Robert Passikoff Quotations

More companies are waking up to the fact that one of the most important touch points they have is when employees have contact with customers.

She's not ducking what happened. This is a platform to show the reformed Martha to the world.

She used to be the queen in the castle on the hill, looking down on everyone else in the valley, ... Now she's in the valley with everyone else, fighting it out on a level terrain.

Her particular brand of hubris, not withstanding her apology and contrition, well, you had to understand that everybody would be watching. There is great risk in putting her back in front of so many people.

What marketers try to do is take a problem and twist it to their advantage, ... If you can't pronounce the name, all of a sudden it becomes something that's slightly less attainable for the consumer and it becomes more desirable. But it's equally likely that when people don't buy it, it's because they don't know how to pronounce the name.

Martha brought added value to the product. Consumers bought a 100 thread count sheet that was blessed by Martha. If you remove her name, the product still exists. Consumers may buy it but maybe won't pay the premium price for it,

I think that we've gotten to a point where we do think that a really good, really expensive gift may actually take the place of a sonnet written on your own.

I think that people look for things that are convenient. There's a desire to connect.

Will the company survive? That remains to be seen, ... The immediate thing for MSO to do is distance the company from Stewart.

The fact is that you don't want the consumer to get bored with your product or they'll easily substitute it with something else.

The fact is that it is a woman who looks like she could be my wife, and that has meaning for some.

The fact is that lack of awareness is not something Stewart suffers from,

Wal-Mart is certainly looking to hitch its wagon to a brand that can lead it to an upscale consumer base.

umbrella sense of real personal treatment, real customer service and spanning a broad financial arena.

Of course they are going to abandon the name. They have to.

While it's an enormous financial institution, the issue is that they don't really stand for anything. Everyone knows them, but no one knows what they stand for.

Two mistakes haunt me: Not completing the manuscript of my book sooner and not buying Microsoft in 1986 before it split nine times.

So, you've got a whole group of new people who have kind of entered into the holiday, and they're spending money.

A lot of names that were country-based, especially from France, have now become accepted and articulated and pronounced correctly by consumers,

They say it doesn't matter what they say about you as long as they spell your name right. In this case, you don't want them spelling your name right. You don't want them even talking about you.

Engaging consumers these days ? in their minds, in their hearts, in their heads ? takes more than advertising on a special event to a large audience.

This company, as it is configured today, is unsuited to compete in the marketplace with its brand taken away, ... This is no longer the same company that we knew 10 minutes ago or even 22 months ago.

In May 2002, if you asked me anything about Martha Stewart, all of my responses would have been positive.

In May of 2002, when the brand competed with others, they were doing so from the castle on the hill. Now they're in the moat with everyone else.

If Martha goes to jail, this company will be hit but it won't fall apart, ... It could still compete in all the categories because it has a life of its own now and it's not as reliant upon Stewart to sustain financial viability. Sure, it will become a different company, with a different brand strategy, in need of a new leader.

I liken what Wal-Mart's trying to do in terms of fashion to turning around the Queen Mary at full steam, ... It's not impossible to do. But it's not easy either, and it's going to take quite a long time.

Target means style at accessible pricing. Wal-Mart hasn't reached that point.

It's difficult, but in these times, when the customer is willing to look around for fashion, it's certainly not impossible for Wal-Mart's new brand to succeed.

The company has seen how tenuous it can be to be a hundred percent invested in one person,

The damage was done a long time ago. The competitive landscape is so dramatically changed from two years ago.

They migrated her from villain to victim and now they are trying to show you the softer side of Stewart.

It wasn't just that she was found guilty. She was also found to be mean-spirited.

A brand needs to be rated a 107 or better by customers for it to see real profitability, ... If they were expecting the TV show to substantively shore up the weakened brand, we'd have to borrow from Martha and say it wasn't such 'a good thing'.

They're actually doing now what they should have done two years ago, which is to distinguish themselves from what had become a poisoned brand.