Articles
Brand Experience Strategy
Me Too Branding. Don’t Be A Copycat.
Ooohhhh me too. Me too. Me too. 
When a brand so closely resembles another in communications, logo, name, or colors that it causes confusion in the market and to its customers, it is called a copycat brand or as I call it, a “Me Too Brand.”
I once met with this tech company whose whole strategy was to intentionally be a Me Too Brand. Their plan was to confuse the market so they could steal their competitor’s clients. They even went so far as to rename their company. They took the company’s two-w…
Customer Service, Client Journey, Brand Experience, OH MY!
“I know what customer service is.”
“I think I know what customer experience is.”
“What is brand experience?”
That is usually how a conversation about customers relating to a business goes. Companies are familiar with customer service and usually customer experience, although they sometimes conflate the two. Brand experience, on the other hand often draws a blank, or worse, it is lumped in with customer service. Do you see a pattern developing here? There has been a lot of conversation around …
Ultimate Brand Experience--Blue Man Group
I saw the Blue Man Group perform live for the first time earlier this year. I’ve been following them for years and have admired their work ever since I learned about them. The humor, creativity, and inventiveness of the organization is unsurpassed and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it!What the Blue Man Group does really well is they are masters of experience. Going to see a theatrical show or even going to the movies it’s about you sitting in the audience watching and enjoying. Yes t…
Will Membership-Based Brands be Successful in the Future?
Before we teleport into the future, let’s take a trip into the past. Organizations like Rotary, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, United Way, and the Lions Club to name a few, really became popular in the early 1900s. It was a primary resource for socializing, giving back to their community, and even personal or professional development and support. Clearly, these were the days before the internet and we could be “social” with the movement of a mouse or the swipe of a screen. People were expected to work…
Do You Have an Authentic Brand?
In order for your brand to resonate with the market, it has to be authentic. This means that the external actions of a company need to align with its internal culture--or do what you say you do.When a company is successful at this, it can receive benefits of over 6 times the amount of revenue growth and over 7 times the amount of job growth. If that is not enough, companies listed on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work for significantly outperform the S& P 500, according to an 11-year study b…
The Power of Aloha Customer Service Is Unconditional Friendship and Trust
I have lost count of all of the different “types” of customer service and sayings about what customer service should be. Oh, and we can also add the different words for customer service and the actual customer! In the end, they all say the same thing, be nice to the people or companies that give you money.
When I was in Hawai’i, Oahu to be exact—and just so you know, there is no ‘w’ in O’ahu. I was there for a speaking gig and then magically it into a vacation. It was my first time there and wh…
Perception or Communication - Who Will Win?
The bell rings to start the fight! The crowd is roaring to cheer on the contender they want to win, Perception or Communication. They are evenly challenged though their strengths reside in different areas, this will be a good fight!Perception leads the way in affecting emotions, capitalizing on the senses and influencing word of mouth. Communication leads the way in providing information, exchanging ideas, involves all parts of the body, and is a part of every form of media.
Perception has the ab…
How to Effectively Communicate With Your Clients Easily
Communication is key to every relationship . . . open communication that is. As technologies change so do the ways, styles, and expectations of communication. This is particularly true with clients. As a business, you can make executive decisions about how your employees are to communicate with each other, but with clients . . . well that is a different story. In many cases, they tell you what works best for them, and communicating with them in their style of preference usually makes communicati…
Getting Employees Engaged: When They Really Don’t Care
Dustin Walling is a very good friend of mine who works with the construction and technology industries on the gap between management and experts within a company, or "performance management" as he calls it. Anyway, he wrote a great post about team building at a Caterpillar dealership that I want to share with you. Enjoy!
When Doug Fabick became the 4th generation owner of Fenton, MO-based Fabick CAT, a Caterpillar Tractor dealership, his father left him with one key piece of advice, “Build your …
Remember, Your Customers Are Busy
I was reading Steve Pavlina’s series about how to network with busy people. The article itself is great. He goes over a lot of common sense things, and uses great analogies and stories to prove his point. His main point throughout the series is to help you see how a busy person perceives the way you are trying to contact them.
While I was reading this, it got me thinking that a lot of the points Steve makes, are the same points that companies tend to be ignorant of in their approach to marketing…