Allen Adamson‘s latest book, See the How: Transforming What People Do, Not Buy, to Gain Market Advantage, will be published by Matt Holt Books/An Imprint of Ben Bella Books on May 2, 2023.
Here’s a sneak preview of the thrust and flavor of Allen’s insights.
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We ride in Ubers and stay in Airbnbs when we travel. We schedule work meetings with Calendly and hold those meetings from anywhere on Zoom. When we return from business trips, we use Expensify to scan receipts, track expenses, and then sync that information with QuickBooks. After a busy day, we order dinner from DoorDash, unwind with a Spotify playlist, or spend the evening binge-watching Netflix. We buy clothing via Stitch Fix and rely on Chewy to keep our pets fed. A decade ago, most brand leaders and marketers couldn’t have imagined what people now take for granted as just “how we do things.”
SEEING THE HOW: Transforming What People Do, Not Buy, to Gain Market Advantage (Matt Holt Books; May 2, 2023), branding expert Allen P. Adamson takes a closer look at how companies like those spotlighted above, and many others, have radically changed work and life as usual by identifying and reimaging a whole new way to provide an overall better customer experience. Through sharing the secrets and insights of today’s most successful disruptors, Adamson equips and empowers marketing executives and entrepreneurs to break out of their product-based mindset, expand their customer-needs focus, and then go out and seize opportunities to make people’s lives better.
“The difference between one brand and another is shrinking all the time,” Adamson reinforces. “What matters: experience.” As he notes, backed by consumer research data as well as anecdotal evidence, today’s consumers are opting out of accumulating stuff and seeking experiences. And it’s not only millennials and younger. In the social media-fueled word-of-mouth world in which we all live, even Boomers are driven to seek out and share their delightful experiences. Bottom line: fantastic experiences get shared far more frequently than stories about better mousetraps.
SEEING THE HOW is a pathbreaking guide to experience innovation. To begin, Adamson urges marketers to approach their mission of winning customers with a pair of fresh eyes, which includes placing a priority on empathy, curiosity, and seeing clearly what others miss, sometimes right in front of their nose. To help sharpen everyone’s focus, he provides eight lenses—based on the proven prescriptions of today’s smartest marketers:
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Lens 1: Focus in and drill down. Using this lens, zoom in on one product or service and then do it exceptionally well. 1-800 Contacts and Drybar are great examples.
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Lens 2: Customize and make it personal. Look at how you can take what you do and know best and make it specific to your customers’ region, type, or personality. Consider State Farm’s Drive Safe & Save program using your phone to track how you drive.
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Lens 3: Joining forces. This lens helps you build your audience exponentially to create an entirely new experience. Consider the creative partnership between Apple and Audible to transform reading books into a listening treat for runners, commuters, and multitaskers.
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Lens 4: See like a concierge. Be that someone with the expertise and ability to listen and solve problems better and faster than the average person can on their own, even after hours of research. For one example, there’s the genius of Apple’s Genius Bar.
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Lens 5: Go the rental route. Look into how you might turn a one-time sale into repeated customer engagement. Take United Rentals, the largest equipment rental company in the world, which provides companies with everything from generators to portable bathrooms.
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Lens 6: Approach things as a broker. There are two sides to every story—and that fact is the foundation for this lens. For examples of companies that specialize in brokering, look no further than online dating apps.
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Lens 7: Explore virtual options. Looking through this lens, perceptive marketers have identified viable opportunities to build fascinating virtual businesses in categories where the virtual previously never played a part—including real estate, medicine, yoga, sports, and student tutoring.
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Lens 8: Getting close to the customer. This lens magnifies what has always been the goal of every marketing effort. For inspiration, take a closer look at how Warby Parker transformed purchasing eyeglasses into a convenient, intimate, and, best of all, friendly and fun experience.
To use these lenses optimally and see what others have yet to notice, Adamson urges marketing leaders to get out of their comfort zone and welcome other eyes, all looking from different places, ages, experiences, and expertise. “Diversity matters,” the author stresses. “If everyone has the same hard-wiring, everyone will look at the world the same way no matter what lenses they look through, and opportunities will be missed.”
Practical, compelling, and, yes, truly eye-opening, SEEING THE HOW is an exciting guide to innovation with a purpose: changing the lives of customers, the way businesses do business, and maybe even the whole world in remarkable and lasting ways.
For more information: https://allenadamson.com/
PR Contact: Valerie Silverman Kerr, valerie@vsk-publicrelations.
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ALLEN is a noted expert in all disciplines of branding. He has worked with a broad spectrum of consumer and B2B businesses in industries from packaged goods to hospitality, technology to healthcare. His previous books, including BrandSimple and, most recently, Shift Ahead, are used as textbooks in higher education business programs nationwide. After holding senior management positions at Ogilvy & Mather and DMB&B, Adamson joined Landor Associates, a full-spectrum brand consultancy, and eventually rose to chairman. Under his leadership, the company partnered with global brands including Accenture, GE, Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, HBO, Marriott, MetLife, P&G, Sony, and Verizon.
Additionally, he guided non-profit organizations such as the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. For the past several years, he has been an adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, where he also serves as the brand expert-in-residence at the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship. A sought after industry commentator, Adamson has appeared on ABC News, NBC’s Today, CNBC’s Squawk Box and Closing Bell, and Fox Business Network, and is often quoted in publications including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, and Forbes. He is co-founder and managing partner of Metaforce, a disruptive marketing and brand consultancy that takes a multidisciplinary, channel-agnostic approach to driving growth.