Susan Silver, Author at Argentum Strategy

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...

Backing Off Buzzwords – Colliers

Colliers is one of the largest industrial real estate firms in the country. Their selective, highly specialized Logistics and Transportation Group wanted messaging that went beyond platitudes and generic buzzwords to more clearly describe why they’re different and special in a meaningful, believable way. In this 5-minute video for their annual...

Look at Your Competitive Set in a New Way

A recent Harvard Business Review article, Cultural Innovation, by Douglas Holt, resonated with me on multiple levels. First, it’s about rethinking your category and its underlying unmet needs, Second, it’s all about understanding the entrenched schemas in your category and identifying hidden dissatisfiers to break them, which is the foundation...

A Fresh Look at How B2B Customers Buy

The last few years have seen a flurry of new Argentum clients in the distribution space. Distributor differentiation is especially challenging since distributors typically carry the same products at the same prices as their competitors. As a result, these distributors have been some of my most interesting clients to position. One of these...