Google + on air, an anti-facebook bomb?

This new avenue to live broadcast, as distinct from posting a video on Youtube, seems to me to be a game-changer.

Social media lives by interaction, engagement, that is what gives it its power,  and to be able to go live to an audience, even if it is just your own family at first, offers the opportunity for the networking capacity of social media to accelerate at a logarithmic rate.

For a while I have wondered at the task facing Google competing against Facebook, which has an established base now of a billion, they have built formidable barriers to exit and entry, but “on air” could just change the equation.

The momentum seemed to be moving slowly towards Google, but this innovation will give it a great big shove, particularly in the light of the facebook IPO, with the shares currently being traded at 10% less than the issue price, and 25% below the peaks reached on the big day. There appears to be a healthy dose of cynicism  that has suddenly emerged as a result of the obscene amount of wealth facebook insiders have skimmed, whilst the gullible have done their dough, and this cynicism can only assist Google+ build some much needed competitive momentum.

Lean ROI calculation

Return on Investment is the basic calculation made to assess any investment, but too often gets complicated by all sorts of assumptions and forecasts.

In these days of rapid prototyping, access to A/B testing tools using the web,  and the logic of many small bets in the innovation process rather than a few large ones, the calculation becomes less important if you follow the simple rule:

“Keep the “I’s” small, and nobody will bother you too much about the “R”

Death of an industry

Last week speaking to a gathering, I told the group that Australia was now a net importer of food with a $2.7 billion deficit in 2010-2011, according to the AFGC State of the Nation report . Utter disbelief was the primary reaction, “how could that be” being a typical response.

The Australian food industry is dying at a rapid rate, the pressures on local suppliers are heavy, and increasing all through the supply chain. Retail oligopoly, high $A, regulatory impositions that make no sense, costs of supporting local government social initiatives, and all the rest of the stuff that clogs up the wheels of competitiveness and productivity.

Heinz moved to NZ last year, SP exports, Australia’s largest tomato grower in liquidation, a second major grower hitting the wall in April, and this week, fresh tomatoes hit $10/kg in supermarkets.  A sign of things to come in many categories.

We are watching the death by a thousand cuts of an industry, small businesses that garner little exposure are hitting the wall all over the place, Golden Circle gone, Goodman Fielder on the skids, growers are going broke across the board, dairy processing almost all owned overseas, about all that is left is meat, because we are amongst the biggest producers, and horticulture, because most fresh produce does not travel well.

Now, if we continue to go the way it seems we are destined to go, housebrand NPD will eventually overtake proprietary NPD as it has now done in the UK, and you need to ask where that NPD will occur. Certainly not here, because not only have we seen off the manufacturing businesses, we have substantially depreciated  the technical capabilities necessary for innovation. Even the CSIRO is a shadow of its former self in the food industry, having removed much of the intellectual infrastructure as its masters re-aligned the priorities to other areas, and progressively trimmed the resources. 

The recent drop in the $A will help, just a pity there are few businesses left to take up the slack.

 

Brand Loyalty?

The holy grail, the prime objective of billions of dollars of advertising, the  wall behind which many campaigns that have failed to generate incremental sales have hidden, Brand Loyalty. 

I cannot help but wonder if the label “Brand Loyalty” is sometimes just a metaphor for making the purchase choice easier. The environment we inhabit is now so absolutely over-run with messages information, and tactics to build “customer engagement”,  that we all must have a serious case of cogitative overload, weather we know it or not, so we need a mechanism to sort the options.

In this context I am reminded of the old “KISS” principal, Keep It Simple Stupid.

Apple is often cited as the greatest marketing machine we have ever seen, an accolade I am comfortable with, but perhaps there is another dimension. Rather than building brand loyalty, perhaps they have just so simplified the purchase decision in an environment that is psychologically threatening by the number of alternatives, and the techno-speak that most use as communication , that they  grab the sales almost by default.

Apple has successfully made buying a piece of tech few buyers understand simple, and attached a cache to that simplicity. This spoof makes the point, but mind the language.

Four immutable laws of sales.

For years with my sales consulting hat on I have pushed the notion that when selling a product or service that requires the B2B buyer to exercise some level of consideration, so it excludes the everyday, commodity purchase, there are only three ways to  get the sale:

    1. Demonstrate how your product can assist them to increase their sales
    2. Demonstrate how your product can assist them to reduce their costs
    3. Demonstrate how your product can increase their productivity.

This has worked well over a long period, in a wide range of situations, but recently the socilaisation of  business driven by the web has added a fourth headline sales driver that to date I have always included in the first:

Assisting a potential or current customer to grab an opportunity.

The world is changing so rapidly that a successful sales operation needs to understand very well the competitive and strategic environment in which their customers compete. In gaining and renewing that understanding, you will see opportunities for your customers that they may not necessarily see themselves. Whilst this is part of helping them increase their sales, the new tools of communication and collaboration that enable the development and leveraging of IP/IC are such that few can stay on top of them all. Therefore being a part of their business development process, by providing valuable insight, and perhaps a  view informed by a different perspective, will deliver a stronger relationship, and contribute value to the process that will translate into sales.