brand story
942 posts
Profit And…
My mother started working over sixty years ago. As the tenth child of a widow, with nothing more than a basic education she had very few choices. She could be a seamstress or a replaceable cog on the assembly line at one of any number of factories. Sadly the factory jobs won because those jobs…
The First Rule Of Customer Creation
Humans learn to develop empathy in the first year of life. We not only learn to recognise emotional reactions in others but also to understand what’s causing those reactions. One toddler will try to comfort another who is crying—not just with any toy, but with that child’s favourite toy. We know how
How Are You Measuring Your Lead?
As a society, we have become obsessed with getting and staying ahead. We have become addicted to winning, and thus to comparing ourselves to others—not just in business, but in life too. But being ahead, either materially or psychologically is a slippery slope to a mindset of never enough. A culture
Done Right Is Better Than Perfect
Last week, someone—a person with a business, a living to make and maybe mouths to feed, took time to find the contact form on my website to send me this message. Hello Are you an online marketer, do you own a business or businesses? I was just looking at your website. Do you want real…
The Difference Between Good And Great
The tiny Italian restaurant in Carlton is in full swing. It’s 6 pm, and a couple of experienced chefs are cranking out meals. The kitchen is a well-oiled machine, the oven is at capacity, as diners and Uber Eats drivers converge at once. The food is good. It’s just not great—unlike the food served a
Attention Is A Byproduct Of Affinity.
The truest words ever spoken about storytelling were those of one of the greatest storytellers of our generation. J.K. Rowling once said—’No story lives unless someone wants to listen.’ As people who are anxious to change the world, what we try to do is make people listen. But there’s another equall
Victims Of Success
We’ve all been let down by a business we were loyal to or disappointed by a product we once loved. When we dissect what happened, it’s often possible to trace the missteps to a single source. Thriving businesses become victims of their success, and great products become mediocre when the people who
From Average To Exceptional
The menu at Fumi’s restaurant is identical to every other sushi restaurant in town. The ingredients come from the same fish market, and the prices are similar. On the face of it, there’s nothing to set the restaurants apart and no reason for a diner to favour one over another. The difference is only
Who Exactly Is It For?
Alec has been on the road since 4 am. He’s picked up three fares all morning. The arrival of Uber has hit him and other Melbourne taxi drivers hard. According to Alec, the taxi industry has seen a 40% decline. He says he earned as much twenty years ago as he does today. He complains…
Becoming The Obvious Choice
Today you will repeatedly engage in the process of persuasion. You will try to engage with someone in a way that convinces them to change their opinions, choices or actions—their mind or their behaviour. You will aim to persuade them that you or your product are the obvious choice. We tend to think
Should You Simplify Your Sales Script?
There’s a shop half-way down Smith Street that sells just about everything. Whatever you might need from a hammer to a cigarette lighter, a birthday card to an egg slicer they’ve got it. It’s the kind of shop that usually encourages browsing more than buying, where people wander around aimlessly ‘ju
The Downside Of Competing For Customers
The boardroom was ready. We each had a bottle of French sparkling water, a notebook and pen next to our seat. Delicious herbal tea and snacks were served on our arrival. We were meeting to discuss how best to tell a story that resonated with the client’s customers before the launch of a new marketin
The Empathy Profession
When I was growing up (and maybe when you were too), careers like medicine, nursing and teaching, were regarded as being part of the ’empathy profession’. Today, every one of us, from accountants to designers, CEOs to Astronauts, are in the ’empathy profession’. No business or brand can thrive witho
The Hallmarks Of Good Marketing
A real estate agent can generate more interest in a property by listing it well below the expected selling price. Underquoting is sometimes used as a marketing tactic to create a heightened sense of urgency in prospective buyers who don’t want to miss out. When the property sells for 30% above the q
In Praise Of Intangibles
Think about all the things you didn’t charge your customers for today, those things that don’t appear as line items in your budget. The care with which you choose ingredients. The way you treat your employees. The time you spend listening to a prospective customer’s problems, so you can excel at ant
Marketing Forwards
Lachie was a half-decent painter and decorator, but what he really had going for him was his youth and enthusiasm. He’d been in business long enough to reap some reward for his efforts, but not so long that he’d experienced the bust that inevitably followed the boom in Western Australia. Lachie had
A Measure Of Progress
In the animal kingdom ‘more’ is often the best measure of success. Herds and hoarders have a better chance of survival. But ‘more’ isn’t always the best measure of human progress. The longest queue isn’t always a sign of better quality. The most sales don’t always lead to a more sustainable business
Ten Benefits Of Backstorytelling
Since the explosive growth of the advertising industry that began on Madison Avenue in the 1920s, marketing has been about creating a story to make people want something. Conventional wisdom dictated that if you wanted to sell more of a thing, you appealed to a customer’s desire to improve his situa
Start Setting Your Brand Storytelling Goals
We expect brand storytelling to do a lot of heavy lifting for our business. We want our story to engage prospective customers and communicate the value we create. We rely on storytelling to create a sense of belonging and encourage people to believe in our brand. Ultimately we expect that our story
The Measure Of Greatness
I will never forget the first assembly at my children’s school in Australia. Our family had newly migrated to Perth, Western Australia. We wanted to settle our boys as quickly as possible into their new life. So, much to our ten-year-old’s disgust, they were in new schools within two weeks of our ar
