Several years ago, Wells Fargo (WF) was caught in a huge violation of the law. Management had set up a program whereby they compensated the boiler room sales people for how many new accounts they opened for customers. Their bosses encouraged them to open these “sham” accounts without the customers’ awareness! At the time, I could […]

By Joel Brind, PhD City University of New York And President and CEO of Natural Food Science, LLC You might think science is basically a left brain exercise, due to the logical reasoning of hypotheses and all the math. But as a lifelong scientist, I can tell you there is nothing more important in doing […]

By Dr. Charles T. Kenny The Right Brain People® In our most recent blog series, we have been talking about brands that seemingly injure themselves, destroying brand equity for a variety of reasons. We titled the series “How to Kill Your Own Brand”. We have received dozens of comments about this series of blog posts on the […]

We have heard from one NFL insider that our last blog post hit home and has circulated. We love to hear back, so tell us what you think! We still intend to analyze the decisions the owners are making. And will do so in the near future. But in the meantime consider who and what […]

We see it all the time. Once-strong brands die because they don’t adapt to rapid changes. They just keep on keeping on until they wither away. Some well-known examples: Pan Am, Tower Records, Blockbuster, Circuit City, Woolworth’s, Borders Books. Let’s take just one example that could be in the first stages of a death spiral: The NFL. The […]

Great brands trigger experiences that consumers are longingly looking for. Great brands deliver on their promises – their “Brand Promises.” But do brands really make promises? Here is a list of 100 great brands. Over the years, we’ve worked for 10 of these brands, and for brands in most of the product categories represented. We’ve also worked for […]

In the Fall on a sunny Saturday morning, we headed out of the suburbs and into the city to Columbia University. We were remarkably fortunate to be among the first recipients of scholarships to the first Saturday Scholar program of its kind. We have the Ford Foundation and Columbia to thank for this remarkable experience. […]

Market research is not just a series of ad hoc projects. Good market research for a brand or product begins with a plan to conduct a sequence of research projects. The most effective way to do that is for qualitative and quantitative to work together so that the questions raised by quantitative research point toward […]

Confirmation bias is when we look for things to confirm our preconceived ideas. It is human nature and we are all susceptible to this cognitive bias. If you are aware of this mindset you can avoid “selective listening”. It is easy for us to hear and remember the things that consumers say that confirm our […]