A study showed that over the past decade, design-driven companies — Apple, Starbucks, Nike, Herman Miller, Target, Whirlpool — outperformed the S&P 500 by 22%. The good news is that your company can do everything they do. Focus on creating elegant user experiences (in person and digitally), rich branding and engaging advertising, and the return…
In her follow-up to an interview, a candidate for an internship volunteered the fact that she had read 27 books last summer. This instantly gives her an edge over other candidates. Why? All other things being equal it demonstrates both initiative and a mature understanding that knowledge is not going to seek you out —…
People tend to see the doctor less often when they’re young, and more often as they get older. But we do just the opposite with brands. When a company is young, there’s often a lot of attention paid to brand awareness and perception, competition, market trends and more. But as a company matures, management seldom…
If you’re trying to find a new way to serve customers, don’t ask them what they like or want. Ask them what they’re unhappy with. When Campbell’s Soup asked consumers what they like about soup, they got generic answers: heart, nourishing, warms you up. But when asked what they didn’t like, the answers were very…
What do the best movies, social media, some grandfathers and great TV spots have in common? They all tell a story that people can see themselves in. When someone posts on Facebook, their friends chime in with sympathy or congratulations. Great movies tell stories we can’t forget. There are grandfathers whose tales can make you…
Look at a new pencil — about 7” of lead and a quarter-inch eraser. Now maybe that’s all that works structurally. But what expectation does it set? That we make very few mistakes, and then remove all traces of them. But for a learning organization, mistakes are how we course-correct. The CEO of one Fortune…
Press Ganey, probably the leading driver of healthcare performance improvement, analyzed patient satisfaction data to find out what matters most to patients. Getting better tops the list, right? Nope. In fact, of the top 15 criteria named by patients, not one involved actual physical outcomes. Every one of the 15 related to the quality of…
Marketers use the term “retargeting” to mean a lot of things. But the most accurate description refers to site retargeting: arranging for someone who visited your website but didn’t take any action to see your banner ad the next time they’re online. That banner ad can be specific to the product or service they were…
It’s an unfortunate truth that, within any given industry, most companies’ marketing messages look, read and sound alike. They tend to say the same things in the same ways — even their appearance is often the same. How many bank ads have you seen featuring a smiling row of bankers? Or hospital ads showing confident-looking…
One often-overlooked benefit of online and social media is how easy it makes it to keep up with your competitors. Now it’s a simple matter to subscribe to your rivals’ e-mails or blog posts, follow them on Facebook or LinkedIn — even see what their own customers are saying about them. It’s just one more…