Do you suffer from the "better mousetrap" syndrome?

I've dealt with many brands through the years that had interesting ideas and products and yet couldn't imagine why people weren't beating down their doors to get to those amazing ideas.

It's pretty easy to get laser-focused on creating things. Thinkhaus Idea Factory does plenty of innovation and strategy workshops to help companies develop new ideas to take to market. In some ways, this is where better mousetraps are born. But those mousetraps need to be grounded in something more than personal preference.

Before launching your next big idea, your better mousetrap, ask yourself: Does your audience even realize they have a mouse problem?

Here's a simple way to approach the issue:
1. Start by gathering consumer insights to drive innovation. This doesn't have to be some exhaustive study. It can be some simple engagements where the team turns observations into actionable insights that the innovation team can leverage for better ideas. Consumers are lousy at telling you what product they need.

The average house is filled with products people love today but would have never asked for prior to invention. No consumer said they needed a microwave oven before they were introduced to microwave ovens. People didn't ask for refrigerators, televisions, dishwashers, or even lightbulbs, either. The insights around convenience are what led to the breakthrough ideas.

This is why I make the distinction between observations and insights. You could observe someone washing dishes by hand. That's a task getting done. The insights come from the dishwasher's frustration with the soap, sponge, scrub brush, volume of dishes, dirty water, and more. From those insights, you can create solutions that will have an audience.

2. Check out the marketplace in the areas you're considering. What are you going to be competing against? For blue ocean strategies, you're looking for holes you can fill where there are no competitors.

3. Ideate freely.

4. Engage with your target audience to validate your concept and make necessary refinements.

5. Refine, iterate, and keep checking.

6. Solve the mouse problem.

Need help with your better mousetrap? Let's talk.

Understanding the Narrative Chain for Brand Storytelling

If you’ve been watching the Bud Light conversation in recent weeks you’ve gotten a master’s class example of how brand storytelling isn’t always under the control of the brand. At least in the ways people like to believe it is. Social media has only accelerated the public’s ability to derail the grand schemes of brand managers all over the world.

There are lots of ways to talk about storytelling and the principles of what makes a good story: protagonist, antagonist, hero, tragedy or issue to overcome, twist, outcome, etc. Those are all extremely valuable and it’s good to understand what it takes to create an epic story. But far too many brand storytelling models put the brand squarely at the helm. As we’ve seen lately, it’s not that simple.

Brand storytelling doesn’t follow a linear path. It never has. A linear model doesn’t allow for the chaos that comes with dealing with real, living, breathing humans and constantly changing markets. It certainly doesn’t take social media into consideration.

The Brand Narrative Arc Isn’t Linear

Brand storytelling doesn’t follow a linear model. Because all of the variables are not controlled by the brand.

If you’re not careful, you could fall into the trap with some narrative arc models that, though they account for some issues with the brand, often do so with the issues in the rearview. As if the challenges the brand has faced in the past will somehow predict what the brand will face in the future.

Instead, look at brand storytelling as a narrative chain made up of many stories in “S” curves.

The Opening Stage

At the beginning of every brand story, the brand is in complete control. This is the story the brand intends to bring to the market and use to attract audiences. It’s the new baby ready to be presented to the world.

The Narrative Phase Begins

At the beginning of every brand narrative, the brand is in complete control. This is the story the brand intends to bring to the market to attract audiences.

The Swell Stage

Next, the brand enters into the Swell stage or stages. Sometimes these are guided by the brand. Think of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign. The brand chose to go against the tropes of the beauty category and celebrate real women in all shapes, sizes, colors, and personalities. The campaign was embraced by consumers, the press, investors, and has allowed Dove to enjoy a steady wave of positive press and sales.

The Swell

During the Swell, the narrative builds whether by design or reaction.

What Bud Light is experiencing is the other side of the Swell, when the brand loses control of the narrative by contrasting forces. This isn’t unique to AB InBev.

For those old enough to remember, and for those who want to know the story, J&J and Tylenol went through a horrendously negative Swell event in the 1980s.

A brief recap of the events: In 1982 Chicago, people started dying of cyanide poisoning. Random people with no connection with each other. Except that officials quickly discovered someone was lacing Tylenol with cyanide. It induced panic in the community to the degree that police and rescue vehicles were driving through neighborhoods announcing to people to get rid of their Tylenol. 

In all, seven people died. J&J had a crisis on their hands and decided to just pull all Tylenol products from shelves. ALL of it, since they didn’t want anyone else to die, and no one could be sure what products were affected.

That someone would put poison in a consumer product was well beyond anything J&J could have predicted. It was out of the brand’s control. What came next was where the brilliance happened.

J&J went to work and took control of a shocking event and a little while later reintroduced the world to Tylenol. But to make sure people knew this edition of Tylenol was significantly better and safer, they launched new innovations including sealed boxes, tamper-proof bottles with a shrink-wrapped outer barrier, and a foil seal glued to the top of the bottle. All of these are commonplace today but were huge innovations at the time. They were great examples of a brand guiding the story through the downside of a Swell event.

J&J’s response ended the Swell stage for this event. It didn’t end the overarching narrative, and that’s the important part of how to think of the narrative chain. Brands don’t have control over everything that happens in the Swell, but they do have a responsibility to manage it. J&J chose to pull all products and rethink their approach. Yes, it took a while, but they also took control of the situation.

Some stories, like Dove’s Real Beauty, catch the right cultural wave and enjoy a long, healthy, positive ride. Their Swell has been stretched for years, with most of those years under the control of the brand.

For other brands, the misery is self-inflicted which makes it harder to overcome. Examples include Volkswagen’s rigged emissions testing scandal and Samsung’s exploding Galaxy 7 batteries, but there are dozens of others we could talk about.

At some point the story changes. When that happens, we conclude that narrative story phase and start a new one.

Closing the Swell

The Swell stage may go quickly or last for years. When the story changes, that marks the conclusion of that narrative phase.

Writing the Next Chapter

Thankfully, every brand gets chances to start a new story. Depending on the circumstances, it may start off with “we screwed up, we apologize, and we’ve changed.” In the case of Tylenol, J&J effectively said, “we didn’t start this and could have never seen it coming, but we are changing to try to ensure this can never happen again.”

If the brand fails badly enough, the narrative may shift to the new owners who see the value in the brand and have a chance to tell audiences “the previous owners stumbled and we’re fixing those issues.”

The True NarraTive Chain

The total brand narrative isn’t one, long, continuous story. It is made up of dozens and sometimes hundreds of stories.

Linking the stories

Over time, brands link a wide range of stories, some very positive and others not so much. It’s the natural result of ongoing brand building. And it’s a reminder of why shepherding brands is so important at the executive level. It doesn’t take much these days to turn your once-loyal audiences against you and find yourself rebuilding your brand. In the end you worry about what you can control and adjust to things you can’t.

If you would like help building your brand story, let’s talk.

7 Ways Resourceful Companies Navigate Turbulence

In turbulent times, companies must discover what kind of adjustments are right for them to stay relevant. It can seem overwhelming. But there are a few ways to think about resourcefulness to help companies of any size manage through stressful environments.

In our Dandelion Strategy model, resourcefulness is key. Dandelions send down a taproot first and go deep so the plant can hang out all winter and wait for the perfect time to emerge. This foundation gives them some stability for the battle ahead. By the time you see what's going on the dandelion is way ahead of you. The dandelion has a plan for survival—but it also looks out for the surrounding ecosystem. They bring up nutrients that help surrounding plants. They loosen and aerate the soil in some places and hold on to it in others to fight erosion. They even fertilize the ground around them ... and people rave about the iron and Vitamins A, C and K, Folate, Calcium, and Potassium dandelions add to salads.

How would you rate your brand on resourcefulness? How do you take advantage of the opportunities around you? How are you using what you learn?

Dial up your resourcefulness with these seven steps:

1. Embrace the chaos. Business and life are rarely linear. When you plan for the chaos and build teams that can adjust on the run, challenges are just puzzles to be solved. And you can hire good puzzle solvers.

   Computer programmers and mathematicians use chaos theory, instead. This says that instead of keeping to a predictable pattern, we’d be better off—and find solutions faster—by moving in non-linear ways. The author and economist Tim Harford put it this way: “When everything is perfect, when everything is tidy, we're on autopilot. And we're not necessarily living in the moment, we're not necessarily paying attention. And that's a problem for us.” Embrace the chaos, live in the moment, and thrive in the turbulence.

2. Listen to the people on the front lines. That’s where people are making real-time adjustments to the market and customer and supply chain issues to keep things rolling.

   Plenty of companies put up posters or engage in employer branding campaigns to motivate staff or remind employees that their ideas matter. Those can be effective. They can also be vacuous and empty. What we’re talking about here is really listening to the people who see and hear the needs, frustrations, wishes every day. I’m always surprised at how many amazing—and amazingly simple—solutions come out of conversations with the teams on the ground. Management can’t see it all and should never think it is their job to solve every issue. Get on the ground, listen, and act on the information provided.

3. Expand your market. You may need to change your game a bit. Some say if your organization is not evolving, it is dying! How are you evolving to meet new, emerging demands?

   Uber launched UberEats in 2016 in mostly large markets. By 2018 they were expanding into smaller markets and competing with challengers like DoorDash and GrubHub. Adoption wasn’t hitting the numbers everyone wanted in part because consumers saw food delivery as a solution to a problem they didn’t have, and restaurant owners saw the costs as too high. Then the pandemic happened and restaurants were effectively shut down. This put UberEats, DoorDash, GrubHub, and the rest of the delivery industry in the spotlight as viable and necessary solutions to both consumer demand and restaurants staying in business. To put this expansion into perspective, consider that Uber made $10.4 billion in 2019 from its legacy business, but only $7.3 billion in 2021. Over that same time, Uber Eats grew from $1.9 billion to $8 billion in revenue.

4. Consider new ways to deliver your product or service. If customers can’t get to you, how do you get to them? How can you meet them halfway? If you can’t stock what you had before, how can you still deliver delight and surprise for your customers?

   For example, there are all kinds of rumblings about looming toy shortages this Christmas. That’s going to be a problem but it’s not top of mind yet. It will be. If Christmas is part of your game, how could you change the game and be the hero?

5. Partner with other businesses. Dandelions don’t just look out for themselves. And neither should you. Who else could help you thrive? How could you help them? How could you link arms with companies offering adjacent services so your combined services solve even more challenges for your customers?

   During a past recession I worked with a company that specialized in community waste services dominated by mom and pop operations. We found their customers couldn’t afford to take a week off to attend elaborate trade shows in Vegas. We interviewed a number of these business owners and found they wanted the information and exposure to new ideas, but all of that had to be more convenient for them. Our solution was to partner with adjacent companies and conduct regional shows so customers could drive over—not fly—get the information they needed and get back home the same day. It solved a number of issues for the manufacturers and their customers.

6. Stay connected with your customers. What’s your feedback loop? Who’s keeping their finger on the pulse? Make sure the person or people you put in charge of monitoring customer feedback are in the right seat. Look for someone who thrives on collecting information (good and bad), mining for insights that can make a difference, and then turning those insights into actionable data.

   I once worked with a start-up company that had a senior leader in charge of monitoring customer response. According to reports inside the company, customers were in great shape and loved everything about the brand. By contrast, a little social listening indicated the company was far behind on deliveries, didn’t return phone calls, and was quickly building a reputation for bait and switch. It turned out that the executive was only responding to good news from customers. He was ignoring the complaints. And those complaints were piling up. The company had to put another exec in place fast to save and rebuild the company’s reputation.

7. Celebrate the lessons. I encourage you to build a learning culture, not just a good news culture. In good news cultures, executives make it clear that all they want to hear is what worked, the good news. Bad news is punished as are the people responsible for it. As a result, people learn to avoid risk because taking chances means you might fail. And failure of any type could get you fired. That’s never the case in resourceful and innovative companies. They stretch, they stumble, they bump into things. Take 3M, for example. Scotch tape and Post-it Notes are just two of the many products that came to life because 3M empowered their people to tinker outside of their box. Scotch added adhesive to cellulose strips for an auto body paint masking solution while Post-it repurposed a light adhesive that didn’t have a reason to exist into a tool used all over the world.

   Resourceful companies do exactly that. Like 3M, they give people permission to try new things and stray from their normal course of work. Sure, some of those things won’t work, some will underperform, and some might take off into outer orbit.

   That’s why it’s important to celebrate the lessons learned and share the highs and lows as a group. Google’s former Head of People Operations Laszlo Bock stated in his book, Work Rules!, “it’s also important to reward failure” so as to encourage risk-taking. Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit, said, “At Intuit, we celebrate failure. Literally: Intuit has a Greatest Failure Award. Because every failure teaches something important that can be the seed for the next great idea.”

   Resourcefulness requires being able to imagine solutions that don’t exist yet. That kind of thinking happens best when people feel safe from prosecution within the company. Build a culture that enables courageous thinking and exploration. Celebrate what you learn and grow from them.

What ways have you found to be resourceful in these turbulent times? Let us know by commenting below.

Foundations are Critical for Resilient Companies

Dandelions put out a taproot from the very beginning to give themselves every advantage possible in journey ahead—because they don’t know if that journey will be easy or tough.

Unfortunately, too many companies don’t operate with the basic principles of dandelions and as a result, start with weak foundations, don’t plan for adversity ahead, and falter when the economic winds change. If we’ve learned anything from history it should be that change is inevitable. It can be sudden and unpredictable or like a slow-moving glacier.

What are you doing to give yourself a shot at success even against all odds?

Establishing Your Organizational Foundations

At Thinkhaus, we work with companies to build strong foundations. Depending on where you are as a company, this may be defining your purpose, vision, mission, values. You might use all of these or only a couple. These are your taproots.

Some companies never bothered to write these down, or maybe they did but the language was off. Some companies discovered that somewhere in the pandemic their foundations shook loose and didn’t hold up that well. One of my personal favorites here was created by the brilliant writers for the show The Office and their fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. Their Mission Statement reads:

“Dunder Mifflin Incorporated provides its customers quality office and information technology products, furniture, printing values, and the expertise required for making informed buying decisions. We provide our products and services with a dedication to the highest degree of integrity and quality of customer satisfaction, developing long-term professional relationships with employees that develop pride, creating a stable working environment and company spirit.”

The statement is purposefully packed with corporate babble that is neither clear nor differentiating. It worked great for a comedy show, but you can find similar statements in organizations across the globe.

Generalizing foundational language can also lead to shaky cultures. For example, all those companies that promised their employees that they worked like a family had some soul searching to do when things got tough and they laid off half the “family”. Because that’s not really what we do to family. We don’t push our kids out the door when things get tough. We tighten our belts a little, maybe cut back on extracurricular activities, take fewer trips, etc. But the family stays the family.

It's one thing to say you want a culture that treats people equitably and does everything possible to maintain a collegial environment, but a little clarity goes a long way, especially in difficult discussions and markets.

In mid-2022, Netflix sent out a memo to their staff saying they are not like a family. They are like a high-performance team. And they evaluate based on performance, move people in and out as needed, and optimize to keep the machine performing.

“The thing we most value is working with talented people in highly creative and productive ways,” the statement read. “That’s why our core philosophy is people over process, and why we try to bring great people together as a dream team. Of course, any growing business requires some process and structure. But with our people-first approach, we can be more flexible, creative, and successful in everything we do.”

Further, Netflix went on to say, “As employees, we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values. Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

It’s a much more honest approach: You matter to us. You bring a lot to the table. But don’t forget what we all agreed to build together when we joined.

You don’t have to agree with Netflix. And that’s exactly the point. If their foundations aren’t right for you, choose another place to work that matches who you are.

Is it time for you to take another look at what your company stands for?

Clarifying Brand Foundations

Maybe for you it’s at the brand level. In brand strategy, we use the equity pyramid as a framework to clarify the elements of the brand. The model itself isn’t that important. I want to focus on the bottom two sections for a minute: Points of Parity and Points of Difference. Points of Parity are those things you need to do to be seen as credible in your category but aren’t all that unique. Points of Difference are things that only you do and a fast follower would have a tough time matching within six months.

Something we run into all the time is companies that are shouting their Points of Parity and wondering why people don’t understand what makes them unique. Dandelions do NOT do this. The dandelion doesn’t worry whether they’re like everyone else. They are not. They know their purpose and what makes them unique, what separates them from the competition, and they go on to proudly do their own unique thing.

Why Worry About Foundations?

If you were to construct a building and didn’t quite finish the foundation before putting up the walls, you would expect things to get shaky when it came time to build the second floor. It makes logical sense when talking about a physical space. But companies launch on shaky business principles every day and wonder why they can’t hold on when times get tough.

Establishing a dandelion strategy and getting the foundations right from the start won’t keep recessions, pandemics, or competitors away. But they will help you be best prepared to weather the storms when they happen.

Tell us your thoughts on building strong foundations.

Brand Storytelling: The art of conversation

They say great conversationalists are first really great listeners.

The communications master Dale Carnegie put it this way: “If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.”

Keep in mind that Mr. Carnegie wrote these words in the mid-1930s. This is not new material. The not-so-subtle jab at the general populace is this: we love to talk about ourselves. We love to talk about what we’ve done, who we’ve seen, the hurdles we’ve crossed and triumphs we’ve realized. If we’re not careful, we can talk about how amazing we are and leave our guest completely out of the discussion.

Brands do this all the time. Agencies do this all the time. All this chest thumping and self promoting leaves consumers and customers on the outside looking in … if they even stay around long enough to keep looking.

So how can brands master the art of conversation in their storytelling?

Stop talking about you

As a young copywriter I was taught to talk about the benefits of each product feature because the benefit is what the consumer/customer is actually looking for. It’s the solution provided by the feature.

But many companies want to talk about their accomplishments, size, scale, equipment … features. This is a TELL approach, as in, “let me tell you about me.” It almost makes sense. After months and years of product and brand development, people want to get credit for their hard work. The problem is that no one wants to listen to you talk about you.

Start listening to them

I have a friend named Karen who is amazing at this. Karen is the kind of person who circles a room meeting people and comes back within a few minutes knowing personal details on every single person. People open up to her and share their inner thoughts, goals, and challenges as if she’s the therapist they never knew they needed. It’s magical to see in person.

So what’s her secret? Karen asks great questions and doesn’t interject her own stories while other people are talking. People open up to her because she is genuinely interested in them. If the other person doesn’t ask about Karen, she’s fine to leave those details out.

Obviously brands can’t work a room in their daily communication. But they can spend a lot more time listening to the wants and needs of their customers. Those wants and needs often show up as frustrations.

In an earlier post I talked about Command™ Brand hanging solutions. The brand had tried for years to talk about the superiority of their technology over other options but consumers didn’t care. It was the better mousetrap no one wanted. But in research consumers talked about their frustrations with punching holes in walls and having to repair them, about not being able to move things around, about wanting to hang some things for the holidays and take them down later without making it a big deal. Those frustrations opened up new opportunities for the brand. By repositioning the brand as “Damage-Free Hanging Solutions” that can let you change the position of your hanging as quickly and easily as you change your mind, the Command™ Brand found audiences who couldn’t live without the brand.

Be nice. Be real.

You might think that being nice should be a given in brand storytelling, but it’s not. Brands should choose their tone of voice and brand personality with purpose, teach the fundamentals to everyone who interacts with customers, and reinforce the principles on a regular basis.

When helping organizations launch or rebrand, we spend a healthy amount of time on brand personality and how that will come to life in the marketplace. That may include call center scripts, ad copy guidelines, online content guidelines, etc. Everyone on the brand team must be clear how the brand communicates and what tone of voice is supported. Wendy’s might be able to get away with snarky tweets, but your brand might not. And you should know before you damage the brand.

Let them be the hero

Dale Carnegie said people “are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.” Essentially, we’re all fascinated by ourselves. Think you’re different? Find a group photo you’re in and see who you look for first. Yup. You look for you first. We all do. Then we look at our friends and enemies (hoping they look horrible in the shot), and filter out everyone else as visual noise.

In the brand storytelling world, we must let the customer be the hero. The brand’s position is to help solve their issues and take their pain away. That means helping them be better cooks, better at lawn management, better at home repair, cleaning, office work, workouts, weight management, and many more.

Brands exist to help make the world a better place. They do that by enabling and empowering their customers to take on new challenges and be amazing in their efforts. That means the customer is the hero.

No, really, it’s all about them

We’re only focusing on four steps to brand conversations here because it shouldn’t be that complicated:

1. Stop talking about you

2. Start listening to them

3. Be nice. Be real.

4. Let them be the hero

There are times when brands need to cover details about themselves, but more often than not, the focus should be on the customers and how the brand can help solve their challenges.

If you’re in the market for storytelling help, let’s chat to see how we can support you.

Brand Storytelling: When in doubt, be Q

One of the most common mistakes in brand storytelling is making the brand the hero. It’s an easy mistake to make. Companies work hard on their brands and products, dig to understand what differentiates the brand from its competitors, how it connects with target consumers, etc. After all that work, one naturally wants the brand to get all the credit.

But that would be a mistake.

No, most consumers/customers don’t think of themselves as James Bond. They see themselves living life and facing a wide range of challenges that get in the way of their ultimate goals. When I say wide range, I mean it stretches from cleaning floors and bathrooms, to shaving and grooming, to financial products, to medical devices. People aren’t looking for a brand or product to come in and take over. They are looking for help solving their challenges so they can go on with their lives. This means that the brand needs to act less like James Bond and more like his problem-solving counterpart, Q.

Let’s look at a couple examples:

1.    Cleaning products: Many consumers know Mr. Clean for his handsome good looks, confident smile, and cleaning strength. It would be easy to position Mr. Clean as the guy who comes to the rescue and does all the hard work, but that’s not how consumers see it. When it comes to removing rings around the bathtub, it isn’t Mr. Clean who rolls up his sleeves and scrubs away. That’s mom’s (and dad’s) job. Mr. Clean has permission to be the guy who helps make her job easier by giving her the best solution to cut through grime. He is Q to her James Bond.

2.    Hanging solutions: 3M’s Command brand is an incredibly convenient way to hang just about anything around the house. The adhesive strips apply easily and remove just as quickly once you’re done. This is a classic Q solution. The frustration consumers faced before Command strips showed up was having to punch a hole in the wall to hang something, which required tools, the willingness to damage a wall, and the need to patch a hole if you missed the first time or changed your mind. James Bond in this case was trying to make her space more functional and beautiful but was frustrated by the hole in the wall problem. Then came Q with “damage-free hanging solutions”. Now Bond could change the location of a hanging as quickly and easily as changing her mind.

The model holds true across endless categories. In banking, the financial products offered are tools that enable consumers to succeed. In the kitchen the disposer is the magical device that enables homeowners to clean up in a hurry. In surgical devices, the devices are specialized tools that enable surgeons to perform amazing feats in the operating room. In heavy industry, the valve actuators enable the engineers to route their chemicals to create products that will solve industrial-sized issues.

One CEO of a large multi-national company we worked with liked to say that everything his company did was to help their customers win. He understood that even though his company made some incredible products, the reason his customers bought those products from him was because his entire company functioned as Q. Their job was to deliver amazing solutions that enabled their customers to be the heros.

That’s exactly the right way to think about your brand.

James Bond is always on the run, always getting himself into unexpected situations in his quest to save the planet from the evil of the hour. He desperately needs someone looking out for him and creating solutions Bond doesn’t even know he needs yet. When brands get their position and story right, consumers and customers embrace the brand as part of the family. When the brand tries to be the hero, they compete with the consumer and are more likely than not to suffer a painful demise or, worse, languish in the world of the irrelevant.

When in doubt, be Q.

Making the 5 Consumer Segments Work for Your Brand

Part 2 of a 2-part series

This article builds on the previously-posted piece Five Consumer Segments Every Brand Should Understand.

Somehow the notion that five consumer segments can cross channels and categories seems too simple. That may be partly because many people have been led to believe that understanding target audiences is hard and better left to the experts. It can be complicated. I don’t think it should be.

I believe brands can make significant progress on company goals without overthinking or overspending on the concept of consumer segmentation.

As a reminder, the five segments I discussed in the past piece are: Value; Practical; Performance; Prestige and; Experiential. To make the most of these primal behaviors, we need to consider the language and activities as related to specific filters. I’ll only use a few here for example, but you can apply as many as necessary to help gain alignment on your brand.

Filters Add Depth To The Five Segments

Generation—A common misperception is that segmentation must be age-related, as in you must separate the Boomers, Gen-Y, Millennials and Gen-Z into individual pillars. You don’t. Why? Because there are a wide range of types of people in each group. That’s why I start with Primal Behaviors: they hold true regardless of age.

A Value consumer who is a Boomer will look for a good deal, but may use some more traditional means to get the information such as coupons, direct mail or word of mouth whereas a Millennial may be more likely to download an app and crowd source a deal from some niche Web site. The difference is HOW they look for a deal, not the fact that they look for a deal. Gen-X Practicals want products that work, but may use older brands as reference than their Gen-Z counterparts.

Income—Some marketers believe income determines how people make decisions. It can. But as behavioral economist Dan Ariely covers in his excellent book Predictably Irrational, most of us don’t make rational, cost/benefit analyses when we make purchases. Income is only a marker of how much money someone MIGHT have at their disposal to make a purchase. We all know people who have made great sacrifices, rationally or irresponsibly, to purchase things they want.

Category—Auto/Sports/Outdoor/Dining/ Beauty/ Family/Baby, etc. A key point to understand is that in categories that matter to them, people will make irrational purchases and spend whatever they need to accomplish their goal. If you’re in a different primal group than the one making the choice, their decisions may make absolutely no sense to you. The Value group has a really hard time comprehending why someone would pay full price for any item. But this doesn’t matter all that much to the other four groups—especially when it comes to passion areas. This can get confusing for some people.

One Guitar. Many Buyers.

Taylor Guitars manufactures guitars that cost from a few hundred dollars to upwards of $10,000 each. Now consider a 600-series model that costs roughly $4,200. At that price, you have to be pretty serious about buying a guitar. A guitarist who leans towards Value will look to get the guitar at a deep discount, maybe buy it used, or even barter for the deal. A Practical might evaluate the same guitar for how it is engineered, the woods used, and compare the reliability of the Expression pickup system with others on the market. If these pass the test, the Practical may pay full price without batting an eye. The Performance segment might love the green or blue designs because they would draw attention, plus the guitar’s acoustic abilities onstage would seal the deal. $4,200 might be a lot of money or not much at all. It’s not about whether you or I think any of these people can or should buy a guitar at this price. Each segment would evaluate the cost based on their own criteria. They could all buy the same guitar and fall in love with their choice, but for decidedly different reasons. You just can’t market to each segment using the same language and approach. What excites one segment can completely turn off the others.

 Communicate WITH Your Audiences

No one wants to be talked AT, as in generic words meant for anybody. That’s not communication. That’s patronization.

When you try to speak to everyone you communicate with no one!

If your brand wants to focus activities on narrow bands, start with a primal segment or two, say Performance and Prestige for a high end beauty brand, and work from there. What other filters need to be applied to consider your Performance and Prestige consumers’ preferences in the beauty category? Whatever you do, don’t try to water down the message so some random Practical consumer might not be offended by your Prestige message. Please. If you want to add Practicals to your brand plan, talk to them separately.

Choose The Filters That Work For You

I prefer to NOT create additional pillars because pillars without a specific purpose become a dump zone of sorts. Brands that allow dump zones in their architecture or segmentation set themselves up for longer term confusion. At some point that dump zone data is going to have to be sorted. Why not start with an organized plan?

Start with the primal segments and use your filters to help you determine how each segment acts or reacts when considering other factors such as Quality (good, better, best); Involvement (beginner, aspiring, elite); Need state (Sensitive skin or dietary/health issues, family or individual, etc.).

Subdivisions Within Segments

You can subdivide the segment if it’s helpful to bring clarity to your brand and marketing efforts. For example, you might subdivide the Value group into four parts: Down & Out, Fixed Income, Life Events, Students. The difference is situational events that impact behavior change. So instead of becoming new pillars, consider these to be horizontal filters

The Down & Out group have limited purchasing abilities and blame the world for their situation. Unless you’re in the therapy business, this group usually doesn’t warrant a lot of your resources. The other three groups tend to have positive outlooks and are worth the calories it takes to understand them better. Fixed Income might be retirees who don’t have a lot of spending flexibility, but they’re okay with their situation. Life Events might be people who went through job loss or a divorce and have limited resources for a short period. They’re in the Value group now because some unusual circumstance caused them to be there. When they can, they’ll be back to their usual behaviors. The last group, Students, share a lot with the Life Eventers, in that they see their situation in life as temporary. They plan to have more resources in the near future and then they’ll have more options.

When In Doubt, Go Back To The Basics!

I recognize there is a lot of material to consider here. And if you’re not familiar with it the subject matter can become overwhelming. Don’t let it get to you. Start with the five primal behaviors: Value; Practical; Performance; Prestige and; Experiential. When you understand these core segments you might just be surprised by how easy it is communicate with people who fit into those segments. In workshops, I often hear clients say they know friends and family who match each segment. When we break down the similarities, this simple exercise can kick an innovation workshop into a higher gear.

That’s the hope with all of this: that more brands will find a way to target their innovation and communications to specific audiences in ways that change lives and maybe even change the world.

If you have questions or thoughts on this topic, add a comment here or send me an email.

How Do Resilient Companies Thrive?

There are winners and losers in every economy. Some people and companies collapse under the weight of changes and uncertainty while others seem to thrive. Same conditions, similar circumstances, but one group withers away while others not only survive the challenge but go on to do great things. What makes the difference?

What is Resilience?

Before we break down what resilient people and companies do differently, it might be helpful to define what we’re talking about. What does it mean to be resilient? According to Merriam-Webster, resilience means “able to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens.”

Seems simple enough. But being able to bounce back when bad things happen is largely related to the foundations laid prior to those bad things happening … and then building on the foundations as needed.

So what do healthy organizations do that help them survive the crises that take down their competitors?

Prepare: Build a Healthy Company Culture

Just as a healthy person is better able to fight off illness and injury, healthy organizations give themselves the upper hand in both good and bad times. In his excellent book “The Advantage”, organizational health guru, Patrick Lencioni, outlines four disciplines of healthy companies:

1. Build a cohesive leadership team—the people at the top understand why the company exists, what challenges are top priority, their roles and responsibilities, and how to work together to make things happen;

2. Create clarity—the leadership team is intellectually aligned and committed to the same fundamental values and actions. There can be disagreements at the top, but not dissension.

3. Over-communicate clarity—healthy organizations make sure everyone is on the same page, working together from top to bottom to accomplish their goals. People know why the company exists, how they’re changing the world, and how their particular role factors into that goal.

4. Reinforce clarity—“in order for an organization to remain healthy over time, its leaders must establish a few critical, non-bureaucratic systems to reinforce clarity in every process that involves people. Every policy, every program, every activity should be designed to remind employees what is really most important.”

Just being in business isn’t good enough to withstand real economic challenges. Companies that know what they’re about, why they exist, have leaders who are aligned and able to guide employees to the future, and help people link arms in the struggle give themselves incredible advantages in the marketplace.

Act with Discipline and Purpose

Discipline is key to resiliency at personal, brand, and organizational levels. Healthy organizations move with a sense of purpose in good times and bad. Because they establish their foundations early and understand why the exist, they can align their teams on disciplined pursuits of their goals.

In his book, “Great by Choice”, author Jim Collins details the 20-mile march concept used by explorer Roald Amundsen to successfully reach the South Pole. To summarize: “Enterprises that prevail in turbulence self-impose a rigorous performance mark to hit with great consistency—like hiking across the United States by marching at least 20 miles a day, every day. The march imposes order amidst disorder, discipline amidst chaos, and consistency amidst uncertainty.”

Does preparation build resiliency? In many ways, yes. Because it helps people not collapse when faced with uncertainty.

To quote Collins again, “Having a clear 20 Mile March focuses the mind; because everyone on the team knows the markers and their importance, they can stay on track. Financial markets are out of your control. Customers are out of your control. Earthquakes are out of your control. Global competition is out of your control. Technological change is out of your control. Most everything is ultimately out of your control. But when you 20 Mile March, you have a tangible point of focus that keeps you and your team moving forward, despite confusion, uncertainty, and even chaos.”

Collaborate or Die

There are many advantages to creating a collaborative work environment for organizations, from attracting better employees, and retaining your best people, to improving productivity and getting better ideas out of everyone involved. So why isn’t every company already committed to collaboration?

It starts with leaders—but it isn’t just leaders by title. I like the way Liz Wiseman’s talks about a better grade of leaders. In her book “Multipliers”, Wiseman defines multipliers as “genius-makers who bring out the intelligence in others. They build collective, viral intelligence in organizations.”

It’s important to make the distinction between leaders who are multipliers and people who are what Wiseman calls “diminishers”, or those who “are absorbed in their own intelligence, stifle others, and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability.”

The multipliers in your organization help foster the kind of environment where people feel they are free to collaborate and share their best ideas because they feel valued, energized, challenged in positive ways, and therefore enthusiastically lean into helping the team and organization thrive.

How people feel is really important here. Organizations that post empty values about empowerment and authenticity, and then run people over when they express those values, are doomed to having an empty staff—people who come to work to get paid, not to give 110% of who they are.

Multipliers worry less about getting people in the right seats and accountability charts. They instill a sense of ownership, “provide the necessary resources for success, and hold people accountable for their commitments.”

By bringing out the best in everyone in the company, and leveraging a collaborative culture, organizations gain flexibility, agile work styles, become more adaptable and seem to have the ability to see around corners—not because their people are better or smarter than any other work force, but because every employee is fully engaged and fully utilized.

Worry About What You Can Control, Not About What You Can’t

Resilience is largely focused on companies controlling the right things and getting the right people and processes in place so they can capitalize on opportunities or shift away from issues faster. Success isn’t guaranteed, but resilient companies give themselves a better shot at success than their less prepared counterparts.

In their HBR article “A Guide to Building a More Resilient Business”, co-authors Martin Reeves and Kevin Whitaker identified four significant benefits of resilience at a corporate level:

1. Anticipation—the ability to recognize threats faster.

2. Impact—the ability to better resist or withstand the initial shock. This can be achieved through better preparation or a more-agile response.

3. Recovery speed—the ability to rebound from the shock more quickly by identifying the adjustments needed to return to the prior operating level and implementing them swiftly and effectively.

4. Outcomes benefit—increased fitness for the new post-shock environment.

In summary, resilient companies prepare for the days ahead and give themselves the advantage of a healthy culture, act with a sense of purpose and move at a steady pace, encourage collaboration in, around, and through their people and bring out the best in every individual, and take care of what they can control.

As a result, healthy companies are better prepared to enjoy the fruits—even in a down economy or turbulent environment—when their competitors struggle to survive.

Tell us your thoughts on what resilient companies are doing better and differently than others.

Brand Building Fundamentals: Brand Promise

Brand promise is the collective experience people have with your brand once you combine all other factors of your brand foundation. So it's not tactical or directive. It's the essence of the brand.

You may be familiar with some of the standards:

• Disney: Fun family entertainment

• Coca-Cola: To inspire moments of optimism and uplift.

• Nike: Authentic athletic performance

Makes sense for billion dollar brands. But what if you're not that?

A number of years ago I worked with the local Freestore Foodbank. An amazing organization that helps people get back on their feet through a range of services. When we talked with internal people, they gushed about their ability to help people transition into positive life situations.

But people outside the group thought they only gave away food.

We found that food was the catalyst to everything else.

If you haven't eaten in three days, chances are very good that you don't have much interest in talking about clothing, job skills, housing, etc.

Food comes first.

The brand promise became: Using food as a gateway to life transformations.

It captures the essence of the brand and gave internal audiences a focus.

Brand Building Fundamentals: Positioning

The best companies know they have to own a unique place in the hearts and minds of their consumers. In simple terms, this is positioning.

You can leverage a number of vectors including relevance, clarity, distinctiveness, and a whole lot more. But you cannot be all things to all people. Remember, this is about standing out in the hearts and minds of the people who have a chance of caring about your brand.

In his book, Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely tells the story of Salvador Assael who, through a series of trades, ended up with a collection of black pearls in a day when everyone wore white pearls.

You might think the fact that they were different would do the trick. It didn't, any more than a black t-shirt is exponentially better than a white t-shirt.

Assael teamed up with Harry Winston who crafted the black pearls into luscious pieces of jewelry with premium pricing. Now, the product had exclusivity, a connection to a superior brand and a price tag to match all the glitz and glitter. Soon, black pearls were a necessary item in any reputable jewelry case.

Trying to sell black pearls didn't work. Positioning them as exclusive alternatives did.

Brand Building Fundamentals: Desired Consumer Experience

Brands often talk about what they bring to the market. The smart ones also think about how they want their audiences to respond. In brand building, this is the Desired Consumer Experience (DCE).

Branding only from the inside out opens the door to confirmation biases. It's just too easy to convince yourself that your brand is smart, innovative and darned good looking. But your brilliant product without an audience isn’t worth much in the market.

I like to consider three vectors for DCE:

1. What do you want your audience to THINK about the brand as a result of an interaction?

2. How do you want them to FEEL about the brand?

3. What do you want them to DO?

A few DCE examples:

• (The brand) helps me feel like I can own my future

• (The brand) is always working on my behalf

• (The brand) helps me take care of what's important

• (The brand) makes me feel like a rock star!

I tend to lean towards emotion in the DCE partly because emotional connections are longer lasting than simply having consumers think "I always get a good deal."

Ultimately it's your call. Just be purposeful in your choice.

Brand Building Fundamentals: Points of Difference

Every successful brand must have attributes or benefits that make them stand out in the hearts and minds of consumers and stand apart from their competition. These are the points of difference in the brand foundation and are fundamental to helping your brand win in  the marketplace. They are what give your audiences a reason to turn your way versus the competition.

These can be rational, as in distinct product quality features or maybe even the fact that it's tied to a particularly strong parent brand/organization, or emotional, as in the way the brand makes its audiences feel.

Key here is that points of difference should be elements of the brand that competitors can't copy easily (think under six months). Unless the brand is willing to fight for trademarks, you can expect your assets to be copied.

One of my favorite examples of the nuances between points of parity and difference comes from the classic Miller Lite campaign. In this campaign they touted "Great Taste," a point of parity in the category plus "Less Filling," a point of difference at a time when consumers wanted fewer calories without sacrificing taste. Brilliant.

Brand Building Fundamentals: Points of Parity

What your brand does that qualifies you to be in the market will not differentiate you from your competition. They're called points of parity in brand building—so you can move on to what matters.

The name is fairly transparent: these are elements the brand offers that enable them to be seen as a player in any particular category. I often state it like this: If I were a billionaire and wanted to get into your category, what would I need to offer in order for people to take me seriously?

The list often starts with things like: wide range of products, good quality, a variety of experts on staff, size of company, efficacy, good value, etc.

In workshops with some larger, established brands rethinking their way, the list can fill several pages—which is perfect for the group to work through. Because many established brands fall victim to believing their Points of Parity are what separate them from their competition. They don't! They simply keep you in the game.

The next step in the equity building process is to identify Points of Difference. These are usually much harder to nail down—some brands may only have one or two true differentiators.

I'll discuss those in my Points of Difference post.

Tankers and Speedboats: Is your innovation program solving the right problems?

What's the balance between your tankers (people who excel at keeping the train on the track and dialing up efficiencies), and your speedboats (people looking to move fast and find what's next)?

Most companies need both. Too many speedboats and you can new idea your company out of existence. Too many tankers and the world will pass you by. With innovation, it's often best to let your speedboats race out to the front.

I'll use the Peloton bike as an example. (https://lnkd.in/e3DJd-W) In your typical company, the challenge goes out to build a better spinner bike, so the tankers get on it. They hyper-analyze materials, components and electronics, adding and honing to build the ultimate self-contained unit, like bikes have always worked.

But the Peloton team are speedboats. They combined a love of cycling, problems with scheduling rides and the isolation of working out alone, and came up with a better experience in general. Now you can be a part of a group experience—at home. Log in, ride, sweat and win alone and yet still with others. Brilliant.

Tankers can now fine tune the machine while the speedboats run ahead.

Tankers and Speedboats: Checking the box versus solving the issue.

Every company has check-the-box employees. These are people who keep their heads down and move through a steady list of to-do items.

Sometimes these are the tankers who were hired to keep the machine going. I have also found this in tankers disguising themselves as speedboats. These people like to check LOTS of boxes every day to show how busy they are.

But we need people who lift their heads up to identify and solve issues.

Take, for example, the lowly highway stripe. Before 1911, roads had no dividing lines to help people know when they'd strayed too far over. Maybe this wasn't a big problem on straight roads, but there were countless wrecks around curves as people drifted around the turn.

Check the box people don't see or solve this problem. But a guy named Edward Hines, who was a Michigan county road commissioner, saw the problem for what it was—solvable. He had his crews add lines to the center of the roads, and thereby changed the way we navigate highways around the world.

It wasn't a crazy invention or expensive idea.

But it wasn't anyone's job to solve this issue, either.

Tankers and Speedboats: Are you trapped by success, or failure?

Success can trap even the speedboats of a company into believing their one brilliant win is enough. It isn't. Companies must continue to innovate and learn, try and fail, learn more and stretch to find what's new. Because in every category, someone is out there willing to fight to make an impact. And those without the roadblock of success can do amazing things before they're told those things can't be done.

On the other end of the spectrum is failure, which leads to risk aversion. They say if a cat sits on a hot stove and gets burned he'll never sit on a hot stove again. The problem is that he won't sit on a cold one, either.

I worked with a company once that had tried a number of innovation approaches years before. During one intense period they'd tried consultants, students, PhDs and more only to come up short. So they stopped innovating and just focused on legacy products.

The tankers of the company convinced everyone that innovation was a bad thing and pointed to the old data as proof.

After a scare from a competitor, new management turned the innovation spigot back on and the company lived to fight another day.

Tankers and Speedboats: Are you over-engineering the solution?

The average tv remote control has 40+ buttons. Most people use about six on a regular basis and stretch to 10 in a crunch. So why do remote controls have the extra 30+ buttons? Because they can. But should they?

This is a classic tanker paradox. Instead of stopping with clean and simple, tankers are driven to add and build until all that extra space is filled.

I found this in an innovation program with a client a number of years ago. Market and consumer insights said consumers really wanted a product that did ONE particular job very well and came in reasonably priced. The tankers in the organization skewed the data to show that what people really wanted was a product that did a VARIETY of things.

We sketched ideas on a continuum and went back to consumers to double check things before heading further in product development. Sure enough, the simple ideas came out on top.

At this point the client took over the rest of the product development. What hit the market was a convoluted mess. The tankers won. And the product failed.

I've found healthy teams balance their tankers with speedboats who have the power to say no to over-engineering.

Does the age of a company really matter?

People like to talk about how old their companies are as points of difference from their competitors. As if being around for 30, 40 or 50 years will make the difference when people choose between the top options.

That's a nice, safe, rational belief. And if people made decisions rationally, promoting the age of the company would be a real differentiator.

But people are not rational.

According to some studies, up to 90% of all decisions we make are emotional. We may rationalize our choices after the fact, but emotions are driving the machine.

If age of the company really made the difference, people would be flocking to Sears and Kmart this morning instead of hopping online or heading over to Walmart or Target. That won't happen, of course, because Sears and Kmart have lost their relevance.

Relevance is what matters.

In every business category, whether B2B or B2C, service-oriented or manufacturing, people want to know that the products and services offered are relevant to how they live.

If you solve problems for your audiences, you have relevance.

If your solutions don't match the world around us, it doesn't matter if your company has been around for a day or a 100 years.

What if hope actually is a strategy?

Over the last few years of working with executives to help establish their business foundations and reset their company cultures, I have heard the phrase "hope is not a strategy" enough to have a gag reflex.

People bring it up when we talk about missions and values, when we get to employer branding and company culture, and when we discuss marketing plans. It seems like a go-to drop the mike kind of phrase for people who want to kill a conversation.

One major issue is that hope is EXACTLY what's missing from many company cultures today.

Executives must lead from the front in uncertain times. They must prove that even when it's tough they, the leaders, have some idea of what a positive future looks like and are willing and able to help the company achieve success. They must give the people in the organization hope that tomorrow will be okay.

Great leaders get this innately. Weak leaders struggle with it and as a result their companies die from within.

Hope is not only a strategy. It is one of the key factors in resetting struggling companies, blending cultures in mergers and acquisitions, and bolstering healthy companies looking to take on greater challenges.

Regardless of what your company values say, people need hope.

10 Steps to Creating a Personalized In-Store Experience

The in-store experience is critical to the success of any retailer. It is especially important to small retailers and mom-and-pop operations. It is your chance to prove to your customers that you have their best interests in mind and that you are truly focused on helping them succeed.

That means first impressions count. It means how you address them and their interests matters. It means they are your number one focus for the entire time they are in the store, and you will give them every reason to return—as well as give them reasons to tell their friends how amazing your store is. 

1) Engage the customer within the first 30 seconds of their entry into the store. Thirty seconds isn’t much time, but it feels like an eternity to someone visiting who sees you not connecting with them.

Avoid the gauntlet! There is plenty of research that shows a rise in heart rate and stress as consumers enter some retail shops—because they know they are going to be assaulted by commissioned sales people. When this happens, consumers naturally put up their defenses and say no to ANY help offered.

So, when you engage with your customer, it MUST be in an approachable manner and CANNOT be confused as an attack by a money-hungry salesperson.

2) Introduce yourself by name and thank them for coming in to the store. Then ask if there is a specific question they came in the store to answer. This may include shopping for a distinct event, room, person or item. You offering your name makes this a personal experience, not just a trip into someone else’s club.

Technology exists today that allows consumers to scan QR and other codes in-store and receive real-time information on the range of options available. Consumers can even link to an online shopping cart while in the store and do their shopping virtually while browsing the real thing. This kind of technology enables the floor personnel to stay connected to customers without chasing them throughout the store.

What I love about this approach is it enables the customer to stay in control of as much of the information gathering and sharing as SHE wants, and removes an uncomfortable barrier between pushy salespeople who ask too many questions at the wrong times.

3) If they say NO: give them room while providing information on the layout of the store. For example, point out how the store is arranged, where to find particularly popular items, showcase what’s new or different.

Tell them you will check back with them in a few minutes—and let them shop on their own. But make sure you check back with them.

Keep your promises, even little ones made in the moment. These may seem small to you, but your customer uses them to judge your credibility.

4) If they say YES: obviously you want to address that need. This is where customer segmentation comes into play. The more you know about the type of customer you are dealing with, the better prepared you are to provide the right kind of information they want and how they like to receive the information.

For example, if you’re in a specialty business like a guitar or bike shop, you need to be able to determine whether you are talking with someone who considers him or herself an expert, or whether you have a newbie on your hands. The expert may be able to cut to the chase and sort through all the technical details of the product. The newbie will likely be lost by the jargon and turned off by their perception of you acting like a know-it-all.

5) Offer ideas: People like to buy; they just hate to be sold. So offer ideas and reasonable suggestions. Start small and work your way up.

Keep in mind that your online retail competitors have all of this built into their software. So instead of personal assistance and suggestions your customers get pop-ups and banner ads. You being there in person should be a better option to online, if you want your customer to return.

6) NEVER PATRONIZE YOUR CUSTOMERS! If they don’t know what questions to ask, it is your job as the expert to help them get to a great solution while allowing them to save face. Most people do not like to admit that they don’t know the answer to a question. You proving they don’t know what they’re talking about may make you feel better but it will almost always guarantee a lost sale plus a social media wildfire.

Retail is hard. Dealing with living, breathing customers in person every day can be crushing to the spirit—on the bad days. But that never gives you the right to belittle your customers. The customer is NOT always right. By the same token, they are not always wrong, or stupid, or lazy or ... you get the idea. Use the Golden Rule here.

7) Be the expert: Most of your customers want you to know what you’re doing, and expect you to know more about your category and channel than they do. So feel free to offer tips and share anecdotes based on your personal experience. Chances are good that you have more experience in your category (especially if you’re in a specialized category) than a fair number of your walk-in customers. Your excitement for your store, variety, options, potential and more will rub off on them—and improve your chances for a sale.

8) Think long-term: You are building a relationship one visit at a time. Some of your customers will walk into the store having done their homework and knowing exactly what they want. For them, you will likely serve as the resident expert who shows them what they want to see and verifies the details.

Many more customers will want to browse and ask questions, especially for larger ticket items. Be patient with them. Give them a reason to come back, which starts with liking the in-store experience and the person helping them—that’s you.

9) Get them into the system and into events: Every in-store visit is a chance to connect long-term. So get their name and contact details while pointing them to your Web site, Facebook page, app and more. Let them know the kind of information you post online (tips, videos, styles, upcoming shows, etc.) so they have a reason to check in. Ask if they would like to receive follow up reminders and updates.

10) Give them a reason to return: Remind them of your name and show them that you remember something about their interests, which proves you were listening to them. Offer to help personally on their next visit.

For consumers to continue to frequent brick and mortar retailers, the experience in-store simply must offer options beyond making product available and available locally. Those arguments are wasted when consumers can have virtually any items shipped directly to them overnight in most cases and free of charge.

In-store experiences offer an excellent opportunity to build lasting relationships between real people and provide the emotional connection many say is increasingly missing from the equation. If you can’t win on price, and many boutique stores cannot begin to win a price war, then emotion and personal interaction must overcome the difference. You can do it.