The Power Of A Shared Brand Narrative

The doors of the department store are barely open and Chris is setting up for a busy day ahead at Mecca. Most of the sales assistants at the other beauty counters don’t glance up as a customer walks through. They’re expecting tyre kickers this early in the day. Chris is different. He’s aware and attentive,…

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The Incremental Advantage

Despite what we know about how distracted our customers can be and how endless their choices are, when it comes to our messaging and marketing, we often overestimate our ability to cut through. You only have to spend five minutes watching someone scrolling through a feed on their smartphone (try it), or see how the…

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Why Your Business Needs A Set Piece Plan

David Beckham scored 114 goals over the course of his 20-year football career. More than half of those goals were a result of what’s known as a ‘set piece’. A ‘set piece’ is a carefully orchestrated and practised move in a team game that returns the ball to play. Beckham became an outstanding player because…

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The First Law Of Good Marketing

We can tie ourselves up in knots wondering and worrying about how to communicate our value to prospective customers. Which marketing tactics should we use? How can we improve our product descriptions? What’s the best strategy for converting leads to sales? How can we ‘get more eyeballs’ on our content? While these are all valid…

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Depth Over Reach

It’s pouring rain on the morning the free weekly lifestyle magazine is stuck through the railings of every home on every street in our neighbourhood. So the 20% of people who would normally flick through it over morning coffee won’t bother to open the magazine today. The soggy newsprint goes straight into the recycling bin.…

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What Are You In A Hurry To Do?

In our world of infinite information and seemingly endless opportunities there’s a temptation to fill every moment—to make every available second a productive one. So we multitask. We eat at our desks instead of taking a break. We always listen to podcasts on our commute, neglecting to pay attention to what’s going on around us.…

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Don’t Be Afraid To Start Small

On a rainy Monday early in December 1955, 40,000 African-Americans boycotted the public bus services in the town of Montgomery to protest the arrest of 42-year-old Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. Their boycott lasted 381 days until the city repealed its law requiring segregation on public buses.…

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Why The Realistic Marketer Wins

Marketing shoulders heavy burden in any business regardless of size. We expect our marketing efforts to make more customers aware of our brand and to grab their attention. Not only that, we want our marketing to create trust, differentiate our products, communicate value and change people’s minds. Marketing must also convince strangers to choose us…

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The Two Questions Behind Every Successful Product And Service

There’s a subtle difference between a product or service that stems from an idea and one that’s born from recognising an opportunity. Ideas are solutions in search of problems. Opportunities are problems begging for a solution. The magic of solving problems for a specific customer is that the marketing is baked into the product. Like…

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The Number One Way To Create Brand Awareness

There was something peculiar about the SoHo hotel where I stayed on my recent overseas trip. I didn’t see a single child for the length of my stay. Nowhere in their marketing does the management specify their property is unsuitable for children and yet because they are uncompromising about going all the way to the…

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