Bolivar J. Bueno - Customers First: Dominate Your Market by Winning Them Over Where It Counts the Most

Copyright 2012 by Bolivar J. Bueno. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-0717-8788-8
MHID: 0-07-178788-7

The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-178787-1, MHID: 0-07-178787-9.

All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps.

McGraw-Hill eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions, or for use in corporate training programs. To contact a representative please e-mail us at bulksales@mcgraw-hill.com.

TERMS OF USE

This is a copyrighted work and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (McGrawHill) and its licensors reserve all rights in and to the work. Use of this work is subject to these terms. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works based upon, transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the work or any part of it without McGraw-Hills prior consent. You may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use; any other use of the work is strictly prohibited. Your right to use the work may be terminated if you fail to comply with these terms.

THE WORK IS PROVIDED AS IS. McGRAW-HILL AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY, ADEQUACY OR COMPLETENESS OF OR RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED FROM USING THE WORK, INCLUDING ANY INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH THE WORK VIA HYPERLINK OR OTHERWISE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. McGraw-Hill and its licensors do not warrant or guarantee that the functions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its operation will be uninterrupted or error free. Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting therefrom. McGraw-Hill has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the work. Under no circumstances shall McGraw-Hill and/or its licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages that result from the use of or inability to use the work, even if any of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages. This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise.

Every journey requires some kind of compassa sense of where one is headed and an assurance that one is on the right path.

This book is, in a word, a compass.

As a marketer, keeping the brand that I steward on track is perhaps the most important and difficult challenge I face daily. The rate of speed at which the world is changing requires significant insights, strategies, and nimbleness. Todays environment can be a destroyer of brands if one is not consistently in tune with the customer.

Having a Brand Model based on insights into ones customers is invaluable. Even better is having a customer-focused model that is dimensionalized so that one can use it as a guide to assess potential scenarios and strategies, allowing for a fluid yet disciplined approach that will grow the brand instead of diluting it.

BJs Brand Modeling process provides a deep understanding of the passion that ones best customers have for the brands they love. This understanding guides the strategies and dialogue within the organization with confidence and alignment that expedites decisions and provides the filter through which decisions are made and positive results are achieved.

Ive been a marketer on the agency and client side for more than 20 years. There are two key brand killers that are always at your doorstep: apathy and ideation. You can probably understand why apathy kills a brand (through a lack of energy), but you may wonder why I say that ideas can also kill a brand. After all, we are in the business of creating ideas, arent we? The problem is that we often fall in love with ideas without properly evaluating whether these ideas are right for the brand. And since the customer defines the brand, ultimately the question that we must ask is, Is it right for our best customersour Brand Lovers? To answer this question successfully, you must first understand the psychological makeup of your best customers. A customer-centric Brand Model helps you do just that.

Marketing is a delicate combination of art and science. The art is a beautiful flow of intangible emotions that connects brands and customers in a way that speaks to the customers heart. The science of marketing can be elusive. A solid Brand Model uses customer insights to identify a brands various dimensions based on evidence and facts. These verifiable data are undeniably insightful not only for the marketer, but for the entire organization, and they keep an organization from apathy and from falling in love with ideas that dont fit the brand.

Peter Drucker said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. I believe that the best way to predict the future of your brand is to acquire an in-depth understanding of your best customers and to use that knowledge to predict the future. Your best customers know the most about your brand; they love you and hold you to high standards. Understanding that love and using it to grow more customers is what BJs Brand Modeling process is designed to do.

In Customers First, BJ makes a compelling case not only for Brand Modeling, but for the best approach to building a model, creating a strong and sustainable compass not only for marketers, but for the entire organization as well.

Julie Gardner
Chief Marketing Officer
Kohls Department Stores

Customers are skeptical. Theyve been lied to by just about everyone whos had the opportunity to do so. From role models who cant keep extramarital affairs from wrecking their golf game to behemoth corporations betting against their own customers investments to politicians regularly resigning for engaging in the very activities they legislated against, no one has been telling the truth. You need an element of trust to get genuine customer buy-in, but weve spent a generation and a half teaching the public to trust nobody.

This creates a problem for todays business leaders. How do you connect with these empowered, educated, skeptical consumers? This is a question of some urgency. If you dont have the answer, you have to figure it out now, and you have to keep your business thriving at the same time. Theres absolutely no time to hesitate. If you cannot connect with your customers in a meaningful way, you will become irrelevant to them. When youre irrelevant, youre replaceable, and your customers will inevitably replace you with a brand that they do feel connected to.