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Not your marketing professor’s story
I'm currently reading Jim Signorelli's StoryBranding, and it's wonderful. I realize it just reinforces what I already believe but it's helping me focus my thinking and use what I know. MENGonline: Branding through the power of story, 2011-11-30, by Jim Signorelli Brands and stories are both vehicles through which relationships are forged. To better understand this…
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Don’t make your customer a target
Here's an interesting story about how Target the store avoids letting its "guests" become "targets" themselves. Even with their suppliers, most people don't want a relationship that's driven solely by money. Loyalty means that we recognize each other's needs, including the need to be left alone sometimes. Hub Magazine: Intents and Purposes, 2012-Jul/Aug, by Brian…
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Using systems to measure an ad’s like-ability
It turns out that Digg established, and Twitter and Tumblr are now using, systems that reward advertisers for creating ads their users like. Although like-ability is no guarantee of effectiveness, it's still valuable. We can't persuade someone who doesn't like us, and as David Ogilvy said "you can't bore people into buying your product." So I…
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Finding something to talk about, that’s a marketing job.
I love the "blogging is like jogging" quote below. Marketing has got to start pulling more and more practices from journalism, which is good because there are a lot of under-employed journalists. You can see what our local guys have been doing at the Lone Star Awards. The definition of "interesting" is "of interest to…
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How to get someone to do something when they don’t feel like it
I started my career as an Assistant Account Executive at the Houston branch of Ogilvy & Mather Advertising. I had huge responsibility and no authority. Managers would frequently use AAE's as a go-between in their efforts to influence another manager. As in, "Go tell the Creative Director that the client wants to see at least…
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Who’s on your side? Loyalty is something we feel, not something we count.
At the GEL Conference in 2007, I heard restaurateur Danny Meyer give a presentation about hospitality. He said good service doesn't have to be 'flawless.' Good service occurs when you feel the waiter or host is 'on your side.' We don't expect our friends, family and service providers to give up their livelihoods for us,…
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Consider the best kind of loyalty we could have
As I've been trying to understand loyalty, I've come to realize that it includes an element of submission. When we are truely loyal, we submit to the other party's needs. Customer Centric Growth: The world's best loyalty program, 2012-Jun-12, by Steven P. Dennis Many of the world’s most powerful brands–Apple, Four Seasons, Louis Vuitton, just to…
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Find the value first, then make the connection
When the values inside a company are out-of-sync, even the best intentions can be useless. We have to find the values that connect us and recognize the ones that don't. This approach takes a level of maturity that's rare to find. You can be the grownup. Culturesync: Tribal Leadership, 2012-Jun-26, by Deirdre Gruendler If you…
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Partnering for loyalty
In many categories, customers have low interest in interacting with the provider. (One time I had to do follow up research on heating and air conditioning customers. They couldn't care less about it–as long as it was working.) One of the best ways to raise interest is to partner. Wall Street Journal: Retail Electricity, by…
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What if you could change the culture in your city? #li
Most of us just accept the 'normal behavior' of a place as something that's handed to us. We have to deal with it. But that's not true, as Grant McCracken has demonstrated. The challenge is having the ingenuity and patience to make changes. Harvard Business Review Blogs: Could a Social-Media Tool Increase Kindness? 2012-Jun-12, by Grant…
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