a gathering place for people who love the Capital and the challenges and rewards of making it a world-class source of pride and inspiration to Canadians and the millions of people who visit every year.