A question to help you improve your leadership. Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung often would refer to the two-million-year-old self, even when speaking to a child. Jung understood that inherent in our humanity is the wisdom of the ages. Here are three steps you can take...
Cult Brands Are inclusive and actively make customers feel welcomed In Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia, the Macedonian King upset his military compatriots and childhood friends by marrying Roxana. Roxana was the daughter of a minor Persian baron. That is, she was not from Macedonia; she...
What are fairy tales? Simple stories to keep children entertained in the nursery, perhaps—tales of giants and princesses spun out of simple fancy and wayward whimsy? Perhaps, they're something more. Fairy tales are some of the oldest stories in existence. These are tales that have been...
Leaders may struggle to create brands that are still relevant in today's culture due to the high but ambiguous expectations they must achieve. Consider the tried-and-true method of identifying and aligning around a compelling brand promise. This is critical when comparing your brand's performance to...
What do you know? It turns out you can buy happiness. Okay, I might be overstating the case—but only a little. Nearly a decade ago, researchers Scott Rick, Beatriz Pereira, and Katherine Burson found that retail therapy—going shopping specifically to lift the mood, a behavior typically...
One of the most pernicious and underappreciated difficulties in businesses is the fight to feel valued. But What happens when customers feel devalued? In almost all our research, three things happen: Devalued customers destroy your brand's reputation. Devalued customers don't come back. Devalued customers will make your competition...
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...