Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

We flit from trend to trend in this society. Now at a faster rate than ever, given the attention-deficit disorder affecting more of us each day. We trend-hop in business, especially. "Innovation". "Service". "Design". "Creativity". "Excellence". Each of these concepts are certainly valuable. Each has been the subject of books, lectures, magazine cover stories and buzz galore. Still, what does it all add up to? I'm not really sure, but I have a hunch.

 

Based on 30 years of watching the repetition of patterns in successes and failures, I don't think it "adds up" so much as it boils down to this: unless innovation, service, design, etc. are doing something for a paying customer somewhere, they are absolutely worthless. This is why I think the concept of customer advocacy trumps everything else. It is the starting point. Proverbial "square one". "Advocating" on behalf of customers isn't a trend. It's a state of mind. A way of life. A culture unto itself.

 

How can you tell if and when a company is a customer advocate? You can start by taking a look at their recent revenue history. How are sales doing and what does the trend reveal? What's in the product pipeline? What's the buzz among users? Are competitors emulating them -- or are they eating their lunch? How's their stock price doing, adjusted for any downturns or upticks in their category?

 

These, of course, are the macro indicators, the outward signals that can be gleaned from public information. What about early-stage companies? How can you distinguish a bona-fide, customer-advocate entrepreneur from a wannabe? There are no shortcuts to due diligence. You have to do the diligence. Still, there are questions to ask, as a starting point: What is the problem your product, or service, addresses and solves? Who has this problem? How are they dealing with it today, in the absence of your solution? How do they describe this problem -- in their terminology? What will they pay to use your solution? What evidence do you have to support this? What experience do you have with the people you've targeted? How big is this problem (how many people have it, or know they have it)? What evidence do you have to back this up?

 

Anything less than thoughtful, throught-thru answers to each of these questions should raise a red flag. You're either advocating for customers, or you're in search of the problem that you think your product might solve. That may not be like walking backwards, exactly, but it's close. At the very least, it's not the way to run a business.