Never a Lack of Ideas

Happy Halloween For the past two Halloweens, I have presented my lists of the top ten and next ten brands in the United States. I would remove Angry Birds from the list (what a difference a year makes!), but I'd keep everything else the same. My previous posts describe my criteria for these lists. So, in my final installment of this series, I give you my list of top brands #21-25: 21. Corona — There are thousands of brands of beer, but the one that stands out most makes us think of sitting on a beach every time a lime is placed inside one. 22. Tostitos — Go ahead, try to name another brand of tortilla chip. There's a party in every bag. 23. Christian Louboutin — There's only one brand of shoe recognizable simply by its red sole. Louboutin even has a trademark on the red sole in the US. 24. Tiffany & Co. — Every woman wants a gift in the little blue box, and every marketer marvels at the margins Tiffany brings in compared to its competitors. 25. Linked...

French Not Required Right next to the French Metro stop at the Palace of Versailles is a McDonald's that gets tons of traffic from visitors around the world. We stopped in and I loved what I saw: six self-serve kiosks at which customers can place their orders in any one of five different languages. That's brilliant. Managers at the restaurant have clearly identified that customers in the restaurant come from all over the world , they may not speak French, and they may not be familiar with all of the items McDonald's offers in France. So they give customers the ability to take their time and read about menu items in their language of choice, place their order with a credit card, and then pick up their food when it's ready . I love innovations in fast food, so I had to take a little video of us using the digital ordering system. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed filming it. Add This to Your To-Do List If McDonald's can innovate its order...

I'm Going Wild! In my last post , I wrote about five lessons I learned from starting my own business, hoping someone might learn something from my experiences. In this post, I will describe what I learned about myself throughout this process — not to toot my own horn, but to hopefully inspire someone to start her own business as a result. I became a good salesman. I have never given myself credit for being good at sales. But what I've learned is that sales is an extension of marketing — or the other way around, depending on who you ask. Good salespeople know the needs of their customers and deliver a solution that satisfies those needs. Identifying the customer was my first challenge: distributors, retail stores, and end consumers all have different goals and the sales pitch to each party is vastly different. As a one-man operation, I was forced to become a great salesman, and if you start your own company, you will be, too. I perfected my elevator pitch. Related to #1 an...