If I walk into a business and I’m trying to understand what’s really going on, I ask this: “What tension in your customer’s life do you help resolve consistently?” Not features.Not demographics.Not your mission statement. Tension. Because tension is where: motivation lives loyalty forms word of mouth sparks premium pricing becomes possible competitors get...
At some point, every marketer hits a wall. I did too. Early on, I thought the job was to be clever:Better headlines. Better campaigns. Better hooks. Sometimes it worked. Then I’d watch a “less clever” brand win anyway. Why? Because customers weren’t choosing the cleverest message.They were choosing the brand that...
Marketing loves neat diagrams. Awareness → Consideration → Conversion. But real buying behavior is messier: pause compare forget re-enter ask a friend get distracted come back weeks later That “messy middle” is where brands win or lose. This is why long-term brand building matters: It creates memory structures that make it easier to choose later. And it’s...
Most companies say they’re customer centered organisations. Then they measure: internal efficiency short-term sales campaign ROAS quarterly targets And customers feel the gap. Customers First came from watching this happen over and over. Customer-first isn't the intention. It’s behavior. It’s what your team does when: a policy collides with a person a process creates friction service is inconvenient “nobody...
A lot of brands try to “build loyalty” with rewards. Points. Discounts. Perks. Those can help, but they’re not a sense of belonging. They’re incentives. Loyalty, the real kind, is closer to what you see in Cult Brands: Customers don’t just buy.They identify. They feel belonging. They feel seen. They feel...
My second book was born from a simple observation: People talk.Constantly.About everything. And it’s not random. In Why We Talk, I explain the core idea:Humans are wired to share what helps us make sense of the world. That means the biggest growth engine is often not an ad platform. It’s...
Here’s a question that reveals whether a brand is playing checkers or chess: Why do the biggest brands in the world still spend hundreds of millions on advertising they can’t track? Nike doesn’t buy billboards, Olympic sponsorships, or global TV expecting a direct conversion tomorrow. Apple doesn’t run...
In the year 2000, I was standing in the middle of F.A.O. Schwarz in New York City. The famous toy store. The Tom Hanks piano. The magic. And yet, something felt off. There were plenty of people… but not enough buyers. It looked like a brand with a full...
Hi, I’m BJ Bueno. If you’ve been on this list for a while, you’ve seen my name a hundred times. Helped brands. Wrote books. Built frameworks. We talked about loyalty. So why am I reintroducing myself? I want to welcome all the new readers, today over 6000 CEOs of...
Hi there, and Happy New Year! To kick off the year, I wanted to send you a small gift I made for leaders who are building brands in a noisy world: Cult. Creative.A deck on how storytelling helps brands earn trust, create belonging, and turn customers into...