Be Different or be dead

May 17, 2021

Why marketers should try to make people emotional rather than buy products

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Why marketers should try to make people emotional rather than buy products.

Marketers should refocus their attention to building solutions for the heart; customer offers that stir their feelings and emotions.

We live in a product flogging world.

Products are pushed at us. Technology rains down on us through mass communications.

What businesses supply (as opposed to what we want) is jammed down our throats with the hope that we will bite-and-buy what they offer.

People buy what they want, desire and crave, not what they need

People buy on the basis of what they yearn, crave and ache for; to achieve happiness in a world with pressure and stress on their lives.

Product flogging is intrusive and completely out of sync with this reality, and is a recipe to fail.

Happiness is driven by what we experience rather than what we consume in material goods. Fond memories of a family vacation are long-lasting. The new car is fun for a while but soon feels no different than just the one we just traded in.

This is a game-changer for product floggers. Rather than push features, technology and price, the challenge is to create broad-based appeals to the full spectrum of feelings that an individual has.

The marketer’s goal is to illicit a warm feeling rather than to satisfy a need

The marketer’s objective in this sense is to elicit a positive emotional response from the customer, rather than satisfy a consumer need.

“When people were asked to recall their most significant material purchase and their most significant experiential purchase over the past five years, they reported the experiential purchase brought them more joy and enduring satisfaction, and it was clearly ‘money well spent’ compared with the material purchase,” wrote Thomas Gilovich, Professor of Psychology, Cornell University in Determinants of Happiness.

Furthermore, experiences create more happiness than material goods because they are a personal expression of what we desire. They belong to us alone and no one else.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel — Maya Angelou

The payback is long-term customer loyalty; the better they feel, the longer they stay.

These 3 steps will get you started.

1. Establish the ‘Experience Creator’ position in marketing to augment in the standard product management role.
These are the experience packagers; the folks that integrate, brand and price the value elements necessary to deliver the complete experience that customers covet.

This position is a synthesizer who brings together the appropriate combination of the organization’s products and services to create an emotional response that bonds the customer’s loyalty.

2. Include feelings as a key element of marketing and customer research. What experience would make someone happy, special and fulfilled? What does the person crave?
Develop feelings objectives for the offer you bring to market. What feeling do you intend to cause by the offer: contentment, trust, joy,...? If you’re serious about stirring emotion then you need to have a target that embodies the marketing intent.

3. Measure the emotions evoked by the experience packages you create; “How did it make you feel?” not just “Did it do what we said it would and does it meet your needs?”

Memo to marketers: forsake your flogging ways and start creating personal experiences for your customers.

The world is full of floggers.

If you want to make a difference and stand-out from the flogging herd let experiences guide you that produce an emotional response that keeps a customer with you forever.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 5.17.21 at 05:08 am by Roy Osing
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May 10, 2021

How to make yourself undeniable and win every contest

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How to make yourself undeniable and win every contest.

Undeniability is the condition where an individual won’t be put off their goal.

It’s a force that moves inexorably towards the intended finish line and there’s nothing anyone or anything can do to prevent it from achieving its intended purpose.

Successful people tend to have the ‘undeniability factor’ working for them. When they put their mind to doing something, they simply cannot be denied achieving their intended outcome

How does one acquire undeniability? Do they learn it in school? Do they acquire it with life experience? Are they born with the undeniability gene? Or is there some other reason some have it while others don’t’?

The reality is that it’s probably a bit of each.
Like most profound and complicated-to-explain things in life, I believe it’s a combination of a number of factors that are at play when undeniability is being formed in a person’s motivation profile.

But it’s what you observe in real life situations that offers more understanding than hypotheses tested in a lab environment ever will.

And so, after witnessing (not a large) number of undeniability ‘masters’, these are the 5 like-no-other attributes they possess that give them their affliction:

Goal setting

Undeniables are tenacious goal setters with a substantial number of them in the audacious category.

The goal setting process instils urgency and a sense of commitment which provides the energy to relentlessly move forward.

They set goals for everything no matter how small. If it’s worth doing, they need to set a goal to get it done.
Their goal setting infatuation makes them the antithesis of most people who thrive on activity and business and achieve terribly little.

Personal conviction

When they set their sights on a goal, undeniables are all in. They’re not ‘slightly interested’ in achieving their goal; they are and passionately driven to do so.

And it’s not out of intellectual interest in the subject matter; it’s a drive in their gut that makes them move on it relentlessly.

Bravery

Undeniables are brave; they are fearless in pursuit of their end game.

Trepeditiousness knows no part of them. They understand the risks but nevertheless drive forward often right into the face of adversaries. Walking into a buzz saw isn’t a pleasant experience for them, but they’re ok with doing it if it’s a requisite to achieving their purpose.

And their bravery is supported by the fact that they know their stuff; it’s what makes them special and gives them the confidence to move often against the crowd and willing to accept all of the consequences that often befall a contrarian.

They are the expert in whatever they’re targeting to achieve, which is mandatory to meet the challenges they face in advancing their agenda.

Mentors

Undeniables have a stable of like minded (but different) mentors to draw on for advice and guidance consistent with each unique journey they pursue.

Bumps in the road require different perspectives on how to maneuver through them and having a mosaic of experience to tap into allows the undeniable to consistently achieve their goals.

Their mentors are special with each one of them having an unparalleled history of getting stuff done as opposed to having only a lofty academic pedigree for credentials. Undeniables hunt for the ‘been there done it’ mentor and they accept nothing less.

Age and maturity

Undeniables start early in life when their energy reserves are high, curiosity is growing and passion is honest.

They were researchers of anything that interested them, spending hours and hours trying to understand every aspect of the topic in their crosshairs.

They realized very early that their exam goals could be achieved by working out a rigid (and sometimes ‘unrealistic’) study schedule and by putting in more hours than anyone else.

They also have an idea of what they wanted to be when they grew up before their schoolmates. They had a rudimentary career plan that not only defined the few choices they were interested in, it also defined the possible routes to achieve each one.

Undeniables are special people  that achieve success in spite of those around them who try (often unknowingly) to deny them.

Study the traits I’ve given you and see if you can emulate them — this stuff is ok to copy because there are so few of them in the world you will be viewed as an original.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 5.10.21 at 04:53 am by Roy Osing
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May 3, 2021

Why great brands are not made by the organization’s leaders

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Why great brands are not made by the organization’s leaders.

I’ve sat in board meetings as the EVP of marketing listening to board members pronounce their views on the company’s brand and how it should change to meet changing market conditions.
From the 21st floor, they declare what brand position best serves the organization in terms of the current business plan and the environment as they see it.

Yes, board members should have influence on brand positioning, as should people further down the line in marketing, advertising and public relations — not to mention a plethora of others in the organization who want to join the brand party because it’s fun to be involved.

But let’s be clear: the brand work done by these folks is at best aspirational and bears little resemblance to the impact felt by the brand when implemented and experienced by customers and other stakeholders.

The brand developed by marketing, for example, represents the value proposition that they want communicated in order to meet the marketing objectives involving competitive differentiation and customer value considerations. 

Whether it’s declared by the board or marketing, it’s a paper brand position at this stage — a brave brand only.

Because at the end of the day, if an organization can’t deliver on its brand promise, the promise is useless and and is seen as a lie by all who witness it.

The brand stays in the ‘dream’ stage until it’s edited, filtered and tested by all of the practical, operational factors that impact the brand’s efficacy.

In my experience, these are the factors that either reinforce the brand dream or kill it.

▪️The frontline of the organization who engage with demanding customers day-in and day-out with aggressive competitors must believe the brand promise.
They must feel that they can deliver on the promise 24X7, because if they don’t believe, the dream dies.

▪️Operating processes that impact the way customers engage with the organization must support the brand promise. If, for example, the brand promises a friendly future but the internal policies make it cumbersome and difficult for customers to transact with the organization, the promise and delivery collide and the brand lie is borne over and over again. And the dream dies.

▪️Internal rules and policies affecting the customer experience must be in harmony with the brand promise. If the brand promises amazing customer experiences but internal rules force the customer through hoops they don’t like, customers are pissed off, they tell their friends what horrific service is being delivered and the dream dies.

▪️Frontline people must have the personal attitude, life experience and competence to deliver the brand promise day-in and day-out. Rude and uncaring treatment of a customer renders an organization as self-serving and narcissistic with utter disregard for the needs and wants of the people they serve. And the dream dies.

▪️The organization must be cleansed if the grunge and CRAP that gets in the way of employees delivering the brand promise. If frontline people are constantly fighting unnecessary internal roadblocks that get in the way of delivering what customers crave, again, the customer experience suffers and once loyal customers leave for a more friendly environment. And the dream dies.

▪️Frontline emotion and proclivity to serve others must be a huge component in the engagement process if the organization is to maximize the value of the customer experience, and this requires that people with a high EQ - emotional quotient - are recruited into frontline positions. If frontliners don’t illicit goosebumps during the interview process then the wrong person is being hired. And the dream dies.

▪️There are many organizations that decide to rebrand themselves without addressing the alignment factors discussed in the previous points — and nothing changes. They create a new identity with a flashy new logo and tag line but the essence of the organization carries on the way it always has. For these organizations, leadership seems to believe that the new logo will miraculously change their performance, but it doesn’t.

They overhaul their web sites with a new look and feel. Advertising messages change stressing an aspect of the organization they feel is now important and nothing changes.

The same operations problems persist; the same employee morale issues remain and competitive vulnerabilities continue despite the fact that how the organization is visually presented to the market has been morphed into something different. And the dream dies.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

A brand begins as a dream, conjured up by people intent on finding the best solution to the market challenge they face in a crazy changing environment. And it stays as a dream until leadership creates the infrastructure — the support systems — that makes the brand real.

If they’re not up to the task, the dream dies.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 5.3.21 at 04:36 am by Roy Osing
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May 1, 2021

An amazing business plan can be created with you in just 2 days!

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Together, we can create a business plan that will not only help you through the pandemic, it will also position you for a successful long term future.

And we can do it virtually in just 2 days so you don’t have to take unnecessary time away from your business.

This is how you and your team can build a winning business plan for your organization in just two days and start executing it on the third!

— Do you have a strategy for your organization that recognizes the dramatic changes that have taken place in the markets you serve?
— Have you successfully carved out a distinctive and unique competitive position to guarantee success?
— Do have the resources and time to spend creating a plan to guide your business into an uncertain future?
— Are you prepared to pivot to a new direction when an unexpected crisis hits you?

If you have answered ‘no’ to these questions, talk to me about my strategic game plan method which I developed over my 30+ year career and used it successfully in a variety of businesses.

I am the only business advisor that offers this approach to creating a strategy fast and economically for any type of organization

A strategy:
— that focuses on execution rather than pontificating on lofty goals that are rarely achieved;
— that is based on proven and practical practices I successfully employed over my career;
— will inspire your employees and colleagues;
— that is like no other in the markets you serve;
— based on simplicity: if it ain’t simple it probably wont get implemented;
— that leverages what you know about your business, rather than requiring copious amounts of study and unnecessary analysis (no paralysis by analysis here!)

Thanks again for leading us through your strategic game plan process for each of our business units with us this week; you made my job relatively easy. I think we now have a clear overall very challenging strategic plan to implement over the next 24 months, and as we both know what really matters now is the implementation and execution. I enjoyed working with you and look forward the reviewing our progress with you on a quarterly basis — Tom Rose, President and CEO, Layfield Group of Companies, Richmond BC

Here’s what you can expect from my strategic game plan (SGP) workshop:

— learn my BE DiFFERENT practices which are used as a guide to building your SGP;
— determine your growth goals;
— strategically choose the customers you want to allocate your scarce resources to;
— develop your competitive strategy — your ONLY statement — that separates your from your competition;
— set the critical objectives necessary to deliver your SGP;
— assign accountabilities and time-frames for each objective: who does what by when to complete each objective;
— have fun! in the 2-day experience.
 
In short, after ONLY 2 days, you will have a strategy that can be executed as soon as you leave the Workshop. And you will have the confidence that the plan will work because I have successfully used the BE DiFFERENT Practices I espouse and the SGP process successfully not only in his career but also with other businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

For a personal consultation on how a strategic game plan can help you and your organization, please connect with me.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 5.1.21 at 03:09 am by Roy Osing
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