help! which one?

by Kenneth Rudich

Really.  If you do nothing else during this visit to Marketing Strategy Management, please help me decide on a logo by leaving your vote in the comments section below.  Which of the two logos above do you like better?  Or, if you don’t like either, that’s an option too.

After all, a logo is an important part of the overall marketing initiative, whether it’s online internet marketing, social media marketing, or offline marketing.  It assists with maintaining the continuity of the brand by leaving a consistent and, hopefully, lasting impression.

Some might even question why it’s taken me so long to establish one.

a little background about marketing strategy management

I started Marketing Strategy Management without putting a lot of thought into the aesthetic quality of its appearance.  The skin was secondary to my initial concern, which centered on the task of developing good content as early as possible.  I was eager to get the ball rolling rather than be held up by matters that could easily steal time from achieving that objective.

We’ve since explored a variety of subjects, like search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, internet marketing, social marketing, marketing communications, branding, and more.  My favorite topic, and the one I’ll be focusing on with greater regularity in the future, is using a value chain approach to develop and manage a marketing strategy.  They are all good and relevant topics, and I very much enjoy working with them.

In retrospect, I think it was a good idea to start with a single-minded focus on creating content.  I am pleased with, and gratified by, the rapid growth in both the quantity of visitors and the number of subscribers.

More importantly, I am humbled by the caliber of the people who stop in and leave insightful comments about the content they’ve discovered.

In addition to these thoughtful observations, many of you have also taken a moment to share suggestions for improving the blog.  In fact, second only to the insightful comments about the material have been thoughts related to the visual appeal of the skin – or rather, the lack thereof.  My favorite came from a fellow who, after commending the content of a post, quickly added, “…but your opera is a bit wonk mate.”  Others chose “bland” over “wonk.”  Either way, I got the idea.

Simply put, the time has come to consider making renovations.  And not just consider it, but actually make them.  I want to thank everyone for nudging me in that direction.  I’m always open to constructive criticism, and I’m glad so many of you were kind enough to give it.

Moreover, I hope you’ll keep on making suggestions and offering comments.  I’m also open to having people author posts for MSM or provide any other material they believe is relevant.  I regard this blog not so much as my own, but as a community blog – one that embraces everyone’s ideas.  And that community, at least in my mind, spans the entire reach of the internet. 

what’s ahead?

The renovation won’t be done overnight.  I still believe strongly in maintaining the quality of the content, whether I produce it or it comes from another source.  That alone consumes a fair amount of time and energy.  Given other responsibilities that I also have, time is a somewhat limited commodity.  I’ll have to find it where I can for making visual improvements.

And I will be trying other new things as well.  But for now, I’m going to start by adopting a logo.

Again, please take a moment to give me your thoughts about the logos you see at the outset of this post.

May we all be exceedingly adept in our marketing efforts!

Best Regards, Ken

click on image to enlarge

by Kenneth Rudich

A brand is the sum total of the experiences and exposure people have with it. 

It only makes good sense to keep a close rein on the brand development process as it moves along the value chain.   Anything less could be a mistake.
 
Nuff said…right?

Well, maybe not.

lapses happen

Let me relate a recent customer service experience I had.  It happened in the deli section of a store belonging to a large supermarket chain.

A small sign posted on the glass case of the deli counter indicated that the chicken wings were going for fifty cents apiece.  In a display of modular thinking, it further suggested they were available in plain, barbecue, and apricot glaze.  That was all the information it contained.  Nothing less, nothing more.

As one who is nearly fanatical in his love for chicken wings, I couldn’t resist the temptation to order a dozen and did.

But as the clerk handed the sealed sack of wings over to me, I noticed the price on the label was grossly inflated.  After pointing this out, she informed me I had chosen the more expensive wings as opposed to the ones referred to on the sign.  A few more moments passed with her objecting to my insisting they were over priced, which is when I decided it was time to summon a manager.

Upon his arrival, the manager quickly detected the error and instructed her to change the price of my wings.  With that, he hastily turned around and left without saying anything more.  The clerk meanwhile did as she was told.  Only this time, as she extended the sack with the corrected price, her face clearly conveyed a grudging reluctance to have given me any service at all, let alone one that ended like this.

My original intent was to shop a bit more but I immediately decided against it.  Feeling frustrated, I paid for the wings and rushed out the door.

Later that evening, the usually enjoyable experience of eating their wings was tarnished by the events of the day.  In fact, I didn’t even finish them, and I’m pretty sure that’s never happened before.

a value chain lesson

Two components of the value chain were mishandled in this encounter.  They were the communications component and the transactions component. 

It started with the conflict between the communication of the price on the sign and the actual price on the transaction label.  This lapse would have been easily forgotten if things had been handled even remotely well after that.  But they weren’t.  Neither the manager nor the clerk seemed to recognize that brand name development is part of their job.  As a result, the situation grew worse.
 
The clerk behind the counter became testy and argumentative rather than gracious and polite.  She not only refused to change the price without the intervention of a manager, but I had to make the request for a manager to come.  It was obvious she planned to battle it out until I’d surrendered.

Though the manager fixed the price, he failed to remedy the situation.  First, there was a glaring absence of any gesture to compensate for my grief – maybe a free side dish or a few extra wings to make it right.  Second, he never verbally owned up to the mistake and apologized for it.
 
Perhaps most remarkable of all, this dispute amounted to less than three dollars worth of business with an otherwise regular customer.

in summary

So I think it’s worth repeating: a brand is the sum total of the experiences and exposure people have with it.  It is prudent – and only prudent — for a business to defend the brand development process at every single point of the value chain.

By the way, there’s another supermarket just down the street from this one.  They have a good brand identity, and I’m left to wonder if they don’t offer a better customer service experience?

Related Articles:

creating value…or climbing up a waterfall?

click picture to enlarge

by Kenneth Rudich  

A well executed social media marketing strategy strives to leverage the potential for three key dividends.  

increased exposure

To most organizations, social media offers another platform for expanding the effort to create awareness, interest, and action.  It can stir a wholesome combination of real and virtual word-of-mouth promotion among people who trust one another, and it can do it in numbers that continually swell with each passing day.  

The critical aspect to making this work is to be absolutely certain your product or service claims match with the customer experience.  Be careful about crafting expectations.  It’s better to have the actual experience exceed the customer’s expectations than the other way around.  The former will build trust while the latter will erode it.  Trust begets trust and that will enhance the sphere of influence engendered by the social media marketing strategy.   

gathering customer, marketing intelligence

Actively following and listening to your customers and prospects is a good way to gather insightful intelligence about them.  Commercial social media monitoring tools can furnish reports that help you to assess the nature, tone, impact, trends, and key influencers of the topics that you care about most.  

You can also gather intelligence by monitoring the chatter in your own social media sites, as well as follow people who become fans to learn more about their other interests (and/or keywords) for use in future communications with them.
    
Be aware that this process offers the internal opportunity to exploit the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to assessing the current value of your brand, and also for creating new value.  A diverse group of people from within your organization, representing multiple functions and disciplines, should be encouraged to participate in the intelligence gathering process, and then share their insights and perspectives among themselves.  The goal is to uncover all the angles and intricacies associated with any joint knowledge that comes to light.  This means bringing in people from all across the value chain, like product developers, R&D, distribution, finance, and so forth.  

customer, prospect interaction

A unique attribute of social media revolves around the ease with which you can interact with customers and prospects.  Anything that motivates them from a passive mode to an active mode, to interact with you or your products, will fuel the process for coaxing them further along the engagement path.
 
There’s a broad array of opportunities for doing this.  Surveys, contests, getting them involved in product development, giving or loaning them some products to evaluate and critique, sending them to a web site that encourages clicking or navigating through it based on something of interest or intrigue, are just a few examples.  

When doing this, consider the different stages of customer cultivation so as to design the interactions in relation to the individual stages, with the idea that most or all of the stages will be separately represented in one way or another.  For example, one activity might be geared toward arousing interest, another might seek to stimulate greater advocacy among the already established advocates.  

the big bang

The big bang is to have all three working in your favor.  Then you’ll be harvesting from your social media marketing strategy more than you’ll ever have to put into it.

Related Articles:

Social Media & Marketing

click picture to enlarge

by Kenneth Rudich                   

Long before social media marketing came into existence my father was an avid vegetable gardener.  Nothing could beckon him quite like that little patch of top soil sitting nestled at the edge of the yard.  He loved to work it just as much as he could — tilling and fertilizing and tilling some more; measuring out rows and planting the seeds; watering it daily and trimming back weeds.  
 
The hours turned into days, the days into weeks, and the weeks into months.  By the time it was ready for harvest it was a veritable island of abundance and variety, far more than a small family like ours could possibly eat.  And since my father loathed waste as much as he loved gardening, he’d gather the excess and give it to neighbors and friends.
 
In retrospect, I think he enjoyed this part the best, because people didn’t let him just drop by and leave.  No sir.  They invited him to stay for a while, maybe sip lemonade or drink a cold beer.  Sometimes they broke out the horseshoes and played until dusk.  Other times they sat on the porch swapping stories and laughs.  As the night wore on and the moon smiled down from its perch up above, the mood was graciously infectious and always endearing.               

Now that those days are behind I can see that my father actually cultivated more friendships than gardens.  No wonder that patch of top soil expanded in size with each passing year.  The yield that it gave was only half of the story.                   

Gardening and social media marketing have a lot more in common than you might otherwise think.  In both cases, it’s not what you plant but what you cultivate from it.                   

the woo, woo, woo of social media marketing

Social media marketing is clearly on the upswing as brand conscious marketers are racing to incorporate blogs, micro-blogging, wikis, media sharing, online forums, and social networking into their promotion initiatives.  Describing it as an explosion probably doesn’t come close to reflecting just how big it really has become.
    
But “doing it” and “doing it well” are not necessarily one and the same, especially if you’re looking for fast results or immediate gratification.  Social media puts a woo woo woo into the process of wooing customers.  Gone are the days when winning mere customer loyalty was enough.  Now, if you’re going to harness all that social media has to offer, you must seek to sway customers into becoming advocates, too.  And that, more often than not, takes plenty of time and some serious cultivation.  It requires an endless campaign of engaging them in an ongoing conversation.  This means having real and genuinely meaningful exchanges, and getting to know them really well.  It may also take some finesse to spur them into having meaningful exchanges with others about your product or service.  If successful, these exchanges can produce an ever-expanding sphere of influence over time.      

An earlier post of mine, “Three Words Describe Marketing,” advanced the idea that marketing can be boiled down into creating awareness, interest, and action (note: I began the article with a caveat that this was from marketing 101 – you know, keep it simple stupid).  In the fall 2009 issue of Moosylvania’s report on marketing trends, however, they divide social media marketing into six discrete steps, and you can clearly see the insinuation of a “social” influence in their version:                   

1. Attention: another way of saying, creating awareness.
2. Interest: arousing consumers to want to learn more.
3. Engagement: when consumers decide they want to interact with the product.
4. Endearment: when consumers have interacted with the product/service long enough to form an opinion or purchase decision.
5. Sharing: when consumers have experienced the product long enough to develop a degree of expertise about it, and start to share their opinions with other people.
6. Advocacy: when customers proactively promote or criticize the brand based on their experience, and they do it in a variety of social venues.

The way I figure it, this six step process adds at least two more woo’s to the single woo I’d suggested in the marketing 101 version.  And that takes me back to the tireless effort my father put into his garden, because he always went well beyond where others would stop.  His garden became a vehicle for creating and maintaining relationships.  Now social marketers must do the same, too.                   

parts 2, 3 and 4

In Part 2, we’ll explore whether social media marketing is for you.  Part 3 will pursue a more in-depth look at the concept of cultivating a social media strategy — maintaining due diligence, monitoring (listening), and adjusting as needed.  And in part 4, we’ll look at some actual cases—and how the challenges differ between larger organizations and small businesses, and what each must consider for effectively addressing those challenges.

fun imagery

by Kenneth Rudich              

Part 1 delved into using imagery and metaphors to help establish and communicate your brand.  The capacity to employ them wisely can build a strong emotional tie between your products and services and the people who buy them.             

the creative aspect

There is a creative component to doing this well.  It entails the art of producing imagery and metaphors that vividly and concisely convey an embraceable message, one that people can and will connect with.              

Some folks are more talented than others when it comes to doing this type of work.  A person that is adept at writing good ad copy, for example, will clearly stand apart from someone with a lesser ability.  A graphic artist or photographer with an astute eye will always find ways to create images that make amateurs pale by comparison.    

Never shy away from seeking the help of others with complementary skills, aptitudes, expertise, or experience.  Leverage the collective wisdom of the people you trust.  More often than not it will make a material difference, and you’ll be awfully glad you did it.             

the technical aspect

There is a technical facet to this as well, and it has nothing to do with technology per se.  By technical, I mean executing the communication strategy with clarity, consistency, and continuity.  This is something almost everyone can do as long as they remain vigilant about it.  It requires staying abreast of each key area:              

• clarity: making sure all imagery and metaphors clearly convey the desired message, tone, or image.
• consistency: once you’ve decided on a desired image or message, stick with it; treat it like an ongoing campaign; remember, it takes time and continual reinforcement to firmly establish a brand.
• continuity: make sure the same message is delivered across all your marketing platforms.

While this may seem simple on the surface, be forewarned that it is easy to lose sight of it over time.  We all get busy, and sometimes things inadvertently fall off our radar screen.             

a real world example 

The client is a sports bar and grill located in a city that is a popular tourist destination.  Consequently, tourists represent one important piece of the customer base.  Local clientele, particularly the regulars, comprise another.  None too surprisingly, the owner is interested in generating new traffic from both sources.             

The image or theme he wants to project is: “A Place for Social Interaction.”             

the physical premises

The physical premises reflect the work of an owner with close to thirty years experience in the business, almost ten at this location alone.  Operating from the notion that everything a customer sees and experiences will affect his business reputation, not a single detail has escaped attention:          

• the place is clean and appealing to the eye,
• the menu contains a good variety selection with reasonable prices (and daily specials),
• the staff is friendly (on a first name basis with customers) and service-oriented, 
• the general surroundings provide a veritable haven for sports enthusiasts – complete with modern amenities like 48 new flat screen tv’s, all sorts of satellite reception capabilities, a robust sound system, a billiards area, a rectangular bar with an unobstructed view of everything, a separate dining area, a patio overlooking a park with a small lake and disc golf course, three tabletop shuffleboard stations, and a section discretely set aside for accommodating private groups of up to 40 people.

Ultimately, the diverse clientele offers the best testament of just how inviting it all is.  They run the gamut, from young families to seniors to everyone in between.   And yes, it has a lively social atmosphere.            

the internet presence

The ad copy contains an exhaustive list of the bar’s features, like how many tv’s there are, or that the beer is kept cold, as opposed to focusing on giving customers a sense of why their experience here promises to be memorable.  It seems to say, “We built it so you should come,” rather than, “You’ll have a great time if you come.”  Plus, the landing page looks cluttered due to a poor layout design.
 
Perhaps livelier copy would be better suited for arousing interest:     

Oddly, the same copy neglects to mention certain key features like the capacity to entertain private groups, or how the owner gives back to the community through active participation in local civic affairs (which amounts to a lost opportunity for creating good will).        

And speaking of imagery, the “photos” page is entirely filled with pictures of an empty establishment.  It looks clean and modern, but empty.  Does the sight of empty chairs, empty tables, and empty stools insinuate “a place for social interaction” to you?  The imagery must match the perception you want to create.  In this case, there should be lots of pictures of lots of people having lots of fun in all sorts of ways.
 
Lastly, there’s an opportunity to further advance its socially-driven image through the launch of a strong social media strategy.  Such a strategy could become the virtual extension of “a place for social interaction” and become a nice vehicle for spreading word-of-mouth promotion, for holding contests, sharing information about daily specials and other notable events, and for getting new and current patrons even more invested in the social atmosphere.             

your brand, defend it

 A brand is the sum total of the experiences and exposure people have with it.  It’s in your best interest to always remain vigilant and defend it in every single piece of the marketing and promotion of it.

imagery

by Kenneth Rudich 

Words alone are often inadequate for communicating emotional nuance, things like mood, tone, timbre, temperament, and pitch.   

Take a simple phrase like “You’re really something!”  It can be used to convey high praise, glib sarcasm, or even dismay.  But until or unless something reveals the intent behind it, getting a proper read can be difficult.     

The use of imagery is a good way to fortify gestures, concepts, and words with flavor and meaning.
 
Emoticons, for example, add clarity.  Without them, a playfully light-hearted tone can be lost , and something communicated in jest can go terribly wrong .
    
Or consider how much more powerful “I love you” becomes when accompanied by a dozen red roses, a box of chocolates, or maybe a ring.   It enhances the emotional connection, makes it stronger, bolder, deeper, more fulfilling.     

Or take a moment to dwell on the difference between a greasy hamburger joint and a fine dining establishment — what you’ll see, what you’ll smell, what you’ll hear, the texture and taste of the food?  As you do this, is your brain summoning images to mind or are you meandering among words?     

verbal expressions, non-verbal thoughts

It turns out there’s a reason why imagery has such a noteworthy effect.  According to marketing professors and researchers Gerald Zaltman and Robin Higie Coulter, it’s because “Thoughts typically occur as non-verbal images even though they are expressed verbally.”  So while the brain processes words, the mind frequently creates images to represent them.
 
In fact, the rule of thumb among communications specialists is that about 80% of all human communication is non-verbal.  Said another way, thoughts are not dependent on words.  A sound or sight or smell or taste or touch can evoke non-verbal thoughts in the form of feelings, images, or emotions.  No words are needed for these thoughts to occur.
 
Moreover, imagery can override the meaning of words.  If you tell me you love me while looking over my shoulder at someone else, which do you think will carry more weight – the gazing past me or the favorable words?     

Has anyone ever told you, “Do as I say, not as I do?”  And it caused you to look at them with a huh?     

emotional branding

In an earlier post, “Creating Value…or Climbing up a Waterfall,” I’d mentioned that the perceived benefits variable in the definition of value is usually traceable to some underlying set of human motives, which may be social, functional, physiological, or psychological in origin.  Using imagery to nourish a positive emotional connection with your product or service is a valuable tool in the marketing arsenal.  It taps the psychological motive that shapes thoughts, feelings and behaviors; and it can go a long way toward improving perceived value.
 
A truly effective use of imagery considers the prospect of engaging all five senses if possible, and then focusing them on a singularly desirable association with your product or service.  For instance, mull over these questions for a moment:     

• do you associate a certain perfume or cologne with your significant other? 
• do you have pet names for one another?
• do you know your significant other’s favorite color to wear?
• can your significant other touch you like no one else can?
• can you prepare your significant other’s favorite food?

Notice the different senses but one focus.     

words that create imagery

Even when it’s verbal, as in the form of a metaphor, the imagery can yield a powerful effect.  One insurance company connects its services with the phrase “Like a good neighbor.”  Other companies in other industries have their own metaphors:  

• “Hope, triumph and the miracle of medicine,”
• “The king of beers,” 
• “Like a rock,” for example. 

In an earlier post, I used the phrase “like trying to climb up a waterfall” in lieu of saying it would be futile or ineffective.  Both of these descriptive words would have been perfectly suitable, but I was shooting to create an image that would resonate with the reader, perhaps causing him or her to arch an eyebrow when they came across it.     

execution is key

Once you’ve decided on cultivating a particularly desirable association or core image, it is important to execute with clarity, consistency, and continuity.  Be cautioned that this advice can appear deceptively simple, when in fact it can easily be mishandled, particularly if you have a lot of other distractions vying for your attention.  The penalty for mishandling the execution can range from simply having it become a less effective campaign, to diluting the brand, to actually causing harm.
 
In part 2, I’ll look at an actual case where the business owner had a mix of great execution combined with poor execution, how that hurt the consistency and continuity of the brand by creating mixed signals, and what recommendations were given to correct it.

value defined

by Kenneth Rudich

My dog Reddi constantly burdens me with costs in terms of time and money.  I have to walk him, feed him, train him, bathe him, and play when he gets restless.  There are vet bills and licensing fees, plus squeaky toys and special treats.  And then, too, there’s that perennial chore of having to tidy up in the wake of his path, if you get what I mean.  

Every single day he’ll exact a price, but never once have I resented it.  The truth is, when he looks up at me with those adoring eyes and wags that slender tail, or greets me with a splendid show of canine jubilation, or curls up beside me just to be nearby, I am rewarded with a sense of satisfaction that far exceeds the costs of keeping him.  At moments like these, he is, in every way, the very definition of a marketing concept called value.  

the concept of value

Economists define value as the perceived benefits relative to the price or cost, as shown in the formula: Value = Perceived Benefits/Price or Cost.  

The perceived benefits are usually traceable to some underlying set of human motives, which may be social, functional, physiological, or psychological in origin.  

Sometimes these motives are of equal priority; but more often they will vary in importance, such as divided into primary and secondary ones. Thus a person may agree, albeit reluctantly, to forgo one or more secondary motives if the primary motives are met.  For example, a financially strapped individual may settle for an economy car even though a luxury car is preferred.  In this case, the primary motive of securing transportation (functional) outweighs the secondary motive of prestige (psychological).  

The price or cost represents what someone is willing, able, or authorized to give up in exchange for the perceived benefits.  

It too may have motives attached to it, such as the amount of money, time, or energy a person is willing or able to invest.  For instance, some people will gladly pay a premium for convenience or prestige.  Others would rather exert extra time and energy to hunt for a bargain. Economists refer to this as price elasticity, and it can help with establishing the optimal price people will pay in exchange for a product or service.  

Ultimately, the satisfaction of motives, not just needs, is at the heart of delivering value.  If the price or cost exceeds the perceived benefits [a key motive (or motives) is under-served or not served], then value is decreased or non-existent.  If the perceived benefits equal or outweigh the costs, then value exists and is perhaps even maximized, which produces a level of satisfaction known as value fulfillment.  

Ipso facto, my dog Reddi delivers value fulfillment for me because the perceived benefits of having him around clearly overshadow the costs (bear in mind that he’s fortunate I’m not counting on functionality as a primary benefit, given his gross negligence with matters like housecleaning, doing laundry, or picking up after himself).  

create value, build brand

In the last post, “As the Marketing World Turns,” I touched on the idea of building a memorable brand from the customer perspective.  If you follow where I’m now going with this post, then you’ll recognize that value is the foundation upon which such a brand rests.  

The better you know and understand the people you serve, the better the foundation you’ll be able to build for your brand.  Here is a short list of questions you might want to deliberate when assessing the value of your product or service:  

• what value creating attributes or activities can enhance the connection with your brand?
• what underlying motives seem to be at work, and how do they get prioritized?
• what role does cost or price play in the perceived value of your product or service?
• how can value creation help to position your product or service in other people’s minds?
• how does your value proposition stack up against that of your competition or of other substitute products and services?

This article titled “Marketing Strategies by World Hotels for Customer Retention” is an illustration of value creation from the perspective of the lodging industry.  Notice the attention to detail for identifying, and then catering to, specific motives.  

Brand management and marketing must rigorously entertain questions about delivering value on a regular basis, and then tweak the value proposition accordingly.  To do anything less will result in the equivalent of trying to climb up a waterfall. No matter how hard you work, you’re not likely to get very far with making your brand stand out.  

In future posts, and with a hopefully generous amount of input from others interested in the same topic, I would like to explore in-depth some of the better tools, techniques, and ideas for managing and marketing value across time — whether for realizing individual goals or helping an organization to meet its objectives.  My vision is that the eventual pooling of insights will lead to a rich form of creative cross fertilization, in which we not only inspire one another, but also achieve greater success because of it.  

Insofar as the usability of this blog is also important to me, I would like to invite suggestions along those lines as well.  

Welcome everyone.  And may we all deliver value with dexterity and skill!

consumer culture

by Kenneth Rudich

Anyone familiar with the halcyon years of the American industrial revolution will surely appreciate just how dramatically different things are today when it comes to the role of marketing.  

Back then, business revolved around the idea of achieving profitability through mass standardization.  It was about cookie cutter efficiencies and economies of scale; unskilled labor and assembly line construction; few product choices and one-size-fits-all customer care.  It could be labeled inside-out thinking, and perhaps nothing exemplified this formula better than Henry Ford’s rumored quip about the Model T, when he reportedly said, “You can have it in any color as long as it’s black.”  

Of course, people ultimately were given a few more options than that, but the companies themselves tended to replicate the same business model.  There was mass production, with mass marketing and mass distribution, for mass consumption.  Seldom did you see a major player stray far from this heavily trodden path.                          

Though that time period has long since receded from view, it does deserve some credit for keeping the U.S. economy humming along over several decades, and its enormous success – at least in that regard – led not only to the rise of a robust middle class but also a consumer culture.  As it turns out, that same consumer culture – or rather, the maturation of it — is what lies behind the emergence of another, newer, post-industrial age marketing trend. 

In a significant reversal of thinking, today’s single biggest challenge centers on building a memorable brand from an outside-in perspective.  Outside-in thinking attempts to craft a product or service that speaks directly to people’s motives and promises to fulfill them.  And with help from innovative technologies, modular designs, and creative business practices, it has indeed become possible to satisfy needs, desires and tastes unlike ever before.  

This in turn has given birth to the idea of mass customization (almost sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?).  Consider, for example, the stark contrast between Henry Ford’s musing about the Model T and a current tv commercial tag line for a contemporary phone vendor, in which the announcer proclaims, “You don’t need to get a phone, you need a phone that gets you.”  Or another commercial with the claim: “Auto insurance isn’t something you should carry; it’s something that should carry you.”  And then, too, there is the internet itself, with all the countless examples it has to offer. 

Whether you use mass marketing, mass customization, or some combination of the two, the age of the product or service experience is upon us.  How have you tailored your brand to keep it fresh and make it stand out from the crowd?