by Gary Mintchell | Apr 7, 2026 | Marketing
Om Malik wrote about a new marketing phenomenon—velocity.
This is how the new announcement economy works. You declare a massive number. The headlines write themselves. The stock moves. Mission accomplished. Whether the deal actually closes becomes almost irrelevant. The momentum already happened. Remember Stargate?
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by Gary Mintchell | Mar 13, 2026 | Business, Marketing
The vendor engineer explained a new product. My job was to take the product to UL for testing and approval. This was about 1984. It was a heater with electrical/electronic controls. We went over the schematic. “This circuit is here because the customer likes… This circuit controls something the customer doesn’t like.” I was so impressed about designing for best customer experience.
This memory returned when I saw this report from Interact Analysis. I like this market analyst reports better than most after having spent some time discussing methodology with a founder.
The report reveals that most companies haven’t a clue about what most of their customers want and need. I could say I’m shocked…but I’m not.
The study specifics:
Participant Demographics
- Company type: Hardware OEM, System Integrator, Consulting/Advisory Firm, Distributor/Channel Partner, +Others
- Countries: Participants took part from all over Europe, the USA, Middle East and Asia
- Participant roles: Executive/Leadership, Strategy/BI/CX, Commercial/Marketing, Product Management, Sales, Engineering/Technical, +Other
- Organization annual revenue: ranged from <$25M to over $1B
Methodology
This report is based on an online survey conducted in December 2025 and January 2026, capturing feedback from more than 200 individuals worldwide. All responses were validated to ensure data accuracy. Insights from 10 in-depth interviews with leading organizations further enrich the findings by adding qualitative context where relevant.
While nearly all respondents report some level of customer feedback activity, only 30% say they have a fully developed, structured program in place. Of these, almost two-thirds are companies with revenues above $1B, highlighting the resource advantage that larger organizations hold.
Smaller firms, meanwhile, often rely heavily on sales teams or informal, ad-hoc methods. This limits their ability to track trends consistently or gather representative insights.
Existing customers will tell you one story, but it is likely incomplete. A neutral, domain-expert approach enables richer insights, better representation, and a more accurate understanding of customer and market realities.
I worked with a company some years ago to talk with customers about implementing certain technologies. I heard stories, but I also wondered what they were holding back.
More than half of companies collect feedback sporadically, though most realise this is insufficient. Outsourcing elements of the feedback program reduces internal pressure while enabling organizations to maintain a consistent read on market sentiment.
The problem of who collects the data and where it goes.
While the C-Suite is the primary user of customer and market feedback – reviewing insights and applying them to strategic decisions – the sales team is most often responsible for collecting this data and managing the associated budgets.
However, sales teams may not have access to the right target groups for detailed, balanced feedback. Customers may also be less inclined to provide candid input when the request comes directly from their account owners, creating gaps in representativeness and depth.
I’ve also been at the bottom of the funnel either sending customer information or receiving “suggestions” from management about customers I knew well. The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 13, 2026 | Design, Marketing
I downloaded Apple’s latest operating systems OS26, iOS26, iPadOS26 with the famous redesigns.
After hearing so much about their development and betas, turns out that they are, well, OK. Not good. Not better. Not that bad. Just different. I think different just to be different.
The first third of my career involved roles in product development. These were mostly consumer products. I learned about looking for things to change in products in order to provide a better customer experience.
Oh, and also how to describe those changes to marketing—hoping they would stick to the facts and not overhype the changes.
I suspect that was Apple’s downfall with the changes. They tried so hard to explain all the great changes with explanations about how they worked. Don’t believe it. Mostly it was change because someone in management thought it was time for a change. The animations are cutesy without any real value or meaning. The new icons fail to add visual understanding. After I learn them, they will be lost in familiarity and—just OK.
Reminds me of a magazine publishing company where I worked. They changed the font and color of the company name and added a funky logo. Since these were not self-explanatory (which they should have been), they sent a three-page memo explaining all the changes. You know, what the color symbolized, what the logo represented (since it was hardly intuitive).
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by Gary Mintchell | Nov 17, 2025 | Leadership, Manufacturing IT, Marketing, Software
Aras, a PLM developer, appointed a new CEO a couple months ago (see Aras Appoints Leon Lauritsen as Chief Executive Officer). Our schedules finally coalesced for a conversation.
I’ve been invited to two Aras community events over the past two years. Prior to that, my PLM market knowledge was dominated by three companies. To be honest, I’d never even heard about the company. With one visit and a few interviews, I knew there was something different and better here. (See this report from this year’s event Agentic AI, SaaS, Community—The Aras Community Gathering.)
Aras holds a smaller market position (based on conversations, not market research—something I shun), but it offers something that larger companies don’t. Enterprise and manufacturing software developers usually require users to change their operations systems to fit within the constraints of the software system. Aras provides a more flexible system—something that both Aras product people and customers have told me.
Lauritsen worked for a partner called Minerva for many years prior to its acquisition by Aras. He has held a couple positions within Aras mostly in sales leadership. His background also includes programming and product management—providing him with a background to lead the company in its next iteration.
Aras was a founder-led company until growth required someone to provide professional organization and systems. That leader was Roque Martin. After four years, the board felt it was time for the next step. Lauritsen told me this next step is to incorporate AI into the offerings. In fact, he looks to have the company “supercharge with AI.” He obviously didn’t get into the AI weeds, but I gathered the impression that his product people are working with a variety of approaches for the best fit for each application.
He starts with the customer as he defines his vision of the company. PLM defines the best ways of working for the customer. He has the company working in its labs to find innovative ways to implement AI for both within the organization’s development team and for best practices for customers.
Interesting given my recent work with organizations seeking data interoperability, Aras is seeking ways to coexist with current enterprise solutions.
Many times conversations with company spokespeople center on the product. I asked Lauritsen to define business values provided to customers. He told me about two customers at about the same stage of market development. One used the Aras PLM solution to improve systems to increase quality. The other had a different problem—product development time to launch. Aras provided solutions to fit the business need of the client.
While researching for the interview, I saw that Lauritsen had been on the Danish national Judo team and remains on the national Judo board. Judo requires as much mind training as physical training. So, I had to ask how Judo helps his thought process as a leader and marketer. He laughed, saying the other Aras folks on the call had probably heard enough about Judo. He gave an example from strategic marketing. The principle of Judo is to use the opponent’s force against them. When you face a larger opponent, you know you cannot directly engage, but you must look for the weak point where you can leverage their size agains them.
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by Gary Mintchell | Nov 4, 2025 | Marketing
I’ve noticed for many months, or even a couple years, publicist invitations to interview someone. I’ve accepted interview invitations for many years from publicists that resulted in the subject asking, “What do you want to discuss?” I go, hmmm, I thought you initiated the interview, because you had something to say or promote.
Listening to Dan Heath’s WorkLife podcast today, he discussed AI publicists. So, I’m not the only one! We receive an invitation to interview someone. The email begins with “we’ve noticed on a recent podcast (or blog post) that you’re interested in (x).” They then apply some torturous logic to go from that thought to someone who (according to the description) deserves a Nobel for being a genius. Usually there is no correlation to what I do. They obviously used some form of AI to scan for blog posts or podcasts and scrape a thought, then extrapolate.
I used to send a polite reply. But more of these came. Now I delete unopened.
I understand how hard it must be to make a living in PR these days. I’m guessing they get paid for the number of interviews or some such metric.
The old way is still the best way. Cultivate the respected writers who best fit the profile of the company/person/product. But try selling that to a small business owner or marketing director who is looking at the media stars with millions of hits. Give it up.
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by Gary Mintchell | Jun 24, 2025 | Marketing
I was on a Board of Education in the 1980s. Another member and I pushed for restriction of smoking on school grounds. Another member was a purveyor of tobacco products at the wholesale level.
That member brought a stack of documentation at least a foot high purporting to show the positive health benefits of smoking.
They thought they had the right of free speech to promote ideas contrary to nearly unanimous research about the hazards of smoking—both to the smoker and to others around them.
My wife and I were considering European vacations. People in many cities of western Europe are rebelling against tourists. It seems that people are buying many apartments at a premium price in order to rent them to tourists through AirBnB or equivalent companies. The unintended consequences include housing shortages for natives and increasing prices for property rendering them too expensive for locals.
AirBnB issued a press release saying the real cause was hotels, because that’s where 80% of tourists stay. (Hmmm?) Do hotels contribute to the situation by buying properties? Probably some. But let us not be duplicitous.
Some oil companies just sued under the First Amendment right to freedom of speech to be able to contradict overwhelming evidence garnered from scientific research conducted globally that show direct links to burning fossil fuels, air pollution, and climate change.
The men who wrote the original documents of the US government including the First Amendment discussed the necessary corollary to free speech—responsibility.
An entire industry exists to massage words such that a client can appear to be innocent even when not.
Many companies and people, on the other hand, have discovered the fruit of the moral value of owning mistakes and improving.
Let’s hope that you and I can avoid the temptation of lying in favor of honesty—even if it hurts. And calling out those who fail. Be aware of what you read.
