Wisconsin made a valiant charge at the just concluded NCAA championship. Having beaten mighty, undefeated Kentucky, the Badgers were fiercely competitive against Duke, at one point taking a nine point lead in the second half. Their star player, Kaminsky, dominated Duke's star, Okafor,for almost the entire game. But in the... read more →
Apr
07
Mar
19
From the March issue of Reference Point Some 215 of the world's top thought leaders, subject matter experts, managers and executives in the field of customer engagement and advocacy gathered for two full days of in-depth presentations and idea exchange at the 2015 Summit on Customer Engagement last month. Participating... read more →
Mar
17
I normally don’t fly Delta, but found myself on a business trip to Atlanta last week. For the return flight, I got to the airport a couple of hours early, bought a day pass to the Delta Sky Club, and got ready to get some work done. Since it was... read more →
Jan
14
Still time to register for the 2015 Summit. In a recent post, I listed 5 powerful social motivators--based on deep seated social and affiliation motivators widely shared by people--and that smart companies are using to motivate customer advocacy (see below). In this issue, we look at several powerful personal motivators... read more →
Jan
13
I refer to Pixar Studios, which, since being taken over by Steve Jobs (and headed up by John Lasseter), has cranked out mega-successful story-after-story that audiences can't get enough of: 27 academy awards, approaching $10B in revenues for its films (an average of more than $600 M each). Pixar actually... read more →
Dec
17
There's something arbitrary about spotting "trends" at the end of the year, but 2014 actually did bring some clarity in areas such as the marketing value of social media (a lot less than folks thought), and the validity of many traditional marketing assumptions about growth (they're wrong, and we also know... read more →
Dec
11
We're all in the business of motivating customers to take action. Specifically, we want customers to advocate and influence for us--to tell their stories about the value and enjoyment of working with us to their peers, and the world. There is still much confusion and consternation surrounding this topic. Just... read more →
Dec
02
I've been warning for some time about the futility of applying traditional marketing approaches to the new world of the empowered customer (who's happily ignoring traditional marketing approaches and doing his/her own research to find out about firms). For some time now in its monetization strategy, Facebook has been looking... read more →
Nov
20
It's a bit amusing that "customer centricity" is now a hot topic. Most hot topics last about 18 months and then turn into "occasionally useful approaches" (at best). But customer centricity is actually enduring--and critical. As the great Peter Drucker pointed out, the purpose of any business is to create... read more →
Nov
13
What unique and critical value do you bring to your organization? It's a question every employee should ask him/herself. It's the foundation for knowing and projecting the value you bring to the business. For those running or supporting customer advocacy and related customer engagement programs, it can be difficult to... read more →