I have drawn these findings from a variety of research studies. Most are outlined in my Brand Aid book. The five drivers of customer brand insistence are awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection. Brand familiarity and knowledge are the most important components of brand equity, leading to liking…

Opaque is an all in the dark restaurant. With the help of a giant crane, Dinner in the Sky serves just that, dinner in the sky. Southwest Airlines differentiated itself based on a sense of humor. Build-A-Bear Workshop decided to involve the customer in the creation of the product. Von…

Recently, a Venture Capital intern asked me to explain marketing to him at the end of our two-hour interview. While I have spent more than 40 years working on hundreds of successful marketing campaigns for almost as many brands, and while I could spend days talking about the nuances of…

Your brand’s voice is comprised of its tone and its word choice among other components. Together with your brand’s archetype, personality and visual style, your brand’s voice helps you to personify your brand. Any or all of these might be components of your brand’s voice: Accent (socio-economic, regional or foreign) …

I have witnessed executives asking for a single communication to do too much. “I would like this communication to build awareness and initiate a purchase.” “I would like this to speak directly to our customers, prospects and employees.” “I want this communication to prompt them to give us their name…

Customer discovery must run deep. You need to talk with a lot of people and you need to probe deeply with each of them. That means understanding their hopes, fears, aspirations, anxieties, beliefs, attitudes, values and more. While a highly trained marketing research moderator may use a variety of qualitative…

I have spent the past 35 years conducting research on behalf of brands. Over that period of time, I have conducted hundreds of studies. In this blog post, I thought I would outline the types of research that you can conduct and the things you can learn from that research…

Ethics is not a topic that I hear marketers talking about very often, however it is something that I think about frequently because I understand the societal impact of what I do. …

To be efficient in marketing spending, brands usually focus on their best customers first and then on their other customers. Typical objectives are to increase their customers’ individual average transactions (IAT), spending and share of wallet. They often also want to increase customer loyalty. Less often, brands allocate marketing resources…