Because the four moments of truth explored in WTF not only define the modern customer journey, the link between the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) and what I call the Ultimate Moment of Truth (UMOT) is more influential today than when the book originally published?
Why do bikes stay stable when you ride them (and fall down when you stop)?
A tiny reason is the gyroscopic stability of the wheels, but the real reason is the forward momentum of the rider. And we learn the first day we’re on the bike that forward motion is essential or we’re in trouble.
In our fast-moving world, it’s easy to get hooked on personal velocity. What’s in your inbox? Did someone follow you in the last ten seconds? Where’s the beep and the beep and the beep from your last post?
Perhaps we talk faster, interrupt, talk over, invent, dissect, criticize and then move on to the next thing. Boom, boom, boom.
Don’t want to fall off the bike.
But life isn’t a bike. It works fine if we take a moment and leave space for the person next to us to speak.
Are you going fast without getting anywhere?
Riders on the Jurassic World Velocicoaster | Credit: UNIVERSAL ORLANDO RESORT
We can get hooked on systems that want us to get hooked, on platforms that use our effort as their product, our emotions as fodder for their next milestone.
Doing something new simply because we’re worried that the old thing we were doing a minute ago isn’t fast enough is a waste. The crowd might enjoy it, but in the long run, it diminishes our contributions and our joy.
I could just as easily write about the person who is stuck, sitting in the back of the room, the corner of the Zoom, looking for deniability and a place to hide. That person with no velocity has ceased to contribute and might be in as much pain as the person who’s doing nothing but maintaining high personal velocity.
Somewhere in between the two, as in most things, is the place we’d like to be.
Customers care about end-to-end experiences, not how your company is organized. Business leaders are quick to say that a connected customer experience is a major business priority. But the truth is that they are struggling to do it well. New data captures the gap between business and digital transformation and the integrated experiences customers desire.
Countless growing departments, new services abound, and the truth remains: Customers have to see you as one company. This is why a connected, personalized, and seamless customer experience (CX)can make or break your brand. But telling this to executives is preaching to the choir. Eighty-eight percent believe a complete and consistent view of their customers is crucial to the future of their business. But fewer than one-third say they currently have that unified view. And for those 31% executives who have a single 360-degree view of customer data? Half say they lack the organizational structure to actually make use of those customer insights.
Remembering this Blast from the Past from a WARM summer several years back!
Every year in Toronto the summer ends with the Canadian National Exhibition running the last two weeks of August until Labour Day. For the first time in 30 years I decided to venture down in search of effective examples of experiential marketing and there were many to be found. In fact I’d say that many marketers are missing out on key branding and customer acquisition opportunities by not taking advantage of this annual event.
First off let’s be clear, it’s been years since I’ve been to the (CNE). This wasn’t always the case, in fact some of my earliest memories are of my Mother loading up all the kids and making the road trip from Burlington in the 1960’s. In the 1970’s I saw many classic concerts at the CNE Grandstand including T-Rex, Three Dog Night, The Guess Who, Emerson Lake & Palmer and The Beach Boys only to name a few. My CNE highlight had to be going backstage to meet RUSH and having a smoke with Neil Peart when we stepped out of the trailer to escape all the girls going ga-ga over Geddy Lee.
In the 1980’s, 90’s and since 2000 ‘The Ex’ and I went separate ways, not with any intention, we just drifted apart. But that was then and this is now, we’ve come back together so let’s dive into some of the experiential marketing seen at this year’s CNE.
Big company CEOs get paid ridiculous amounts of money, but the good ones also do something that most of us avoid.
They make decisions.
In fact, that’s pretty much the core of the job. Whether to shut a plant, open a store, create a division, invest in a new technology…
That’s the part that creates the most value.
When we go to work, most of us simply go to work. We do our jobs, respond to the incoming, hone our craft, make some sales.
The decisions get put off or ignored altogether.
And yet it’s the strategic decisions that can change the arc of our career and our job satisfaction as well.
Here’s a simple list of questions: What are the five big decisions on your desk right now? Would others in your position have a different list? How much of your day is spent learning what you need to know to make those decisions? And can you make them all by Tuesday?
While I have never been a CMO myself, I do have a lot of real-world marketing (and advertising) experience, I was a featured writer for the CMO Network of Forbes for nearly 10 years, I have interviewed well over 2,000 leaders just like yourself, I coach and counsel CMOs and I have very close relationships with many of your peers.
So while having never served in the role per se, I know the role quite intimately. I know of the struggles and challenges you go through on a daily basis. I know all about the daily ride you go on. Boy, do I ever.
Ok, just wanted to set the table for those who I have not had the pleasure of getting to know. I like to joke that I collect CMOs like I used to collect sports cards. As a kid, my brother Greg and I spent arguably just slightly less than the GNP of Sri Lanka on football, baseball, basketball, and hockey cards.
Of course, none of said cards still exist today else my brother and I would be living in the lap of luxury in, well, Sri Lanka.
A summary of Brian Solis’ keynote presentation at the recent Martechvibe Fest event in South Africa by Suparna Dutt DCunha
People keep saying it: everything has changed. As the days spent in our homes blur together, outside in the world of marketing, huge shifts in consciousness are happening.
The pandemic is teaching marketers not just to be digital, but to use it to bring new experiences that are more intuitive, productive, efficient and exciting for customers, and also be empathetic, according to Brian Solis, the global Innovation evangelist at Salesforce. Speaking on Day 2 of the Vibe Martech Fest South Africa about the new role of integrated marketing and CX in a novel economy, he said, “The novel economy is the term I came up with to describe the new normal. It’s not an old new normal, it’s not necessarily a new normal, it’s a future without a playbook yet.”
The virtual office skeptic says, “we can’t go fully remote, because the serendipity of personal connection is too important.” The theory goes that watercooler conversations and elevator encounters add up to an emotional bond. Add to that the happy coincidence of overhearing a conversation where you have something to add or seeing something on a colleague’s screen, and the case is made for bringing people back to a building.
Of course, what it overlooks is that in any building with more than 200 square feet of space, you’re only bumping into a tiny fraction of the people who work there. If they’re on another floor, or across the street, they might as well be in another country for all the serendipity that happens.
CEO of Photofy John Andrews considers how collaboration with your employees could make your digital content sing…
Digital marketing today is a crowded arena. It’s become the primary tool for marketers in terms of dollars spent. But as spending has increased, saturation and diminishing returns have occurred at an alarming rate. There’s simply a finite amount of human attention and too much noise. More dollars continue to flow into programmatic media all seeking to reach the right shopper with the right message at the right time… in the fastest and easiest way possible.
No thank you… is that really so hard to say? I get that people are busy, and that we all get a little overwhelmed sometimes from all the marketing that we see. But if we’ve got a long-standing relationship and I’m reaching out with an offer, a favor for a friend, someone looking for a job, or just to run something by you, then I would really, really like to see a response other than pure silence. Wouldn’t you? Occasionally a call, email, or bit of social outreach simply slips through the cracks. I get that. But you should make an effort to respond. It doesn’t have to be a yes, but anything is better than crickets!
