At Carrier, we're obsessed with customer information and patterns. There has never a better time to be a customer, and there has never been a better time to be a seller or a manufacturer, because you can know what is happening. There has never a better time as long as you're willing to listen. When you run an ad during the Super Bowl, the gap between when you make that brand promise and when you deliver it is actually quite great. With the Internet, the gap between when you make the promise and when you deliver is instantaneous.
Some people are much better at building their brands than at building their business.
There aren't a lot of companies that had great business models but screwed up because they spent too much money on marketing. What we're talking about here is people who made more of a splash on the hype side without backing it up with a solid business. And that's not going to work in any economy. It sounds like we shouldn't just go hog-wild in the opposite direction. It's all about sticking with the business you know and are good at.