Current Affairs
Don’t Monkey Around with Brand Perceptions
Walmart Pulls Coconut Milk Amid Monkey Labor Allegations. Chained monkeys were trained to quickly climb palms and pick the coconuts for Thai coconut milk brands. Although they were rewarded with food for their labor, animal rights organizations got involved and have been calling this “monkey slave labor”. In 2019, PETA investigators in Asia surfaced several…
Read MoreInvading Hordes
Changes that come suddenly, that are overwhelming and life-changing, can destroy a world of familiarity and predictability but innovation often rises from this destruction to form new business models. When the unexpected visitors arrive. In 793 at Lindisfarne, in northern England, a small monastery of monks going about their monkish business is attacked in the…
Read MoreMore than Digital: Connecting with People
It’s Time to Transform Marketing into People Connecting. How and when you connect with existing and potential customers is not about just sending constant emails out. Why inundate people with your content? It’s common for brands, as it is for people, to want to talk about themselves. We’ve all had interesting and fascinating people in…
Read MoreStrategic Ambiguity
Sometimes An Intentional Lack of Clarity Is Exactly What a Brand Needs. From Coca-Cola to Dunkin Donuts to the global consulting firm Prophet, many companies from consumer-level to B2B are becoming, well, less specific about what they actually sell or do. Coca-Cola Company has far more of its sales in the myriad of beverage brands…
Read MoreMcDonald’s Wants to Know You, The importance of Customer Engagement, and Netflix Falls Off a Cliff
Fries, a Shake, and a Big Mac. You may think when you order at a McDonald’s they know all about you. Not really, but boy, do they care. With the challenges of the pandemic, supply chain shortages and price increases, keeping customers engaged and coming back became a challenge. Many retailers, and now McDonald’s, have…
Read MoreFinding the Perfect One
You offer great value, but how do you find that perfect customer? It often seems that the perfect client, the perfect person is elusive, and not easy to find. Yet you know that what you do—how you are, how you deliver on your promises—will be exactly what that one potential customer, that one person also…
Read MoreMarketing and Brand Strategy are the New Business Strategy
Living in A World of Constant Change. For every company, every brand, and every business from startups to Fortune 500s, the marketing plan is often seen as driven by the business strategy. This idea is a traditional view from business management practices of the last century. Actually, they’re one strategy in this constant world of…
Read MoreDisruption – Knowledge, Flexibility, and Revolutionaries
The Unexpected Challenge. The ability to shift, change and adapt is an essential part of what organizations need to do to survive and manage change in today’s world. Understanding this must be part of marketing and business operations. If your customers are not paying attention or they’ve totally changed, you need to know this. Disruption…
Read MoreSkipping Stones on the Water
Extending the effect of your marketing with social media amplification. When you sit by a lake on a lazy afternoon looking at the still water, you find the smoothest round and relatively flat stone about the size of a fifty-cent piece and, with a powerful spin, toss it and watch it bounce across the lake…
Read MorePeople, Personas and Motivations– Behavioral Marketing Works.
Blasting Ads At Everyone is Like Talking to No One. Historically, marketers have had a very difficult time identifying groups or subgroups that best benefit from a product. Obviously, that never stops anyone from selling. With minimal data to work with, companies bombarded consumers with unrelated ads, emails, phone calls, and other outreach that is…
Read More