Benoîte Yver
  • Tech CMO
  • Expertise
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • The Modern CMO Blog

Brand Strategy

7/23/2025

 
Early in my career, I got a front-row seat to what world-class brand strategy looks like.

At the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), I had the privilege of working with Michael Silverstein, the legendary strategist behind "Trading Up", "The $10 Trillion Prize", and "Women Want More" (which I had the privilege to help write).

Under his mentorship, I learned how great brands are built:
→ on deep human insight
→ at the intersection of culture and commerce
→ and with global scale in mind from day one.

That experience shaped how I’ve approached brand building ever since, whether repositioning billion-dollar companies or helping emerging brands punch above their weight.
​
Picture
Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World's Largest, Fastest-Growing Market

What is Brand?

7/20/2025

 
Brand dollars don’t work when you aim them at the wrong challenge.

During last week’s panel discussion with Katherine Melchior Ray, Nataly Kelly, and Laura Ries on using AI for corporate branding, I shared a simple framework that I find helpful for diagnosing brand challenges and priorities.

👉 There are two types of brand challenges requiring very different playbooks:

🎯 Brand awareness = Reach problem
Top-of-funnel → Owned by growth/performance → Solved with earned, owned, paid media, and distribution.

🎨 Brand equity = Perception and reputation problem
→ Everyone's job (marketing, product, customer success, leadership) → Solved with consistent experience and cultural alignment

Now,
You can’t fix awareness with equity tactics.
And you can’t fix equity problems by buying reach.

Yet companies confuse the two all the time and waste brand budget in the process.

👉 Ask yourself: What brand challenge are you trying to solve right now? Is that a reach problem, or a trust and perception problem?

Thanks again to Richard Cotton and Rhys Phillips at DataCamp for hosting a fantastic session on using data and AI in corporate branding.

________________
♻️ Share this with your network
➕ Follow Benoîte Yver for more.

Using Data & AI for Corporate Branding

7/15/2025

 
🔥 It was a privilege to join these three legends last week for a thought-provoking panel on ‘Using Data & AI for Corporate Branding':

📚 Katherine Melchior Ray - Former CMO of Shiseido & Babbel, UC Berkeley Haas professor, and co-author of "Brand Global, Adapt Local"

🎯 Nataly Kelly - CMO at Zappi, former HubSpot VP, and the other brilliant mind behind "Brand Global, Adapt Local"

⚡ Laura Ries - Chairwoman at RIES, taught brand positioning in 60+ countries, and author of 7 branding books, including the upcoming "The Strategic Enemy"

Sitting alongside women who've shaped marketing at Nike, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, HubSpot, and literally defined positioning strategy was both humbling and energizing.

Some key highlights:
"Insight doesn't live in the data, it lives in the interpretation."

"The future of marketing isn't choosing between AI and human intelligence. It's about using AI to amplify cultural intelligence."

What an honor to contribute my perspective on scaling AI-powered brands alongside these marketing giants! 🚀
Watch here:

https://www.datacamp.com/resources/webinars/using-data-and-ai-for-corporate-branding
Picture

Hot take: You don’t need third-party intent data.

7/1/2025

 
You need to get your SEO and AI query engines' content strategy in order.

Sorry to break it to you…
But no ABM platform or intent data subscription is going to magically surface your next whale account.
Not in 2025. Not ever.

Most of that so-called “intent” data is vague, delayed, or flat-out wrong.
And you’ll waste a year and six figures realizing it.

Want real intent signals?
Capture search demand with SEO + AI Engine Optimization (AIO, GEO) !

- Build a content engine that ranks
- Own your category and competitive keywords

I.e. track first-party signals with your own site !!!
That’s where the real gold is.
Not in some data vendor’s black box.

Let’s go back to first marketing principles.
Strong SEO/AIO strategy. Strong Content. Clean data. Real conversion signals.
The boring stuff that actually works.
________________
♻️ Share this with your network
​​💬 Add your comments below
➕ Follow me Benoîte Yver for more.

    Benoite Yver

    Serial Tech Chief Marketing Officer

    Archives

    November 2025
    October 2025
    September 2025
    July 2025
    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed