i Every now and then, I am asked to write the foreword for a great book. And, every now and then, I say yes. The deal is always the same. Once the book is released, I ask that I’m able to publish the foreword in full to share with you here. My friends Lars Birkholm Petersen, Ron Person and Christopher Nash wrote a book, Connect: How to use data and experience marketing to create lifetime customers. As they describe, marketing is…
X Marks the Spot Where the Medium is the Message
Several years ago, I embarked on a crazy journey to reinvent the book to make it a physical metaphor for the purpose of the book. I had no other choice. It was a book about designing meaningful and personal experiences in a digital economy. It would have been to ironic to tell you do do so in a traditional print format. It also would have been unimaginative to simply release an ebook or app. The point is that you can’t…
Designing the Experience: My Ongoing Experiments with Book Trailers and Storytelling
I’ve always been fascinated by Hollywood trailers. So much so, that 10 years ago, I was determined to develop a trailer for my next book at the time, Engage!. Since then, I launched every subsequent book with a trailer. You can see a compilation here. With my latest book X, I broke that tradition. It wasn’t intentional however. I simply got so caught up with the launch and the following book tour that I couldn’t get to it. That didn’t…
Why the future of corporate marketing may hang on the personal brand
Guest post by Mark W. Schaefer (@markwschaefer) I hate the term “personal branding.” And yet, personal branding may be the salvation of corporate marketing. Allow me to explain today why both statements are true! For the past few years I’ve been immersed in the world of personal branding as I wrote my new book KNOWN: The Handbook for Building and Unleashing Your Personal Brand in the Digital Age. I started the process by exploring what the experts thought it meant…
Is Your Marketing Strategy Aimed at the Present or the Future?
If you’ve designed your marketing strategy around what your market expects today, you may want to revisit it. Why? Your market will expect something different in the future. And that future is starting to arrive now. When I’m not deep in the weeds studying Digital Transformation, Innovation, Experience Design and Culture, I’m incessantly thinking about brands of tomorrow and what it takes to be relevant to an evolving society. I recently spent some time with Qlutch CEO Jim Sagar to explore…
Customer Experience Versus Just Experience: Why the difference is key to brand relevance
Customer experience aka CX is one of the most important trends changing business today. And, experts believe that it represents the next big competitive advantage for companies that invest in it. But what is customer experience exactly? It’s one of those terms (and movements) that is defined and interpreted differently depending on who’s talking about it within the organization. But without a common appreciation for customer experience and what it represents to customers, not just our view of them, our…
An Intern’s Review of WTF: What’s the Future of Business
One of the little known stories about my previous book, What’s the Future of Business: Changing the way businesses create experiences, is that I wrote and published it after I had started my latest book, X: The Experience when business meets design. While it stands on its own, WTF is technically a companion book to X and can be read as a part 2 of sorts. One of the lesser known facts about WTF, is that it wasn’t even on my docket….
Introducing a framework for experience architecture
Alan Quarry is one of those people that makes you smile and earns your trust and respect within minutes. He also has a pretty killer video setup. Alan invited me on his show to talk about X and I gladly accepted. The minute I plugged-in to his video feed though, I instantly wished I could teleport to his studio. #jealous. In X, I introduce framework for experience architecture and how one can become an xperience architect. We talk about what that…
X Marks the Spot: Where Experience Meets Design
Please watch the video below… I’ve met some pretty incredible people over the years. One such individual that I wanted to introduce to is Bryan Elliott, an entrepreneur, writer, event producer and advocate for innovative thinkers and businesses. I originally met Bryan at Blog World Expo back in the day, one of the original big tech shows we all used to hit on the circuit. He’s just one of the nicest (and most connected) human beings you could ever meet at a conference or anywhere really….
The Truth About Creating Customer Experiences
Bryan Kramer is just one of those people with whom you instantly bond. For those who don’t know him, he shot onto the social, digital, content marketing scene with fun and fervor. He’s highly regarded as a strategist, speaker and author. He’s also someone I think of as a good friend. Recently, I had the honor, and enjoyment, of shooting an episode of H2HChat (Human to Human) with Bryan and his super smart co-host Suzi McCarthy. The conversation was both…
