Closing the Gap: Brand Modeling as a Decision Making Tool

Sportwear company Athleta built its reputation on yoga wear and gym apparel. Customers found the company online, and soon the fledgling firm had a strong following. Strong enough, in fact, to attract the attention of the Gap. Gap purchased the Athleta brand in 2008, hoping to become more competitive in a field they once dominated.

From all indicators, it appears to have been a good decision. The Athleta line has performed well for Gap, who saw sales in the relevant division increase $100 million dollars the following year. Athleta clothing was only available online and via catalog. Now Gap is taking the brand into the brick and mortar environment, opening a store in San Francisco in January.

This is a move that’s counter to a lot of the prevailing wisdom in retailing, which advocates leaving physical stores behind entirely.  The Athleta brand has been doing well already, which leaves the question to be asked: What went into the decision to commit the time, energy, and resources into opening a brick and mortar store for this brand? What makes the leadership at Gap confident that the risk is worth the reward?

Brand Modeling as a Decision Making Tool

The leadership at the Gap are no more capable of seeing into the future than the rest of us are.  They don’t know, with absolute certainty, that making the investment in a brick and mortar storefront (especially in pricey San Francisco!) will pay off.  But they’re not making the gamble blindly, either.

The Problem of Uncertainty

The largest problem business leaders have is the lack of certainty that confronts us each and every day.  There are very few decisions that we can make with absolute confidence. We don’t know the outcome of any decision until we make and implement the decision.

Consider the Gap’s position: there are so many factors that go into the success or failure of a brick and mortar store—and that’s before you factor in the impact of an established brand. While the success or failure of any one storefront may have very little impact on the Gap organization as a whole, it matters to the Athleta brand.  It’s critical to give the new venture the best chance for success.  The trick is knowing exactly what “the best chance” consists of.

Brand Modeling Identifies The Criteria For Success

At its essence, Brand Modeling is the systematic examination of what your best customers value most about your organization and understanding how to deliver more of that experience.  Additionally, you need to know what your best customers value in general, and in your category.

Gap is confident that they know what female apparel shoppers want. Toby Lenk, president of Gap Direct, Inc, which oversees the Athleta brand, said, “With this type of product, women’s active athletic product, it is really important to be able to feel it, touch it, try it on.”

Is the ability to engage tangibly with a company’s offerings enough of a draw to bring customers into the store? Is the point of a brick and mortar store to provide another sales outlet—or to drive more sales in an existing venue? Lenk reports customers spending four dollars on apparel in the brick and mortar setting for every dollar they spend online. It’s compelling information.

Brand Modeling allows us to take compelling information and determine the best way to make use of it. The Brand Modeling process delivers quantifiable, objective data that can be used to examine that conclusion and determine its validity. The richer and more complete the understanding of our best customer’s behavior and motivations is, the more we can introduce a number of variables into our engagement with them and project, with reasonable confidence, how our best, most profitable customers will react. That’s a powerful tool to have, especially when you’re trying to decide whether to open your next location in San Francisco, San Diego, or in “the real world” at all.

February 3, 2011 by

Lady Gaga as a Role Model?

Do business leaders have a lesson to learn from Lady Gaga? At first glance, it might not appear so, but that’s until you learn that the 25 year old singer is well on her way to earning over $100 million in 2011.

Forbes Magazine recently ran a piece detailing Gaga’s multiple revenue streams. Praised for being as shrewd and decisive as she is fashion-forward and creative, Lady Gaga has done some things exceptionally well. There’s wisdom in her approach that can be emulated by business leaders across the board.

Besides, she’s a snappy dresser.

Loving Her Little Monsters

Lady Gaga has, throughout the course of her career, made an explicit point of reaching out to and celebrating her fans.  Calling them her little monsters, Gaga connects with her fan base regularly, via Twitter and other social media platforms. There’s a continual emphasis on community, and when Lady Gaga talks to her fans, she makes a point of addressing them en masse.

This same sense of community, of belonging, of being part of a larger whole, is echoed in the success of some of the world’s most dominant brands.  Harley Davidson, through gatherings and events of the Harley Owners Group, takes much the same approach, albeit with marginally more chrome.

Apple aficionados revel in their sense of community, defining themselves as much by their choice of technology as their worldview, personal philosophy, or profession.

Let Your Best Customers Know They’re Your Best Customers

Lady Gaga uses every touch point to let her fans know she values and appreciates them.  She shouts it from the stage, she says it when she’s accepting awards, it’s written in the liner notes to her CD, and her website is loaded with messages of appreciation and gratitude. Fans are told that coming albums are polished versions of what they got to see first at live shows and concerts, before the world was watching every note. There’s an overt message of inclusiveness and celebration.

More than that, Lady Gaga’s messages are crafted and delivered in a way to resonate uniquely for her very best fans, many of whom think she’s speaking directly to them.  This connection underlies their fanatical loyalty. Business leaders who want to duplicate the same type of connection with their best customers need a way to find the same point of emotional resonance, delivering the messaging that buyers will find not only compelling, but meant exclusively for them.

“I am doing this all for you,” Lady Gaga pronounces, and her fans cheer with total abandon—because they believe it.

Can your organization say the same thing to its customers? Would it be believable? Can you, right now, point to three things that your organization has done to let your best customers know not only that they’re appreciated but that they’re the core, driving force behind every aspect of what your company does?

If you’re committed to growing your business and growing your profitability, all of your marketing and branding efforts must be discovering why your best customers love you. Like Lady Gaga, you must use constant, overt appreciation and celebration of your best customers. If for no other reason, treating your best customers better than anyone else creates more people who want to be your best customers.  And that’s music to anyone’s ears!

January 27, 2011 by

What Makes A Subaru A Subaru

2010 was not a great year for many car manufacturers. The phrase underperforming analysist expectations has been bandied about quite a bit. Projections for the auto industry’s growth invariably include the words slow and steady.

Except, of course, for Subaru. Sales of Subaru’s offerings, which includes the Legacy, Outback, and Forester, are up over 22% in 2010. Look back two years, and it’s a staggering 50% increase in sales.

While this has been happening, the US economy has been in rough shape. People who don’t have jobs or who no longer have easy access to credit aren’t shopping for cars right now. Consumer confidence may be returning – but it’s taking its sweet time getting here.

And Subaru has their best year ever.

Not only are they having their best year ever, they’re having their best year ever while running the Share the Love campaign. In this wildly popular incentive (now on its third year) Subaru gives away $250 to one of five pre-selected charities when someone buys a new car.

Subaru’s doing extremely well with a campaign that urges people to give away money during one of the toughest recessions this nation has ever seen. In a world that seems overrun with anxiety and financial stress, Subaru is making significant strides finding people who have a need to share what wealth they have.

Most companies will tell you they’re after companies who want to save money. Subaru chose to focus on the ones who want to give it away. And look – it seems like they’re winning!

How Did They Know To Do That?

Subaru is doing what successful, dominant companies do. They’ve learned who their customer is – and not just on that easy, surface level. Demographic data provides valuable insights, to be sure – but there’s no ready way to enumerate the ranks of people who would be moved to purchase one model of car over another when the differentiating factor between the two is the chance to donate $250 to help homeless cats find new families. To get that, you have to go deeper. You have to understand on a profound and fundamental level what makes your customers tick.

Brand Modeling begins with the premise that we have to know who our customers think they are. How do they see themselves in the world? What type of person are they – and what type of person are they when they like themselves the best?

Subaru hit it out of the park when they hit upon the concept of almost effortless altruism. Even a cursory examination of their target market – or a quick conversation with one of the growing legions of Subaru loyalists, who are happy to ‘share the love’ with you – reveals a strong tendency toward social and environmental activism. These are people who like to give, who like to contribute to the world around them and leave the place better than they found it. These are traits they value highly – and when they see a car manufacturer espousing those same values?

They’ve been given a reason to buy that no other car manufacturer has given them.

That’s why Subaru has had the best sales year ever, pure and simple. They’re giving their customers what their customers value most – and a pretty good car, besides.

January 18, 2011 by

The Dark Knight: Why So Successful?

 

It’s only the second movie to ever pass the $500 million mark, with Dan Fellman, Warner Brothers’ head of distribution, predicting that it will end up taking in somewhere between $530 and $550 million.

Critics trying to figure out why The Dark Knight has been so successful have come up with a series of rational, and seemingly plausible reasons why the movie is so popular. But, frankly, I don’t buy any rationalization I’ve seen.

Some claim it has to with the fact that it was Heath Ledger’s last movie. But, Ledger was never a box office superstar. The Dark Knight has made more money than all of Ledger’s other movies combined. And, it’s not even his last film. He has a role in next year’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, and I’ll bet that film won’t be a box office smash.

Some claim it has to do with Heath Ledger’s performance. But when have great performances translated into big box office money?

Some claim it has to do with director Chris Nolan reinvigorating the Batman franchise. But, Batman Begins grossed less than Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman.

Some claim a combination of these factors is responsible. That’s reasonable, but I think something much more interesting lurks below the blockbuster surface: The Dark Knight taps into the power of archetypes in a very accessible way—a combination I’ve yet to see as clearly demonstrated in any other film. It was even evident in the trailers.

And, I have no doubt that the heavy archetypal atmosphere was intended by Nolan: in Batman Begins Jonathan Crane, a Jungian analyst and the alter ego of the villain Scarecrow, explains that people often externalize their inner demons, in his case in the form of the scarecrow.

It’s hard to imagine a supervillain that is a closer manifestation of evil chaos than the Joker. The Joker, in Jungian terms, is Batman’s shadow. The shadow is irrational, and is the repressed side of a persona, containing things that, if they became conscious, contradict the way an individual believes himself to be.

The Joker is chaotic, acting without rationality, he embodies the forces that Batman tries to repress. If Batman were to let them manifest, he could easily become as evil as any villain. In trying to take down the Joker, Batman is afraid of becoming too much like the Joker, not willing to let the shadow through as conquering the shadow impulses and falling prey to them are equally likely.

This struggle between Batman and the Joker, two sides of one personality, is at the heart of the movie, and at the heart of all the trailers.

In the end, Harvey Dent’s transformation into Two-Face shows what happens when one gives in and becomes the victim of the shadow’s impulses. He has two faces, one is his normal persona and the other is the shadow. He is the synthesis of Batman and the Joker, were Batman not able to confront the irrational evil inside. After Two-Face dies, Batman must allow himself to embody some of the evil aspects without giving into them, to lift the burden from Harvey Dent, who couldn’t contain his shadow impulses, and save Gotham’s soul.

And what does this have to do with marketing? If you’ve read my article on Archetypal Branding, you know I’m a big proponent of discovering the archetype inside your brand. The Dark Knight embraced the idea of the shadow archetype, and in doing so depicted the internal struggle all humans experience with their darker side. It spoke to a deep, undeniable aspect of the human condition. This is what all great archetypes do.

Archetypes energize your brand and tap deep into your customers’ relationship with your brand. They pass beyond a rational, surface level, and get to the heart of the emotional relationship with your brand. They speak subconsciously to your customers about what it means to be human—about what it means to be them.

And yes, as The Dark Knight shows, embracing archetypes and delivering them in a way that can be easily understood by your customers can be profitable.

October 8, 2010 by

Ten Reasons to Focus on Your Best Customers

Your best customers are your Brand Lovers. Understanding the needs of your Brand Lovers and serving them better than anyone else is critical if you want to outmaneuver the competition and grow a long-term sustainable business.

Here are ten reasons why your Brand Lovers are so important:

1. Your Brand Lovers choose you more often than your competitors. To most Mac users, there’s no alternative competitor to choose from.

2. Your Brand Lovers spread the word about your brand and create new customers for you. Basically, your best customers are the source of your word-of-mouth stream.

3. Your Brand Lovers are by nature loyal customers. Customer loyalty is a better determinant of profitability than mass appeal. (Again, just ask Apple.)

4. Focusing on your Brand Lovers and cultivating customer loyalty can help you double your return on assets (ROA).

5. Similarly, serving your best customers can lead to explosive return on investment (ROI). Example: When Apple opened their retail stores they expected to generate $1,000/square foot. They actually generated $4,000/square foot.

Ultimately, your Brand Lovers drive the profitability of your business.

6. In The Loyalty Effect, Frederick Reichheld explains how a 5% increase in customer loyalty can increase a company’s profitability by 40 to 95%.

7. Think about what would happen if you turned just 10% of your occasional customers into Brand Lovers. For large enterprises, this shift represents billions in additional revenue and radically higher profit margins.

Need more reasons?

8. By focusing on your Brand Lovers, your cost of acquiring a new customer decreases.

9. Your marketing effectiveness soars as a result of building a stronger brand presence focused around the needs of your best customers.

10. By focusing on your Brand Lovers you can build a powerful brand that stands for something meaningful to your special customers. This gives you clear differentiation and helps you organically attract more of your most profitable customers.

The bottom line is that serving your best customers is the surest way to grow a profitable business—in any economic climate.

February 28, 2010 by

Ikea Brings Fun Shopping to Your Home

 

Many retailers loose a big edge online because they don’t create a pleasurable shopping experience, a place where the customer can enjoy the essence of the brand and even do a little “window shopping.”

If you have never visited Ikea.com you don’t know what you’re missing. Perhaps one of the best shopping experiences found online, Ikea’s Web site is considered to be a “best of breed” by the “Web Globalization Report Card,” placing 23rd out of 200 Web sites.

More amazing than their online store is the fun experience provided through their online kitchen showroom. Ikea has developed this online showroom to inspire their customers with ideas for their kitchens. Check out the experience for yourself!

Ikea has set up an online experience that can’t even be matched in a real life scenario. With great music, photography, and a lot of imagination, Ikea allows their shoppers to look through their products and get a feel of what it can do for their home. Although there are many products displayed with their price, Ikea wants you to take in the full experience and doesn’t even offer any kind of shopping cart to distract you from the experience.

Ikea creates an online showroom that sparks anyone’s imagination. By inventing different scenarios, music, and different atmospheres, Ikea allows everyone to find something they love about Ikeas design.

So what can we learn from Ikea’s online experience?

Ikea shows us that great brands extend past the physical world. Making sure their online space reflects their physical locations and atmosphere, Ikea makes sure they give their customers an enjoyable shopping experience?even if they’re just browsing.

Don’t be afraid to show who and what your brand is throughout all touch points. Give your customers and those interested in becoming your customers a unique experience no matter what aspect of your brand they encounter.

Happy Brand Building.

Where to go from here

IKEA Cult Brand Profile

Make Love Requited

The Loyalty Continuum

October 8, 2009 by

Let’s Give ’em Something to Talk About

Amazing customer experiences will start conversations

ORLANDO, Fla. – Last summer, in an article titled, “I Sold it Through the Grapevine,” Business Week reported that marketing powerhouse companies like Procter & Gable were using legions of moms to help promote their products. In behind-the-scenes word-of-mouth campaigns, these moms share products and coupons with co-workers and friends based on talking points suggested to them by the company, helping the company introduce new products and extol the virtues of current products.

BJ Bueno, marketing expert and a partner at Nonbox Consulting, believes hiring “pretend fans” often backfires. His newest release, Why We Talk: The Truth Behind Word-of-Mouth (Creative Crayon Publishers, February 2007, ISBN: 0971481539, $24.95) explores word-of-mouth marketing and how to generate, not manipulate, customer conversation. Bueno introduces seven principles to create amazing customer experiences and generate authentic product gossip, steering marketers away from buzz agents and freebies, as well as other techniques that do not build lasting brands.

As word-of-mouth becomes a more accepted and popular marketing practice, most marketers have focused on WHAT people talk about but have failed to address WHY people talk. Based on extensive research into psychology, marketing, and consumer behavior, Why We Talk explores what motivates consumers to spread the word about a company and its products. Bueno advocates learning how to serve your customer better, instead of investing time and energy trying to manipulate and influence customers to talk.

There is no magic formula to get people to start jumping around and telling the world about a new product or service,” says Bueno. “If you give someone something to talk about, they will. Create experiences for your customers through your products and services that give them something to talk about.”

Bueno is the co-author of the popular marketing book, The Power of Cult Branding, which received rave reviews from leading marketing mavens like Al Reis, Jay Conrad Levinson, and Jeffrey Fox. Bueno is also a partner in Nonbox Consulting, a consumer insight think tank located in Orlando, Fla., which provides consulting services for companies interested in discovering the secrets to creating beloved brands. He is a member of the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association (RAMA) and is on the board of the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) for top international retailers. He has advised companies like Kohl’s Department Store, LA Lakers, Thomas Nelson Publisher, Scheels, and the Magic of David Copperfield. Bueno currently lives in Orlando, Fla.

For more information about Why We Talk: The Truth Behind Word-of-Mouth, please visit cultbranding.com/blog.

October 5, 2009 by

A Child’s Day Is Forever

One of the characteristics of Cult Brands is their unabashed ability to play, as written in the Golden Rule of Fun. Although we’re programmed to think that there’s nothing funny about being an adult, these brands fearlessly turn back the hands of time and enthusiastically celebrate the child within us.

Childlike, Not Childish

You play an innocent practical joke on your friend. And it’s a good one. But your friend doesn’t appreciate your feeble attempts at making her laugh. She scolds, “Don’t be such a child!

Now you can take this proclamation as either an insult or a compliment. According to Merriam-Webster, to be childish is to be characterized by immaturity, lacking in poise and complexity. To be childlike is to resemble a child, marked by innocence, trust, and ingenuousness.

Many times we confuse these two terms. We think that acting like a child is a bad thing, because we’re old, we should know better, we need to act our chronological age at all times. However, in Games People Play, psychiatrist Eric Berne theorized that we have three ego states—the Child, Adult, and Parent—all of which are important and acceptable within the right context. We’re comfortable playing the Adult and Parent, but now we know it’s really okay being the Child at times too.

MINI’s Way to Play

Certain Cult Brands, like MINI, the ‘jumbo shrimp’ of the car industry, have overturned such rigid definitions of adulthood by encouraging drivers to get out there and play.

On their website, they explain that too many hours clocked at the office can put you in a rut, and how it’s best to get out and motor. With step-by-step instructions, you can install a customizable MINI Desktop Decoy screen saver, and then duck out of the office. That way, it’ll look and sound as if you’re working hard, when you’re hardly working and taking your MINI out for an afternoon ride.

Other creative collectibles include a downloadable assemble-it-yourself Life Size MINI Robot that doubles as your motoring guardian. You just need to print out and tape together 289 sheets of paper, and there you have a gigantic transformer robot as your personal wingman. But of course, knowing MINIs awareness of environmental issues, please recycle. MINI also encourages its drivers to hand out Good Motoring Citations, which look and feel like real traffic violation tickets, only the citation is meant to reward good motoring. MINI explains, “Let’s take the law into our own hands. Let’s slap someone with a compliment. Let’s reward a really good parking job. Let’s write someone up for having a sweet set of wheels. Let’s be sure we make this month’s quota.” You’re instructed to fill it out, place it under the windshield wiper, and then run away.

The purpose? MINI says it is to contribute to the “collective good” of “motoring karma.” Among the different citations, you might be the proud recipient of the “Wash me” citation and the note: “Congratulations. Your car is absolutely filthy. This means you have really enjoyed motoring in the fullest sense of the word. Keep up the good work.” MINI’s initiative reflects a playful spirit, much like the experience of exploring a nouveau casino en ligne 2024, where innovation meets entertainment. You might also be commended for having a great bumper sticker. MINI says, “Humor is important, especially when you’re stuck in traffic. Without it, we’d all just be getting from point A to point B. But you took the time to change that. And never once mentioned your honor student, thanks a lot for that.” As an owner of a convertible, you might be recognized for “going topless.” Your note reads: “You’re motoring in a convertible the way it was meant to be done: Open. And you trusted the world not to rob you blind. And that’s special.”

The beneficiary of the ‘Good Motoring Citation’ is then instructed to “mail this compliment home to your mother.” After all, we’re still little kids playing in a bigger sandbox.

Take this lesson from MINI, and don’t be afraid to show customers your playful, childlike spirit. We all know that the big kid getting down and dirty on the playground is more fun to be with than the stodgy, serious adult who’s afraid of rumpling his three-piece suit.

Embrace the Golden Rule of Fun and honor the childlike spirit within. Admit it. It’s more fun coloring outside the lines, isn’t it?

September 16, 2009 by

Eternal Student

Dr. Michael DeBakey was a god-like figure in the world of surgery, he performed in the neighborhood of 60,000 surgeries, invented over 50 medical instruments, had a pioneering role in developing the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units, the artificial heart, as well as a slew of other surgical techniques.

As a 23-year-old medical student he invented the roller pump, a critical component to the heart and lung machine that makes open-heart surgery possible. In developing this pump, DeBakey couldn’t find any useful device in the medical literature, so he went to the library and started studying pumps of various formats created over the past 2000 years. He found his solution in the 19th century.

He also developed a type of ventricular assist device (VAD)—a device that replaces partial function of a failing heart—which isn’t particularly surprising taken in the context of his other achievements, except he invented it in his 90s.

Dr. DeBakey’s achievements are astounding, but the thing I find most fascinating about him is a comment by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in a blog post about DeBakey’s passing: when DeBakey was asked what accounted for his inventiveness he attributed it to reading one new book a week, even reading the Encyclopedia Britannica when he was younger.

This was striking in light of how many people claim that they don’t have time to read. A 2005 Gallup poll reported that only half of all Americans read more than five books a year; yet, according to a 2006 Nielsen Media Research study, the average American watches four hours and thirty-five minutes of television each day. There isn’t a lack of time to read, the time is just diverted elsewhere. And, surely if the greatest living surgeon had time to read, anyone does.

The majority of people who claim they don’t have time to read tend to be bogged down in the daily grind of their work, from entry-level positions to the executive level. They get stuck in the execution; they confuse busyness with effectiveness. It’s not surprising that these types feel they don’t have time to read: they are caught in a web of constant doing—it seems like hard work.

The Nobel-prize-winning structural biologist Max Perutz once said of James Watson, one of the co-discovers of the structure of DNA, “Jim never made the mistake of confusing hard work with hard thinking.”

And look where hard, effective thinking got Watson and DeBakey. And, they both read, a lot.

This quest to learn isn’t just characteristic of great scientific minds, it’s also characteristic of great business leaders. Howard Schultz went searching for the future of the Starbucks business, and found it in the cafes of Italy; Sam Walton made frequent trips to all of his stores to see what was working and what wasn’t and how he could use it to improve the business of WalMart; and, Oprah has transformed her love for knowledge into empowerment for her devoted fans through Oprah’s Book Club.

Reading books are not only a great way to learn but also a great way to extract yourself from the web of busyness and can provide valuable insight for many dimensions of your life.

So, next time you feel busy, sit down, read a book and reflect. How can the ideas change your business? How can they change your life?

September 1, 2009 by

Being Human: Honor Thy Employee

You take a week off work to deal with a family emergency. When you return, you’re told to contact the Human Resources Department. The voice on the phone is devoid of human feelings. You’re instructed to fax proof to substantiate your absence. What would be acceptable as proof—a copy of the emergency room bill or how about a receipt from the funeral parlor? Why do you need proof? Can’t you hear it in my voice? Isn’t my word good enough?

Archaic company policies spell out sick time benefits. If you’re out sick for more than two days, you’ll need to bring in a doctor’s note to excuse your absence. You think you’re caught in a time warp, traveling back to your days in elementary school. Next thing they’ll ask is for your mommy to sign off on your quarterly performance reports.

Sadly, these types of heartless interactions are typically encountered in bureaucratic organizations. Although not necessarily motivated by malice, these companies are blinded by their need for efficiency. It takes courage to break out of this rigid mindset and relinquish the need for control. Most of all, it takes spirit to esteem employees as human beings with meaningful lives beyond work.

Cult Brand Southwest Airlines is the champion of cultivating a world-class culture. At Southwest, if you have a baby, you’ll receive a joyous note of congratulations. If there’s a death in your family, you’ll receive communication filled with heartfelt condolences. If you’re out sick because of a serious illness, you’ll receive a phone call every two weeks to see how you’re doing.

Founder and former chairman Herb Kelleher once said, “We could have made more money if we furloughed people. But we don’t do that. And we honor them constantly. Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions of grief or joy, we will be there with them. They know that we value them as people, not just cogs in a machine.”

Kelleher guided Southwest by these principles for nearly 30 years, and the public is finally catching on. A recent survey by the National Consumers League shows that customers are paying more attention to the way employers treat their employees. In fact, 76% of Americans indicated that a company’s treatment of its employees is a major factor in deciding whether or not to patronize that company.

Like Southwest, the entertaining financial information provider The Motley Fools knows the value of honoring their employees, especially in celebrating life’s milestones. While many parents need to fight for their rights to take time off, The Fools give new moms and dads 8 to 12 weeks off at 100% pay. Knowing that new parents barely have enough time for themselves, they provide $400 worth of take-out meals at the company’s expense. The Fools even offer a lactation program, including home consultation and telephone/email support, to help ease the transition to parenthood.

Companies that prioritize policies over people are destined for mediocrity. Great companies focus on human values rather than by-the-book operations and procedures. If you treat your employees with love and respect, you can trust that your customers will be privileged with the same.

Honor your employees as human beings, rather than automatons ready to serve at any cost. They have a name, a face, and most of all, a beating heart.

July 23, 2009 by