Business

There are a lot of ways and places to think about what comes before after or the end - Personal Relationships Dan Heath talks about what you see, and how what you don't know may lead to false conclusions.  A wrongful (even inadvertent) association of a person's demonstrated behavior with their intrinsic character can have powerful and lasting effects.  What you, as a bystander or observer, don't know is what precipitated the behavior or attitude you're seeing. And yes, while you don't...

A Nonlinear Approach Increase sales.  Reduce expenses.  These are the ways of the business world, yes?  Well, yes.  But as Zappos proves the indirect route can do something amazing in the process:  offer a guiding light that empowers and motivates employees, and reaches consumers in a "blue ocean" sort of way. "...If Amazon gets a lot of customer service calls, it will try to figure out why -- maybe there's something confusing about the product description -- and then it will try to fix the problem...

What'd You Do *That* For? Sometimes marketing teams struggle to reach solutions to problems.  There could be a million reasons for the struggle, ranging from personal style or very different work experiences over to disparate points of view on the objectives and goals.  While there's tremendous value to having a mix of talent and styles on a team, the opportunity created by the mix may be diminished by a lack of cohesion, shared vision, and communication.  Does everyone know where they fit? ...

From our earliest years, boundaries form mental and physical structures guiding our behavior in society.  Boundaries are guideposts of sorts, directing our energies between the accepted and the unacceptable.  Boundaries define your personal playing field and vary in size and shape for every person.  Sometimes you want to be inside the boundaries which form your box (niche, specialty, market, channel, philosophical approach, etc.) while other times you want to be beyond it. Success comes from...

Practice makes perfect. With experience comes wisdom. We've heard these time-worm pearls (and others just as sage) before.  In many ways they're true and have withstood generational shifts and time because the simplicity of the message.  Life is a continuum, a progressive build of yesterdays. In physical sports, other games of skill, and tasks requiring finesse (like the perfect meringue for a key lime pie), practice can mean perfection.  Faster judgment, quicker reaction, alternative...

Here most of us are, trying to explain the value of cultivating connections with our customers and forging a community of users built on solid product, stellar experience, and authentic communication. For the average marketer (and the average business), the road is a long one full of incremental baby steps and the occasional delay or detour. Still, that beacon of social business shines brightly and encourages us to travel on. But what if you're Ashton Kutcher? An acclaimed actor whose charm and charisma...

I've fallen into a trap. So have you, you just might not know it yet. In some areas of my life, I've let status quo take hold. The norm. The expected. Not rocking the boat, or really taking the energy, time, and attention needed to address some systemic issues that needed to be addressed.  Either those areas weren't causing enough pain (and ignoring them allowed me to focus on those that were), or I focused my energy in other areas instead, creating my own little diversion so as to avoid the sticky...

"A principle isn’t a principle unless it costs you something".—Bob Goldstein, former P&G Vice President of Advertising Today is the first day of the work week and as usual we ended the day with our company meeting.  There's only a small number of us, so we can be efficient with the 45 minutes we've allotted. As usual, each team member spent a few minutes touching on the more complex, urgent, or higher-profile tasks facing them this week. Sometimes they relate those tasks to specific...

A little recent planting (yay! spring!) inspired me to consider the parallels between a healthy plant that's long overdue for transplanting, and organizations reflecting on "here" and considering how to get "there." How Might A Plant Resemble A Company? A Brand? The beginning was rife with struggle. Maybe even odds against. They both started small and were nurtured and protected throughout critical times. They both need precise amounts of key elements: fuel, disposal systems for waste (think...

Gotta Speak the Language Last week, I was in Des Moines, IA attending a marketing conference sponsored by the Iowa Banker's Association titled "Blue Ribbon Banking: Marketing for Success."   At Ovation, we're considering our sales strategy for the bank vertical and this local conference provided good timing. My banking experience is limited to the typical consumer relationship, so I thought it particularly important to visit with bank marketers in hopes to better understand their pain points. ...