rehumanize

Over the last two days I led a live case study for MBA students at the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine.  Their challenge was to identify a new flavor for Dasani Drops that is relevant to the brand and could drive incremental sales.  I am grateful for the hard work shown by all 12 teams and am excited to get two teams in front of my friends at Coca-Cola. Beyond evaluating the soundness of each team's research and findings, I was also looking for signs that they were willing to color outside the lines. In the innovation workshop I run for left brainers, I explain that creativity is not a dark art – it is simply counter-intuitive problem solving.  Yet if corporate whiteboards could talk they would tell tales about the three most common creativity killers: We accept assumptions and end up solving the wrong problem. We know what we know and narrow our thinking within well-trodden mental paths. We aren't comfortable pursuing multiple solution

Empathic Marketing is a model for integrated marketing that I developed from a simple human observation – what's true in life is true in marketing.  It was inspired by my observations over time and across categories that the ways in which we form personal relationships mirror how we form brand relationships.   The 4Es of relationship building – empathy, experiences, endorsement and energy – shape our best and most lasting relationships, both in real life and with the brands we embrace. Apple has long mastered the 4Es.  At its launch, it struck an empathetic bond with creative souls everywhere who yearned to think different.  Its stores, not to mention its its design and packaging, created experiences that transformed perceptions into deeply-held beliefs.  Its legions of fans created a peer-to-peer endorsement network.  And Apple's steady cadence of new products created a aura of infectious momentum and energy . However, I believe that Apple's advertising lost its