There is something irrational about brand loyalists. Chicago Cubs have some of the most loyal fan following in the world—currently ranked #2 in the list of top ten fan bases in pro sports. This, despite the fact that the Cubs didn’t win a single Major League Baseball championship for 108 years until 2016. In 2017, Apple paid $27 million in fines after it admitted to deliberately slowing down older versions of iPhones. Despite that and other exposé like the iPod’s Dirty Secret, every year Apple fans camp overnight outside Apple stores—sometimes sleeping on garbage bags and risk being arrested—j ..read more

Every mid-career marketer I know is constantly looking for ways to upgrade themselves by reading books, talking to people smarter than them, and learning about the intriguing theories in behavioral science. And while there are plenty of such resources around us, they are mostly hidden in plain sight. It’s harder to find the wisdom that we are looking for than attaining the wisdom itself. Luckily, sometimes all you need is to hear a random conversation to discover new insights and epiphanies. Just recently, Yaag interviewed Rory Sutherland for his podcast and it might just be the most compact b ..read more

When you take out all the external trappings from modern marketing, it boils down to two basic things—understanding human psychology and using common sense. It’s what makes marketing easy and accessible for everyone. Unfortunately, it also lowers the barrier for entry for everyone—which is why marketing sometimes becomes a channel for people who are looking for shortcuts and hacks to manipulate the masses. Seth Godin is one of the best marketing minds in our times who understands the predicament that modern marketing is going through right now. He recently appeared on The ABM Conversations Pod ..read more

Anyone who’s not been living under a rock, knows the amount of change the business world has gone through since the beginning of 2020. The shutting down of conferences and tradeshows around the world,  the adaptation to remote working, the blurring lines between work and life outside of work have been some of the most visible aspects. But what’s interesting is that it has exposed the real existing degree of collaboration within organizations more than ever before. We have always had the need for better collaboration and alignment across the organization, but as long as we worked under the ..read more

Building a startup is like raising a kid. Some parents—the startup founders—do an excellent job of setting their startup up for great success. But the majority of them wither away in mediocrity because of one or several factors like wrong timing, lack of funding, hasty founders, bad products, or lack of distribution. So how do people start a startup with a difference? I doubt that there’s an easy blueprint for startup success. On the other hand, there are entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, or Gary Vaynerchuk who build one successful business after another—as if there’s a formula fo ..read more

Product market fit is all the rage among the startup circles—and deservedly so. Personally, I think it’s as mythical as a fantasy movie’s plot. You set out on an adventure to start a business. The adventure ends when you find two secret keys which—when combined—will reward you with riches and open new doors of possibilities. Product market fit is what makes a seemingly trivial invention like the swimming pool noodles a million-dollar success. And when you don’t have the magical PMF combination, it’s what fails million-dollar ideas like Steve Jobs’ NeXT Computer. But despite all the hype, produ ..read more

Ask any CX or marketing expert, and you’ll immediately know that the customer marketing landscape with one-way dialogue is a thing of the past. According to research by Bain & Co., companies that excel at customer experience, paying heed to consumer feedback, experience 4-8% growth in their revenue against their competition. To that effect, today, industry leaders are quickly adapting to the voice of the customer (VoC) programs as they represent an enormous opportunity for driving sales and building relationships. But what is VoC? How does it impact your business? And what can you do to bu ..read more

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Cole Schafer, the master/sensei of copywriting. For anyone who doesn’t know who Cole is, he runs the famous creative writing shop called Honey Copy, make-no-mistake, a six-figure revenue business, where he teaches copywriting and has a particular course for freelance copywriters. Be it going viral on medium or writing copies that raised huge funds on Kickstarter, or helping product launches, or copywriting billboards–he is someone who has pretty much done at all. And if you have been listening to our friend Christopher Lochhead‘s Podcast – Lochhead ..read more

OKR has been around since Andy Grove of Intel invented it back in the seventies, and it has its legacy about it, including Peter Drucker’s work. So it has a solid foundation. OKR is and will be the predominant goal system for the knowledge economy and the majority of organizations. You’ll most organizations using the OKR methodology and OKR tools by the end of this decade. Let’s start with the basics. OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It is a goal system. Simply put, it means that you will achieve an objective, which a specific set of key results will measure.  If you are not alr ..read more

Knowledge Panel is not as niche as they used to be back in the day. It’s become relatively universal now. I like to consider it this way. On the left, Google is recommending what it thinks the best answer or the best solution to your question or your problem is. One the right-hand side it’s saying, “This is a fact, this is stuff we are sure about.”  Left-hand side: Advice.  Right-hand side: Fact.  Getting that Knowledge Panel means you have to convince (Google) that it is fully understood facts about yourself or your brand. 44.8% of brands have a Knowledge Panel, 36.6% of people ..read more