Creating Loyal Brands : Themes Of The Week...

So much content, so little time...

A weekly round-up of the themes and posts I found particularly interesting or useful.

With the winds of disruption still blowing at gale force, several posts this week explored the new realities of marketing, as well as taking a good look at loyalty, and the emerging importance of customer experience.

Marketing's new age...
With the traditional marketing model increasingly consigned to the annals of history, new models for success are gradually emerging.

The End Of Advertising As We Know It - And What To Do Now argued that the time for big ideas expressed through integrated campaigns has past, and laid down four useful guidelines for moving forward.
Social Uprisings Could Change How Advertisers Connect to Consumers urged brands to become more willing to take a stand on issues that matter to their customers, or risk irrelevancy in an increasingly revolutionary world.
Agile marketing: the 70:20:10 rule laid out a practical approach for marketing to become more responsive and adaptive, in today's more fluid marketing environment.
The 20 Keys To A Brand Story highlighted the importance of starting with your story, in order to build a successful, sustainable brand.
While Seth Godin's rules for marketing in the new economy provided an excellent, thought-provoking guide to the new realities for marketers.

The look of loyalty...
As customer loyalty becomes an ever more precious, and scarce commodity, several posts explored how to improve on current practices.

Deliver An Experience That Matters: 3 Steps To Creating Lasting Loyalty In Your Customers explored three practical ways for marketers to get more engagement in their loyalty programs.
How to foster loyalty with great customer service looked at the lessons from Hotels.com customer service approach to their loyalty program.
Maximizing The Benefit From Customer Loyalty... provided a simple framework for working with loyal customers, to reduce costs, strengthen loyalty, and increase growth.
While CMOs: Let's Give Up On Advertising And Do These 6 Things Instead urged marketers to focus on a practical customer advocacy program. 

It's down to experience...
In today's connected world, with ever more frequent and varied interactions, a brand is increasingly defined by the customer experience it provides.

Why Service Is The Final Frontier For Differentiation showed how customer experience is dependant on memorable and attentive service, that can only be driven by the leadership culture.
4 Attributes of a Frictionless Customer Experience argued that for a customer, an excellent experience is simply one that is completely effortless, and highlighted where to focus.
If It's Essential to a Good Experience, Why Hide It? used a powerful example to demonstrate how thinking through the experience from a customer perspective can uncover simple improvements.
While New Research: You're Doing Customer Experience Innovation Wrong highlighted the gap between how companies rate customer experience innovation, and what customers actual experience, and urged a focus on identifying and creating the experiences that really matter.

Finally, food for thought for any marketer today, The Black Swans Circling P&G provided great insight into the forces undermining the very foundations that big consumer brands are built on.

Have a good weekend...