A few years back I had the opportunity to soak up the wisdom of Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, as he reflected on the history of his company. Intuit is the maker of Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax accounting software applications.

Intuit recently announced its quarterly results—an incredible 13 percent increase in revenue and a 16 percent rise in operating income. This is a company that has enjoyed steady success for a long period of time, and Cook’s remarks reveal insights into why.

Cook revealed the backstory behind the launch of QuickBooks, Intuit’s small business software. Prior to QuickBooks, the company was focused exclusively on Quicken, its groundbreaking consumer product. Subscribing to a belief in a “relentless focus on the customer,” Cook said Intuit was slow and perhaps a bit reluctant to expand to another market. In fact, the idea for QuickBooks arouse when Intuit discovered that 50 percent of Quicken users were using it for business, a fact Cook says he basically ignored for two years.

When they did decide to get into the small business market, Cook and his team did it with nerve. “If you go to a new segment,” he said, “you have to be relentless about building from the ground up. You can’t just hack something together.” Shortly thereafter QuickBooks, “the first accounting software to do accounting without accounting,” was born. The target was companies with fewer than 20 employees who weren’t accountants and didn’t want to be accountants.

With a combination of diligence and urgency, Cook did his homework, drawing on his experience as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble. “It’s very common for people to say they do one thing and then actually do it a slightly different way,” he said, citing as an example the fact that people say they sort laundry more often than they actually do. He focused his team on developing a product with the right functionality, while recognizing the danger of feature creep that tends to plague new software (and delay its launch). “The reason we do version one of any product is so we can do a great version three,” Cook said.

Version one was good enough to win a commanding share of the market, despite a price point ($99) that was double that of competing products. The price was, Cook admitted, “built on a hunch,” but because QuickBooks was dramatically different its price was fairly inelastic.

Since that time Intuit has steadily added features and functionality (and margin) to the QuickBooks suite of products, which now start at $199.95. The company confidently promises that the software will pay for itself in 60 days.

Cook has since relinquished his CEO title (he’s now chairman of the company’s executive committee) but his influence is still apparent and there’s no reason to mess with success. “The difference between a groove and a rut,” Scott says, “is whether your stuck.” I’d say Intuit has been in a groove for some time now.

“Can the experience of an emotion persist once the memory for what induced the emotion has been forgotten?”

That’s the question posed—and tentatively answered—by scientists at the University of Iowa as published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  They studied a select group of patients with severe amnesia using emotional film clips to investigate whether or not their emotions would persist beyond the memory of the clips they watched.

Sure enough, the emotions lasted longer than the memories. Both positive (happiness) and negative (sadness) emotions were tested, and both yielded similar results. The authors said, “These findings provide direct evidence that a feeling of emotion can endure beyond the conscious recollection for the events that initially triggered the emotion.”

The implications for marketers are significant. Many brands focus their efforts on the rational side of the equation, trying to convince people why they should buy their products or services. This study suggests that emotional appeal is just as—if not more—important. In other words, the emotional associations tied to your brand are more lasting than any specific claims you make.

There’s a cliche in our business that people buy on emotion and justify with fact. Like many cliches, perhaps it attained that status because it’s true. The evidence seems to suggest that’s the case.

April 26, 2010 was a big day for Apple. That was the day it surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable technology company.

Kids who have grown up with the iMac, iPod and iPad may greet the news with a yawn. But those of us who remember the early days are somewhat stunned. Who would have thought ten years ago (let alone twenty or thirty) that Apple, which proudly refused to compromise its way to market share, would ever overtake big, bad Microsoft?

Nobody knows what’s going to happen from here, whether this is a temporary blip or a permanent changing of the guard. But as I look at the future prospects of both companies I can’t help drawing a parallel to similar organizations in another rapidly-changing, highly-competitive sector.

Microsoft is GM. Apple is BMW.

Microsoft, like GM, is big, covers just about everything, and makes products that work well most of the time but have a spotty quality reputation and for the most part don’t excite anyone.  Apple, like BMW, sticks to its core competency, is relentless about design and performance, and as a result is able to command a premium price.

Microsoft, like GM, seems to think building better products is enough, not understanding (or in denial about) the legacy of mediocrity associated with its brand. Apple, like BMW, is completely clear about the power and value of its brand and the vital importance of remaining true to it.

Take two stylish new cars, identical in every respect. Badge one with one of GM’s brands and attach the BMW brand to the other. Which one will people prefer? For which will they pay a premium? Do the same with a new computer or wireless device using the Microsoft and Apple logos, and ask the same questions. The difference is attributable to the brands, the meaning and value of which are driven by the quality and performance of the products to which they’ve been attached over the decades.

I don’t suggest anyone write Microsoft off. The company is run by really smart people, and it’s possible they have the next killer app in the garage right now. But Apple is smart, too, and it understands the whole-brain dimensions of its industry better than anyone.

None of us—and none of them—can predict the future. But I have more confidence that Apple and BMW understand people better than Microsoft and GM. For companies whose focus must always be on the next generation, that’s the holy grail.

I can’t say that I’m a huge LOST fan. In fact, until the finale I hadn’t watched a single episode all the way through. I tend to stay away from programs that string viewers out from week to week, and no show has done that better than LOST this side of Dallas.

That said, I thought it would be interesting to catch the final episode, so I sat down and tried to make sense of it along with everybody else. Most notable to me—no surprise here—were the commercials, which were selling for nearly a million dollars a spot. Of specific note were the Target commercials.

If you saw the show, you know what I’m talking about. Target always does a good job with its advertising, but it took unique advantage of this television event by having fun with historical LOST plotlines, tying them to computer keyboards, barbeque sauce and smoke alarms, among other things. The products themselves didn’t matter, as they were just pegs for the inside jokes.

Those jokes are what was so smart about Target’s strategy. By tying its spots to LOST’s imagery and icons, not only did the commercials command viewers’ attention, they effectively said, “Hey, Target’s a LOST fan too. We get it.” It was as if Target had been sitting down in front of the tube right alongside every LOST viewer for the past six years.

People do business with people they trust, and sharing common experiences builds trust. During the LOST season finale, Target reinforced its friendship with millions of customers who are fanatical fans of the show. Whether it sells more barbeque sauce or smoke alarms the next day isn’t the point. Advertising is about building awareness, preference and bonds of affection, and Target used its multi-million dollar LOST buy to do just that. Bravo.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek ran a short piece this week about how John Deere’s lean inventory has created a predicament for its most loyal customers: Do they forego immediate equipment needs and risk missing part or all of their harvest, or purchase new tractors and combines from AGCO or (gasp!) Caterpillar?

Deere has the lowest inventory as a percentage of sales among fifteen farm equipment makers. That’s not only inconveniencing its customers, it’s frustrating its dealers—one of whom was quoted as saying his sales would be 20 percent higher this year if he simply had enough stock.

Deere’s strategy is a good example of the Loss of Nerve principle at work, as organizations can all-too-easily cut back too much when growth stalls. Of course, the company didn’t make the decision to trim inventory lightly and has navigated its way fairly well through the recession.

But James Field, Deere’s Chief Financial Officer, admitted that the company had been too pessimistic about the recession’s effect on farming. As a result of the sudden, unexpected demand, Deere revised its late-2009 prediction of a 1 percent decline in sales for the coming year to an 8 percent increase. The company’s customers and dealers—not to mention shareholders—are caught in the spread.

No one ever said managing through a recession was easy, as we’ve all discovered over the past two years. But in an industry where loyalty runs deep, it’s got to make the folks at Deere see red each time a customer gives up the green to go yellow.

I recently attended a conference with about 150 other client-side and agency marketers at which we had the pleasure of hearing from Scott Bedbury, who played a key role in the rise of both Nike and Starbucks, and Jeff Hayzlett, who is playing a key role in the resurrection of Kodak.

Despite having completely different styles, Bedbury and Hayzlett were both inspiring as they told tales and shared lessons about their experiences marketing iconic brands. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in feeling just a tad bit envious of what they had accomplished.

But it got me thinking. What, exactly, was the difference between the two guys who stood at the front of the room and the rest of us who sat in the audience?  My sense—and I have a feeling Bedbury and Hayzlett would agree—is that one key reason was that they were willing to be great.

I know that sounds odd—”willing” to be great, as opposed to “wanted” to be great. But I think “willing” captures it better. After all, everyone wants to be great, but few have the will to do what’s necessary to get there. Oh, sure, most professionals work hard and do their best and desire to succeed. But to be great—that takes more.

Becoming great requires not only the knowledge of how to do things, it requires the wisdom of knowing what truly needs to be done. It requires character to challenge unspoken rules and sacred cows, conviction to stick to your guns, and determination to not be dragged down by those who are content to stay in the audience. It requires the confidence of vision and a willingness to risk doing right—morally and ethically, to be sure, but also professionally.

Bedbury and Hayzlett both offered testimonials to the above, from Bedbury’s conviction not to waste money on copy testing to Hayzlett’s refusal to let “legal” shut an idea down. The thing that impacted me most, however, was not what they said, but where they stood: At the front of the room.

They were willing to be great. Am I? Are you?

Wal-Mart is a study in contrasts.

Its low prices are awesome. Its shopping experience, not so much. Its positioning is terrific, but its advertising leaves something to be desired. It serves well its paycheck-to-paycheck customers, but panders too much to the politically correct.

Wal-Mart has a rock-solid heritage in founder Sam Walton, but too often loses sight of what makes it special.  The latest example came in the form of an announcement last week that the company was cutting prices on some 10,000 items. With any other retailer that would be cause for celebration, but with Wal-Mart it’s just disappointing.

Wal-Mart = Low Prices. Period. Not margins. Not promotions. Not rollbacks. If prices are always as low as possible—as Wal-Mart has worked so hard for so long to convince us of—how then can they be cut, especially across such a wide swath of products? In one of its “rollback” TV commercials, “Mike the truck driver” says, “just by driving smarter routes and making sure our trailers are packed fuller, we save millions of dollars on fuel costs.” Does the world’s leanest company expect us to believe that it just figured that one out?

In an April 9 story about the price cuts, the Wall Street Journal’s Miguel Bustillo and Timothy W. Martin cited a J.P. Morgan analyst whose regular Wal-Mart price survey resulted in a bill 2.3% higher than it was in the previous month. That’s a pretty big jump. While it’s any company’s prerogative to raise or lower its prices, Bustillo and Martin wondered  “…whether Wal-Mart is committed to pushing the envelope on pricing as it did in the days of its late founder, Sam Walton, or is merely hyping promotions as it pursues a  more margin-driven approach…”.

Judging from what Wal-Mart CMO Stephen Quinn said of the cuts, it appears to be the latter: “We felt we needed to increase the intensity and excitement with our customer, especially the feeling that Wal-Mart has great deals.”

Yuck. “Great deals,” “hyping promotions” and “a more margin driven approach” are what you’d expect from Kroger or Macy’s, not Wal-Mart.  I don’t know about you, but I expect the “great deals” at Wal-Mart to be baked into its everyday low prices, not used as underpinnings of a grand promotion.

Like many companies trying to cope with slowing sales, Wal-Mart can be its own worst enemy. Instead of fiddling with margins and flirting with upscale customers, Wal-Mart should aggressively tout its all-the-time, every-day, low-low-lowest prices. Always. It’s the one company with the credibility to do so, and promotions like this threaten that very crediblity. Wal-Mart needs its customers to believe that it always—always—gives them the lowest prices it can.

That’s what made Wal-Mart Wal-Mart. It shouldn’t mess with success.

Now that we’re well into 2010, how’s your company doing?

Are your objectives clear? Is your team operating like a well-oiled machine? Are you focusing on your core? Are you taking prudent risks?

If you aren’t sure about—or don’t like—the answers to the above questions, click here to take a confidential, anonymous, three-minute self-diagnosis. By answering twenty questions you’ll get a snapshot of how well your company is resisting the destructive internal dynamics I discuss in When Growth Stalls. And you can encourage other members of your team to take it to so you can compare results.

Spend a few minutes today reflecting on how your company is performing and, if necessary, make a minor course correction. It could make a major difference.

Dell’s small-and-medium-business division grew by ten percent in the fourth quarter. Its operating profit increased 17 percent. That’s good news, isn’t it?

Maybe not.

As our business has picked up in early 2010, I’ve noticed something frustrating: Response time from our vendors isn’t what it should be. Nor is our own responsiveness, I must confess. Finding a way to quickly and effectively meet customers’ needs, in fact, may be the challenge of the year facing most companies.

There are two resources in business, money and time. Over the past two years, most companies have seen their financial margins evaporate, requiring them to trim every ounce of fat they can out of their operations. That means their margins of time are gone as well. Like a shoulderless highway  suddenly getting jammed with moving vehicles, there’s nowhere for oncoming traffic to go. It’s a problem that can only be solved by adding capacity, which isn’t always an easy option—assuming management even has the nerve to do so in a still-uncertain environment.

Last year I confessed that my second greatest fear (after “how are we going to cope with this mess?”) was “what if it all comes back at once?” While the economy isn’t exactly booming, it does appear to be showing signs of life. That’s a welcome sight, but it presents a whole new challenge to companies recovering from stalled growth.

Life is never dull.