Featured THREE MARKETING MINDSETS (TO SHIFT).

  THREE MARKETING MINDSETS (TO SHIFT). Mindset #1 (to Shift): Write Marketing Plan Before Getting Brand/Creative Involved. Great marketing doesn’t just happen by opening the lid of a creative box, throwing in the plan and hitting an “On” button. The creative fire that forged the brand keeps sparking right into the marketing plan. Creatives are ...

Featured THREE BRANDING MINDSETS (TO SHIFT).

              THREE BRANDING MINDSETS (TO SHIFT). Mindset #1 (to Shift): Place Your “Message Stack” Above All. No, not “above all.” The message stack is vital and valued to your marketing and sales. Indeed, it is the bathwater you keep fresh, clean and healthy, tracking ...

Your “To Be or Not to Be” List

Try not to become a person of success but rather to become a person of value. ~ Albert Einstein To be or not to be, that is the question. ~ William Shakespeare To Be or Not to Be. Before all your To Do’s, check or create your To Be list ...

Market Like Water

People seek not just to buy, but to buy into a feeling, a sense of trust that “you took the time to really know me.” These are the cases that clients like to discuss when rethinking their branding to better connect with customers. Like water for a parched soul. *** GRAPESHOT: The “Get to It” ...

Write This Down (on paper): TRUST

THE TRUST TEST. Email or phone or….? Which tool do you use to win the trust of your customer, and a sale? Forty-eight graduate business students were given $89 in a study on lying online. They had to tell their partners about the money — and how much they were going ...

How Your Customer Sees You (or Doesn’t) and Trusts You (or Not)

Isn’t it weird how this works? You’re on an overcrowded street in the city, in a sea of people, when you suddenly, unexpectedly, out of the hundreds of faces in your visual field, see the one face of someone you know. Not only do you recognize them immediately, you also ...

Seeing the Extra in the Ordinary

    Emotion plays a larger role in customer experience (than effectiveness and ease): Harvard Business Review’s and Forrester‘s respective seminal studies are still rock solid in showing us why emotion is the most influential of the three e’s of Cx quality — effectiveness, ease, and emotion. Customer Satisfaction (isn’t good enough): Former ...

How Your Sales Depend on the Story of Ben

You know things. Like how storytelling is the way we’re wired to learn. To communicate. To empathize.  Yep, to sell, our ideas, our dreams. You can’t sell it if you can’t tell it. It’s just part of our human DNA: 1. We learn (far faster) 2. and retain (far longer) 3. Through ...

Top Dance Routine Ever?

Imagine a dance routine in a 2082 version of Dancing with the Stars. Think it would blow you away compared to today? Now, check out this from the same 70-year time span…going back in time. Think it could possibly still be one of the greatest dance routines ever? You decide. ...

Nice vs Wow

Next time you’re considering a visual for, well, absolutely anything representing your brand, consider the difference between the two responses: “Nice”       or “Wow”     Ask yourself, will it: 1. Stand Out from the 1,000s of images they will see today? 2. Stop+Engage them in feeling, thinking, and supporting ...

CEO: Know Thy Social Self

It’s not “social  media” that CEOs need concern themselves. It’s more a common sense leadership thing about knowing one’s self and one’s company’s Social Self.  A company’s Social Self can be a revenue-influencing metric that shows a CEO the comparative values between its company and its competitors when and how ...

Gladwell’s Secret Sauce

I have to bring us back to this classic Gladwell. It remains deliciously relevant to seeking a universal answer for making customer X satisfied with product or service Y. Don’t fret over the length of this talk. Malcolm Gladwell makes it fly. ...

Define Brand Strategy and Strategist

Strategy is the single driving cue. With this cue, you have a clear direction. It lights the way. Sets your tone. Ensures the feel. Drives nuance. It changes habit and creates craving. There is only one strategy. All else are tactics that support it. You can decide to revise a ...

Diving for Happiness

I don’t just want to be where my prospects are. I want to make their experiences there better.   ...

Fake Brands Kill Real People

How does an “innocent” public keep drug cartels and terrorists in business? By thinking it is doing no harm when buying counterfeit brands. So, when Prada, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Ray-Ban, Coach, Gucci, et al, gathered in Washington, D.C. for the Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, they were presented the problem, and marketing ...