Groucho Marx once famously quipped, "If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.” Unfortunately, many story-obsessed brands seem to agree that telling the same story over and over again, with only the names changed, will surely result in a good ending. In fact, if a brand repeatedly tells the same story, audiences may...
We're hearing a lot about AI these days and increasingly it's being incorporated into various marketing technology platforms as well. This week, I had the good fortune of receiving a demo from an up-and-coming social media management platform that incorporated a subtle, yet very effective AI application in its offerings. In a nutshell, the demonstrator selected a long-form article from the company...
The stats are undeniable—few of us like going it alone, at least when it comes to buying stuff in unfamiliar categories. On the consumer side, the Spiegel Research Center reports that nearly 95% of shoppers read online reviews before buying. And on the business-to-business front, a G2 Crowd and Heinz Marketing study showed that 92% of buyers are more likely...
Ad agencies are notoriously poor at applying their craft to their own brands, but martech companies don't have that problem. Marketo and Hubspot are masters of inbound marketing, in which brands draw potential customers to them with tactics such as content marketing and search optimization. Salesforce is really good at using Salesforce to sell itself. And Demandbase, a leader in...
While Gens Y & Z are famously prone to FOMO, my unscientific survey of hundreds of CMOs suggests many suffer from FOFB, "fear of falling behind." This fear manifests itself in positive ways like intense curiosity, networking with peers and continuous learning. On the flip side, it can also lead to embracing robotic technologies (i.e. bots, programmatic, AI, phone trees,...
If you ever have occasion to work or present at Amazon, you'd better leave your PowerPoint slides at home. According to a directive from Jeff Bezos, PowerPoint is now a thing of the past at Amazon. Why? Well, for the world's richest man, time really is money ($4 million an hour at last count!). And Bezos is convinced that meetings...
Leadership, whether you're the CEO, chief marketing officer or chief financial officer, can typically be boiled down to three fundamental tasks: Set the vision, build the team and allocate the resources. Arguably, all three are equally important, yet in this CMO-centric column, we've focused more on the first and third, closely examining the strategic and budgetary choices that modern marketers...
There are two brand videos below. Each is only a few minutes long. Both use emotion to tell a story. But I think you will find that one of the two clearly stands out as a better story - and consequently a better brand story overall - for that company. (Warning: Spoiler Alert) Of course, it's subjective but I'm guessing...
When Jonathan Beamer took over as CMO of Monster nine months ago, he found a brand that, despite "ten years of neglect" from both a product and marketing perspective, "was still one of the strongest in the job search category." He credits this residual strength to Monster's original insight, "that people desperately want fulfilling work," which remains as true today...
The other day, I was speaking with storytelling guru and "father of modern branding," David Aaker. One of the best ways to create a "signature story" for your brand, he said, is to magnify the problem that your product or service addresses. As David's advice was kicking around my cranium, I came across the story of cloud backup and data...