The Campfire Archive
Our complete archive of brand and marketing articles.
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Our Complete List of Articles
How to use differentiation to gain a competitive edge (and survive) in 2025
Differentiation has always been a cornerstone of brand and marketing. But the deeper we go into this new era of tech and AI the more your ability to differentiate becomes a true survival skill.
5 Reasons You Should Never, Ever Copy The Positioning Of A Market Leader
It’s easy to look at the success of a market leader in your category and consider “borrowing” some of their approach. But as a smaller, challenger brand this is the last thing you should ever do.
How to Maximize Growth Within the Positioning Hourglass
To maximize growth as your business evolves you may need to speed up, or slow way down through the positioning hourglass.
10 Point Checklist to Clearly Communicate Your Positioning
Use our 10 point diagnostic to ensure your positioning crosses the bridge from strategic-concept to communicated-reality.
Why AI has become a leading cause of positioning blur
If you obscure your brand's value with talk of AI just on its own you’re more likely to blend in than to stand out.
Find out exactly where your brand can win with SmokeLadder
How you can use our app SmokeLadder to analyze your positioning and find places to win in the market.
11 Tips (Plus Graphics) On How To Strengthen Your Brand Positioning Strategy
With a topic as complex and nuanced as your brand positioning strategy we need good visuals to avoid getting lost.
How To Use Brand Positioning (Not AI) To Avoid Becoming Perfectly Average
As best practice trends and generative AI increase the competitive noise, it's critical to differentiate using brand positioning strategy.
Which Key Messaging Strategy Is Right For Your Brand: Value Or Differentiation?
There’s a well discussed idea in branding that key messages should focus on the customer benefits of an offering rather than its features. But like any good rule, there are always exceptions.
How To Write Key Messages That Use Your Customer’s Own Words
The ultimate goal for your key messages is to align your brand’s unique value with the needs of your customers. And do it in a way customers can easily understand.
Branding Research: How To Do It And What Business Leaders Believe About Using It
How to use branding research to gain a deep understanding of your customers and market position.
How To Start Your Demand Generation Marketing Using Brand Positioning
A simple 3 step guide on how to start demand generation marketing by leveraging your brand positioning.
Why Small Brand Changes Can Create Angry Customers (See, Wordle)
How should your brand manage changes to make sure it doesn't cause frustration with customers? The online game Wordle provides a good lesson in that delicate balance.
5 Ways To Improve Your Brand Communication Based On Data From 4,598 Companies
Brand communication insights based on our data and analysis of 4,598 companies to help you connect with more customers and grow your business.
How Brand Extension Can Spark Growth And Strengthen Your Strategy
See how brand extension creates growth opportunities by exploring the value a business provides and how it can meet customer needs in a new way.
How To Write Brand Core Values That Your Team Remembers And Rallies Around
Whether your brand needs to create Core Values from scratch or give an existing set a refresh, here’s a 3-step exercise to craft a set of values your team can embrace, remember, and rally around.
Competitive Positioning: How To Make Your Brand Stand Out In A Sea Of Sameness
Brands that take a safety-in-numbers approach may avoid the problem of being dismissed by customers, but it’s likely to lead to an even worse outcome — being totally forgettable.
Map & Fire Named A Top Branding Agency In Los Angeles And California In 2021 By Clutch
Map & Fire was named one of the best branding and strategy agencies in both Los Angeles and California in 2021 by Clutch.
Brand Love: 6 Ways To Get Customers To Fall In Love With Your Business
Create loyal connections with your customers by embracing the same qualities we use in our personal relationships.
Rebranding Strategy Guide: From Brand Refresh to Full Brand Transformation
Rebranding strategies come in different forms based on the depth of changes needed. Do you need a Refresh, a Rebrand, or a Brand Transformation?
How To Use Brand Archetypes To Create An Authentic Voice That Customers Trust
By thinking of your brand as a character it makes it much easier to communicate in a clear, authentic voice that your customers will engage with and trust.
4 Ways Your Brand Can Tell A Story Of Premium Quality To Customers
What are the patterns your brand uses telling customers about its quality?
One Simple Truth About How Customers Think That Will Make Your Marketing Stronger
The most dangerous misconception that founders and marketers can have is the belief that anyone, including their most loyal customers, care about their product or service.
3 Things To Consider Before You Redesign Your Brand’s Logo
Before jumping into the sometimes turbulent waters of identity design you should be crystal clear on one big question:
Why do we need an identity redesign right now?
The Brand Strategy And Customer Research We Used To Get Our Client 59% More Paid App Conversions
To highlight the immediate benefits of investing in your brand strategy we can look at a recent case study with one of our clients.
The Value Of Map & Fire’s Core Purpose And Mission After 5+ Years
A check-in on Map & Fire's Purpose and Mission 5+ years in, and with 2020 in the rear view.
How To Write A Headline For Your Website That Inspires Action
Of all the ways your brand expresses its value to connect with customers, there are few more powerful than your website’s headline.
How To Create A Cohesive Brand Identity, Personality, Voice, Story, Name, And Promise
Defining something as multifaceted as your brand is bound to lead to questions. And while there are plenty of resources out there, the challenge is often understanding how those answers fit together.
How To Avoid Falling Into Brand Positioning Traps Like Quibi (The Streaming Platform)
While your positioning should highlight what makes your brand great, it’s also a valuable tool to identify dangerous points of competitive overlap.
5 Ways To Build An Authentic Brand (Even If You’re Small) Like Fire Department Coffee
When your brand is young and growing, it’s easy to feel limited by what you don’t have — budget, people, resources. Instead, by leaning into the assets you do have, you can tell an authentic story and build trust with customers all without a massive team or bank account.
31 Small(ish) Brands That Pack A Big Punch Of Marketing Inspiration
When developing a brand it’s easy to find yourself trapped in a mental bubble. To break out of those ruts, it’s helpful to see what other businesses are doing.
How To Give Your Brand A Sharp Point Of View Like HEY (The Email App)
One of the most important, and most often missed, aspects of creating an effective, memorable brand is a sharp point of view. Your point of view tells your audience a compelling story about how you’re unique and why they should engage with your business.
Use 5 And-Then-Whats To Focus Your Marketing On Your Customers’ Highest Level Needs
The better you are at understanding what your customers want to accomplish in their lives, the better you’ll be at marketing. The 5 And-Then-Whats tool is designed to help you understand the needs of your customers on multiple levels.
What Top Chef’s Restaurant War Pitches Can Teach Us About Brand Positioning
The TV show Top Chef provided a perfect sample set to crystallize how powerful positioning is to the success of your brand.
5 Quick Questions To Audit And Upgrade Your Key Marketing Messages
There’s a reason why writing effective marketing messages is so hard. Within the span of a couple short sentences your messages have to summarize the entire essence of what your brand provides.
Analysis And Examples Of All Fortune 100 Companies’ Brand Messaging For COVID-19
What messages are the biggest brands putting out around the COVID-19 crisis? And what can other brands learn from these examples?
Video Calls Are Giving People (And Brands) A Crash Course In The Value Of Authenticity
At a time when we’ve never been farther apart physically, video calls have managed to bring us closer together.
We Analyzed Emails From 97 Brands In Response To COVID-19. This Is What We Learned.
Every business is facing the same question: How should brands communicate during a crisis like this?
How To Tell A Compelling Brand Story With Data Like Zipline (The Medical Drone Company)
The better your brand is at storytelling, the easier it will be to build trust with a new audience.
How To Get Real Customer Data Within Hours (Not Weeks or Months) That Will Improve Your Brand and Marketing Messages
Customer research is critical for every business. The key is to find ways to get it quickly and put it into action.
Brand Vs. Marketing in 2021 – The Big Shift Around Your Relationship With Customers
The words we search for on Google can provide an excellent peek into how we think about concepts.
How To Launch A Brand With A Big Impact Like Canoo (The Electric Car Subscription Company)
Every brand starts at zero when it comes to their audience.
4 Research Insights On How To Tell Better Stories With Brand Imagery
Your brand’s ability to use images effectively has a big impact on a customer’s decision to engage with you.
What Is A Brand? The Brand Relationship Model Helps You Visualize It And Make It Stronger.
If you don’t have a clear way to think about your brand, it’s difficult to build and improve on it.
5 Elements Your Website Homepage Needs For Customers To Trust Your Brand
A new customer arrives on your website’s homepage for the first time...and the clock is ticking.
How To Create Effective Key Marketing Messages With The 4 Forces That Drive Customer Decisions
The purpose of your marketing messages is to describe how your customers’ lives will improve when they engage with your business.
Actionable Strategies: 8 Ways To Implement Your Brand
For your brand to be effective it needs to be central to how your entire business operates.
Marketing Insights Pulled From 5 Multi-Billion Dollar Brands
When developing a brand, it’s not always easy to know what’s working and what isn’t.
The Benefits Of Talking To Your Customers Like Real Human Beings
Creating marketing messages robs people of their ability to speak like human beings.
5 Questions On Building A Brand With Entrepreneur Of The Year & Drift CEO David Cancel
The marketing technology company, Drift, can teach us a lot on how to use your brand to propel fast growth.
The Secret To Elevating Your Brand’s Creative? Constraints.
When creativity needs to serve a specific purpose, expressing it can go from a liberating experience to a paralyzing one.
Why Brand Strategy Is Critical For Aligning Remote Teams
Remote work creates savings opportunities for businesses and more freedom for employees, but it has some big challenges too.
How Your Brand Can Benefit From Having A Sense Of Humor
Humor has the magical ability to ease difficult situations and extract more joy out of good ones.
Features Vs Benefits: How To Increase The Impact Of Your Marketing Messages
Don’t just describe the features of what you provide, talk about the benefits.
Core Values And What Customers Think Of Shady Business Tactics
For companies with solid cultures led by thoughtful leaders, core values serve as the brand's foundation.
Find Out What Your Target Customers Did Before They Found Your Brand
How did your customers solve the needs you address before they found your business?
Start Your Marketing Messages With 5 Senses Not 5 Facts
When it comes to decision making, we love to think of ourselves as thoughtful, rational beings. And in marketing, we extend that same line of thought to our customers. We imagine them carefully assessing and analyzing our offering. Poring over every detail.
But the truth is your customers, like everyone, mostly make intuitive, emotional buying decisions.
Marketing Messages Teardown and Survey Results for Superhuman (The Email App)
Your messaging has to express the brand’s unique position in a clear, emotionally appealing way.
The 6 Biggest Misconceptions We Hear About Brand Strategy
One of the most memorable conversations I’ve ever had with a founder came from a brand strategy workshop we ran a few years ago.
We asked an open-ended question to the group: “Why haven’t you worked on your brand strategy in the past?”
How To Find Your Brand’s Position With A Competitive Landscape Map
The right visual can be a huge asset to quickly convey information about your brand's position.
Why We Waited 4 Years To Put Our Brand On Instagram
The default answer to the question “Should I be on (name a channel / social network)”, is NO.
Why Your Brand’s Logo Is The Last Thing You Should Worry About
The phrase “your brand is not your logo” has been around for years. But it doesn’t go far enough.
How To Make Sense (And Use) Of Your Brand’s Core Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values
Developing strategic statements and summaries for the direction of your brand is an essential process for every business.
4 Signals That Your Brand Is In Poor Health
When your brand is healthy, your offerings, operations, and communications all resonate with your customers.
Business Advice On Stoicism Via Kawhi Leonard and Alex Honnold
It’s easy to compare the emotional turbulence of running a business with riding a roller coaster. The standard business lifecycle comes with tense uphill climbs, exciting turns, and sometimes heart-stopping descents. When you’re that invested in your work, you can’t help but feel the intensity of those moments.
One of the biggest tests for founders and business leaders then becomes how you react in those situations.
Infographic: What CEOs Care About (And How Their Brand Can Help Them)
Insights and stats on what CEOs and Founders think about most when building a brand.
One Simple Question To See If You Have A Strong Brand Strategy
For your brand to establish a unique position and rise above the noise, your strategy needs to embrace legit trade-offs.
Two Key Ideas That Will Make Your Marketing Ads More Effective
If you don’t put care into your ads, you’ll burn through budgets without much to show for it.
How To Find The Peaks, Pits, and Potholes In Your Brand
To create a brand that’s effective, memorable, and sustainable you have to make trade-offs.
Timeless Leadership Principles That My Dad Instilled In Me
The actions my Dad modeled drove home many important lessons for me on how to lead a business.
Use Game of Thrones To Help Your Brand’s Tone of Voice
Tone of voice is a critical component of your brand. Your tone impacts every piece of communication you have with your customers. If it’s inconsistent or misaligned with your customers’ expectations it can destroy any chance you have of building a connection with them.
Why Indecision Is A Black Hole That Can Consume Your Business
Even if you’re not an astrophysicist you still probably know at least one thing about black holes. There’s just something mysterious and exciting about an object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing can escape it. Even light.
Why The Words “For Customers” Make Good Marketing Messages Great
When it comes to messaging, the biggest mistake companies make is to focus too much on themselves.
How To Transform A Hole Into A House With Brand Positioning
Every time a customer looks at your brand, they want to figure out the position you fill in their life.
Create a Unique Brand Using The Elements of Value
How well do you understand the different reasons why customers use your business?
5 Questions to Help You Create a Customer-Centered Brand
No matter how you choose to define your brand, it should always hinge on one common element: your customers.
Two Reasons Why Your Brand’s Core Purpose Should Focus On Being World-Class
When you look at the idea of “world-class” from the right angle it can become a powerful guide for your business.
7 Quick Ways To Get Unstuck From A Marketing Mental Block
You’re at your desk. You’re deep into a problem. You’ve stared at it for hours. And now you’re stuck.
Disrupting Toilet Paper With Tushy | 10X Marketing Teardown
There's a product out there that everybody's used but might be slightly embarrassed to talk about; toilet paper. The company Tushy is looking to disrupt this industry. Let's see how well their position to do that.
Are Your Brand Colors Ready For An Upgrade?
Your brand colors can be a real asset to build trust with your target audience.
How To Estimate The Length Of Your B2B Consulting Sales Cycle
Regardless of what a prospective customer does or says, it will always take way longer for them to get started than you expect.
What Can the Anki Vector Robot Do For You? | 10X Marketing Teardown
Does this little home robot provide enough value to actually get you to buy him?
How To Create Clear, Consistent Content With Brand Archetypes
One of the hardest parts of creating content for a business is developing a consistent style.
Why Entrepreneurship Could Be Your Way To Embrace Work (Not Escape It)
You can spot an entrepreneur the second the topic of work comes up. Their eyes light up. They smile. Their speech quickens as they eagerly describe their business.
4 Questions That Will Strengthen Your Brand’s Iceberg
There’s a popular metaphor in the strategy world of comparing your company’s brand to an iceberg.
The idea is that your visual identity (logo, colors, and such) are like the visible “tip” of your brand.
Lying below the surface are the strategy elements that support and inform that identity.
5 Easy Steps That Will Help You With Your First Customer Interviews
Whether you’re a startup or you’ve been around for years, talking to your customers is a critical practice. It provides a level of insight into your business that you can’t get through surveys and analytics alone.
Is Camping Ready For Disruption? A 10X Teardown of Tentrr
The 10X Rule states that in order for customers to switch from a current behavior, they need a new option that’s 10X better.
Why A Quiz Can Give Unique Insights On How Your Customers Think
As business owners, we all make assumptions about how our customers think and feel. But when those assumptions are wrong, customers will struggle to see the value of our offering.
How to Find The Painkiller in Your Vitamin Business
There’s a well known idea that you can classify any business into one of two camps: Vitamin or Painkiller.
How To Check If The Window For Your Brand Is Open Or Closed
How much does timing affect your chance of success in a market? What outside forces might impact the longevity of your business and brand?
Why Your Brand Could Fail If You Don’t Write Things Down
When it comes to business decisions, relying on your memory could be fatal.
One Phrase That Can Crush, Motivate, and Free Your Business
If I told you that “nobody cares” about your business how would you react? What’s the feeling you get in your gut when you hear that?
How To Use Your Positioning To Plant A Flag In Your Customer’s Brain
Why it’s critical to understand who your business is competing against.
How to Make Your Product Better Than Doing Nothing
With all the different flavors of competition your business is up against, there’s a sneaky one that’s easy to overlook.
The Joy Of Learning How To Fire Yourself
One of the biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur is maximizing the use of your time.
As a founder you never get a nice, contained list of responsibilities to focus on. Instead you get one massive list titled: “Do everything to keep the business going”.
What (And How) Your Customers Really Think About Your Brand’s Pricing
To be effective at attracting and converting customers for your brand, it’s important to understand how they think about the price of your offering.
There are lots of factors around price that influence a customer’s decision to make a purchase.
Feels Versus Features: Which Brand’s Phone Has the Best Messaging And Marketing?
A marketing teardown of the good and bad on how the biggest phone brands are attempting to pitch you on their latest and greatest products.
How To Build A Strong Brand Strategy Bridge For Your Business
No matter how you choose to define your brand's strategy, there are common elements that every business needs to account for in some way. These elements impact the success of your business whether you realize it or not.
5 Steps That Will Get You From Business Idea to Launch (Step 5: Your Messaging)
It’s easy to see how if you were to jump straight to writing messages, you’d have a pretty difficult time coming up with effective ideas around how to communicate.
5 Steps That Will Get You From Business Idea to Launch (Step 4: Your Offering)
This step helps you look at your product or service specifically through the lens of the problem (aka. Job) you identified for your customers.
From the point of view of your customer, what unique qualities of this offering most speak to their needs such that it would compel them to buy it or engage with it?
