From the monthly archives:

January 2010

Differentiation by Cookie – The Power of the Brand Symbol

by Mike Schultz and Bob Croston on January 15, 2010

COOKIE-PIE-CHART4Cookie, Oh cookie,
How you taunt me,
With your fiendish taste,
Your devilish charms
- Anonymous

I can eat a whole pan of fresh cookies if I have enough milk to smooth their passage, and if the wife isn’t home to witness the carnage. I’m not proud. Not ashamed either. Just another helpless victim of the all-mighty mixture of chocolate chunks, butter, vanilla extract, egg, flour, sugar, and baking powder.

Apparently, a couple of billion dollar corporations have tapped into the power of the cookie as well, and they’re using it to create competitive differentiation in their markets. The New York Times has published a nice piece about how DoubleTree Hotels and Midwest Airlines have baked cookies into the fiber of their business strategies, and how the strategies are paying off.

I can imagine a competitive differentiation strategy brainstorm at a professional services firm; the “let’s align around the cookie!” plan might not end up with the most votes. Yet it’s working for DoubleTree and Midwest. Here’s why it does, and how you can cook something up that might work for you.

Click to Read More

5 comments »

Ten Questions for You in 2010

by Mike Schultz on January 7, 2010

HC Newman Color of Money.jpg

Most businesses head into 2010 with a healthy dose of uncertainty. I like it. It’s not because I enjoy not knowing what’s coming, if the economy will double dip, or if the banks will need more TARP funds to weather the financial storm.

I like it because where there’s uncertainty there’s change. And where there’s change there are new opportunities to tackle, mountains to climb, and successes to achieve.

As I speak with leaders of professional services firms these days, the big questions looking forward are about fear, risk, and reward. Early last year fear was rampant, few were willing to risk anything, and firms were playing defense to protect their margins by tightening their belts.

Click to Read More

2 comments »