TAKE-HOME LESSONS

→ An explosion of connectivity, and the power it gives customers, is turning companies upside down.

→ Industry is undergoing a massive migration from a material-based economy to a digital one.

→ The question isn’t WHETHER your company will be disrupted, but WHEN.

→ Customers today don’t “consume.” HAVING more runs a distant second to BEING more.

→ Today’s customers want more than features, more than benefits, and more than experiences. They want MEANING.

→ They don’t BUY brands. They JOIN brands. They want a vote in what gets produced and how it gets delivered.

→ A successful brand can become a touchstone in a customer’s life—a vivid symbol of what’s useful, delightful, and even magical.

→ When a product becomes a symbol, the symbol becomes the product.

→ In a flipped business, the product is not the innovation, the customer is. The company with the best customers wins.

→ The best brand builders see greatness in their customers, and figure out ways to enable it.

→ Any effort to get customers is marketing. Any effort to KEEP THEM is branding.

→ The best question to ask a new product marketer is not “How big is the segment,” but “You and what army?”

→ In the age of easy group-forming, the basic unit of measurement is not the segment but the TRIBE.

→ To achieve authenticity with your tribe, you have to begin with company purpose—the reason you’re in business beyond making money.

→ Each brand experience should be the brand in miniature, a representative sample of what your customers understand about the company and its offerings.

→ You can’t DECIDE a great customer experience. You have to DESIGN it.

→ Delight in the minimal, the ultra clear, the super simple. Never add without trying to subtract.

→ The goal of designing prototypes is not to impress your customers, but let them impress YOU with their reactions, knowledge, and insights.

→ We now live in a world of participatory theater in which we watch the performance and simultaneously judge the performer.

→ Customers don’t want to be TOLD, they want to TELL. They long to be the heroes of their own journey.

→ Empowered customers will move heaven and earth to ensure your success, happily attracting others to the tribe with their magnetic sense of commitment.

→ A brand isn’t what YOU say it is. It’s what THEY say it is.