Great article by Alice Thomson in the Daily Telegraph this week on the fact that our parents, of WW II generation, have always had a green tinge; although they would be the last to say so.

But how has this passed down the generations? (Looking at generational influences in customer behaviour is both fascinating and important.) I, like my mother, religiously save left-overs; my fridge is full of them, and my husband constantly throws out mould covered pots, whose contents I can no longer identify! So although I’ve learnt a behaviour, I haven’t quite got the same ethos as my mother who once a week cooks up her bubble and squeak.

In her article Alice quotes her children going to school chanting “recycle, regenerate, rebuild” - all well and good, but are we teaching our children to chant mantras, or are we teaching them to think about what they do?

Coming soon!

We are regularly called upon to write articles, research white papers, and even ghost write for clients. We’ll put the most popular of these documents into the library - with relevant permissions of course!! Also included will be papers written by other people which we consider to be useful to organizations trying to be more mutual in their marketing.

Community, Culture and Collaboration

Marketing is Change Management - So many companies struggle to twizzle people back towards a ‘relentless focus on the customer’. How can current techniques of change management and internal marketing help?

The Year of the Customer Community - Social network technologies are starting to hit the collective conscience at the same time as other trends point to a ‘second coming’ for customer communities. An evaluation of the costs and benefits of a customer community should be on the cards - but beware they are not for everyone. (paper from 2005!)

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Personal Social Responsibility

The Social Life of Business - Every company should build responses to relevant ‘socio-political’ trends into their customer value propositions as a matter of good business.

In My View - CSR - Series of thought provoking comments on a topic by people who have a passion for it. In this paper we look at the emergence of Corporate Social Responsibility as a driving force in 21^st century business.

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Thinking Differently, Thinking Skills

Harnessing the Power of Story - Customers make their experiences real, for themselves and others, through stories. ‘Word of mouth’ swirls around our lives, shaping our reality as we talk. We story the world into existence. Those in the know use stories to advantage, for the rest - we are tossed in its flows and eddies

Forget Leaders, We Need Inspiration - Once upon a time big organizations used brand and advertising to present a trusted face to consumers, as they replaced, local businesses. Today, we have relationship marketing and corporate social responsibility to do the same job. But if these ideas are to transform the heart of our businesses we are going to have to change the way we think - not an easy task.

Systems Thinking- As the global context for business continues to undergo seismic shifts, we explore how Systems Thinking can help us to understand this ‘Terra Incognita’ and develop enduring strategic solutions.

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What Customers Want, Customer Management

Learning to Manage Customers - To gain the right skills for customer management, organizations need to re-examine their marketing practices from first principles, CRM is an evolution of the marketing discipline - the management practice designed to align company resources with customer requirements in order to achieve optimum profit.

The Customers’ Benchmark - Used cleverly The Customers’ Benchmark can act as the design template for customer propositions, for within the seven factors lie the drivers and inhibitors of purchase decisions and customer loyalty

The Voice of the Customer - Customer feedback improves product design and enables six sigma projects. Feedback is the petrol driving ‘sense and respond’ organization. But what is feedback, how do you get hold of it and, crucially, how do you refine it into an asset.

You have permission to talk to my wife - Marriage vows are a deeply emotional commitment to care, share and endow our partners with all worldly goods. So it can come as quite a shock when call centre agents impertinently imply we are defrauding our nearest and dearest. Welcome to the world of the 1998 Data Protection Act (DPA).

Inspiring Good Business
  

In the nineteenth century,‘good’ business was mutual, providing homes, good food, education; lifting people from slums where an average death came age 14.In the twentieth century, ‘good’ business learnt marketing; running savvy, competitive operations, selling goods to tribes of unknowns.In the twenty-first century ‘good’ business is both mutual and savvy; attuning to social visions, creating reciprocal networks.

Now is the age for Mutual Marketing Now it is the time for
inspiring / market / thinking

The challenges

Customer relationship management, social networking, social responsibility - of both the corporate and personal kind - all are major market shaping forces in the private, public AND third sector. The business of business is getting far more social, far more collaborative, and if organizations are going to be sustainable, they need to understand their markets and respond with innovative new business practices. Inviting customers to collaborate in building their own ‘experience’; understanding how product packaging should be responding to trends in green consumerism; engaging employees in a unified corporate culture around brand values.

We used to work individually with clients on these issues, but found ourselves tackling similar problems with different departments. Very little was ‘joined up’; so much energy and resource was being wasted causing stress and frustration. Yet, all the time people were gamely trying to change things, be innovative and think differently.

A mutual response

We found that if we joined forces to entwine both our subject-matter expertise and business disciplines (research, strategy, facilitation, business design) together, we were much better able to support clients:-

• Explore the market trends in relationship marketing and social responsibility they needed to respond to

• Work together cross-functionally, recognizing inter-dependencies
• Face outwards and work in a co-ordinated fashion with stakeholders - customers, partners, community organizations and shareholders.
• We decided to call this way of working Mutual Marketing - drawing on historical precedents. The word mutual reflecting both the growing social response required of business, and the need for cross-functional, outside-in collaboration.

How it works to support you

Our research and client services are now co-ordinated and build on mutual principles; so developing a fresh and inspirational, yet pragmatic, answer to dealing with the complex business challenges we all face today.

As business analysts our ongoing research programme provides insight and thought leadership to inform the actions of our clients. We then act as advisors, facilitators and tutors, undertaking tailored client research if necessary, to help re-focus, re-think, and re-model business practices. By working on real business problems together with clients; integrating their business understanding with our subject matter expertise and experience, then together we inspire market thinking and develop innovative action.

This is not confined to the marketing department, corporate strategy or CRS manager. Through mutual practices we cross the functional and group boundaries that hold organizations back. We believe that marketing, the practice of anticipating and providing for customer needs effectively, is a discipline that everyone in an organization should have. Through our methods of skills development we help everyone to think about business problems and support the creation of inspirational ideas that capture market opportunity.

For a further understanding of who we are and what we do here are two other relevant sections; a flavour of how we can help and the Benefits of our services.