The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things

The Intuitive Customer - Helping You Improve Your Customer Experience To Gain Growth

How do you grow your revenues without upsetting your existing customers?

In this episode, Colin Shaw and Professor Ryan Hamilton dive into the new book he has written with Anne Wilson, Senior Lecturer at Wharton.

Published by Harvard Business Review Press, the book is called:

The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things

Available here: https://bit.ly/3ZCN2wD

Professor Ryan Hamilton reveal how brand growth often gets derailed not by bad strategy, but by insufficient attention to how your customer segments relate to each other. You may think your audiences are living on separate islands, but spoiler alert: they’re not. They're watching each other, seeing what the other does, and sometimes they don’t like it and will move elsewhere.

From Crocs to Prius to the Bud Light fiasco (and yes, even neo-Nazis in New Balance sneakers), this episode pulls no punches. It’s a fast-paced, funny, and brutally honest look at why many brands fail to grow—and how you can avoid becoming the following cautionary tale.

💥 Best Quote from the Episode:

"If your growth strategy relies on one customer segment not hearing what you're saying to another, it's already a bad strategy." — Prof. Ryan Hamilton

🧠 What You’ll Learn:

• Why growth isn’t just about what you offer—it’s about who sees you offering it

• The hidden relationships between customer segments and how they impact brand value

• Why Bud Light’s attempt to broaden its appeal led to a marketing meltdown

• How Crocs turned from a fashion joke to a fashion statement

• What to do when the wrong customer segments start adopting your brand

• How to spot leader–follower segment dynamics and use them to scale

• Practical questions to ask before you launch a growth strategy

📘 About the Book: The Growth Dilemma

Ryan’s new book with Annie Wilson is out now! Published by Harvard Business Review Press, The Growth Dilemma explores how inter-segment conflict affects brand growth and what to do about it. It’s innovative, practical, and unlike anything else out there.

Buy it now: https://bit.ly/3ZCN2wD

📣 Get Involved

If you're leading a brand, managing customer segments, or thinking about how to grow, this episode is for you.

Reach out to Ryan on LinkedIn if you're interested in:

• Workshops

• Keynotes

• Or just picking his brain over a coffee (virtual or otherwise)

📨 Connect with Ryan: https://bit.ly/3SvsqTh

About the Hosts:

Colin Shaw is a LinkedIn 'Top Voice' with a massive 284,000 followers and 86,000 subscribers to his 'Why Customers Buy' newsletter. Shaw is named one of the world's 'Top 150 Business Influencers' by LinkedIn. His company, Beyond Philosophy LLC, has been selected four times by the Financial Times as a top management consultancy. Shaw is co-host of the top 1.5% podcast 'The Intuitive Customer'—with over 600,000 downloads—and author of eight best-sellers on customer experience. Shaw is a sought-after keynote speaker. Follow Colin on LinkedIn.

Ryan Hamilton is a Professor of Marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School and co-author of the book 'The Intuitive Customer'. An award-winning teacher and researcher in consumer psychology, he has been named one of Poets & Quants' "World’s Best 40 B-School Profs Under 40." His research focuses on how brands, prices, and choice architecture influence shopper decision-making, and his findings have been published in top academic journals and featured in major media outlets, including The New York Times and CNN. His work highlights how psychology can help firms better understand and serve their customers. Ryan has a new book called “The Growth Dilemma: Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things.” Harvard Business Press 2025.

Follow Ryan on LinkedIn.

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