Reading Time: 2 minutes It’s occurred to me recently that the interesting changes in customer attitude that accompany brand commitment are not necessarily on the radar of enough companies.
Tag: customer engagement
Sometimes, buyers need cake
Reading Time: 2 minutes Everyone loves secrets. The power of secrets is not just in the information. It’s in the fact that often secrets represent shortcuts. And the shorter road is something that fascinates many.
Define your terms of brand, then your terms of business
Reading Time: < 1 minute So many companies build their brand around their business. They establish the tangible assets and processes and look to extrapolate the intangible value of that as brands for their buyers. They transit in other words from the physical to the emotive.
Brand personality: how does your brand respond to parody?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Talk by Starbucks this week of “next steps” following a Comedy Central prank that parodied their name raises the question of what should brands do when the borax is poked?
A simple guide to being an interesting brand
Reading Time: 2 minutes I’m intrigued by the number of people who insist they don’t believe in marketing, that no-one takes any notice of it and that they don’t have time to engage with brands. Until … they have something they want to tell the world. Then, suddenly, marketing – specifically their marketing – is interesting, exciting and something […]
Coffee to go
Reading Time: < 1 minute I walked into one of my favourite haunts and they were busy – OK, frantic. Waiting staff were running everywhere trying to get things done, serving people they didn’t know, trying to make a good impression. I got my coffee – and nothing else. No hello, no eye contact, no sign of recognition. Just my […]
The next era of brand conversations
Reading Time: 3 minutes Too many brands continue to fail at convincingly placing what they have to offer inside the lives of the people they are trying to reach. A lot of that seems to come down to a simple mis-alignment of priorities: whilst marketing teams ponder data and speak earnestly about really understanding their buyers as individuals, those […]
Smart companies expect their customers to complain
Reading Time: < 1 minute Expect – in the sense that they are ready to act immediately should anything go wrong. They do so with grace, speed and humanity. They apologise when it’s appropriate. They move quickly. They recognise the loyalty opportunity of doing right by people.
Who’s your brand story working for?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Some marketers like to work forwards. Advertisers for example often tell a story and then wait to gauge the reaction they get. Direct marketers on the other hand start by quantifying a reaction (in the form of a return) and then craft a story to generate that response. What I’ve been discussing recently is whether […]
Behind the new shop window: the real online shopping challenge for brands
Reading Time: 3 minutes Making people more interested in your brand is one challenge. Making them more loyal is quite another.
Brands and the power of secrets
Reading Time: 3 minutes Ten years ago, Don Tapscott and David Ticoll’s book “The Naked Corporation” foresaw a time of transparency in which businesses would find themselves more visible and subject to greater scrutiny. They were on the money. But in an age where everyone is more inclined to talk a lot louder and a lot more frequently, have […]
The different scales (and values) of talk
Reading Time: 5 minutes “Everybody’s talking at me. I don’t hear a word they’re saying,” observed Harry Nilsson in 1969. 45 years on, it seems a lot of people are still not listening – but brands should be. New findings from Gallup suggest marketers may be pinning the wrong hopes on social media.