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The starting point for this book came a couple of years ago, when after a 30-year absence, I reengaged with my love of fine art and sculpture. As a young man I had studied fine arts and intended to pursue a career as a sculptor. Since it was the late 1970s, I went off to the local library (definitely pre-Internet) to look for a school in Italy to explore my creative aspirations. I discovered the Istituto Europeo di Disegno in Rome, Italy. So off I flew to Rome to apply, gain acceptance, and become a fine artist.

It wasn't quite what I expected. On the expected side, my studies exposed me to classical approaches to design and form, and enabled me, as a sculptor, to look at an object that has no form and see the form within it. I think that foresight has given me the ability to get to solutions more quickly. The unexpected was the practical side of creating fine art. You had to consider how the materials and installation affected the final viewer experience, so I studied industrial and architectural design, plus materials handling in order to work with the physical realities of the installation space. In hindsight, this combination of creative thinking and fact-based analysis established the basic framework for my future marketing mind-set.

Inspiration Where You'd Least Expect It

While in Italy, I had a second and probably more profound experience that influenced my thinking. It took place on one of my school holiday breaks. My limited funds didn't allow me to fly back home to Canada, so I went to visit my parents' Italian birthplace in Rende, Calabria – a small village nestled in the hills of Cosenza, a southern Italian province. As I walked the streets of the small town, I could feel the rhythm of the community where my parents grew up and the life they left behind. Wandering through the central square, the Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi, I overheard a conversation between a shoemaker and one of his loyal customers. This simple but personal conversation shaped my perspective on how to build long-lasting customer relationships, and I have illustrated it in the following story:

My grandfather lived in a small town of about 500 people in southern Italy. In the town was a shoemaker. He was a great shoemaker and learned the trade from his father and his father's father. He knew practically everyone in the town: how many kids they had, when he had made their last pair of shoes, and what kind of shoes they needed and liked. He could see them, talk to them, and check how fast their shoes were wearing out. He literally knew his market on a first-name basis. He could anticipate their needs and next purchase. If something went wrong, he could make it right, fast. He was always there with exactly what they wanted – when they wanted it.

He provided an exceptional level of what we now call customer centricity and experience, and that's how he ensured his customers' loyalty.

When I returned to North America and the realities of making a buck set in, I soon discovered opportunities for aspiring sculptors were very limited. It was time for Plan B, and I decided to use my creative skills to freelance at a few design and advertising firms. After I got some initial experience in the industry, I realized I had a unique advantage: I knew how to both frame a problem and create its solution. By employing my creative and analytic skills learned in Rome, I was able to turn around projects and solutions faster than my fellow creatives. In short order, this led to starting my own shop, which has since grown into a multidisciplined agency offering traditional and digital services to a broad range of global brands.

Only when I started to sculpt again did I realize that my business beliefs and practices were still heavily influenced by those early years in Rome. In particular, the study and discipline of classical art and the remarkable conversation between the shoemaker and his customer both played pivotal roles in the development of my business mind-set. These two experiences gave me a creative, analytic, and customer-centric lens on which to base my business approach/philosophy.

The Age of the Customer

In hindsight, I believe my formative time in Rome not only contributed to my past success but also will be even more important to me tomorrow. We all know the age of the customer is here to stay, and while its arrival has had a rather disruptive impact on the world economy, I believe it will continue to drive exponential change in the foreseeable future. Innovation and information are at the heart of this shift, and there is a lot of both. Enabled by a constant stream of new digital and social technologies, customers sit in the middle of an information tsunami. Their instant and convenient access to information has empowered their decision-making abilities, and their immediate access to community helps them confirm their choices and influence others. Pity the business that still uses only traditional marketing communications methods; it must be struggling to keep up with this pace, and its long-term prospects are dim.

Conversely, the current marketing ecosystem offers us many exciting opportunities. I'd like to share with you some of what I've learned in navigating these waters and how you can use this fundamental change in customer relationships to enhance your brand's marketing efforts and thrive in this new marketing environment.

This book is slightly different from the current crop of business books describing how to connect with customers in our transparent digital world. Don't get me wrong; there are many great books out there from renowned authors backed by first-rate research. But I'm more of a practitioner than a researcher, so you will find my observations and insights come from the realities of the street. With over three decades of hands-on, eyes-wide-open experience to tap into, I've accumulated lots of “lessons learned” and, with them, some ideas on how businesses, even individuals, can thrive in this new marketplace.

I certainly don't have all the answers. Sorry, I have yet to find the “silver bullet”; in fact, I still have lots of questions myself. That is what's so remarkable about this environment. If you're willing to get out there and take some risks, you'll find that today's digitally powered analytics systems will very quickly tell you how you're doing and will provide immediate and continual feedback, and with those answers will come even more questions.

My shoemaker tale started me thinking about how my insights and experience could help move brands forward in this new age. To face an enhanced level of customer centricity, we need a new marketing approach, a game plan, that encourages and rewards customer involvement. We may need to reconfigure our organizations, and we definitely need a new mind-set – one that is built on attracting, engaging, and retaining customers at every touchpoint, on and offline. This will be the new definition of success.

So that's what this book is about. Who are these new customers, why are they behaving so differently from the past, and how can we build long-lasting relationships that work for them and our business going forward?

Welcome to Customer-Centric Marketing. Please feel free to contact me at aldo_cundari@cundari.com or through any other social channel. I'd relish hearing your thoughts once you're done reading.

Note: Customer Versus Consumer

While often interchangeable, there is a small difference between the terms customer and consumer. Using customer implies you (or a competitor) already have established a relationship – she's no longer just a prospect for your product or service. Consumer, as used in the advertising and marketing world, implies someone who could use your (or a competitor's) product or service. Given these minor distinctions, let's use customer– I think it's more desirable.