In the sometimes befuddling and jargon-filled world of marketing it seems a new buzz phrase pops up weekly. In the last year the term “content marketing” has been all over the place and seems to be gathering steam. I have to admit, I’m pretty jaded about these things and have been known...
It shouldn’t be news to anyone who reads this blog regularly that I believe one of the great red herrings of customer satisfaction is the whole idea of “wowing” them – I go so far as to call it the myth of wow. There are a number of good reasons for this and way...
I have a lot of conversations about messaging. The way an organisation talks about itself can be a morass of impenetrable jargon or a clear engaging message – and of course there are degrees in between. What I often run into in these conversations is what I’ve come to think of...
You may recognise the following exchange when discussing positioning or messaging for your organisation. “How about we say we help our customers…” “Yeah but help feels a bit plain, how about…” You can insert the replacement words here – a grab bag of escalating verbs designed to show that while the others might...
The estimable Peter Drucker once stated that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Not sure about the eats part, but the fact that it plays a critical role in building a strong, resilient, competitive organisation is accepted wisdom today. From where I sit, culture is the active face of your brand. Brand...
The holy grail for organisations is customer loyalty. Less talked about but more important to building a brand is employee loyalty. Simply put, you can’t build a great (or even good) brand if you are constantly replacing people. A recent article in Inc. outlines the four things that help earn employee loyalty (and, no,...
I’ve been asked by a number of people what my “brand” take on the Labor Party shenanigans is. I’ll start by saying I’m an interested observer of politics, but by no means am I a political commentator (shudder). And since returning to Oz from the US I’ve been, by turn, bemused,...
Volkswagen has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately. And the company response, or lack of it, carry some good lessons for SMEs who may find themselves in similar situations with products gone wrong and unhappy customers at the gates. I won’t go into the nuts of bolts...
A new campaign by BMW is a timely reminder that you can only be great at one thing. Finding that one thing. Focusing who you are and what you do around that one thing. Making decisions big and small to support that one thing. This is fundamental to building your brand. Knowing...
Something strange happened last year. Metro Trains, who are not especially known for effective communications, decided (were convinced) to make a video. The video was a fun little ditty called “Dumb Ways to Die” and targeted the stupid things people do that get them killed, some of which were stupid things people do...