The Premium Story

It was just a short internal flight, you barely enough time to get comfortable in your seat—46 minutes to be exact. That didn’t stop the guy who had mistakenly been ‘downgraded’ from business class to economy from blowing a gasket. He complained loudly, his finger stabbing in the direction of the gate agent’s face, while…

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The Most Important Lens We Have

As business owners and team leaders we view our businesses through various lenses. We have a financial lens, a success lens, a marketing lens, a service lens and on and on depending on how complex our organisation is. We measure our performance in a hundred different ways, often neglecting the most significant metric of all—customer…

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Amplify The Good

As soon as she handed the keycard for the upgraded room to the formerly disgruntled (now beaming) guest, the receptionist smiled and handed her a second card. Her eyes held those of the woman who had been complaining loudly only five minutes before. “Would you please consider giving us a review on Trip Advisor, the…

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Marketing Is How It Feels

In a recent article I read that “….aside from a few television spots and billboards here and there, Apple pretty much ignores marketing and advertising.” This is simply not true. EVERYTHING Apple does, from the massive investment in package design that creates scissorless, video-worthy unboxing experiences, to product names, Genius training, years spent obsessing over…

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The Power Of What We Measure

It’s easier than ever before to create a set of metrics by which to monitor our progress and measure our success. Click-through rates, subscriber numbers, impressions and customer lifetime value are useful data points. What if we measured our success by the results we delivered for our customers? Not what the customer did for us,…

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Nothing And Everything

“Have you got far to go with those?” the assistant asked, while looking me squarely in the eye, as he was deciding how best to pack my groceries. It was the tiniest gesture, nothing much, and yet it was enough to stop me in my tracks, because it’s not what we’ve come to expect. Nobody…

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Why Most Marketing Fails

It’s hard to communicate your value if you don’t know what the customer’s definition of value is. Most marketing fails because the marketer doesn’t understand the story his customer wants to believe, before he tells the story. So the real estate agent starts describing the proximity to great schools, without knowing if the couple has…

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How To Get The Results You Want

In work, as in life we create a sense of balance by understanding what we want and what we don’t. We prioritize by wanting less of one thing and more of something else. Less overwhelm and more progress. Fewer things to react to and more results. Less busyness and more time. Fewer restrictions and more…

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How To Tell The Story Of Your Products

Why is real estate copywriting so terrible? Maybe it’s not that bad in your town or city, but wherever I have lived the copy seems to serve one purpose—to fill the space between the images and the floor plan in the brochure. Here are a couple of examples of copy written to sell million dollar…

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The Difference Between A Pitch And A Brand Story

A pitch is what you tell the world about you. It’s presented as the polished version of your story. The one you hope people will grasp and believe within a few short minutes as they reach for their wallets. Your pitch and your story are two very different things. So how is a brand storytelling…

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