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Winning the Elusive Marquee-Brand Customer Advocate

Harvard Business Review

It''s one of the sweetest moments a business can have: landing a marquee-brand customer like Apple or Coca-Cola, Walmart or Boeing. Just because a salesman says he needs a reference from Boeing to close a deal doesn''t mean that he really does, or that some lesser known brand might not furnish a more powerful proof point.

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The 3 Things CEOs Worry About the Most

Harvard Business Review

Randall Stephenson of AT&T explained, “We had 270,000 people we employed around the globe. ” Staton identified the challenge of managing a global brand: “We had the McDonald’s brand, and in each country our market share and the product life cycle were in different stages.

CEO 8