On her blog, Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra brilliantly compares full color company brochures with boring, black & white user manuals to illustrate the need for placing greater marketing focus on the existing customer. For whatever reason acquisition seems to trump retention. Quantity trumps quality. Immediate return trumps long term growth. Perhaps this is because it is just easier to measure. New customers are easy to track, much more so than the ripple effect of …read more
One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure… Freecycle.org
August 28, 2006 By Leave a Comment
Remember that line from the Beatles song “If you want it, here it is, come and get it.” Well that pretty much sums up a wonderful website I recently discovered called Freecycle.org. I heard about the site last Friday while listening to All Things Considered on WYSO. Freecycle allows you to give unwanted items to anyone who might want to take them away. It also allows you to get the things you need from other …read more
How Great Service Leads to Sales: Tire Discounters
August 18, 2006 By 2 Comments
Yesterday my wife’s car surprisingly got a flat tire. It had been parked in the garage for a few days, seemingly fine, but must have been slowly leaking. She called me after she discovered it yesterday afternoon, so I came home from work a little early to get it repaired. I jacked up the car, took off the old tire, bolted on the doughnut and headed out – prepared to drop a few hundred bucks …read more
Invisible KOOL-AID Clearly Fantastic
August 15, 2006 By 4 Comments
Sometimes the way to make a product better is not to add more to it, but to take something away. That is just what Kraft foods has brilliantly done with KOOL-AID Invisible. Growing up, the only objection I remember adults consistently having to drinking KOOL-AID had nothing to do with my consumption of it, but rather the potential disaster that could come if I spilled it on the new carpet, new drapes, new furniture, or …read more
Sure the Ketchup is Fancy, But Check Out the Label!
August 9, 2006 By Leave a Comment
Want to learn about the future of product marketing? Check out www.MyHeinz.com. Heinz is offering personalized labels for their ketchup bottles. While the price is a little steep, (6 bucks a bottle) it is a brilliant idea. Why would someone want this? Why not? As someone who has worked in a restaurant, I can tell you they are always looking for interesting things to put on the table. How about marketing messages about the restaurant …read more
Zen Like – What does that even mean?
August 7, 2006 By 3 Comments
About a month ago I drove past this sign. It was in the front yard of a home that was for sale (It may still be, I don’t know). The home sits at a very busy intersection – the crossroads of two state routes adjacent to the interstate and across from a shopping center. A high traffic location to be sure. What caught my attention was not the house, but rather the comment on the …read more
Change Your Mind
August 4, 2006 By Leave a Comment
Looking for inspiration? Seeking new ideas? Hate to spend money? Check out ChangeThis.com Once a month ChangeThis publishes a handful of insightful “manifestos” which can be downloaded as PDF files for free.  Some manifestos are written by well established authors while others are penned by aspiring newcomers. For example this month’s issue features a Manifesto by Seth Godin containing excerpts from his upcoming book Small is the New Big, and a manifesto by Cincinnati …read more
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