Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.Mark Twain[1. Gay McLaren, Morally We Roll Along, 1938.] Growing your brand can be challenging, but we don't experience...
"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy," John Updike once said, and it was with this in mind that I took in an old debate between journalist Johnathan Kay and conspiracy theorist Webster Tarpley on the 9/11 attacks. I'm not particularly interested in the...
What makes art art? Why is art so important to humanity? These are big questions and not ones that come up often in the context of connecting more effectively with your customers. That's a shame. Understanding what art is and why recorded imagery has such a...
Marketing used to be fairly straightforward: Throw money at advertising in order to influence people to buy your products and services. If your advertising campaign was decent, the resulting sales outweighed the cost of advertising. If your campaign was excellent, your business grew like a...
In our book Customers First, we looked at some of the world's biggest brands—companies like Apple and Nike—to discover how they connect so effectively with their customers. To build powerful, profitable connections, it helps to understand that customer behavior is driven largely by a combination...
Harley-Davidson, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Apple logos have been permanently etched into the skins of customers worldwide. Why do they do it? Why do these raving fans, or what we call Brand Lovers, scorch their bodies with a company’s mark? And what can marketers and brand managers...
Frederico Fellini was a critically acclaimed Italian film director who earned three foreign-film Oscars and a lifetime achievement Oscar. Many of Fellini’s films are counted among the best films ever made. His early films were part of the neorealist movement, which centered on the lower...
Heaven's Gate, Jonestown, Scientology, Manson Family ...
As human beings, we have many different kinds of relationships. The relationship you have with your boss is probably very different than the relationship you have with your romantic partner, and both of these relationships are different from the relationship you have with your favorite...
In 1901, Ivan Pavlov rang a bell and a dog began to salivate. His famous experiment explains much of the mystery behind branding: connect a product or service with the customer’s need and branding occurs. Said another way: create an association in your customer’s mind...