business
512 posts
Wanted And Welcomed
We still have a landline phone at home to make it easy and more economical for elderly relatives overseas to get in touch. It rings at lunchtime and at around 6pm every day. We don’t pick up, because we know these particular calls are not ones we want or welcome. I often wonder what the…
Sorry: Easy To Say, Not So Easy To Do
The assistant serving at the counter apologised for the long wait, then for not having received the order and finally for having no change. The cycle continued with every customer she served. There was a sorry for the wrong order given and one for the fact that the croissants hadn’t arrived that mor
What’s The Best Way?
When I was a new mum thinking about ‘the best way’ to raise my son to do the things that babies of his age were supposed to do, occupied a fair amount of my time. I worried about the best way to settle him to sleep and the best way to wean him. I graduated…
How Does Your Marketing Really Make People Feel?
Imagine it’s a busy Thursday morning and you’re replying to the emails that came in overnight from people you were eager to hear from, when out of nowhere an unsolicited sales email interrupts your flow. Of course it’s just one email, it only takes a second to delete it, so where’s the harm in a…
The Best Marketing In The World
It’s easy to know why the features you built into your products and services are important, but it takes a particular skill to understand and communicate why they should matter to people. The best marketing in the world doesn’t remind people how great the company is or how many features have been ad
My New Book—Marketing: A Love Story
My new book is here. You can buy it now on Amazon in paperback and in Kindle. I’ve wanted to find a way to juxtapose the concepts of marketing and love in a book for a long time. I like to think that even if you never opened the book, just owning it—seeing it on…
Close, Closer, Closest
Twenty years ago geography mattered. When there was one grocer in every suburb there was always enough business to go round. Close was an advantage. It’s easy to believe that because digital has dissolved borders, that it has simultaneously diluted advantages. But being close has taken on a whole ne
10 Characteristics Of Disruptive Innovations
Any one of a number of giant companies could have been first to market with a bagless vacuum cleaner. They all knew that their cleaners lost suction when dust bags became full. They also knew how their customers wrestled to empty dust bags while being enveloped by the dirt they’d just sucked up out
Where Are The Holes?
It’s hard to be objective when you evaluate your competitors. When you’re feeling vulnerable there is a tendency to think about all of the things your competitors are doing right and how you don’t measure up against them. The irony is that opportunities are realised and groundbreaking ideas are brou
How Are You Creating Value?
Think about your favourite airline or a product you use every day and the supermarket you feel most comfortable shopping at. Now think about why you keep going back. What is it that this business delivers? The airline most likely sells similar seats, with average legroom, at around the same price as
Who Is Responsible For Seeing Your Customers?
When I worked in the stock control department at Tesco thirty years ago, I was partly responsible for making sure there were enough tins of soup available to be bought by the customers who would walk up and down those supermarket aisles the following week. There were people in charge of making sure
The Myth Of The Digital Shortcut
What Donald Draper wouldn’t have given to be an ‘ad man’ in 2014. No more sitting around in bars scribbling on napkins while watching people going about their business. No more trying to work out what they’re thinking and how they want to feel in order to sell that feeling back to them, for a…
Fridge Magnet Marketing
Your plumber has probably earned his place on your fridge alongside the chimpanzee magnet your kids brought back from a school trip. His magnet is there because he’s the guy who came out within a couple of hours when that pipe in the laundry burst, causing chaos. You want this guy in your life and…
Price Is Not Just A Strategy, It’s A Story
There was a palpable buzz when one of the most gifted leaders in retail, Ron Johnson—the guy who led the creation of the Apple Store experience, took on the role of CEO at the hundred-year-old company J.C. Penney. All eyes were on him. The business world wanted to know how he was going to transform…
10 Questions To Consider Before Embarking On A Social Media Strategy
We’re coming unstuck with the gift that is social media and here’s why. We often forget that social media is not the same as advertising, that it’s not just a collective of platforms we use to blast messages at people. Then there is our obsession about the tactics. The question I hear asked of socia
The Truth About Vanilla
Almost one in five people who order an ice cream in the U.S. today will order vanilla. Vanilla then is an easy flavour to make because we know that most people won’t have an objection to it and 17% of people are likely to order it. It feels more risky to be the company that…
Play To Your Strengths
If you look hard enough at what’s going right (and sometimes wrong) in a business there are always lessons to be learned. Take the story of Tom the decorator who built a great business over many years, then suddenly seemed to lose his way. Part two of that story explains why Tom succeeded in the…
Don’t Change Your Pitch, Understand Their Story
Back in the days of stay-at-home Mums and morning newspaper deliveries, a memorable tagline on the box (or a coveted toy inside), was enough of a sales pitch to sell us a ton of breakfast cereal. Frosted Flakes were Grrreat because Tony the Tiger said so. And if Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Micha
What If Hype Had A Bigger Purpose?
I find it hard to believe the message that’s scrawled on the chalk board outside the deserted new cafe that still has that ‘unlived in’ feeling about it. The flustered, newly-minted barista is a dead giveaway. Every passer-by knows that it takes more than a week in business before you can make an al
Driving Sales, The Gates Effect And Flawed Marketing Vocabulary
Over the weekend a previously out of print business book, which was unknown to many and forgotten by most shot up the Amazon bestseller list. Why when we had previously ignored John Brooks’ Business Adventures were we suddenly snapping up enough copies to make it the #1 bestselling business book on
