brand story
942 posts
Everything To Everyone
While I was consulting with a client last week we got talking about people who had built powerful personal brands and the reasons for their success. When we stopped at one in particular, her reaction was immediate. “I don’t like him.” she said, as her nose wrinkled. Of course, she has never met this
The First Rule Of Increasing Brand Awareness
Sustainable growth is the goal of every business and conventional wisdom tells us that in order to grow we need to command more attention. Ironically, when we begin thinking about how to increase brand awareness we often shift our gaze internally. We work on differentiating from our competitors. We
The Simplest Way To Improve Your Sales Copy
I was at the local garden centre on Sunday. There amongst the shrubs, trellis fencing and climbing plants was a comfortable-looking, but otherwise, unremarkable garden chair with wooden arms. Unremarkable that is until you read the description on the flip side of the $300 price tag. “Meet the Gin &
Are Your Marketing Goals Aligned With Customer Objectives?
As marketers, we often skip the important step of assessing our marketing goals against customer objectives. As a consequence, we fall in love with our message and forget to question what it is the customer needs to know or wants to hear. It’s not hard to check if this is true of your company—simply
The Difference Between Saying You Care And Caring
I’m not sure when we became defensive about customer care became. I suspect it might have been when we began to put more distance between the customer and us. In the days when there was a cash register that rang with ‘real money’, when we sold eye-to-eye and transacted hand-to-hand, instead of digit
A Reason To Come
“Hey! Are you after some lunch?” asked the young woman on the pavement waving flyers during the 1 pm rush. She gestured to a place on the side street as she tried to lure people down it with the promise of a discount. Most diners who eat at a restaurant down a side street go…
The Value Story
During Tulip Mania, the new merchant class who wanted their gardens to reflect their newfound success, is said to have traded acres of land for a single flower bulb. The scarcer the bulbs became, the more valuable they were perceived to be. As a commodity, the tulip’s inherent value was derived from
How Will You Win?
All success at some level is about winning. Not necessarily coming first, but certainly reaching some kind of goal or destination. The truth is that most of us are terrible at articulating exactly what the plan to get there is. The ability to do this is probably the single most important competitive
The 4 New Stages Of Customer Engagement
The commercial reality for any business is that sales keep the lights on. We’re still following rules that were proposed in the late 1800s by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in order to do that. “The mission of an advertisement is to sell goods. To do this, it must attract attention, of course; but attracting
Consumers Don’t Just Want Better Products, They Want Better Narratives
Sixty years ago, when the world was smaller, people wanted to pay once for something and for the thing to last. We transitioned to an era where we no longer knew as much about the provenance of a product. That fact changed our perception and expectations of quality. We were a little more forgiving a
Who First?
The realisation of an opportunity to solve a problem for a specific group of people is at the heart of every business success story. Sometimes the potential customer already knows their problem or need exists, but often they are not actively looking for a solution. It’s hard to give answers to peopl
The 12-Word Business Plan
Have you ever struggled to illustrate or articulate how your business or idea creates value? This 12-word framework is the simplest way to do it. Take a look at how we could map Blue Apron’s business plan using the 12-word framework. Blue Apron’s 12-Word Business Plan OPPORTUNITY People want to eat
Marketing Inversion
When Amazon.com was still in its infancy, Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO had this to say; “In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.” Shouting brought us Pop Tarts, Alka Seltzer…
Owning The Story
The little deli around the corner just started opening an hour earlier on weekday mornings. Of course, it makes sense for a business located in a walkable neighbourhood to serve commuters who will grab a coffee on the way to work and maybe even buy a sandwich for lunch later in the day. The last…
Why How Matters
How you design the product changes how it feels to use it. How you train your staff changes how the customer is treated. How you answer an email changes how the recipient responds. How much of yourself you bring to work changes how you perform. In a world where more people understand the impact of…
Becoming Indispensable
Every business wants to be indispensable to its customers. Every brand aspires to be the one people turn to without question. Indispensability is the holy grail of customer loyalty, just as fine summers are the secret longing of the Scottish. When we lived in Scotland it felt like it rained every da
Trust Vs. Hype
Malcolm Gladwell announced his new podcast last week. Before the first episode even aired it had jumped to #2 in the iTunes charts, topping long established shows like This American Life. It’s not just Gladwell’s record for writing bestsellers that’s driving people to the podcast. It’s that we trust
Getting On Your Customer’s Radar
Many brands believe the biggest challenge they have is creating more brand awareness. If they could only get on the radar of potential customers then many of their problems would disappear. And yet brands like Macy’s and Ralph Lauren that have built awareness for decades are struggling to remain via
It Matters
The sign had been hastily scrawled in blue biro. The letters gone over and over again to make them more visible to the passer-by. A short cut, that in the end didn’t give the benefit of a short cut at all. It matters that your investment in recruiting doesn’t stretch to buying a sharpie to…
The Heart Of Customer Loyalty
Despite everything we know about the benefits of fostering customer loyalty, most of our marketing is designed to change what people think or do in the short term. We change the label from white to yellow to get a millisecond more attention. We offer discounts on product lines we want to shift and w
