brand awareness
253 posts
How To Craft A Powerful Message
The acceptance speeches are the highlight of every Oscars ceremony. I’m a sucker for them. It’s fascinating to see how the best communicators in the world share their personal message in a just minute or two. This year, actress Frances McDormand stole the show. This wasn’t an accident. Frances knew
Make Fewer Promises
It’s a Saturday night. Jeff, the on-call Planning Enforcement Officer for the local council, is just about to sit down to a takeaway meal and a movie with his wife when his phone rings. Residents close to a new nightclub want him to come and assess the noise levels at the venue. Even before the…
Why Do You Want To Tell A Good Brand Story?
Why do you want to get better at storytelling? When I ask clients and potential clients that question, I get a mixed bag of answers. By far the most common reason is to increase brand awareness. Conventional wisdom argues that the more people who know about your product or service, the greater chanc
Who Will You Impact?
The bus headed back over the Golden Gate Bridge as we neared the end of our tour of Sausalito. The driver pulled over at the second last stop and turned off the ignition so that he could ‘address his guests’. Then Dwayne Johnson (the man who had the name before the celebrity who made it…
Marketing 101
The queue outside Chinatown’s Golden Gate Bakery extends all the way down the street. More people join as customers are served, so the line never gets shorter. Sometimes people show up hoping to buy the famous egg custard tarts through the front door even when the bakery is closed. Locals know to co
What Do Your Customers Thank You For?
As vulnerable humans, we’re brilliant at paying attention to threats in our midst. We are experts at mitigating against failure, which we trick ourselves into believing is the way to optimising for success. This tendency might explain our willingness to devote our resources to averting risk, solving
The Responsive Vs. Reactive Business Conundrum
Every sustainable business was built in response to an unmet need. These responsive businesses endure because they evolve with the customer they intended to serve. The likes of fidget spinner manufacturers don’t count. You can rattle off a dozen responsive companies that have launched in the past tw
Design Your Business For The Outcome You Want
Think about a delighted customer and the ten people she will interact with today. What’s the story you want that customer to share with someone about you, your product or service? How do you want them to describe the change you enabled? What words do you want them to use? How do you want them…
We Are The Culture
Culture is all around us. Our shared values and beliefs are palpable in the places we visit and the people we meet. We absorb those values from the media we consume and the ideas we expose ourselves to. One of the best ways I know to witness how we can shape our culture is to…
A Tale Of Two Managers
My local bank manager, at the branch five minutes walk from my home, works hard to help customers navigate the bank’s new automated systems and services. He’s on hand to show everyone depositing cash how to bypass a teller and make a deposit using the machine in the foyer. The bank manager at the br
Marketing Backwards
I recently witnessed a young friend agonise for two months about which new smartphone to buy. A thousand dollars was a big investment for her. She had to weigh it up carefully. She trawled through every online review site for weeks. But the internal dialogue went on for much longer. We often believe
How Are You Putting The Customer At The Centre?
At every strategy meeting, in every company boardroom and entrepreneurial hub around the globe, you will hear some version of the requirement to ‘put the customer at the centre’ in everything we do. These words are easy to preach from on high and harder (but not impossible), to implement at a grassr
In Praise Of The Ordinary
We devote a lot of resources to creating the momentous. Dressing the window for the big sales event, crafting the sales pitch for a product launch, planning the grand family celebration—those orchestrated events to remember, where we can shine. The truth is we have the potential to make the most imp
Meeting, Managing And Exceeding Expectations
If a brand is a promise, then the expectations people have of the brand are created by the promises we make. Meeting expectations is about the alignment of words and deeds. Disappointment occurs when we don’t do what we say we’re going to do. When we promise more than we can deliver or pretend to…
You Don’t Need To Compete When You Know Who You Are
Before globalisation, marketing, hair straighteners and the bullworker, our tribal ancestors and village businesses stood out by excelling at their craft. They became known for doing the thing other people in the village couldn’t or wouldn’t do. They were beloved for the way they went about their wo
Choose Delight Over Satisfaction
When a flight is delayed why are the passengers who quietly accept their fate and meal vouchers never the ones who get priority on the next available flight? Our instinct is to acknowledge and take care of the customer who complains the loudest. We work hardest to get the dissatisfied, those unlikel
Only You
We had a storm on Saturday. More than 20mm of rain in minutes. We lost power shortly afterwards but managed to isolate the problem until we could get Frank, the electrician to come on Monday. He was busy. One of his big contractors had also called him out that day and they were a priority—regular…
More And Less
We sometimes trick ourselves into believing we can have the best of both worlds. A foot in both camps. Full belly and cake on the plate. Working towards a goal means abandoning an alternative worldview. Brands like Mecca Cosmetica, Lululemon and Blue Bottle Coffee thrive because they are crystal cle
Questions Worth Asking
The progress we make in business and in life hinges on our ability to ask the right questions at the right time. What we need to discern and prioritise are the questions it’s most important to address. The questions we don’t know the answers to can be divided into three categories: 1. Questions that
Gaining The Advantage
This week you answered a customer query and solved her problem. You responded to every email, tweaked your resume and made your case well in the last meeting. You ticked off the things on your to-do list, had a look at your numbers and made solid plans for the weeks ahead. And that’s exactly what…
