When their home of 103 years was sold the beloved bookshop Hill of Content had to move. They found another space a few hundred metres away but needed to transport 17,000 books. Bring in the movers? No. Put out a call to their community of book lovers? Yes. And so, hundreds gathered on...
Tolstoy challenges those of us on a thousand-mile walk to forget our ultimate goal and say to ourselves every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.’ Transpose ‘walk’ for work, and it’s an idea worth considering. We can all use some help with...
No surprise. When people can rely on a good experience interacting with you, you get a brand bursting with value. Yet, how much do you control? Because an experience is always in the now. Yep, the moment right then. And here comes another one, in a constant, unstoppable stream of...
When Michael Garcia bought drinks at a Starbucks drive-through in February 2020, one of the venti-sized cups of scalding hot tea fell into his lap. He claimed the lid was loose and the cup wasn’t properly wedged into the drink carrier. The resulting third-degree burns to his private parts required skin...
Have you ever needed to change a promise? Committed and agreed, then circumstances went pear-shaped or something unexpected got in the way. You feel conflicted. Social practice says you must keep your promises. No matter what’s happening. I’m guilty of that. My work is littered with encouraging words for how to make...
When organisations talk about customer loyalty, what do they mean? Mostly some mix of how frequently and over what period someone buys a product or service. In all cases there is some kind of (usually) monetary trade happening. And modern definitions certainly focus on faithfulness as the cornerstone attribute. Earlier meanings...
It’s a new year and a new platform and look. From here on, I’m using Substack to send you The Brand Article. It’s a better platform to publish my work on and hopefully a better experience for you. So, let’s go. The start of 2025 also means a fresh slate of questions...
Consider any company that’s been around for a decades or more. They will have shifted products and how they sell them. Perhaps at some point they used a different name or logo, discontinued a product, moved locations, shifted to web only. They might have changed manufacturers, been acquired by a...
Habits and rituals can look similar. They’re not, and I’ve focused on the habit side of things for too long. That changed when I read The Ritual Effect by Professor Michael Norton. Norton says, “One automates, the other animates”. Elaborating that “Habit is the what. It’s something we do. … We...
Once you know what your values mean, you can begin the climb to mastery. Still, the gap between the bottom two layers of the pyramid and the top three is akin to calling the Grand Canyon a ditch. The chasm is so rarely bridged because it takes concerted discipline and consistent effort. These...