Few business leaders appreciate exactly how important imagery is in connecting to the hearts of their customers. Most marketers want to create imagery that will attract everyone. That's impossible: when you try to be all things to all people, you become nothing meaningful to anyone. Imagery...

A positioning strategy is a way of positioning your retail products and services in the mind of your customers. As marketers, we aspire to build stronger positions—to create a place in the mind of our prospects and customers where our products are positively recalled.  We hope...

If you were to conduct an immediate survey right now, this very instant, of all of the leadership of all of the companies you interact with, in one form or another, over the course of any given 24 hour period, I can say, with a...

Fairy tales are some of the oldest stories in existence. In one form or another, these stories have been told time and time again—admittedly to entertain, but also to teach. The details vary from culture to culture—Europe gave us Hansel and Gretel using their wits to...

You can’t manage what you can’t measure.W. Edwards Deming Businesses have become obsessed with metrics. More metrics are treated as producing greater the results. And, the better the metrics, the better the results. This metric fixation is the byproduct of an unhealthy obsession with outcomes—the movement of...

Great leaders know that everyone wants to be a part of creating the vision. Keep your team involved and motivated by asking these three questions. 1. “How are things going?” [Managers] do not talk to their subordinates about their problems, but they know how to make the...

In ancient Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus. Apollo is the god of the sun, medicine, protection, and prophecy. Apollo had a large cult, centered around Delphi, the most famous and frequently visited oracle in the ancient world. As the god of wine and...

Business archetypes tap into customers' psyches. Psychiatrist Carl Jung considered archetypes the fundamental units of the human mind. Archetypes are like software programs that come preinstalled on your computer (mind). You may not know they exist, but they are always either running in the background or ready...