brand strategy
1,082 posts
Skill Vs. Talent
The dentist looks inside the patient’s mouth. She completes her examination, makes an assessment and proposes treatment. The proposed treatment considers only two things. What’s going on inside the patient’s mouth and his ability to pay. The dentist knows she can fix the problem. She wants to do a g
The Rise Of The Patient Marketer
The fact that we’re exposed to thousands of marketing messages every day is old news. Our lives are now designed to mitigate against being interrupted by things we don’t care about and never respond to. And yet, we often fail to acknowledge that the people we want to reach feel the same way. If we’r
The First Marketing Myth
Logic tells us that just because someone is aware of a product or service doesn’t mean they will buy it. We know that people are not short of choices. And yet when it comes to marketing our products and services, we prioritise awareness all the time. Logic goes out the window. We fool ourselves into
What’s Your Customer’s Context?
Yesterday I got chatting to Sarah in the street about the sofa she didn’t buy. Sarah, who has three daughters under the age of seven had been looking for the perfect sofa for ages. When she finally found the perfect one she put down a deposit on it and waited for it to arrive a…
Back To Basics Marketing
Our neighbours are having the outside of their house painted. It’s an old Victorian property, built in the 1800s with period features and delicate ironwork. I’ve watched the decorators come and go over the past couple of weeks. Seen them taking care to cover the original tiles on the porch, that cou
The Tyranny Of Checking
There are jobs, and there is work that relies on the professionals checking. We want our surgeons, pilots and firefighters to check and double check. That isn’t the kind of checking most of us do now. It seems that we’ve unintentionally made a career out of checking. We spend many hours a day checki
Better By Degrees
The track and field coach Bill Bowerman spent twenty-four years training athletes at the University of Oregon to optimise their performance. Bowerman was also the co-founder of Nike, and most famously the inventor of the waffle sole running shoe (which he prototyped by pouring rubber into the family
The Ready And Willing
The sandwich boards positioned on the footpath. Posters pasted inside the bus shelter. A pair of charity fundraisers stationed outside the university. All marketing tactics designed with one goal in mind—to make the product, business or cause more visible. The reason our marketing falls flat is that
In Time
You don’t know for sure that the broccoli at the local organic store was grown sustainably or without pesticides, but you trust that it was and you’re happy to pay more for it. You have no proof that like the label says the bread gluten-free until long after you’ve eaten it, but you don’t question…
The Value Of Goals And Outcomes
We tend to think of goals and outcomes as one and the same. They’re not. Let’s say your goal is to run a marathon. Crossing the line at the end of the twenty-sixth mile is your goal. But the effect of the actions you take by trying to achieve that goal is worth more than…
Effort, Performance And Joy
The indoor bikes at my gym have a display monitor on the front. The monitor is designed to show you how much effort you’re putting into your workout. In theory the monitor helps you to get better results. You can see how the combination of your speed and resistance increases your power output. You c
Priorities And Metrics
We often default to using narrow parameters to qualify worthiness or quantify excellence. We focus on a company’s revenue or an entrepreneur’s net worth, count the number of books an author sells or followers an influencer amasses. What we choose to measure has a direct impact on what we then priori
Progress And Potential
Nobody knows who invented the button five thousand years ago. At first, buttons were simply used to adorn clothing. It wasn’t until the invention of the buttonhole three thousand years later that buttons became functional. It took us two thousand years to reimagine what the button could do. And in t
The Power Of Identity In A Competitive World
Nobody who read the pre-match reports or the post-match statistics would have predicted a one-all draw. Iceland, a country with a population of 334,000, was fielding a team of semi-professional players, in their World Cup debut against Argentina, one of the world’s best footballing nations. There wa
What Successful Companies Do
Just one thing. Successful companies help people do things they want to do, so they can be who they want to be. What do the people you serve want to do? How can you help them to be who they want to be? Image by Tim Dennell
How Change Happens
The success of whatever we make, serve, sell or advocate for is dependent on creating and sustaining change. The same rules apply whether we’re trying to change perception or behaviour, get people to buy our software or stop using plastic straws. 7 Steps To Making Change Happen 1. Acknowledgement Th
Extraordinary Is…
In a digital world, extraordinary is Human. Presence. Care taken. Handcrafted. Eye contact. Face-to-face. Heart-to-heart. The intangibles. Genuine interest. A timely response. That feeling of belonging. Thanking someone in person. Executing on the small details. A handwritten note inside the package
Not Just Anyone
Most often, the goal of our marketing is to be found. That goal dictates our marketing strategy. If you’re trying to be found, you’ll seek out opportunities to interrupt everyone, anywhere. But there is an alternative. What would it take for you to be the brand people intentionally chose? How could
The World Inside Your Customer’s Heart
There are few better lessons in the art of storytelling than those learned by watching a great real estate agent auction a good property, on a chilly Melbourne morning. Last Saturday, I looked on as an agent sold a million dollar home by reminding potential buyers how they would feel every weekend a
The Sure Thing
Before we create a product, design a service or build a business we want to be certain the idea will fly. We want to know for sure that if we build it, people will come. If we only did the things we were certain would work, we’d never create anything original. Originality is a leap…
