Ronald Anderson's Key Ideas from Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly
by Bernadette Jiwa

What customers crave, more than the commodity they think they are paying for is to be understood.

What they want more than a reliable ride to their destination, a comfortable bed for the night, or even a book, is to really be seen. What they want more than responsive organizations is personal relevance.

The value isn’t just in the data that businesses collect. What counts is how they use it to make their lives better.

Every business today, no matter its size or legacy, faces four massive challenges.

• Clutter 
• Competition 
• Commoditization 
• Consumer consciousness.

Awareness and attention were the holy grails of every marketing strategy, so the way you became successful was to pay for more of both. But there’s a subtle change taking place. 

People are choosing to spend their money with companies that take the time to get to know them and whose actions resonate with their values—companies that thrive by doing the right thing and by making things customers love, instead of by trying to get customers to love their things.

Digital is an incredible medium, an enabler of businesses that previously wouldn’t have had a chance of succeeding without a factory and huge investment. But it’s not mastering the medium—understanding how the technology works—that matters; it’s how and why you use it.

You don’t have to become the best in the world at Twitter to be the best business in the world at what you do. The opportunity here is far greater than mastering the tools so that we have replacements for the old ways of broadcasting. Digital gives us opportunities to see our customers and to be more responsive to their wants.

 It’s easier than ever to spam whomever you want to reach because most people are just an email address and a click away. If your goal is to get and leverage someone’s attention for a split second, then, of course, you can.

The kind of attention everyone seeks though isn’t this meaningless interaction. It’s based on mutual respect and trust. And the best way to get attention, then, is to give it unconditionally first. To start whispering ‘I see you’ instead of screeching ‘LOOK AT ME’.

They don't disrupt industries, but they disrupt people’s lives for the better. Any innovation that is adopted or idea that spreads succeeds because enough people want the change that happens as a result. 

Success doesn’t come from simply making things that work —it is born from changing the story of the user or customer for the better.

Sustainable businesses have long been built on understanding the importance of how people decide, as much as on knowing what they buy. And great innovations are born from believing that the way people use a product is just as important as how it works.

It has never been more crucial for the innovator and marketer to pay attention to how the user or customer wants to experience a product or service.

Old rules of brand awareness:

1. Make something for everyone. 
2. Tell our story. 
3. Attract customers. 
4. Build brand awareness. 

The brands that succeed today have flipped things around. New rules of brand awareness: 

1. Understand the customers' stories.
2. Make something they want. 
3. Give them a story to tell. 
4. Create brand affinity.

• Before self-service shopping, online stores, social networks, and recommendation platforms, the consumer’s role was limited to buying what was on offer. 
• Today, customers are more than just passive consumers of products and services. They are partners, co-creators, patrons, advocates, evangelists, collaborators, and community members. 

People no longer just want to buy things from us without thinking—they want to become invested in the businesses and brands that they choose to support.

• They start with a purpose and a small problem, rather than a big idea. 
• They're based on what people do, not what they say they do. 
• They leverage data to get closer to users, customers, or fans.
• They can be more responsive to customers’ behaviors and needs. 
• They tap into consumers’ latent desires. 
• They connect the disconnected. 
• They create value where none existed. 
• They disrupt people’s lives, not industries—aligning with the user’s worldview and often changing what people believe is possible for them, thus changing their behavior. 
• They begin by facilitating or creating change for a small group of people at the edges. 
• They seem obvious only after the fact.

It ensures that the needs and wants of your customer remain front and center as you develop products and services and make plans to bring those ideas to life. 

• Step 1: Story: Think about who the customer is beyond the basic demographic information. Describe a day in their life.
• Step 2. Insight: What do they want to do, but can’t? What can you do to help them? 
• Step 3: Product: What features and benefits will help solve your customers’ problem? How will using your product make the customer feel?
• Step 4: Experience: What has changed for the customer once they use your product? How do you want the customer to experience your product?