Reading Time: < 1 minute As marketers, we’re taught to look for patterns. Research, we are told, will give us the insights we need to predict how whole swathes of our society will react. Brands are looking to predict how buyers will act or react so that they know what to expect. Consumers themselves of course operate under no such […]
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Perspectives
Brands shouldn’t try to make sense
Reading Time: 2 minutes The flipside of a marketplace where brands encourage people to buy for emotive reasons is that brands also need to counter consumers’ personal reasons not to buy. Some of these reasons may be legacy. Some may seem to be convenient self-interest. Others may look like they’re based on ignorance, bias, selfishness. They probably don’t make […]
Is behavioural change in a corporate culture all about timing?
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Is this the right time to change?” may not be the delaying question I often dismiss it as. To see why, read Caroline’s post at the Optimal Usability blog (subscribed to, not surprisingly, by the ever vigilant Alex). Caroline quotes from this very astute man – BJ Fogg – who runs the Persuasive Technology Lab […]
Are you ready for the experience war? (It’s been building for ages)
Reading Time: 5 minutes At the AG Ideas Business Breakfast held in Melbourne way back in 2012, Mauro Porcini, Chief Design Officer, 3M pitched an emerging social scenario that would in time lead to the experience war we have today; one where consumers are not just savvy, expert and demanding, but also are difficult to categorise and understand.
Brand dynamics: the shapeshifting of brand likeability
Reading Time: 5 minutes Our traditional view of product preference has for many years mirrored our view of markets. A bell curve, where products rise in popularity over time, sustain leadership through a period of maturity and then decline or are overtaken by another bell-curve driven by product development that supersedes the declining model and looks to take it […]
The portfolio approach to strategy
Reading Time: 4 minutes How do you drive home a strategy to fulfil your future, when everything around you is changing? The secret, according to McKinsey & Co senior advisor, Eric D. Beinhocker, is to radically review what we mean by strategy. In his 2006 book, The Origin of Wealth, Beinhocker argues that rather than thinking of strategy as […]
Is the digital economy actually an economy (yet)?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Some years ago, I wrote a post that took Chris Anderson’s “freemium” model to task. In it I argued that once you had provided services and information freely, the conversion to payment was going to be a lot tougher. Free, I suggested, would become an implicit entitlement. Last week, in a withering attack in the […]
Retail brands: price always has a context
Reading Time: 4 minutes Marianne Bickle takes JC Penney’s to task over their pricing strategy in this pithy and thought-provoking post in Forbes. In it, she argues that the retailing icon misread the market in key ways and compromised its value proposition when it replaced its famous coupon and discounts pricing strategy with a policy that stressed continuity, consistency […]
Affirmation: how to make a brand experience really count
Reading Time: 2 minutes Everybody wants to feel they got value for money. Sure – but when exactly does something feel like it was “worth it”? At what point or points does a brand experience gain that sense of affirmation for a customer? What role does affirmation play in winning the burgeoning brand experience war?
Not a problem: success pivots on what you solve, not just what you know
Reading Time: 3 minutes If you’re not a fan yet of the Scattershot blog, then I’d like to suggest you should be. In a post published earlier this week, Rajant discusses the concept of “ground truth”. Ground truth, as its name suggests, is the view on the ground that verifies and informs the satellite view. It’s a great way […]
The one question every market leader should ask
Reading Time: < 1 minute Two thoughts that I really like, brought together to create a powerful and competitive question.
Does my brand look big in this?
Reading Time: 3 minutes As marketers, we’re often encouraged to puff up our brands to look as big as possible so that they appear significant and credible in a global marketplace. There’s a sense that if you’re big, you must be successful and if you’re successful, then there’s a higher than likely chance that you’ll continue to grow. Size […]