Customer First Thinking

Slow to awaken to market disruption and too reliant on ad spending, the global agency holding companies have seen their valuations plummet in recent years. To reverse their fortunes, they need to transform their service model. MDC is leading the way, aided by an infusion of capital from the new CEO Mark Penn, who is set to turn his collection of "partner agencies" into a "modern marketing company...

Marketing has always been on the front lines of change. Each seismic shift has brought a new set of challenges. But now, in this new world of "infinite media", marketing is facing its greatest challenge ever. The only response, Mathew Sweezey believes, is for marketing to pivot from harnessing media to creating experiences that help customers in the context of the moment.

The world is awash in mediocre content, mainly because most brands struggle to find something meaningful to say. Yet in times of crisis, when people are feeling anxious and concerned, there is never a better time to speak up. The key is the ability to show empathy, Ann Handley argues. She urges brands to "do less" and "obsess" about producing higher quality content that matters. 

Most loyalty programs today do little to make people feel more loyal to the brand. They are mainly promotional tools designed to drive repeat sales by giving away margin in the form of redeemable currency or discounts. Which is why it may be time to reimagine loyalty programs, according to Bryan Pearson, transforming them into dynamic platforms that are a more integral part of the customer experie...

Marketing as a discipline is going through an identity crisis due to the radical shift in the buying behaviour of people. The answer, for some companies, is to ditch the classical marketing function in favour of a broader mandate that makes the customer experience more of a corporate priority. But just fixing what's wrong is not enough, according to Jay Baer. Companies must also offer customers an...

The practice of content marketing began to evolve into a grown-up discipline about a decade ago. That was around the time social media platforms had reached the size where they could serve as a practical delivery channel. Companies no longer had to rely on paid ads to drive visitors to their own branded web properties – they could attract inbound traffic organically through social media. And then...

Most traditional businesses are just now getting used to the idea of a mobile-first world where people spend six hours a day immersed in digital media. But as the digital economy starts to take over, businesses will have to be ready for even more tumultuous change. A new wave of disruptive technology is coming. It will usher in a post-digital age of continuous connectivity and transform how societ...

Download for offline listening. In one survey after another marketing leaders cite driving growth as their biggest challenge. Judgement of a CMO's performance invariably boils down to one measure: the year-over-year increase in brand sales. And as much as marketers have glommed on to the idea of customer experience as a differentiator, they are still mainly accountable for selling more stuff to mo...

Download for offline listening. Over the past decade design thinking has grown in popularity as a catalyst for innovation. Historically, the design function has always operated on the business perimeter, answering to product management, engineering or marketing. But with today's intense pressure on businesses to ward off digital disruption, design thinking has taken on a central role in freeing th...

Download for offline listening. Ever since the earliest ads began appearing in newspapers at the start of the 19th century, advertising has been tolerated by most people as a credible source of information on products and services. But in recent years, as digital advertising has steadily grown to account for one third of total ad spending, public trust and favourability has declined sharply. Most...

Download for offline listening. In 1993, AT&T launched a marketing campaign called "You Will". In a series of memorable TV ads, it depicted future applications of technology that turned out to be eerily accurate. Each commercial showcased a different product innovation AT&T had been working on. "Have you ever had an assistant who lived in your Computer?", one commercial asks. Another begins by won...

Download for offline listening. Businesses are "drowning in data but starving for insight", as the saying goes, and that problem is about to get worse. As society becomes increasingly connected, marketers are facing a rising tide of digital interactions. Somewhere inside that massive pool of data are the answers to questions marketers haven't even thought to ask – yet are essential to creating a b...

Download for offline listening. In 1983 a Professor at Texas A&M University by the name of Leonard Berry coined the term "relationship marketing" in a paper he presented at an American Marketing Association event. His basic premise: businesses should focus more on serving existing customers. Now as obvious as that may sound, it seemed heretical in an era dominated by mass advertising. Berry never...

Download for offline listening. Customer analytics has come a long way since banks first started building Customer Information Files in the 1990s. "CIFs", as they were called, were the primitive forerunner to what we now call "data lakes". Just getting access to data was the main barrier back then – closely rivalled by the suspect quality of the contact data. Today the biggest analytical challenge...

Download for offline listening. His book "Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning and Control", first published in 1967, ranks amongst the most influential, and enduring, business textbooks of all time. Now in its 16th edition (retitled "Principles of Marketing"), it remains the most authoritative guide to the practice of marketing ever written. Other textbooks come and go with the passage of tim...