Even before the IBM commercial where the employees play “buzzword bingo” during a meeting, anyone even tangentially connected to the business world could tell you that corporate America was turning the English language into its personal playground. Similar to the way politicians carefully choose their words to convey the proper emotion and stay on message, businesses have invented terms like “offshoring” to mask the negative effects of losing jobs overseas, and “result-driven” or “value-added” to emphasize positive terms. Sometimes this process goes too far, and someone steps in to say “enough!” In England, that responsibility fell to the Local Government Association, after a local town council began calling brainstorming “thought showers” instead.

Continue reading "Why Invent New Words? Just be Clear" »

Posted by Jeremy Nedelka at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Trust is essential when you decide to move into a motor home with your spouse and three children for the duration of 18 months to explore the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.

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Posted by Mila D'Antonio at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just left Istanbul, after spending two days in that engaging, tumultuous, thriving city. Peppers & Rogers Group’s largest and most successful consulting operation is based in Turkey, and I was there to meet the CEO for one of our larger clients, address his senior staff, and talk to the press. The night before the event, around an outdoor fire on the terrace of a beautiful restaurant overlooking the Bosporus, I chatted with the dozen or so consultants on the PRG team assigned to this client, and we began discussing some of the cultural differences that change how 1to1 marketing is viewed or implemented in different countries.

Continue reading "1to1 Marketing: From Local to Global" »

Posted by Don Peppers at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everybody’s thankful for something this time of year: family, friends, health, a couple days off work, the news that there’s still eight episodes of Cavemen in the hopper, strike or no strike.

But the 1to1 crew is particularly thankful for a different kind of turkey: those events of the past few months that revealed companies and/or individuals who forgot/ignored/actively worked against the whole concept of “service”…and sometimes of “customer” as well.

But it’s not all one-sided. Sometimes, it may not surprise anyone to hear, the customer isn’t always right. Presenting the 2007 Turkey Shoot…

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Posted by Kevin Zimmerman at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A European colleague has asked me whether it isn’t possible to drive customers away by simply asking them to complete a survey about customer satisfaction. That is, can the act of soliciting for a survey actually be a turn-off for customers all by itself?

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Posted by Don Peppers at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)