We offer strategic tools and thought leadership for brand builders navigating complexity, growth, and trust. Explore our indices, books, and other resources to help ensure your brand resonates with your customers.
Great Canadian Brand Index
The Great Canadian Brand Index (GCBI) was created to answer a deeper question than “Who’s popular?” It asks: Which Canadian brands are truly trusted—and why? In a landscape shaped by economic volatility, shifting consumer values, and reputational risk, the Index offers a behavioural lens on brand resilience, symbolic coherence, and emotional relevance. It’s not just a ranking—it’s a diagnostic tool for understanding how trust is built, sustained, and sometimes lost.
At Brand Dummy, we believe trust isn’t a sentiment—it’s a system. The GCBI reflects that philosophy by decoding the signals Canadians respond to: clarity under pressure, consistency across platforms, and values that show up in behaviour, not just branding. Whether you're a legacy institution or a challenger brand, the Index helps you see how your brand is interpreted in the wild—and where strategic misalignment may be eroding credibility.
For clients preparing to scale, reposition, or recover, the GCBI offers more than insight—it offers leverage. It’s a strategic mirror that reveals not just how your brand performs, but how it’s perceived. And in a market where perception drives loyalty, advocacy, and forgiveness, that kind of clarity is not just useful—it’s essential.
Managing Brand Crises: A Guide to Navigating the Storm
Managing Brand Crises: A Guide to Navigating the Storm is a strategic playbook for brands facing reputational risk, public backlash, or moments of high-stakes uncertainty. Rather than offering generic PR advice, the book reframes crisis as a behavioural event—where trust is tested, values are scrutinized, and symbolic identity is either reinforced or eroded. It guides readers through the anatomy of brand crises, decoding how audiences interpret signals under pressure and what brands must do to respond with clarity, empathy, and control.
Through case studies, behavioural frameworks, and modular response strategies, the book equips leaders to navigate disruption without losing coherence. It explores how brands like Tylenol, Nike, and Patagonia turned crisis into credibility—not by reacting impulsively, but by aligning their actions with deeply held values and emotionally resonant messaging. The book emphasizes that recovery isn’t about spin—it’s about strategic storytelling, symbolic consistency, and behavioural insight.
This philosophy is core to Brand Dummy’s value proposition. We don’t treat crises as anomalies—we treat them as moments of truth. Managing Brand Crises reflects our belief that trust is a system, not a sentiment, and that brands must be designed to bend without breaking. Whether you're preparing for growth, responding to backlash, or rebuilding after disruption, the book offers a defensible, emotionally intelligent roadmap for resilience—the same principles we apply in every Brand Dummy engagement.
Consumer Behavior in Practice: Strategic Insights for the Modern Marketer
Consumer Behavior in Practice: Strategic Insights for the Modern Marketer is a hands-on guide for marketers who want to move beyond theory and into strategic action. Rather than presenting abstract models, the book focuses on how consumer psychology plays out in real-world marketing decisions—from pricing and advertising to brand loyalty and emotional engagement. With topical chapters on luxury, ideology, digital behaviour, and the sharing economy, it helps readers decode why customers act the way they do—and what that means for brand strategy.
Each chapter blends behavioural insight with practical application, showing how marketers can use decision-making patterns, emotional triggers, and symbolic cues to shape perception and drive action. Case-in-point boxes and digital media examples make the content especially relevant for modern marketers navigating fragmented attention, cultural complexity, and platform-specific expectations. Whether you're designing a campaign, launching a product, or managing a brand in crisis, the book offers behavioural clarity that translates directly into strategic advantage.
This approach aligns seamlessly with Brand Dummy’s philosophy: that marketing isn’t just about visibility—it’s about behavioural resonance. Consumer Behavior in Practice reflects our belief that understanding how people think, feel, and choose is the foundation of brand coherence, trust, and growth. It’s not just a textbook—it’s a strategic toolkit for anyone building brands that endure, adapt, and connect.