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Michael Solomon

Michael’s presentations reveal cutting-edge trends in advertising & marketing, branding, consumer behavior and social media. He creates a visual excursion into the minds of consumers and what influences them to buy.

Michael is a world-renowned expert in the field of consumer behavior. He has helped global brands such as Microsoft, BMW, Campbell’s Soup and USAA build and maintain loyal consumers. His understanding of today’s consumer enables clients to maintain brand relevance despite the fast-changing rules their consumers write and the competitive pressure to maintain consumer loyalty.

Michael Solomon

Speaker Language(s):
English
Travels From:
Philadelphia, PA
Price Range:
$10,000 – $15,000 +
Works In:
USA & Canada

Fields of

  • Consumer Behavior
  • Influence and Persuasion
  • The Future of Shopping
  • Brand Identity
  • Sales Psychology

Tear Down These Walls! Abandon Obsolete Categories to Disrupt the Market and Engage Your Customers

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The majority of businesses use traditional marketing strategies such as demographic segmentation that no longer successfully engage today’s “chameleon consumer.”  On Monday, you may be a Hugo Boss suit-wearing salaryman who listens to Adele, reads The Wall Street Journal, quaffs a greasy burger for lunch, and tunes in to Fox News. Come Saturday, out come the tats from underneath the starched collar, you ditch the suit for a Kid Dangerous tee and Vans kicks, you down a tuna poké with a craft beer, and listen to Imagine Dragons while you check out the latest issue of High Times.  Just what lifestyle category do you belong to? Good luck to the marketer who tries to describe you. Today’s postmodern consumer defies categorization – sometimes deliberately. S/he yearns to be liberated from cubicles, labels, “market segments,” and especially those confining walls that restrict him or her from expressing the unique self that’s constructed out of all the lifestyle “raw materials” that marketers of many stripes have to offer.  In this insightful presentation, you will learn:           

  • How to reach today’s consumers who plug into a “hive mind” that tells them what to buy
  • Why the debate about “offline versus online” marketing strategies is useless
  • How to market with NOT to your customers
  • Why customers rely on brands to tell them who they are
  • How to develop new killer products and services by demolishing your industry’s walls

Perfect for: Companies of any size who struggle with winning clients and growing their business – Marketing Executives (Marketing VP’s, CMO’s), business owners, startups who are entering the market with a product/service or early stage businesses; even VC firms investing in companies serving this target market

Marketers, AI is Here: Are You Ready for the Brave New World of Persuasive Robotics?

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Companies are charging to the AI technology finish line!  Many are starting to use  chatbots, avatar salespeople and other interactive tech to interact with their customers. But few ask the serious questions that go along with the AI frenzy:  How does this impact our consumers’ behavior? What will be the effect on sales success?  Can we still have loyal customers when they don’t interact with our “flesh and blood” employees? Michael takes a journey into the (near) to explore these and other pressing issues.  He reveals how the brave new world of AI will impact what we know about sales interactions, communications strategies, product design and marketing channels. In this insightful presentation, you will learn:

  • How the physical appearance of a robot/avatar affects the likelihood customers will trust and follow its buying recommendations
  • How chatbots and software that detect a consumer’s emotional state will impact sales interactions
  • AI’s influence on our ideals of beauty & fashion as advertisers use machine learning to generate artificial images for their messages
  • The impact of dating apps and other smart devices on interpersonal relationships
  • How facial recognition and wearable computer technologies meld with AI to create “markets of one”

Perfect for: Marketing, technology and sales executives who are involved in the ongoing development, support and running of sales or customer service departments

Return on INVOLVEMENT is the New ROI: Create Lifetime Customer Value Through Fanatical Brand Engagement

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The new ROI (Return on Involvement) is about acquiring devoted and engaged consumers who remain loyal to your brand over many years. Lifetime customer value is an elusive goal, but it pays massive dividends to those companies that earn it. With a focus on consumer self-identity, Michael shares the brand engagement formula to create passionate, loyal customers. His insights will have you thinking in terms of consumer collaboration, a key ingredient to match consumer identity with the brands they want. In this insightful presentation, you will learn:

  • How to create passionate and loyal customers who use your brand and to tell others (and themselves) who they are
  • How to navigate through market forces and competitive challenges to maintain brand engagement
  • The difference between low- and high-involvement marketing strategies
  • Why your customers can be your best product designers
  • How the forces of fashion influence any product or service (not just clothing)

Perfect for: People who focus on marketing strategies, product managers and those who do marketing analysis on their customers

The Young & The Restless: Capture The Hearts, Minds & Wallets of The Consumers Who Rewrite Marketing's Rules

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Millennials and Gen Z shoppers change their consumer choices faster than Lady Gaga changes her outfits. How can a business maintain a "connection" and achieve brand loyalty from consumers who aren't predictable or consistent? How does a business capitalize on over $600 billion dollars these young consumers spend each year?

In this engaging and contemporary talk, Michael shares the emerging technology solutions that sync with young consumers' lifestyles and why brands do/don't matter to them. "World of Warcraft" and other online video games, virtual reality, "haul videos" and other consumer-generated content are shaping consumer thinking and these insights will transform the shopping experience and how you think about customer insights. In this insightful presentation, you will learn:

  • The mindset of Millennial and Gen Z consumers
  • What is most important in a brand to them vs. least important in their buying decisions
  • The impact of gaming & VR on their how they shop
  • Why you should adapt your customer insights approach to accurately capture meaningful information
  • The challenges to adapt a new shopping experience to win these consumers

Perfect For: Everyone in a marketing-related position as well as sales and customer service

TESTIMONIALS

"I highly recommend Mike Solomon if you want your audience to be truly engaged as they learn about fresh, trend-setting consumer insights.”
Libby S. JohnsonMarket Engagement Manager, Microsoft Advertising
"Michael Solomon is a great resource on today’s consumer and customer expectations. His presentation on building a brand that engages customers in the wild new world of marketing provided a wealth of needed knowledge to our direct selling executives."
Melissa BruntonSenior Vice President, Education and Meeting Services, Direct Selling Association
"Prof. Solomon…was able to make us think of new ways to use consumer behavior to frame our own activities…. He was able to inject humor to maintain attention yet did not deviate from the basic task at hand that was to educate and provoke thought."
David FriedmanV.P. Marketing, U.S. Cellular
"The man is a scholar who is current and street-wise."
Joe BarstysManager, Customer Satisfaction, Subaru of America
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Biography

Michael “wrote the book” on understanding consumers. Literally. Hundreds of thousands of business students have learned about Marketing from his books including Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being — the most widely used book on the subject in the world. Michael’s columns for Forbes.com and other business publications reveal the secrets to decoding today’s consumer.

Much in demand as a keynote speaker, Michael often is asked to provide briefings to global executive teams who want significant increases in their bottom line and who understand that’s accomplished by a deeper connection with their customers.

Michael’s mantra: We don’t buy products because of what they do. We buy them because of what they mean. He advises global clients in leading industries on marketing strategies to make them more consumer-centric.

As a Professor of Marketing (in the Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia) and an industry consultant, Michael combines cutting-edge academic theory with actionable real-world strategies. An executive at Subaru said it best: “The man is a scholar who is current and street-wise.”

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