success
1,070 posts
How Great Products Are Born, Not Made
When you’re designing a product or service it’s easy to believe that making it the best in the world is what gives you a competitive advantage. But the thing about ‘best’ is that it’s subjective. ‘Best’ isn’t determined by you, it’s your customers and users who decide. The truth is that people don’t
How To Be Different
When Apple and Microsoft went head-to-head Apple didn’t ask, “How can we be different from Microsoft?” No, the question they asked was, “How can we be more of ourselves and how do we amplify that in the work we do?” The reason it’s not easy to copy a truly great brand is because they have…
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…
What Will Change Once The Word Gets Out?
On the day after ‘the word gets out’ about your product or service, will you have a thousand news followers on Twitter? Will the kingmaker call? Will your inbox have ten new client leads? Will your stock be flying off the shelves? Will your business be better? Will your bank balance be healthy enoug
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…
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…
Good Business Is Always A Matter Of Attitude
We’ve been using the same painter and decorator for years. He’s been with us amid the chaos of three moves and two home renovations. Tom was a young, ambitious bloke when we first met. He was keen to offer a better than average service and at age 25 his goal of doing that was paying…
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
Fear, Procrastination And Getting Runs On The Board
I recently met with a super-smart friend who has an important idea to share with the world, she had three questions about how best to get that idea out there. I had three answers that might help you to get your ideas out there too. Q. What’s the best process for doing xyz? A. The…
Why A Good Idea Is Not Enough
It took at least 40 years for the computer to go from being a series of ideas and advances to a commercial success. The difference between a good idea and a commercial success is context—the understanding about where that idea fits, how it will be useful in the world and who will care about it.…
A Brand Is More Than A Label
We’ve been branding things from cattle, to jewellery and even people for thousands of years. We began by burning our mark into things to signal ownership. When technology and infrastructure gave us access to things beyond our villages branding began to signal a different type of belonging, one that
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
What Gap Is Your Business Closing?
Business is all about closing gaps. Closing the gap between aspirations and attainment, intention and achievement, between wants and experiences. Products and services can also close gaps between needs and functionality, innovation and utility, feelings and facts. But perhaps most importantly, what
Are You Using Soft Data To Create Value?
It seems like a no brainer to suppose that local businesses like a cafes, dry cleaners or dental surgeries—the kinds of businesses that serve the same customers week in week out, where the staff have the opportunity to look their customers in the eye, would take advantage of the fact that they look
Are You Ready To Tell People About You?
Have you ever come away from being asked the, ‘so, tell me about you’ question in a professional setting and felt like you nailed it—even just a little bit? How do you sum up the essence of who you are, what you stand for and what you’re capable of without sounding like an over-rehearsed egotist,…
All Of The People, All Of The Time
All around us big vanilla businesses and corporations are struggling to understand how to connect with customers and give people what they want. Businesses like McDonalds are ‘resetting’ and trying to find new ways to improve speed and affordability of their core offerings. Their strategy is to beco
Intention Is A Competitive Advantage
Having a competitive advantage is not just about being better in ways that can be measured, it’s about understanding your difference and about knowing how that difference will impact the lives of your customers. Great business leaders know what they want to do well and also importantly what they won
What Are Your Customer’s Triggers?
We mostly think of buying as an isolated act, something our customers do in the moment. But it’s probably more useful to think of buying as a behaviour. A behaviour is an action or reaction which is triggered and conditioned. We look in the fridge at 8pm and notice that we’re running low on milk,…
