There’s a place and time for the formal, projectable kind of marketing research. However, the wrong marketing research can put a drag on momentum, suck-up marketing support funding, lead to the wrong conclusions, inaction and even paralyze the organization with useless facts. Marketing research should lead to knowledge. And, knowledge is a practical understanding that leads […]
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“The goal isn’t to do business with people who need what you make; the goal is to do business with people who believe as you believe.” Simon Sinek, TED Video, September 209 We continue to be convinced that the most common and costliest brand positioning blunders occur in targeting. Most common because way too many in […]
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You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself. John Steinbeck I think it is fair to say that we marketers should strive to empathize with our target customers. After all, empathy is about seeing, feeling and understanding what another person is experiencing—from their perspective. It could better lead us to discover legitimate and […]
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Icon – ikon, (noun) an object of uncritical devotion; an emblem, symbolSynonyms: God, hero, idol Another icon passed away. No, not a human icon (such as Lee Iacocca, the subject of my musing in the last blog), but the Volkswagen Beetle bit the dust. The Beetle is the best-selling car of all time. The last […]
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Lee Iacocca, among one of the first “business celebrities,” passed away on 2 July 2019. Most of us may be familiar with him in name due to his celebrity but not fully appreciate his accomplishments since he was prominent back in the 1980s—long before most of you became marketers. He, along with Steve Jobs (Apple […]
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For quite some time, we’ve been comparing your product to an “egg!” What we’re saying is that there is really little difference in products competing in the same category. They work in the same fundamental way and generate the same basic outcomes—regardless of your category! Consequently, in this “age of sameness and abundance” where generally […]
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We are not publishing DISPATCHES or Marketing Matters this week. We’re taking time to celebrate the 4th of July with family and friends. This is the day that represents our Declaration of Independence and our country’s birth as a free and independent nation. It’s a day where we get together with family and friends to […]
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Past success(es) can be a problem. In a 1999 Harvard Business Review article, “Why Good Companies Go Bad,” which could easily be titled, “Why Good Brands Go Bad,” Donald N. Sull writes, “Success breeds active inertia, and active inertia breeds failure.” This is as true today, perhaps, even more so than when it was first written […]
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With so many product choices today, we truly live in an age of abundance. It is also an age of sameness. Moreover, generally acceptable quality (GAQ) reigns. So, how might we break-out of the pack to win? There are four ways to win with our brand in the marketplace. I’m not referring to functional areas such […]
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I coined the term “Marketect” years ago, which is worth revisiting. Marketect is comprised of two words, “marketer” and “architect.” The word “architect” comes from the Greek word “architektor,” meaning “master builder.” Architects design structures AND supervise their development. Marketing is a lot like architecting. Instead of designing and managing the construction of buildings, bridges, […]
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