Posts Tagged ‘brand differentiation’
The Value of Soft Data
We assume that the most valuable data is static and lives on graphs and in spreadsheets. Turning to the graphs first, last and always to get to know your customers, is like looking at a child’s development purely on a growth chart. You’re definitely not getting the whole picture. While we’ve been busy analysing the…
Read MoreMarketing Is An Art
When you walk into the Bedford Cheese Shop in New York, you’re not seeing cheese sold by the pound, you’re witnessing art being made. A business owner who goes to the trouble of writing these kinds of descriptions on his product is not just a marketer, he’s an artist, practicing with intention, and generosity and…
Read MoreWhat Focus Groups Can’t Tell You
Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” The committee might be able to tell you what they think is working, or what’s broken, but they can’t tell you how to matter. And no…
Read MoreEveryone Owns The Truth
As soon as the flight landed (two hours behind schedule), people began jostling on the spot, eager to get off. The priority of course was people with connecting flights who might have a chance of making them. For others it was too late and they’d be spending the night at the airport hotel. A woman…
Read MoreThe Trouble With Positioning
Do you remember when President Obama came to office first time round and negotiated with the secret service to keep his BlackBerry—Bush and Clinton didn’t even use email. In 2004, three years before the launch of the first iPhone, BlackBerry, who pioneered the smartphone had a market share of 47%. Four years ago Blackberry was…
Read MoreYou Don’t Have To Matter To Everyone
We weren’t meant to be sitting next to each other. The European blonde, who didn’t want to be separated from her boyfriend for 10 hours overnight between Perth to Dubai, asked if I would mind moving to the middle seat in the row behind. So this is how I got chatting to a the chap…
Read MoreDemographics Vs. Worldviews
It’s impossible now to presume everything about your customers just because you know their age, sex and postcode. In a digital world, that enables ever increasing possibilities and choices, people are no longer constrained by location, age, or gender, and they are not so easy to put into a box either. It’s far more helpful…
Read MoreWhat Do Your Customers Care About?
Let’s look at some cold, hard, and fun facts. A search on Instagram one morning in mid-September for #me, gave me over 123 million results. Just 18 hours later a further 466,000 had been added. Let’s round that up to half a million a day, which means 26,000 photos with the hashtag ‘me’ are uploaded…
Read MoreHedging Is Risky
Have ever been scared to share more about what you stand for? Concerned about opening up about who you really are on your website? Anxious that the products and services you offer might put some people off? You’re not alone. One of the greatest challenges entrepreneurs feel keenly is the fear of scaring people off.…
Read MoreThe Uncommon Advantage
In the 80s you’d walk into a record shop and the store owner, along with the record company would literally tell you what to buy. In every store there was a wall with 100 square compartments, numbered unsurprisingly—TOP 100. You got to chose from what everyone else liked, or what DJs were playing that week.…
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