24 Jan

Being Great Requires Giving Up Being Great At Something Else

Piglet: If everybody were like everybody else, how boring it would be. The things that make me different are the things that make me, me!
Eeyore: Stand tall.
Piglet: You’re in a class by yourself.
Eeyore: Be proud.
Piglet: You’re not like anyone else. No doubt about it, you’re second to none ‘cause you’re the one and only one. Piglet and Eeyore, “You’re the One and Only One,” Winne the Pooh: Sing a Song with Pooh Bear

It often seems like companies are doing everything to try and get customers to do more. 

But, when a company tries to do everything, it excels at nothing. 

Since companies only have a limited number of resources, this usually involves trying to improve their category weaknesses, which inevitably draws focus away from their strengths. And, by improving their weaknesses to match the competition and focusing on winning share of mind for their improvements—and ignoring their strengths—they just end up looking a lot like the competition. 

13:00 / Inspiration / Leadership / Marketing
10 Jan

Cult brands stand against an evil force: they believe the world should be a certain way that stands in opposition to an ill they perceive in the world.

It’s common to talk about the customer journey: the important steps the customer takes when interacting with your company. But, many companies forget to pay attention to the journey their business is on. And, it’s through this journey that we can not only become heroes to our customers but also help them become the heroes in their own journeys.

20:00 / Leadership / Personal Development
27 Dec

Happy New Year

As the year comes to a close, we'd like to thank all of you for continuing to support our blog with your readership.

We'd especially like to thank our friends that contributed blogs in the past year: Tyler Williams, Lead Link of Brand Aura at Zappos, wrote about what it takes to build a great brand without engaging in practices that would disappoint your mom; John Bunch, Lead Organizational Designer at Zappos, wrote about the journey to Zappos' 20th birthday this year and what the future looks like for the company; and Greg Breeding, President of Journey Group, wrote about what it took to create the Love Stamp for the United States Postal Service.

Taking into consideration opens, shares, and clicks, below are our five most popular blogs of 2019.

We wish you and your family a happy, healthy, and fantastic New Year.

BJ, Salim, and Aaron

16:00 / Cult Branding / Cult Marketing
20 Dec

The relationship between Cult Brands and their Brand Lovers is mutually beneficial.

Brand Lovers enjoy a real sense of satisfaction, accomplishment, and belonging from the relationship. Their self-image is enhanced significantly: these customers feel better about themselves—and they feel strongly that others view them more positively—because of the brands they openly embrace.

17:10 / Marketing
14 Dec

Business as usual can only be usual for so long.

Few established organizations set aside time to come up with game-changing ideas. Most meetings are designed to produce incremental changes or strategic shifts.

Rarely do you find an established organization trying to create a future that is radically different than what exists as their current day-to-day reality.

This is why most organizations are blindsided by disruptive competition: they couldn’t see them coming because they didn’t come from the competition they were monitoring.

01:39 / Creativity
07 Dec

When collecting customer insights, every question should be connected to a potential action.

When we coach clients on their branding and marketing strategies, we like to marry best practices with customer data. Although some clients want us to use our research methods to do a deep dive into their customers, most companies want us to use their existing data—either collected by themselves or an outside company—as the source of customer knowledge. Over the years, I've noticed some common pitfalls in the ways customer insights are collected and used across companies of all types and sizes.

Here are five ways to avoid some of the most common ones.

06:23 / Marketing
30 Nov

"Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent 
 or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must kindle an extravagant hope." -- Eric Hoffer

When Aeschines spoke, they said,”How well he speaks.” But when Demosthene spoke, they said, “Let us march against Philip.”David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

“Damn, Daniel! Back at it again with the white Vans.”

Remember that meme? It took the internet by storm in February 2016. What started on February 15th as a video on Twitter of Josh Holtz commenting on his friend Daniel Lara’s clothing skyrocketed Josh and Daniel to recognition, landing them on Ellen DeGeneres and being crowned one of the 30 most influential people on the internet by Time Magazine.[1. Time Staff, “The 30 Most Influential People on the Internet,” Time.com, 2016.]

Seeing its popularity and its ability to break through the clutter, many brands started appropriating the meme: Clorox suggested to “get back at it with Clorox” and Axe attempted to link its popularity to their #findyourmagic hashtag.

As in the case with the Damn Daniel memes, companies often try to hijack memes in an effort to gain borrowed visibility. But, all too often they release their memes after popularity has peaked or they misunderstand the meme.[2. Adam Pierno, “How Brands Can Use Memes to Connect With Consumers in a New Way," AdWeek.com, 2018.] [3. RenĂ©e Millette, “15 Times Big Brands Did Memes and It Got Weird AF,” TheThings.com, 2017.]

05:57 / Marketing
22 Nov

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. —Gilbert K. Chesterton

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.Gilbert K. Chesterton, A Short History of England

As we get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving next week in the US, reflecting on what we’re thankful and grateful for over the last year is the norm.

But, it’s important to regularly reflect on gratitude and thankfulness as individuals and as organizations. Too often we take employees and customers for granted. Yet, it is those employees and customers that we owe our success to.

22:20 / Inspiration / Leadership / Personal Development
15 Nov

Go through a magazine and pick out the advertisements you like best. You will probably pick those with beautiful illustrations, or clever copy. You forget to ask yourself whether your favorite advertisements would make you want to buy the product. --David Ogilvy

What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same. Go through a magazine and pick out the advertisements you like best. You will probably pick those with beautiful illustrations, or clever copy. You forget to ask yourself whether your favorite advertisements would make you want to buy the product.David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

Does this sound familiar: you hire an agency for a campaign, but what you get back doesn’t fully capture your brand or it isn’t in line with what you thought you made clear during preliminary meetings? And, you end up running the ad anyway because there’s no time or budget to do anything else.

This isn't out of the ordinary.

Many agencies try to convince their clients that they have unique expertise and creativity that the client doesn’t have access to without them.

22:36 / Leadership / Marketing