Imagine you’re in the restaurant business.  New competitors spring up every day, which means your prospects all have plenty of choices.  So when a new diner walks in the door, you have a single shot at turning them from a one-time visitor into a regular.  How’s parking?  Does the host or hostess smile and greet…

When a career retrospective of an artist’s work is assembled, it’s not unusual to see early works — perhaps even some that aren’t very good.  Why would an artist keep old sketchbooks around when his or her talent has long since progressed far beyond the work they contain?  Two reasons.  They’re an encouraging reminder of…

Too often, the marketing messages we deploy — whether the words or the design — include a lot of stuff that simply doesn’t need to be there.  Words that take up space but don’t add any impact.  Design elements that don’t make anything more compelling, but take up space.  When you look at your marketing…

We sometimes spend so much time thinking about our competitors that we overlook the biggest one: inertia.  Seldom does anybody have to do anything.  More often than not, what we offer is discretionary.  People can always choose not to do anything at all instead of doing business with us.  Does your marketing reflect this?  Even…

Have you ever picked up a magazine in a reception area or waiting room, only to notice that it’s several months old?  What did it say to you about the business you were visiting?  Did it give you the impression that they’re on top of every detail?  That the customer experience was their top priority? …

In an insightful interview in Daniel Rachel’s The Art of Noise, the late Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees revealed the perspective that made the group’s music so memorable — and showed why so much modern pop isn’t. “Let’s do something different,” Gibb declared. “Compete to be different rather than compete to be the same.”…

In his wonderful memoir, Life Itself, film critic Roger Ebert credits a colleague, Bill Lyon, with the most useful advice he was ever given as a journalist: to stop waiting for inspiration and start writing, and to keep writing until the end. The idea, in Ebert’s words, was to “spend less time not writing.” This…

Visit a Chick-Fil-A location, and whether you use the drive-thru or go inside, you’re sure to hear someone respond to you with the phrase, “It’s my pleasure,” almost always delivered with a sincere smile. It may seem insignificant, but it isn’t. It sends a clear signal that theirs is a customer-focused business — that you…

Is a good reputation the same thing as a strong brand? Not really. Having a good reputation matters, but if five local competitors all have a good reputation, that doesn’t help consumers distinguish one from the other — and it doesn’t provide an incentive to choose one over another. Reputation can be part of your…

A company’s name says a lot about how its founders see its potential. Look at two examples. Virgin Galactic is thinking big. Even though we’ve never gotten a manned spacecraft beyond the moon, Sir Richard Branson (there he is again) is leaving options open for travel throughout the galaxy. Now look at how many banks…