March 29, 2024

The helpful brand wins the heart

One way to disrupt your market is to disrupt your marketing. What if you set aside the hard-sell persuasion techniques and the broadcasted interruptions, and instead served up a generous portion of radical helpfulness? What if helping people actually became your marketing strategy? Do you think you could still compete and win? Some brands are doing […]

Telling the story versus being the story

The story you tell in advertising might make the things you sell sound better. But what really matters to people is how the things you sell make life better for them. It’s that experience that makes your story meaningful and authentic. Here is an example. MidModMen+friends is a Saint Paul, Minnesota retailer of restored mid-century […]

Don’t interrupt, add value

Time is not money. It has a far greater value than money. We can spend our money or lose our money, but we can always get more. Not so with our time. Once we spend a moment of time it is gone forever. That’s why interruptions are such an offense. An interruption says “Give me […]

The stories that matter

The most powerful brand stories aren’t the ones we tell our customers. They are the ones customers tell themselves. People tell themselves stories every day to make it easier to understand a complex world. The stories they tell have little to do with facts, and a lot to do with how they see the world. […]