Last week the Wall St. Journal featured a story on Tiffany & Co's "midlife crisis." The piece highlighted the jewelry brand's struggle to regain its "cool" and improve recently tepid sales and profits. A few days later they announced the hiring of a new CEO. Yet Tiffany is hardly alone in dealing with what I have coined … Continue reading Tiffany seeks to execute the ‘customer trapeze’
Category: Brand Marketing
For a long time brands had the upper hand. The purchase funnel was relatively straight-forward. Media channels were few and generally well controlled. The consumer's access to product and pricing information was limited. Distribution channels were highly disciplined. Communication was largely one-way. Marketing plans were often drawn up just once year and any changes required … Continue reading I am the captain now
For quite some time, we've thought about stores, catalogs and the internet as distinct shopping entities. Today the blended channel is the only channel. For quite some time, we've run our retail businesses as a loose affiliation of vertical departments and systems. Today we see that brands are horizontal and that silos belong on farms. … Continue reading The new retail ecosystem: NRF edition
We're typically pretty good at laying out the features and benefits; at explaining all the reasons why our product offering is superior to the competition's and why it makes perfect sense that you should choose us. Unfortunately when the consumer is overwhelmed by choice, when it's hard to get them to even notice us--much less … Continue reading Confusing the offering with the story
Please check out my new Advertising Age article, produced in partnership with Google. Click here: Marketing's new 'power of now'