DANIEL L. LUNANI

Fashion is Everywhere, In all industries and businesses, sometimes we call it, the new way of doing things, My Friend Osborn Katala a financial consultant loves fashion pretty much. It’s not simply the clothes you chose to wear today (and the ones that haven’t seen the outside of your closet for years). It’s the music that you’re loving right now, songs you wouldn’t have tuned into ten years ago. It’s the way we understand how the world works, which policies make sense to us, and what sort of food we eat. Even the investments we make or the debts we incur. It’s the rhythm of our days, our priority list, and our urgencies as well. Almost none of our choices in the world are the result of independent direct experience. Instead, we make them in the context of culture, of our surroundings, of ‘people like us do things like this.’ We choose to align with a segment of the culture and take our cues from them or sometimes our competitors in business, we play their game and beat them at it, I S...

The purpose of marketing is to cause change. If we’re trying to build a movement for our product or service, raise money, sell a product or service, change lifestyles, build community–these are all marketing activities that exist to change the way people act. The project/plan usually begins with clarity. The cause is just, the harm is real, the product is better. The work is worth doing, there’s an urgent need for change, it’s real, always real. But sometimes, the original arguments, as valid as they are, don’t work. In fact, they rarely do. People don’t all line up to work out or sign up from the very start. You can put in the energy to have your pitch get heard. It’s only as the arguments become more clear, or change, that they begin to resonate. This says keep going. And yet we can get stuck with a certain orthodoxy. An early argument can become the only argument. The story that the group tells from the start is the  right  one, and anything else is a disappointing compromi...

  Is that your goal? To find the next hot thing? Do you want to buy it, sell it, use it, eat it? In every industry where there's fashion (which is every industry), people spend an enormous amount of time looking for heat. It defines the cutting edge, determines what's in or out, what's hot or not . The concept of a new product is important for managers. Both newly established as well as existing companies face the problem of developing a new product. Buyers do want some elements of newness in a product. Newness may be in terms of production, marketing, place, service, use, or price. The new product is one that offers new benefits or features. It differs significantly from the products currently available in the market in terms of uses, appearance, performance, taste, price, and construction. A new product is one, which is perceived as new by consumers. It may be an original product, improved product, modified product, or new brand. Various issues are related to a new produc...

That’s not often the same as, “I did my best.” Quality has a very specific definition: Did it meet the customer’s requirements? Any experience, product, or deliverable that meets that spec is deemed to have met the quality standard. If it doesn’t, it’s not of quality. And so we need to begin with,  “who’s it for?”  because the customer might not be who we think it is. “Was it a good wedding?” might mean, “did the host feel fully seen, empowered and celebrated?” or it might mean, “did you have fun?” or it might mean twenty other things. The second question goes along with that, which is,  “what’s it for?”  This product or experience, what did the customer hire it to do? Again, being clear about this is the only way to improve what we’re doing. Only after we answer these two questions can we dig into how to be more clear about what we’re offering and to whom, along with how we can make our work more effective and efficient. [And then it gets complicated…] What if there...