Posts Tagged ‘story’
Better Bridges
The design and layout of a department store are deliberate. The sum of a thousand decisions, choices made to optimise the customer experience and maximise profit. Cosmetics on the ground floor, furniture on the top. The fewer people shopping for big-ticket items invest time ascending six floors. You could argue that the customers who go…
Read MoreWhat’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…
Read MoreBack 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 could so easily be…
Read MoreThe 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 the people we want to serve are not…
Read MoreA Question Of Pride
Like most of their friends and neighbours from big Irish-Catholic families, my grandparents didn’t have the luxury of an education. They were not bookish, in fact, they were barely literate. They couldn’t teach me much about history or science. But they taught me a lot about pride. My grandparents may not have had status, but…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreEasy Isn’t Always Best In The Long Run
The billboard outside the old cemetery read like a real estate advertisement. ‘Last remaining graves for sale.’ It seemed to scream inappropriately at the traffic roaring past. In the past, these local burial plots would have been acquired by neighbouring families who were getting their affairs in order. Now even essential products and services have…
Read MoreMore What?
All marketing is an attempt to amplify. The story we tell and the marketing we do depends on our priorities. Do you want to be more visible, more trusted, more respected, more desirable, more loved or something else? Begin with that end in mind and craft your message accordingly. Image by Jason Ogden
Read MoreAttention 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 equally important truth about storytelling…
Read MoreA World Built On Promises
Scott and Joanna are planning to open a two-hundred-seater restaurant along a small shopping strip that backs onto a residential area in their local suburb. They know the neighbours will be concerned about the prospect of increased traffic and noise from the venue, especially at the weekend when they open until 1 am. So they…
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