brand differentiation
1,053 posts
Important
It isn’t just your mind that responds when you get an email with the subject line ‘urgent’ or ‘important’. Your heartbeat increases, your muscles tense and your breathing gets faster. You feel bad. Your day is thrown off course, if only for a moment. We hate these emails and resent people who fail t
Knowing What You Don’t Know
The most unhelpful assumption we make as marketers is that our customers know why they need our products or services. From there we think our job is to offer proof—to tell people why we are the best alternative. The first rule of innovation, sales and marketing is to understand the customer’s pain p
What’s Beyond Reach?
When U2 perform a stadium concert, their reach is the entire audience of 60,000 eager fans. As he sings the first note, Bono understands his job is to create an emotional connection with every member of the audience. If the concert goer isn’t changed by the experience, then she might as well have st
The Forgotten Marketer
The best marketer I ever knew was a magician. Literally. John Knight was legendary, and not just amongst children. His act was the highlight of birthday parties and community events. He could keep a group of sugar high children transfixed. But he also knew a big part of his job wasn’t the magic tric
Perfect Ten
When we think of our work or products and services, we imagine the perfect ten version of them. The days without a wrinkle, when we are in the zone, and everything is running like clockwork. Striving for ten while knowing it’s rarely achievable is not easy. The ability to live that paradox is how we
The Art Of Differentiation
We, humans, have always been good at noticing what’s compelling about others. Our species’ survival has depended on our ability to recognise strengths and weed out weaknesses. Today, that skill leads us down the road of unhealthy comparison. We have no trouble rattling off the positive attributes of
The Power Of Constraints
What’s the best thing about the place where you live? What word describes your favourite book? What’s the first thing you tell a friend when you recommend a special restaurant? What standout experience made your last holiday memorable? What’s the main reason you shop where you do? What’s the biggest
What The Best Marketers Know
The call centre operator insists ‘this is not a cold call’. She knows time is running out, so she desperately accelerates her sales pitch—speaking without pausing to either breathe or listen. She was trained to believe it’s possible to close the sale if she can just impart all the information in her
Flipping The Focus Group
We’ve been using focus groups for eighty years in an attempt to understand how to create things people want to buy and messages they want to hear. And while we question what our customers like and what demographic they fit into, we rarely think about who they are beyond the choices they make. What i
A World Built On Promises
Today you woke in a bed the manufacturer promised would give you a good nights sleep. You ate something for breakfast that was made in a factory you have never visited or grown by someone you have never met. You belted yourself into a car with a safety rating you have no way of verifying…
Exactly What To Do
When faced with a challenge, we seek out a sure-fire solution. We want to know exactly what to do. We long for the step-by-step guide. The right answer. A formula to follow and faithfully replicate. Formulas work. They give us the answer to questions that have been asked before. But it’s only by bei
Impression Vs. Intention
The ladies changing room at the gym first thing in the morning can feel like a mean environment. It’s every woman for herself as we each carve out a floor tile’s worth of space to change. Spots in front of mirrors are gold. Hairdryers and straighteners as tightly held as premium real estate. The amo
How To Get Better At Pitching
Every day we fail to convince people about the value we can deliver. For every yes, we get ten no’s. Why? We’re quick to blame the quality of our ideas or our storytelling when we fail. But sometimes we fail because we’re speaking to the wrong person at the wrong time. Rejections often happen becaus
Keeping Score
Kill rivals, don’t collaborate. That’s what “fire-in-the-belly visionaries” do. The recent article in the Financial Review was reporting remarks from a speaker at their innovation summit. In his opinion, Australian businesses are too friendly. If we are to survive, we need to behave more like Amazon
The Value Of An Internal Brand Narrative
In a commercial world, we use stories tactically to convince and convert prospective customers. We work hard to change minds and capture hearts, with persuasive words and evocative images in an attempt to make an emotional connection with the people we want to reach. The stories we tell our customer
Marketing Discernment
Much of our marketing is designed to convince or convert a customer in the moment. A particular colour applied to a ‘buy now’ button, the timely Instagram post or product placement at the checkout—tactics to get the lukewarm prospect over the line. Our customer’s path to her decision is convoluted.
Choosing The Customers You Want
More cafes in Melbourne have begun offering a 10% discount to customers who bring a reusable cup. It’s an intentional choice that says something about their values and those of their customers. Theses cafes are attracting the kind of customers they want to serve. The clothing store manager gets disg
What Do You Want Your Brand Story To Do?
What’s the role of storytelling in your business? What are you expecting your brand story to do? Most of us tell stories to describe the value we create. Storytelling is a tactic used to convince or convert prospects to customers—a way to close the sale. We’re selling the power of story short. Befor
Why Not Make Something Great?
Like his grandfather, before him, Shane was in the textiles business. He made good socks for a living until the day he realised that pretty soon there would be no living to be made in a product that was good enough. His company was struggling to differentiate from and compete with big retailers who
Three Pillars Of Great Branding
There’s nothing extraordinary about the location of the vegetarian Mexican street food restaurant at the corner of a Fitzroy laneway. The tacos are good, not exceptional. The prices fair, not cheap. And yet, even on quiet Tuesday evenings, when other restaurants advertise specials to entice mid-week
