I’ll use Delta Airlines as an example. I have a friend, we’ll call him John, that is a Diamond Medallion member of Delta’s loyalty program. Diamond is the very top rank within the Medallion program. In fact, John spends over $100,000 each year flying with Delta.
In one of his must read books, author and researcher Jim Collins was determined to find the key factors that made companies transition from Good to Great. At the onset of the research, Jim refused to believe that leadership played a role in becoming great.
After months of research and analysis, Collins’ team called him into a room, locked hands and confronted him. The research team found that there was “something consistently unusual” about the executives at great companies.
Designer and developer Seth Taylor recently released an amazing iPhone app called Meeting Calc. Functional and simple, the app tells you how much a meeting costs by simply inputting the total hourly rate of everyone in the meeting and then hitting start/stop. You can also tweet out the results.
If you haven’t downloaded the app, then do so today.
I spoke with Seth and asked him a few questions about the app and his plans for the future.
The service dominant logic (S-D) approach came about in 2004 and is a fantastic principle for marketing a product. There is a whole feast of information available to read so this is a concise guide to help you get to grips with it.
The S-D logic requires you to treat products as a service offering. Instead of seeing your product as a simple cash exchange, you must view it as a tool to support a service that will benefit the customer.
Management falls into the trap of seeing marketing and branding as just an outflow of money rather than an investment resulting in increased profitability and/or revenue.
With a bit of math, bear with me, we can show just what marketing is achieving (there’s a plain English version at the end).
In economic terms, disintermediation means to cut the middleman out. For example, consumers buying stocks directly through E-trade or Scottrade is a disintermediation of stock brokers. As a result, the intermediary loses business.
I’m going to extend/tweak the scope of disintermediation to cover branding.
Brand disintermediation is the art of cutting your brand out of the middle even though you may still be earning income in the short-term. In effect, these 3rd parties are stealing your customers while you watch (often because you gave them permission).
Here are three companies that are doing an excellent job at taking brand loyalty away.
Graphic Designer Adam Ladd recorded his five-year old daughter looking at various national brands’ logos. I’m surprised by how well branded some companies are, even with young children. Though, Ladd’s daughter may just be reflecting his buying habits.
It’s easy when creating a logo to get lost in making something creative and memorable, but for art’s sake. A good logo designer considers the message being communicated.
The message can be literal, figurative or emotional.
After having read a lot of blogs and news online, I find myself skimming simply because most writers sound the same or are saying the same thing that everyone else is saying.
Jeff is an exception. I find myself reading each word because his perspective and voice are unique in a sea of ubiquity (check his street cred and interview at ThinkTraffic.net).
