Bet You a Billion Dollars You’re Wrong
Check your wallet. What percent of the dollar bills in your wallet are over 24 months old? If the answer is more than 50%, you’re the exception.
Entries by Michael Zimmerman
Negotiation and Its Effect on Brand: An Interview with Ron Shapiro
Many have heard the name Ron Shapiro. A world-renown expert in negotiation, Mr. Shapiro is a distinguished graduate of the Harvard Law School. He has negotiated agreements in the corporate, government and nonprofit sectors. He has successfully represented many of the world’s greatest athletes, including Cal Ripken Jr., Brooks Robinson, Eddy Murray, Jim Palmer and […]
It’s Not the Logo, It’s the Brand
We need a new word for “brand.” That would help clear up the confusion so many people have about the process of branding. It’s really not the customers’ fault; it’s the fault of marketing professionals who use the term so loosely. And the error is rooted deep in our culture.
Marketing to Overcome Barriers – When Selling Benefits Just Isn’t Enough
People who work in sales and marketing are trained to think in terms of benefits, and rightly so. While features may tell us about a product or service, they inform more than they motivate; buyers are motivated by benefits.
Aligning Brand with Corporate Goals: Keeping the Dog in Front of the Tale
Here’s a simple multiple choice question most branding consultants can’t answer: Which of the following are good reasons to rebrand your organization? (a) We’re tired of hearing our own positioning statements and we fear the brand is getting stale (b) Our logo has been around for decades, and besides, we’ve brought on a new management […]
Why People Share Stories about Brands
We recently reread Adam Morgan’s classic Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands can Compete against Brand Leaders. First published in 2000, Big Fish was ahead of its time. Eleven years ago, there was no Google, no iPod, no YouTube, no Facebook. Yet, Morgan spoke in brave new terms about taking on the market leader […]
So You Wanna Be a Copywriter…
Long before blogs, before desktop publishing, before offset printing, before movable type… we communicated through manuscripts and scrolls. Back then, writing mattered. Authors were philosophers, historians, poets and scholars. Today, not so much.
From Burgers to Benefits
By using features, advantages, and benefits, marketers focus the buyer’s attention on very different things. Features focus on the product by pointing out facts, but facts alone are seldom compelling. Advantages focus the buyer’s attention on the competition, but such comparisons are only useful if the buyer is familiar with the competitor. (And who wants […]
Beyond USP – 3 Simple Rules for Positioning Products, Services and Even Organizations
On April 17, 1961, New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf released the first full edition of Rosser Reeves’ seminal book Reality in Advertising, in which Reeves detailed the theory of USP. Based on more than two decades of research at his world-renown advertising agency Ted Bates & Company (Reeves had been Bates’ creative partner), Reeves […]
70 Percent of Local Business Owners Market on Facebook… Not!
On March 1, 2011, a popular public relations website posted an article based on previously published research, claiming “70 percent of local-business owners market on Facebook.” The headline was shocking, the content equally bold, and the dialog that followed typical of the hype surrounding social media.