I am often amazed at how companies slice and dice their customer base into a million slivers in a quest to meet specific needs while overlooking the basic needs of any customer—clarity, convenience, and confidence. Customers want to clearly understand what they are paying for, how to use the product or service quickly and easily, and to feel confident that they have made a wise choice.

(more…)

When a manufacturer first introduces a product, customers are often so enamored of its function that they are willing to overlook flaws in the overall customer experience. Cell phones and software are classic examples—people bought them despite the fact that they barely worked. However, as soon as the manufacturer progresses to produce commodity products—appliances, cars, and cameras—the customer then ranks their experience in terms of other touch points. Ironically, the product becomes incidental and seemingly small interactions become the memorable aspects of the customer-company relationship.

(more…)

Brand extension in the technology category isn’t easy. Ever-shortening product life cycles, rapidly converging categories and a constant stream of new technologies give technology marketers little time to establish their brands, let alone find logical ways to extend them. With the notable exception of Apple, who has brilliantly managed multiple brand extensions from iMac to iPod to iPhone, there are few stories of successful brand extensions in technology.

The concept of extension is well-known to consumer product marketers. In the classical definition, there are two types of extensions: line extensions (for example, Colgate creating mouthwash, whiteners, etc.) and brand extensions (e.g., Virgin creating Virgin Mobile, Virgin Atlantic, and Virgin Bride, among many others).

(more…)

As every CMO should know, great brands are built not just with advertising and promotions,
but by harnessing the power of customer information—turning data into useful,
action-oriented insights. But, we still see marketing and branding teams who have
access to important customer data, but don’t have the IT tools to make sense of it all.

(more…)

While nonprofits strive to spend every dollar they can against delivering their mission, carefully allotted funds must also be distributed to the efforts that keep their work visible. Branding has quickly become one of the necessary investments these organizations embrace, realizing that their dollars go a long way once they begin to capture attention for all the right reasons. After all, convincing individuals, partners, and influencers that your institution is worthy of their support over peer organizations is a daunting task. Here’s what we’ve learned from our engagements with nonprofit organizations from universities, to social service organizations, to foundations.

(more…)

In every company or government agency where we find a showcase simplification project, we find an individual who is the driving force behind it.

Great simplifiers share intolerance for the status quo, impatience with the rules, and boundless optimism. They view simplicity as a virtue for its own sake—as well as a sign of productivity, integrity, and fairness. While simplicity appeals to the logical, it also touches on the spiritual.

Who are the enemies of simplicity? I have found they gravitate toward certain professions, notably law and technology. In both cases, jargon, convolution, and obscurity are rewarded rather than decried.

(more…)

Most mergers fail. Many organizations, ranging from McKinsey & Company to Big Four accounting firms to the Hay Group, the human resources consultancy, attests to this fact. In one such report on mergers and acquisitions, KPMG reported that “61% of M&A created no discernible difference, or actually destroyed value.” Why this failure occurs remains a matter of ongoing debate.

(more…)

With rare exceptions, conglomerates get little respect. Labeled “holding companies,” or “portfolio businesses,” the implication is that, at best, they are no more than the sum of their parts. Despite what may be a respectable financial performance, these complicated organisms fail to gain the long-term interest of stakeholders that more focused companies do. In short, they are “cursed” to be forever appreciated, but never admired. The costs of this curse are high, particularly among investors, whose skepticism is ever present. This fact has led many conglomerates and near-conglomerates to attempt to fashion corporate brands that simplify their story. Why so many fail—and most do—can be traced to how they approach the challenge.

(more…)

You may have heard about a new smart credit product known in the financial industry as “the contactless credit card.” It enables consumers to make purchases without having to swipe their credit cards, making it faster and easier to transact.

(more…)