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Joining the Conversation
Forty thousand years ago, when our early ancestors used cave walls to draw pictures of the world around them, they were acting on a deep primal urge. Those primitive drawings are a reminder of what...
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The Marketing Ecosystem
At the time it cost $2 million to buy. It was kept on a raised floor in a climate-controlled room. Emblazoned across the front of it was a sign with a single word: Think. The IBM System/360 was...
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Putting Customers First
The top worry that keeps most Canadian CEOs awake at nights? The answer, surprisingly, is customer loyalty, according to a just-released KPMG study, which goes on to explain, “Keeping up with...
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The Value Matrix
It was a product so effective that its users swore by it. But the manufacturer was worried. The patent license was about to expire. A flood of generic products was expected to swarm the market. The...
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The Connected Experience
In the late 1950s the Volkswagen Beetle was little more than a curiosity. At a time when most cars were garish symbols of consumerism, the Beetle was exactly the opposite: small, under-powered, strange...
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Leading with Values
Why is it that so few brands around the world excel at customer experience management? According to Forrester Research’s annual benchmark study of customer experience quality, just 1% of large global...
View ArticleWave Goodbye to the Attention Economy
The marketing business is in trouble. After years of papering over the cracks in an outdated communication model, of continually shuffling the media deck in search of a better hand, the realization...
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Where is Location-based Marketing Today?
Now that almost three quarters of the adult population in North America have a smartphone, people are spending more than half their time online using mobile apps, and conducting more searches from...
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The Loyalty Trap
She jokingly refers to it as her “hobby”. Every weekend, before heading out to shop, she scans the grocery and drug store flyers in search of deals. But she’s not looking for ordinary coupons and...
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Time’s Up: Can Ad Agencies Put the Past Behind Them?
Ad agencies are recognizing their time may be up. No one is going to turn the ad spigot back on. Brand marketers are being challenged to find better ways of spending their money, mainly by improving...
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How to Build Brand Belief in an Age of Zero Trust
“It is the act of a bully”. Those were the scathing words of Ontario’s premier Kathleen Wynne, referring to a couple of wealthy Tim Horton’s franchise owners who had clawed back benefits to employees...
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The Power of Personas
People love to eat chicken. All kinds. Fresh. Frozen. Wings. Legs. Thighs. Backs. Boneless. Roasted. Barbequed. Thin sliced. Whole. Halved. Fried. The list goes on. Chicken is the most popular meat...
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The True Value of Customer Journey Mapping
The practice of customer journey mapping has been around for a decade or so. Over that time, it has gradually become the preferred method for paving over cracks in the customer experience. A journey...
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The Big Shift
“Because I think it may be of some help to you in putting through our recommendation for additional men for the Promotion Department I am outlining briefly below the duties of the brand men.” N. H....
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The Evolution (and Future) of Relationship Marketing
Just over three decades ago, the term relationship marketing quietly slipped into the business lexicon. At the time marketers were grappling with the early stages of market “demassification”, finding...
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What Comes Next?
The future has a nasty habit of creeping up on businesses when they least expect it. Even now, as the forces of digital change cause widespread upheaval, most companies view the potential risks as too...
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The Relatable Brand Comes of Age
They have infiltrated just about every consumer category – clothing and apparel, personal care, home furnishings, food and drink, travel, pet food, just to name a few – hundreds of direct-to-consumer...
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Too Easy to Ignore: Why Brands Are Losing the War for Attention in the Era of...
Content marketing has become a victim of its own excess. In the analogue era content existed in limited form. It lived on paper or over the air. It was stored on bookshelves, on magazine racks and on...
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Will Marketers Finally Give Up On Personalization?
When the era of Big Data dawned in the early 2000s with the explosive growth in web traffic, marketers swooned at the potential for personalized messaging: at long last, the dream of one-to-one...
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Competing On Insight
A few years ago, one of this country’s leading car manufacturers assembled all of its marketers in one room for a first-ever look at a profile analysis of its owner base. These marketers were used to...
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