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Consumer Insights and Coronavirus: How Behavioral Science and Memory Immersion Help Reveal Truth During a Pandemic

At the beginning of the year, no one imagined that 2020 would be defined by a global pandemic. Nonetheless, in a matter of weeks, the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus...

From Appreciation to Aspiration: Unlocking Your Organization’s Potential

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters enjoyed tremendous growth. From its humble beginnings as a coffee shop in 1981, the business bloomed into an enterprise worth more than $100 million. But, by...

The Appreciation Evolution: Moving From Your Organization’s Problems to its Potential

Declining profits and product quality. Failed cost reduction efforts. Strained relationships among employees and increasing pressure from competitors. Gina Hinrichs, an internal process consultant at John Deere, recognized plenty of...

You Break It, You Buy It: Why Trust Matters Most When It Comes to Consumer Data

A $60 billion plunge in market value in less than 48 hours. A $6 billion drop in Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth. Massive user disengagement and a surge in app deletions. In the aftermath...

Prospect Theory: How Perceptions of Risk and Gain Shape Customer Behavior

The question is a matter of life and death: A new disease is sweeping across the country, and epidemiologists project it will claim the lives of 600 people. Scientists have...

Connecting Systems 1 and 2 Thinking: Helping Customers Forge Intuitive Connections with Your Brand

The moment she laid eyes on the kouros, Evelyn Harrison knew something was wrong. Harrison, one of the world’s foremost experts in ancient Grecian art, stood in the basement of...

Jobs-to-be-done: Satisfying your customers’ highest needs

When asked to describe the “jobs-to-be-done” approach to understanding customers, Clayton Christensen remembers the milkshake. A major fast food chain had turned to Christensen and his Harvard Business School colleagues...

Nudge theory: How brands can empower customers through behavioral science

As the fathers of nudge theory, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have seen their ideas applied elegantly in business, health care, and government. But one of their favorite illustrations of...

Eudaimonia: How Health Care Brands Can Fulfill the Lives of Their Customers

What is best for human beings? This question anchors Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the ancient Greek philosopher’s most extensive treatise on what a life well-lived entails. Certainly, Aristotle suggested, most people...

5 Errors to Avoid in Activating Brand Strategy

In April 2017, Pepsi released an extended advertisement. The video, which lasted two and a half minutes in its entirety, featured a fictional protest march in the streets of an...

Your Brand is More Than Your Logo

In 2010, psychologists T. Bettina Cornwall and Anna McAlister published research entitled “Children’s Brand Symbolism Understanding” in the journal Psychology and Marketing. In the months that followed, public outcry would...

The Rise of the Social Brand: What Instagram Reveals About Connecting with Customers

The baby-blue bears were first sighted in 2016. They appeared in Instagram posts from no fewer than three Kardashian sisters. Soon, Vanessa Hudgens, Emily Ratajkowski, and a host of other...