story
325 posts
Build A Trust Engine
In the golden age of the advertising businesses of all sizes relied on ads to promote and sell their products. Giant corporations reached us via TV and whole page newspaper ads. Small businesses got our attention by placing small ads in the local newspaper. In the past advertising allowed average pr
The Opportunity Cost Of Pursuing New Opportunities
Time. We can sell it. We can buy it. But we can’t get it back. And yet when it comes to resourcing opportunities, we sometimes believe we can have it all. All we need is to be disciplined about how we spend our time. When we choose to pursue a new project or goal we’re…
How Much Information Is Enough?
When do we know it’s safe to cross the road? How much information do we need about how far away that truck is and how fast it’s going to decide whether to step off the pavement? How much information does your customer need before deciding she trusts you? As people who sell things or ideas,…
Tell Me About Your Company
If you were asked to describe a friend in three words you’d have no problem. Maybe you’d say he was fun or kind, perhaps you see him as loyal or generous. But if I asked you to tell me about your company’s attributes or brand’s characteristics you’d probably struggle. We invest a lot of time…
Pitch Perfect
The two falafel makers at the weekend market sell an almost identical product but achieve very different levels of success. The marketing tactics they use are similar. Make eye contact with potential customers, offer them a small sample to try and use the time they’re chewing to launch into your sal
Do You Have A Customer Awareness Strategy?
The Friday evening tram was jam-packed with commuters, our bodies so closely pressed together you could feel the heat from the passenger standing next to you. As the tram made its way up Collins Street, the people travelling alone avoided eye contact. Two women next to me were chatting about the bla
Why Do Customers Choose You?
What are the top three reasons customers choose you? What story are you giving those customers to tell—not just to recommend you, but to trust and value, prefer and remain loyal to you or your company? You can make assumptions and best guesses about what’s motivating the people you serve, or you can
Signalling
According to the Collins English Dictionary, a signal ‘is a gesture, sound, or action which is intended to give a particular message to the person who sees or hears it.’ We are sending signals to our clients and customers whenever they come into contact with our business or brand—even when we’re not
What The Best Communicators Do
Professor Daniel Kahneman has spent a lifetime researching why and how humans make decisions. His decades of work focused on the two ways we think and decide using one of two modes of thought, System 1 and System 2. System 1 makes fast, instinctive and emotional judgements and System 2 operates at a
The Immeasurable Benefits Of The Immeasurable
Joanne has no idea what the return on investment of sweeping her bakery floor is. And yet she does it first thing each morning before the first customer arrives. Harry has no way of knowing if the three hours he spends cleaning his taxi inside and out at the weekend makes a difference to passengers.
Building A Following
We’re seduced by the idea that followings and fortunes are made by hastily increasing our visibility on the platform of the day. The truth is the people and brands who earn our attention patiently built their following over time. It’s the work we quietly get on with when no one is watching that make
We Value What We Measure
One of my first jobs was working as the manager of a little Dublin cafe that stood at the intersection of two busy city streets. It was a lot of responsibility for someone in their late teens, and I loved it. There was something magical about opening the shutters first thing in the morning when…
Worthy Of Your Marketing
When we’re planning a party, we know its success depends on the preparation we do in advance, often before the invitations are sent. Every detail, from the food to the table settings, the lighting to the music is carefully choreographed in anticipation of the guests’ arrival. When we’re marketing, e
The Three Pillars Of Brand Resonance
The most common reason people give for contacting me to work with them is to raise brand awareness. Conventional wisdom dictates that if only more people knew about our products and services, or our ideas and our work, then we would be more successful. There’s only one problem with this worldview. M
Change Is A Human Act
We mistakenly believe that changemaking and persuasion are only about getting someone’s attention by creating awareness of an issue or option, and then presenting people with rational arguments that will convince them to make choices we find desirable. But both the science and what we witness in the
Heartwork
These words spoken by Director of The London School of Economics, Minouche Shafik, in an interview last year ring true: ‘In the past jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in future they’ll be about the heart.’ The truth is our best work always has been about the heart. And the good
Be A Powerful And Purposeful Storyteller
*The following post is an extract from my new book The Right Story.* Throughout history, the technology of the day has always influenced how its users communicate and share ideas. How we think about spreading ideas is shaped by the resources available to us. How we connect and persuade is affected b
The Right Story
What makes some bad ideas successful, and why do many good ideas fail? It turns out that there’s no such thing as a bad idea or a good idea. There is only the wrong story or the right story. The right story is one that is trusted. It is believed because it is told by…
Be Ambitious
In our culture ambition is both celebrated and frowned upon—not always in equal measure. Ambition is encouraged and rewarded, but only to a point. Perhaps it’s not ambition itself that’s the problem, but rather, our narrow definition of it? We aspire mostly to the ambition of accumulation. We want t
The Upside Of Generosity
The waitress supervising breakfast at the hotel was doing a great job of doing her job. The coffee pots and bread baskets were full. Dirty tables were promptly cleared, and not a single customer had complained that morning. She kept herself busy as the minutes to the end of her shift ticked by. The
