Alan See
What’s Your Marketing Strategy When Your Product Seems To Be Out of Fashion?
Today is Veterans Day in the United States. It's a day set aside to thank and honor living veterans who served honorably in the military - in wartime or peacetime. My son is a veteran. He served in the 4th...
Customer Intelligence Is Meaningless If You Don’t Tie It to Strategic Action
I have three growing kids in the house, so my refrigerator door gets plenty of action. That explains how the bottom hinge broke, which prevented the door from closing. My milk was getting warm and butter was melting. A refrigerator that doesn't keep cold...
Marketing’s New Workout; Super Crunching Your Gut (Feelings)!
Over 25 years ago I was the marketing manager for a small privately held oil field service company; it was my first "real-world" job. You know, it's funny how certain experiences leave a lasting impression, and one particular incident still stands out in...
Your Customer’s Mindset
My hat is off to Beloit College. Each August for the past decade, as their faculty prepares for the academic year, they release the Beloit College Mindset List. Its 70 items provide a look at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives...
Marketing and the Science of Persuasion
The new AMC primetime drama "Mad Men" provides a 1960s setting in which advertising agencies were all-powerful influences on the masses. In fact, the general theme portrayed is that "consumers don't know what they want until we tell them." The American Marketing Association's...
Building Rapport in the Relationship Economy
In 1884 John Patterson purchased the National Manufacturing Co. from James and John Ritty for $6,500 and renamed the company The National Cash Register Co. The word around Dayton was that Patterson had wasted his money; and it wasn't long before he...
Take Aim at Delinquent Customers Before Your Banker Takes Aim at You
Monday's Wall Street Journal article "Dealing With Deadbeats" (by Suzanne Barlyn) brought back a family-business memory. The article addressed the topic of slow-pay customers and the resulting impact on cash flow for a small company. My dad has worked for himself most of his...
When the Customer-Focused Journey Meets the Fiefdom Syndrome
Your company's dream-journey is to become Wall Streets next customer-centered poster child. Every technology vendor and consultant you engage with will want to share credit for the success of your customer-focused business model through documented case studies and white-papers. You're sure to...
The Definition of Marketing
It's interesting once in awhile to step back and observe change … You can almost hear the conversations evolve as marketing has evolved from mass marketing to segment marketing to target marketing to relationship marketing: • "Consumers don't know what they want until we tell…
Keep Your Marketing Organization Off the Road to Abilene!
I completed my college studies at Abilene Christian University which is located in Abilene, Texas. I really like Abilene and look forward to my class reunions. However; for marketing organizations, Abilene is to be avoided when mentioned in the context of the...
Marketing Recruitment: “Crew Wanted for Hazardous Journey”
CREW WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. -- Sir Ernest Shackleton's recruitment notice for the 1915 Endurance Antarctic expedition (some 5,000 applicants...
Social Media Networks: “It’s Not What You Know
Our discussion around word-of-mouth marketing in one of my recent classes morphed into an "it's not what you know, it's who you know" debate. Following that line it does appear that more and more individuals (and organizations) are beginning to explore ways to...
“Will It Play in Peoria?”
Not long ago one of my students used the phrase "Will it Play in Peoria?" during our classroom discussion. It's been awhile since I've heard that statement, but every now and then it surfaces. For those of us who have a few...
All for One and One for All through BI Competency Centers?
"All for one and one for all" is a popular passage used as a statement of solidarity. BI vendors have been promoting this vision for years as a strategy for putting the power of data-analysis in the hands of all employees in order to...
Finding the Voice of the Customer in Unstructured Data
I was recently involved in some market research pertaining to the convergence of structured and unstructured data. It's a topic that has been catching interest through the intersection of BI, Search and Text Analytics. As you know, information channels such as the...
Welcome to Marketing 101
My students' first assignment is always a short interpretive paper in which I ask for their personal definition of marketing; as well as their perspective on marketing's importance in helping organizations achieve success. Over the years, I've discovered that these papers provide a...
If You’re Going by the Old Rules, You Don’t Know Your Customer
Many years ago, the "3-6-3 rule" was an expression used to explain an informal rule of operation for banks in which 3 percent interest was paid on deposits, 6 percent interest was charged for loans and the bank president was playing golf by 3...