There’s a clear line between the things you need to do to build a brand and the things that are nice to do. Where and what you spend your time and energy on can be the difference between being a Zappos, Patagonia, Apple (or any of the brands that I like...
In October 2010 I featured a story about TOMS Shoes – a social business that promises to give a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair you purchase. It’s a hell of a promise and my story celebrated them reaching a million shoes. This past month they...
I was talking to a reporter about the so-called Coca-Cola “weight washing” announcements last week and it got me thinking about a broader issue. We all have ideas on what promises organisations should be making, but that isn’t our job. Coca-Cola doesn’t promise to keep you thin. They do promise to “refresh the world and...
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,...
In the absence of expectations being set about what I can or can’t do, it is perfectly reasonable that you as the customer or other stakeholder will apply your own expectations to the situation. But here’s the problem with that. It dooms me to fail. Because there is no way that I can...
It’s coming up to the big daddy Hallmark holiday of the year, Valentine’s Day, so it seemed appropriate to share some love. There are a lot of brands that I like. I like what the organisations do and how they do it and that they stand for something. There are also a...
I was talking at a Churchill Club event this past week around brand and one of the key messages I had for the audience was that while brand is certainly the result of the promises you keep, whether you keep them or not first shows up in what you do...
Too many organisations have become stuck in the “delight” fly trap. It bears repeating – customer satisfaction and loyalty are a function of organisations meeting the expectations they set. The “delight” fly trap. I gave a talk this past week for the City of Monash Women’s Business Network. The topic was “seven things...
An associate sent me an article from Fast Company the other week called “Why it’s important to integrate honesty into your brand”. It wasn’t the article content that made me stop and think (although there’s plenty in there I could comment on), it was the idea that you can “integrate” honesty. Like it is...
In light of the Virgin Australia stake in Tiger Airways this past week, I was thinking about the promises they make. One of my issues with Tiger Airways is that they seem to want to “have their cake and eat it too” in the promises they have made. It’s a common budget airline...