Building a Customer-Centric Brand: 3 Challenges to Marketers
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerView Group (originally posted on the AMA Philadelphia website)On Thursday, November 8, the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) hosted an event focused on building a “customer-centric” brand. The guest speaker for the evening, David Norton, has extensive experience helping brands build an infrastructure to better serve customers. In his role as Chairman and CMO of GALE Partners and past positions such as CMO of Caesars and Harrah’s Entertainment, David’s expertise is in bringing brand strategy to life through innovative customer experiences. I was lucky enough...
New Strategic Initiative? Prepare for a Marathon.
By Diana Finley, Co-Founder, Client JourneyNew Strategic Initiative? Prepare for a Marathon. By Diana Finley, Co-Founder, Client Journey Leader Have you ever run a marathon? Even if the answer is no, think about the preparation involved before standing at a starting line with 26.2 miles ahead of you. For most, there is a big shift in day-to-day habits. There is commitment to a training schedule, getting up earlier than normal to fit in long runs, adjustments to diet and so much more. Still, after all...
4 Reasons Internal Marketing is Different from Internal Communications
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerView GroupWe are in an era where “employee engagement” is both extremely important and horribly misunderstood. Organizations know they need to find new ways to energize their employees, yet they seem unable to break their old habits. They continue to pile on more details, more information and more priorities without changing their approach. Many of our clients have internal communications teams to manage the flow of company information and priorities. Accordingly, when a company is looking to mobilize their workforce around...
Everyone’s in Marketing
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerView GroupI grew up in the corporate world believing the idea that “everyone is in sales”. Daniel Pink’s “To Sell is Human” is one of my favorite books. However, “selling” has not evolved as much as organizations would like and is still in many ways an individual pursuit. Good salespeople find a way to get the job done, while companies struggle to figure out what to do with the other 75%. The more time I spend working with large corporations, the...
Bold Brand Move? Don’t Forget to Prep Your Employees
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerView GroupNike’s recent launch of their Colin Kaepernick ad campaign made waves well beyond the world of sports. Some referred to the move as “bold”, others called it “radical”. Whatever adjective you use, Nike knew that linking their brand with a polarizing figure was going to ruffle some feathers. Nike isn’t the only company that has taken a stance on a political or social topic lately. There is a fine line between a brand taking a position and a publicity stunt....
The Audience Your Marketing Team is Overlooking
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerView GroupWith all the attention and investment marketers are putting into audience segmentation, there is one critical audience that marketers tend to overlook – their own employees. Employees, specifically customer-facing representatives are the link between the company’s marketing strategy and the actual customer experience. Too often, brand advertising tells customers it will deliver one thing, but oftentimes, customers don’t end up experiencing what the brand promises. How can companies expect customers to be committed to their brand promise if their own...
5 Reasons Your Customer-Facing Employees Should Push Brand Over Products
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerView Group5 Reasons Your Customer-Facing Employees Should Push Brand Over Products Would you rather have the people who interact with your customers understand your products or believe in your brand? Of course, the urge is to answer “both”, but the reality is companies are choosing between these two paths every day. Both goals require an investment of time and money and those resources are in short supply. The most common path is to invest in product training that will make your...
Marketing has a Training Problem
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerView GroupMarketing has a Training Problem By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerView Training is not a topic that most marketing or brand teams spend a lot of time thinking about. The marketer’s job is to get the message to the customer, while internal partners in training or sales are responsible for getting customer-facing teams bought-in the to the story. But as we have written about previously, that message is not making its way to the front lines. Our research shows that two-thirds of marketers...
Marketing Accountability is Shifting: What’s Out, What’s In, and What to Do
---By Christopher Wallace and Mike Blumberg--- In 2018, consumers will spend half of their time interacting with online media, more than any other medium. As the consumption has shifted more to digital, so have the marketing dollars, with companies on track to spend $119 billion on digital marketing by 2021. While digital has given marketers new options to reach their target audiences, it has also forced them to learn new disciplines, understand more in-depth metrics, and make investments in channels...
3 Ways to Put Humans at the Center of your Customer Experience
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerViewCustomer experience has become one of the hardest to define business concepts of our time. When CMOs from 25 of the largest and best-recognized brands in the worlds gathered recently for a private think-tank session at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, customer experience was one of the primary topics. However, their stance on t was quite simple – customer experience needs to become more “human”. Adweek spoke with Mathilde Delhoume from LVMH, who shared that brands need to focus on the longer-term customer relationship...
Pssst… Your Brand Is Leaking
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerViewA “brand” is a delicate concept. Think about the elements that make up a brand – the visuals (logos, photos, commercials), the carefully chosen words that make up the story. Brands are designed to be make an emotional connection with customers, so it would stand to reason that the people who craft a company’s identity grow attached to it. The brand is a marketer’s baby, their work of art. To all those marketers, I hate to break it to you but your brand is leaking. The intricate story you've faithfully worked to craft is falling apart, but it isn’t your agency,...
4 Reasons B2C Brands Need to Improve Marketing-Sales Alignment
By Christopher Wallace, President, InnerViewThere have been volumes written in recent years about the need for Marketing and Sales alignment in the B2B world. However, there is less buzz around this topic in the B2C world. The reasons why are numerous, but let’s focus on two concepts behind this: brands and consumer demand. Marketers in the B2C world are focused on building “brands” that will attract buyers based on certain characteristics. Marketing to consumers is much more about lifestyle than it is utility, so if...
