DW's Blog

A Guide To Product Storytelling

by DW Green — February 10, 2016

The following questions can assist buyers and marketing team with product storytelling by helping to identify the product stories—and selling points—that need to be communicated to your customers.How was the product developed?How did the idea for this product come about?What happened and who was involved?How is the product made today?How did the product get its name?Does this product have something special that competing products do not?Other questions:1. What methods are used to ensure freshness, quality or better tasting products?

Does the producer use any special technique (ex. air-chilling chicken, cave-aging cheese, dry-aging beef) and why does this make it better?
Is it made using a family recipe that has been passed down through generations?
Is the product handmade or hand-selected? (In this day of mass-produced products, handmade and hand-selected products say that special care was given to the product.)
Does it use natural, sustainable or environmentally friendly production methods? (Ex: Cage-free eggs, hormone and antibiotic free meat or organic produce grown without chemical pesticides or synthetic fertilizers.)
Is it baked fresh, prepared in the store or made to order?
How often is it delivered to your markets? (indicates freshness)

2. Where is the product from and why is that a benefit to the customer?

Be specific if possible....
read more

How Can Custom Signage Increase Super Bowl Sales?

by DW Green — January 28, 2016

What do New Year’s Eve and the Super Bowl have in common? Parties! In fact, Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest day in the United States for food consumption, right behind Thanksgiving Day! And Super Bowl Sunday is the Number 1 at-home party event of the year, even surpassing New Year’s Eve. Super Bowl is one of the five big pizza days of the year. The other four? Halloween, the day before Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Take advantage of Super Bowl sales this year while enhancing your price perception with custom designed end cap and in-line shelf signage. In addition to conventional manufacturer T.P.R allowances, create your own set of in-store specials. Consider discounting all items consumers may purchase for their Super Sunday Party and tag them with custom designed Super Bowl Savings bib tags and display signage. This sign and price strategy makes sense for every holiday. Reducing prices on holiday related items will have a huge impact on consumer confidence and price perception. Not only will a well-signed effort increase sales and penny profit but will also ensure you are getting credit for your temporary discounted pricing. The key is to develop a custom sign for the specific holiday so that it stands out from your typical day-to-day value pricing signage. There is time ...

by DW Green — January 21, 2016

Howdy Partner!

I have always believed in satisfaction guarantees. I believe companies are wise to stand behind the products and services they provide their customers. Personally, I have always been loyal to companies who take care of me and financially back their work when problems arise with product or service deficiencies. There are five reasons why a guarantee is a powerful tool, both for marketing product and service quality and for achieving it. First, it pushes the entire company to focus on the customers’ definition of good products and services, not an executive’s assumption. Second, it sets clear performance standards, which boost employee performance and morale. Third, it generates reliable data (through payouts) when performance is poor. Fourth, it forces an organization to examine its entire service-delivery system for possible failure points. Last, it builds customer loyalty, sales and market share. What makes a good guarantee? It is unconditional, easy to understand and communicate, meaningful, easy and painless to invoke, and easy and quick to collect on. Unfortunately, fear of customers cheating is a big hurdle for some when considering offering guarantees. Sure, there will be cheaters—maybe 1% of customers who take advantage...

by DW Green — January 6, 2016

dwcrop I resolve to do whatever is put in front of me with all my heart and soul without regard for personal results. I will do the work as though it were given to me by the universe itself—because it was....

by DW Green — December 16, 2015

Every single being has an amazing, unfathomable gift that only meeting life head-on and heart-on will reveal. And we can’t fully know our gift alone. We need each other to discover the gift, to believe in the gift. And then, to learn how to use it. The challenge for each of us is not to discount our gift because of the indifference of others, and not to abdicate our gift because of the various weights we’re forced to carry.What does it mean to have a gift? For the lamp, the light it was shaped to carry is its gift. Without a light, a lamp has no purpose. For a person, we are shaped by experience to reveal the light we carry. For a person, how that light comes through us is its gift. And a life cut off from the work of its heart has no purpose. Our call in the midst of our days is to discover the gift that connects our heart with our hands, to discover the light that fills the lamp of life we are given. Once discovered, our work is to never let the light of our gift go outA lamp can light any patch of ground, the hand filled with heart can light anything it touches. The various skills of the world are how the gifted hand moves.Through our gift, we bring our portion of life-force back into the world. Each of us is born a heart’s length from everything that ever lived and from everything yet to be. Every being on Earth is created to be a conduit between the Universal Life-Force and the moment coming alive. Being such a conduit is our birthright. Whe...

by DW Green — December 9, 2015

This is an excerpt from Marc Gobe’s excellent book Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People. I highly recommend reading this book. It presents a new marketing perspective that may very well help you differentiate your company in the market place.“In A Wall Street Journal article entitled “So long Supply and Demand” the conclusion reached is “The bottom line. Creativity is overtaking capital as the principal elixir of growth. And creativity, although precious, shares few of the constraints that limit the range and availability of capital and physical goods.” In this new business atmosphere, ideas are money. Ideas, in fact, are a new kind of currency altogether—more powerful than money. One single idea—especially if it involves a brand concept—can change a company’s entire future.But what exactly constitutes a great brand concept today? In this hypercompetitive marketplace where goods or services alone are no longer enough to attract a new market or even to maintain existing markets, I believe that it is the emotional aspects of products and their distribution systems that will be the key difference between consumers’ ultimate choice and the price that they will pay. By emotional I mean how a brand engages consumers on the level of the senses and emotions; how a brand comes to life for people and forges a deeper, lasting connection.Brand Identity Starts at HomeA brand is brought to life fo...

by DW Green — November 25, 2015

A Prayer for Gratitude“Today, Lord, I want to express my gratitude for everything I receive from you. Today, I will express all the love and happiness that exist in my heart. I will love your creations, I will love myself, and I will love the people who live with me. I will enjoy the presence of the people I love, respecting their choices in life as I respect my own.Today, I will graciously receive your gifts by enjoying your gifts, by enjoying the beauty of all your creation. Help me to be as generous as you are, to share what I have with generosity, just as you share your gifts so generously. Help me to become a master of gratitude, generosity, and love so that I can enjoy all of your creations.Today, Lord, help me manifest my creation as you manifest the universe, to express the beauty of my spirit in the supreme art of the human: the art of dreaming my life. Today, Lord, I give you all my gratitude and love because you have given me life. Amen.”—Don Miguel RuizThank you all....

by DW Green — November 19, 2015

Pay attention to the greatness you observe in as many people as possible, and if you don’t see it at first, then spend some mental energy looking for it. The more you’re inclined to think in genius terms, the more natural it becomes for you to apply the same standards to yourself. Tell others about their genius. Be as complimentary and authentic as you can. In doing so, you’ll radiate loving, kind, abundant, creative energy. In a universe that operates on energy and attraction, you’ll find these same qualities returning to you....

by DW Green — November 12, 2015

Creating a store culture of exceptional customer service requires a strong commitment to service at all levels of the company, beginning at the top. It requires executives to think about marketing and operational processes in new ways. In order to be truly effective, however, the store environment must be one in which management integrates and demonstrates exceptional customer service.Executives who direct employees to provide exceptional customer service without changing their own behavior or making operational changes to support high service standards are doomed to failure. Worse yet, if the company begins marketing an exceptional service program but doesn’t deliver on the promise, it can seriously damage the store’s reputation and undermine customer loyalty.Rather, management must focus on taking steps, large and small, to nurture the philosophy of exceptional customer service in all aspects of the business so it becomes deeply rooted in the company culture. The best way to begin is “practice what you preach.”Success comes fastest to those managers who serve as role models for exceptional customer service—those who, through words and actions, strive to meet the highest service standards in day-to-day operations, promotions, and employee and customer interactions. When management begins living exceptional customer service, operational and marketing processes can be more effectively adjusted to support a cohesive program....

by DW Green — November 4, 2015

Offering exceptional customer service is indeed a powerful way to differentiate your store in the marketplace. How do you distinguish yourself as a leader in service excellence?Most retail businesses in America believe they offer good customer service, but in reality the opposite is probably more accurate. Why? With the daily demands of performing repetitive tasks in a highly productive environment, employees are often oblivious to customers and their needs. Customer service is typically given lip service by managers, who view training and developing employees to provide an exceptional customer experience as a low priority in a cost-controlling, low-margin industry. Ironically, it is just such an investment in employee training and development that can increase sales exponentially. While operational efficiencies are essential to superior corporate performance, they should not hinder the company’s ability to gain a customer service advantage.For a retailer to gain a customer service advantage over its competitors, a serious investment of resources to train employees is critical. It is also imperative to have in place vehicles that foster communication between the customer and store, including regular interaction between top management and customers. Why is this important? Because customer service is one thing, but exceptional customer service is another thing entirely. It’s not enough that every customer is acknowledged by every employee they meet on every...