Harvard Business Review recently posted an article by Anthony Tjan, CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Ball.
He suggested that one way to know and understand customers better is by studying the broader context in which your customers use your product or service. To do this, ask what your customer is [...]
Trendwatching.com posted an extract from The Globe and Mail discussing the trend of helping consumers “feel good”.
“Paying it forward” is an old idea with new life lately. Many different major brands have launched promotional campaigns that blur the line between business and philanthropy.
Benjamin Franklin pioneered the idea more than 200 years ago when he lent [...]
Deliver Magazine provided some thought provoking questions for many organizations and their marketing teams.
You spend hours crashing through strategy documents, pulling out nuggets of customer insights, determining differentiators in the industry and understanding what it is that makes your corporation unique. And in the end, you have a vision of who and what your company [...]
A fable based on tomorrow’s thoughts…
There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run, how many people he could reach in a single mouse click. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, (or maybe he was a snail) challenged him to a race. All the animals in [...]
Trendwatching.com posted an extract from The Economist discussing a new trend by major advertisers: they are “doing good”.
The 107 million Americans who tuned in to watch the Super Bowl on February 7th did not see any advertisements for Pepsi. Instead of spending $20m on a handful of 30-second spots, the firm decided to give that [...]
We did a study and analysis of our customers and sales over the last 14 years. We found a few surprises.
Even though we have a passion for helping new businesses get started and grow and love watching people realize their dreams. The average number of years that one of our customer organizations has been operating [...]
According to an article extracted from McKinsey Quarterly by Harvard Business Publishing, purchasers of consumer electronics have greater interest in products offering core benefits at attractive prices than in products with unused bells and whistles.
Consumer Electronics Get Back to Basics
Part of marketing is product design, but I wonder do we need to embrace these [...]
Trendwatching.com’s February 2010 newsletter highlights products that are simple, small and/or cheap. The products and services are designed for low(er)-income users in emerging markets, but manage to appeal to buyers in mature consumer cultures too.
Goods and services especially designed for emerging markets often incorporate one or more of the following characteristics:
Smaller and/or limited number of [...]
BNET recently sent an email, the subject line read “Which Is Worse for Your Brain: Texting or Pot?” That is quite a question.
The post referred to a University of London study done for Hewlett-Packard that found that “infomania” — a term connected with addiction to email and texting — can lower your IQ by twice [...]
BNET recently shared this great post about simplicity. Marketers at Starbucks, Kraft, and Campbell have discovered that “simple” sells. Products that stress fewer ingredients – food, drinks, cosmetics, even pet food – are outselling rivals, as this USA Today story explains.
Is this a trend with traction? Will this “marketing megatrend” extend beyond consumable products? Leading [...]