“Innovation” (along with web 2.0, social networking, etc) is certainly a business concept du jour. Cited frequently in mission statements and CXO interviews… but not well executed in practice.
Why? I think one reason is that “Innovation” creates a mental leap straight to “Product / Service Innovation”. Too many companies believe that real innovation means they […]
I was back at Albertson’s today… yes, for the warm bread. I also picked up a bunch of other stuff, and I couldn’t help but notice I was idle for several minutes while the clerk checked through and bagged my groceries.
In that time I hovered over the debit/credit payment terminal waiting for the right time […]
After reading John Grant’s new book, Brand Innovation Manifesto, I started thinking about Scott’s last post about consistency. Grant makes an interesting point that many modern brands are much more complex than brands that were developed in an ad-centric world, because they are built through experiences. Google, Starbucks, and JetBlue are all pretty hard to […]
What’s better than sliced bread? HOT sliced bread.
My wife and I have never shopped at our local Albertsons. We’ve been loyal QFC customers from day one… but the other day I was driving home from work and had to grab a last minute ingredient. Albertsons was on the way home, and so I popped in. […]
I cracked open a new stick of Degree deodorant this morning and carved into the top were the words, “Lead the Way” (granular picture included - sorry). At first, it kind of made me smile… because when I’m putting on deodorant, I don’t really feel like I’m “Leading the Way”… my purpose is a little […]
I went to a concert this past weekend and was so pumped up after the show that I went on YouTube to see if anyone posted a clip from the performance. Four days and 100 viewed clips later, I’m one of a few hundred posting comments in back and forth, each sharing their experience […]
Been a while since the last post - and for that I apologize. No excuses, just a good ol’ fashioned apology. Which is exactly the theme of this post. If there is a universal customer service handbook in existence, surely chapter 1, paragraph 1 contains this nugget: “Apologize to the customer… even if it’s not […]
I’m a huge advocate of “taste-testing”… as the authors of Creating Customer Evangelists would say, “break your product down into bite size chunks so it can be easily sampled.”
Case in point - I was at my local Pro Golf Discount store this week exploring the purchase of a new driver. Anyone who golfs avidly knows […]
So I ragged a bit on Microsoft with the last post… discouraging PowerPoint use for breakthrough presentations. Well today, let’s score one for Microsoft. This morning a package arrived at our doorstep… from Microsoft, addressed to my son. It was his 3-month old “care package”, something Microsoft put together to show him a little love […]
