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Marketing and the Sense of Belonging
I read a fine post on Only Dead Fish the other day. It dealt with the question of how we find community in our fragmented world. Another question occurred to me: what does the fundamental human desire...
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Phony Assets vs. the Trusted Advisor
As a marketer, the first two items on your to-do list are making people aware and then engaging them. The first task is easy to understand. The second, not so much. And that’s a problem, because...
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When Customer Satisfaction Harms Customer Loyalty
Satisfied customers are loyal. Says who? Not hoteliers. According to a new study, satisfaction across the hospitality industry is rising, but sales aren’t. That’s because customer loyalty is sliding....
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Innovation and the Struggle for Control
You’ve probably known for a while that Firefox is moving to a faster development cycle, and a lot of corporations are peeved. The complaint of the big IT departments: “We can’t keep up your release...
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On Recharging the Batteries
I’ve written before on the need to rest, reflect, and recharge the batteries. You haven’t heard from me this week, because that’s what I’ve been doing. I hope you’ve had the chance to do the same.
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The power of community
Over the past two years I have been helping to build a community in East Portland. This area is now called Rosewood. When we started two years ago, it was a place of strangers, people living together...
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The problem with Big Data
Okay, we all know the story about how Target used data mining techniques to improve the targeting of its advertisement campaigns. It got real creepy, like when they started sending ads for baby...
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Why lean is not enough
Over the past two decades, companies have been focusing on squeezing more value out of their manufacturing operations. Cleaving the fat, making things lean. This process has, for the most part, been...
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Fast Iteration: lessons from genetic programming
Okay, I am not going to get too geeky here, but there are important lessons that I have learned from hanging around with some serious geeks. One lesson was about the power of value networks (learned...
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Shareholder value vs. Customer value
There was a great column published this week by Joe Nocera entitled “Down with Shareholder Value“. In that column he challenged the long-held notion that the end-all and be-all of a corporation is the...
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A reason to listen
Years ago I embarked on a journey. How many years ago was it? 14? Anyway, it feels at this point a long time ago. This was a journey to learn how to better use the web to listen. Not to collect data...
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How we listen matters
During the 90’s I was running around Asia listening to business executives about their needs for IT systems and support services. There were two main methodologies that I used, focus groups and...
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The dawn of the digital renaissance
I am beginning to see the future. Working with high school students helps you do that. Our business and political leaders are not the future, it’s the newly minted young adults that are. And they live...
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When Customer Satisfaction Harms Customer Loyalty
Satisfied customers are loyal. Says who? Not hoteliers. According to a new study, satisfaction across the hospitality industry is rising, but sales aren’t. That’s because customer loyalty is sliding....
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Unleashing the potential
Brand. This is perhaps the most important and least understood word in our business world. Yet, loyalty to a brand is the most important predictor of business success. A brand is far more than the...
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Innovation, Coffee and German Philosophers
I’ve been thinking about coffee lately. And innovation. And, of course Nietzsche. Who doesn’t, after all? Coffee has two roles in innovation. The obvious one is in keeping people awake so they can...
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