brand awareness
253 posts
Being Seen And Heard
The numbers vary, but the trend is unmistakable. The average consumer is subjected to more marketing messages every day. In a world where it’s harder to get noticed marketers have responded by trying to be more visible. Being noticed is the goal of most marketing. The irony is five seconds in the sp
People Power
When a traveller books a $700 a night hotel room she assumes that she’ll have a five-star experience. She’s expecting more than a better bed, thicker carpets and fancier facilities. When a five-star hotel gets a one-star review, it’s an indication that something went badly wrong. Of course, guests a
Forget Which Way The Wind Is Blowing
When the disco diner opened on a warm Summer night in a flurry of pink neon, accompanied by loud music and cheap booze, the owner felt reassured he’d found his tribe. But as the evenings grew shorter and the nights colder, his confidence began to waver. The evolving messaging on a pair of sandwich b
Skill Vs. Talent
The dentist looks inside the patient’s mouth. She completes her examination, makes an assessment and proposes treatment. The proposed treatment considers only two things. What’s going on inside the patient’s mouth and his ability to pay. The dentist knows she can fix the problem. She wants to do a g
The First Marketing Myth
Logic tells us that just because someone is aware of a product or service doesn’t mean they will buy it. We know that people are not short of choices. And yet when it comes to marketing our products and services, we prioritise awareness all the time. Logic goes out the window. We fool ourselves into
Back To Basics Marketing
Our neighbours are having the outside of their house painted. It’s an old Victorian property, built in the 1800s with period features and delicate ironwork. I’ve watched the decorators come and go over the past couple of weeks. Seen them taking care to cover the original tiles on the porch, that cou
The Tyranny Of Checking
There are jobs, and there is work that relies on the professionals checking. We want our surgeons, pilots and firefighters to check and double check. That isn’t the kind of checking most of us do now. It seems that we’ve unintentionally made a career out of checking. We spend many hours a day checki
The Value Of Goals And Outcomes
We tend to think of goals and outcomes as one and the same. They’re not. Let’s say your goal is to run a marathon. Crossing the line at the end of the twenty-sixth mile is your goal. But the effect of the actions you take by trying to achieve that goal is worth more than…
How Change Happens
The success of whatever we make, serve, sell or advocate for is dependent on creating and sustaining change. The same rules apply whether we’re trying to change perception or behaviour, get people to buy our software or stop using plastic straws. 7 Steps To Making Change Happen 1. Acknowledgement Th
The First Rule Of Customer Creation
Humans learn to develop empathy in the first year of life. We not only learn to recognise emotional reactions in others but also to understand what’s causing those reactions. One toddler will try to comfort another who is crying—not just with any toy, but with that child’s favourite toy. We know how
Should You Simplify Your Sales Script?
There’s a shop half-way down Smith Street that sells just about everything. Whatever you might need from a hammer to a cigarette lighter, a birthday card to an egg slicer they’ve got it. It’s the kind of shop that usually encourages browsing more than buying, where people wander around aimlessly ‘ju
The Downside Of Competing For Customers
The boardroom was ready. We each had a bottle of French sparkling water, a notebook and pen next to our seat. Delicious herbal tea and snacks were served on our arrival. We were meeting to discuss how best to tell a story that resonated with the client’s customers before the launch of a new marketin
The Empathy Profession
When I was growing up (and maybe when you were too), careers like medicine, nursing and teaching, were regarded as being part of the ’empathy profession’. Today, every one of us, from accountants to designers, CEOs to Astronauts, are in the ’empathy profession’. No business or brand can thrive witho
A World Built On Promises
Scott and Joanna are planning to open a two-hundred-seater restaurant along a small shopping strip that backs onto a residential area in their local suburb. They know the neighbours will be concerned about the prospect of increased traffic and noise from the venue, especially at the weekend when the
Who Trusts You?
We spend a lot of time wondering who we can trust. We are careful to work out who is worthy of our friendship, business or time. And yet, we often fail to make the connection between trust and success when it comes to ourselves. You don’t become trusted by being more successful. You become successfu
Marketing Forwards
Lachie was a half-decent painter and decorator, but what he really had going for him was his youth and enthusiasm. He’d been in business long enough to reap some reward for his efforts, but not so long that he’d experienced the bust that inevitably followed the boom in Western Australia. Lachie had
A Measure Of Progress
In the animal kingdom ‘more’ is often the best measure of success. Herds and hoarders have a better chance of survival. But ‘more’ isn’t always the best measure of human progress. The longest queue isn’t always a sign of better quality. The most sales don’t always lead to a more sustainable business
Ten Benefits Of Backstorytelling
Since the explosive growth of the advertising industry that began on Madison Avenue in the 1920s, marketing has been about creating a story to make people want something. Conventional wisdom dictated that if you wanted to sell more of a thing, you appealed to a customer’s desire to improve his situa
Start Setting Your Brand Storytelling Goals
We expect brand storytelling to do a lot of heavy lifting for our business. We want our story to engage prospective customers and communicate the value we create. We rely on storytelling to create a sense of belonging and encourage people to believe in our brand. Ultimately we expect that our story
What The Best Marketers Do
I’m not sure when our attitude to marketing shifted. But it’s likely that it coincided with our ability to buy attention. The price of reaching more eyes and ears on flyers and billboards, radio and TV, seemed cheap compared to the effort of earning customer loyalty day after day. The great marketer
