One of the companies which kept popping up in my research was the online American shoe and apparel store Zappos. It is a cutting edge company with some really unique marketing methods and an incredible like-minded team behind it. CEO, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) is quoted regularly about customer service...

Flawsome is all about being more authentic and bringing some personality into our marketing materials and dare we say… some humour? Flawsome communication means dropping the carefully scripted wording and instead just saying what we mean. Not only is it easier to write this way, it helps to build rapport...

Organisational crises aren’t always big cataclysmic events or total screw-ups. In fact most of us will never head organisations big enough to experience major catastrophes. What we will face, regardless of the size of our businesses, every week and sometimes every day, are micro crises. Of course, there are obvious...

I see too many businesses abuse their fandom by only sharing information about products and services via social media. The problem is that promotional tweets and Facebook posts don’t typically generate useful conversations with fans and that’s definitely NOT Flawsome. Social media gives businesses an unprecedented opportunity to gain feedback from...

In one of my earlier articles ‘The secret to being forgiven’, I spoke about the power of appearing to open and transparent when things go wrong. It’s hard enough to give an honest explanation of what happened during a crisis and apologise for whatever part your organisation was responsible for,...

Subjecting yourself to customers’ opinions when you don’t control the outcomes requires a lot of faith in your product – but if you don’t have faith in it, how can you expect anyone else to? Chevrolet, the American car manufacturing company, began a Flawsome marketing campaign back in 2010. It...

At a business networking breakfast I attended a short time ago, the guest speaker asked us: “What is excellent customer service?” There were a few answers, things like “making a promise and keeping it”, “going beyond the call of duty”, “caring about your customers” and so on. Whilst the speaker...

Over 85 percent of all pancreatic cancers are diagnosed late, when someone has less than two percent chance of survival. In a 2013 TED talk, Jack Andraka spoke about how, mostly by researching via Google, designed a test for pancreatic cancer that 168 times faster, over 26,000 times less expensive,...

Vegemite, as we know it, had a Flawsome beginning because it was originally invented by accident. It was a German scientist who discovered that brewer's yeast could be concentrated, bottled and eaten. In 1902 his formula gave rise to the popular UK spread Marmite. Vegemite followed in 1922 when the...

NEWS FLASH: you don't always have to be the leader in your market to be successful. With so many companies competing for the number one spot, you don’t have to be the biggest or the best, and, in fact, being the opposite can be just as effectively marketed.Avis, the car...