Eudaimonia: Why Health Care Brands Must Go Beyond Treatment to Build Real Trust
What is best for human beings? Aristotle spent a lifetime working toward an answer. He found that most of what we pursue, friends, health, and security, is desirable not in isolation but because it points toward something more fundamental. A deeper form of happiness. A life well lived. He called it eudaimonia, derived from the […]
Nudge Theory for Brands: Three Ways Behavioral Science Can Improve Customer Experience
It started in a men’s restroom. Not a laboratory. Not a boardroom. A men’s restroom in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. More specifically inside the urinals. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, the fathers of nudge theory, have seen their ideas applied elegantly across business, health care, and government. But one of their favorite illustrations involves a simple […]
From Data to Direction: Why CMOs Should Be in the Research Trenches
In an airport lounge, a CMO stares at her quarterly brand tracker results. The numbers look good. Awareness is up 6%, consideration is stable, and NPS is climbing.
Customer Experience Failures: Hidden Opportunities for Growth
Every dropped call, delayed flight, or frustrating checkout process tells a story. But the most successful brands know these stories don’t need to end in failure – they begin there as an opportunity. By looking deeper at customer frustrations, brands can uncover transformative insights. Consider FedEx’s revelation about shipping barriers. The problem wasn’t that customers […]
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 proposed two alternative programs to address the outbreak, and you must decide which to implement. If program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. […]
Forging Bonds: How CMOs Drive Brand Loyalty Through Human Truth
“We are no longer creating brands. We are forging bonds.” – Daryl Travis, Founder and Chairman, Brandtrust This profound shift captures the fundamental truth of modern brand building: meaningful connections transcend mere transactions. Today’s consumers don’t just purchase products or services – they invest in relationships that unfold across countless touchpoints. Every interaction shapes the […]
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 for help. Despite much market research and meticulous product testing, milkshake sales wouldn’t budge. This stagnation was inexplicable: According to the chain’s survey data, their […]
4 Ways Consumer Psychology Can Improve Your Marketing
One of the seminal psychological insights of the 21st century began with a jar of jam—or rather, 24 of them—a total that would soon prove problematic. Psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a display table in a gourmet grocery store featuring two dozen jam varieties. If shoppers sampled their wares, they received a […]
