“I went to school on Tom’s ideas!”
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com
A Clear Eye.
On customers, brands and marketplace success
by Tom Asacker
“I went to school on Tom’s ideas!”
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com
1. Decoding Steve Jobs: Trust the Art, Not the Artist
I'm not impressed with Bill Taylor's blog post, but the comments are priceless. Harvard Business Blog
2. Google to compete with Microsoft with new operating system
Google in the latter half of next year plans to release an operating system based on its Chrome Web browser for low-cost PC netbooks, according to a post on its Web site. The Google Chrome Operating System will go head-to-head with rival Microsoft and its Windows operating system. The New York Times
3. Rationalization in Decision Making
Why we don’t always choose our favorite option. Kellogg Insight
4. STORES' 18th Annual Top 100 Retailers
Ranked by annual revenues, this report is the definitive list of North America’s largest retail companies. Bet you know who’s in the top spot. STORES.org
5. Video and book excerpt: When sustainability means more than ‘green.’
Sustainability in business means, above all, ensuring that the business thrives in the long term. Placing today’s social, economic, and cultural challenges—as well as environmental ones—at the core of a company’s strategy isn’t just lip service; it’s the key to sustained success. McKinsey Quarterly
Bonus link: Eternal Moonwalk
When great companies like P&G, UPS, Time Warner, Meredith, and others need an entertaining and inspiring speaker to shake up their people, fill them with ideas and charge them with inspiration, who do they call? See for yourself! www.AsackerOnVideo.com
If the value of a brand is the value of the customer's experience, then it stands to reason that said value is cocreated with the customer since the customer plays an integral role in the creation of the experience. Right?
Okay, now stop and think about what you are doing -- what ever activity it is -- and answer these three simple questions:
1. Are my customer's experiencing this activity?
2. Is the activity creating a positive experience for the customer?
3. Will this activity improve the future experiences of my customers?
If you answered "no" to those questions, you're activity is valueless. Figure out a way to stop doing it, or change the way you do it, so you can get on with the critically important job of adding value -- to your brand, to people's lives, to your organization, and, ultimately, to your own work and life.
I was once asked by an executive, with regards to branding, value, expectations, etc.:
"So let me get this straight. People are exposed to my business -- my brand -- by experiencing something or someone. And then they think about what it is they’ve sensed and decide if what I offer -- our unique value proposition -- is something that interests them?"
That sounds right, doesn't it? It's not. Here's how I responded:
"Well, you’re close. In fact, you’d be dead on if this were 1950. Unfortunately that’s not how people’s brains work today. It’s simply impossible to rationally consider all of the choices in this chaotic and overstimulated marketplace -- to put all of that brand information in our heads and then sort through it. Instead people take a more intuitive course of action.
Instead of sensing and then thinking about you and what you offer, they sense and then feel something. They engage in interpretive looking or sensing. Their sensory experience causes them to feel a certain way and believe certain things about you, based on their past experiences and memories. Then they think about those feelings and instinctively make some sort of decision."
Do you see? People's feelings create a sketchy mental picture of your brand and your offering and their thoughts hastily complete that picture to support their beliefs, their assumptions, their biases, and even their self-perceptions. You must appeal to their feelings first. He didn't get it. I hope you do.
Three years later and not much has really changed with regards to brands and branding.
Note: I wasn't making predictions, just stating the obvious (which, strangely, is not so obvious to most business people): Listen to the podcast
This month's short article was inspired by legendary designer Dieter Rams' “Ten Principles for Good Design:"
Read "How to Design a Brand" when you get a chance. Here's the link (PDF):
If you enjoy it, please pass it forward. Just right click the link directly above, click "Copy Link Location," and then right click and paste it into your email. Or blog about it, or get crazy and Tweet it! :) Thanks in advance.
And as always, if you're interested in receiving notification of new articles by email (along with some random statistics, news and interesting links that you won't find on this blog), you can join the legion of others by entering your email address, clicking the submit button, and then confirming your subscription from Aweber. Thanks!
1. Malcolm Gladwell on why Chris Anderson is wrong about "Free" and Anderson's response.
Gladwell in The New Yorker. Anderson on his blog. And a few words from Seth Godin.
2. You Can't Beat Habit
The economy has even the most habitual customers rethinking what they buy -- forcing you to win their loyalty all over again, according to Neale Martin, author of "Habit." Entrepreneur
3. Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis
When the economy recovers, things won’t return to normal -- and a different mode of leadership will be required. Harvard Business Review
4. Scientist: Influencer Theory Is Bogus
Yahoo's Duncan Watts says the influencer idea isn't even a theory, it's a 'rhetorical device.' Brandweek
5. Why Your Gut Is More Ethical Than Your Brain
It's believed that to live ethically, we must engage our reason, which reins in the whims and follies of emotion. But what if unethical behavior is actually spurred, rather than prevented, by reason? Fast Company
Note to my U.S. friends and family: Have a safe and happy 4th of July celebration! Here's a little video to inspire you: Great Quotes from Great Leaders
I hear it all the time: "How do I get my people to embrace these brand concepts? To live these brand principles?"
Here's the simple answer: The same way you get customers to respond to your brand. First, by appealing to what matters most to them, which is them -- their lives, their families, their futures. Start by covering the table stakes in your competitive environment: things like fair wages and benefits, an emotionally healthy work environment, fairness and transparency in your dealings with them, control over their own work, and recognition for achievement. Then provide opportunities for learning and growth.
But here's the Catch-22. You can't provide all of that unless you start to grow. That’s why growth through innovation is the imperative. It’s a virtuous cycle. Growth leads to more opportunities, higher morale, and enhanced communication, which in turn gets everyone passionate about the brand.
You can’t simply ask people to change -- to work better together -- and to expect it to happen. They have to want to, as well as know why and how. So put the brand -- the growth strategy -- in your people's hands, and it will become impossible for them not to become engaged and to take responsibility. And then that Catch-22 -- fueled mainly by fear, flawed reasoning and bureaucratic nonsense -- will cease to exist.
"Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas."
- Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
(Rest assured, we will never provide your email address to anyone. Period.)
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