Mar 22, 2010 | Branding, Marketing, Personal Rant
Australia rode on the sheeps back in the 50’s, but in the 70’s & 80’s the sheep turned nasty, and we mostly got off, having lost our pricing power through the competitive growth of synthetics, and strategic stupidity.
When we dismounted, looking for an easier way, superfine wool was 19 microns, now, the leading edge of the few that left are approaching 11 microns, and there is now a substantial volume of wool in the 15-17 microns range, an astonishing achievement.
When Australia unwittingly “outsourced” the many processing stages in the wool value chain, largely to China and India, it was driven by the commodity pricing mentality, that still widely exists. Now, as we chase our tails to the bottom of the price curve, we are paying the price for that short sightedness, as we have no capability left in any stage of the value chain past —-growing the stuff, to leverage the leading position of the best growers, and to supply markets with a sustainable fibre with deep capabilities to meet and shape consumers needs .
Australian Wool Innovation, the current iteration of successive industry bodies charged with the responsibility to “market” the clip is in disarray again, as they try and treat symptoms they do not understand with medicine that did not work 40 years ago.
There is no point being on the leading research edge, unless you can commercialise the output and generate a return from it by reshaping demand, rather than just taking a small premium because you are marginally better at doing what everyone else does. AWI and its predecessors have done a good research job over the years, bit a very poor marketing job.
Mar 21, 2010 | Marketing, Small business
Yarning to an old mate last week, the usual wide ranging stuff you examine with someone you know well, he said “you know, what you do is forensic marketing, exhuming the deeply held assumptions that distort the outcomes, simplifying the jargon, identifying the make-work activity, seeing with a fresh eye the alignment of priorities”
It struck me as a very useful description, so I constructed a simple list of the starting points:
- Who are your customers?
- Why are they your customers?
- What do they buy?
- How much could they buy?
- What do various customers have in common?
- Why do they buy from you, and not your competitor?
- How much & what do they buy from your competitor?
- How do you define their Wallet?
- Is it the same as they would define it?
- What keeps your customers, your competitors, and you awake at night?
- Which customers have you lost, and why?
- What would you have to do to get them back, and is it worth the cost?
- If you were seeking to enter your market now, how would you do it?
- What are the barriers to better performance of your products?
- What are the markets where your capabilities rather than just your products have relevance?
- How do you communicate with customers?
- How do they communicate with you, and what is the quality of that communication?
- How engaged are you with your key (not necessarily biggest) customers?
- Where are the markets that have evolved that use different versions of your key pieces of capability?
- What can you learn from them?
- How do the demand chains work?
- Where in the chain does the real leverage reside?
- Where are the sources of waste in the chain?
- How do you innovate to eliminate them?
- How can you turn those who inhabit your demand chain into collaborators?
- What are the key competitive capabilities of your competitors?
- How do competitors react to the tactics you employ?
- How effective are their reactions?
- How has their response fed into your planning?
Once I started the list, I found it just went on, and on, and on, pages of it.
What changes is the way elements interact, apply differently to different situations, and the means by which experience, deep sector knowledge, and the wisdom that comes from hard lessons steers you towards a smaller range of drivers that warrant deeper analysis in any given situation.
A review of marketing, that can be best described as “forensic” can deliver real benefits from the insights that evolve.
Mar 21, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing
Guvera, an Australian start-up, has evolved a business model that is a bold but necessary experiment for the music industry.
Music downloads from the site will be free, paid for by advertisers who get the opportunity to connect with consumers of particular songs, or music genres. This has some very attractive possibilities for marketers of a wide range of products.
Seems a way better solution to the piracy travails of the music industry than their reaction to date which has been modeled on King Canute’s control of the tides.
Mar 18, 2010 | Marketing
Sometimes academic research evolves to support what common sense has told us for years.
A standard phrase in the marketing lexicon is “look at it from the customers perspective” an obvious and logical strategy, not often used for a range of reasons, largely associated with the manner in which firms organise and conduct their operational, strategy development and governance processes, but largely driven by common sense and experience.
Now there is research, and books coming that supports the notion of the “outside in” company. At last, common sense appears to be making a formal appearance.
Mar 17, 2010 | Communication, Leadership
It is often said, in one way or another, that the key to success is a willingness to fail, because only by taking risks, not accepting the common wisdom or status quo can you be sufficiently different to be have the chance tosucceed.
J.K.Rowling is possibly the most successful author of the last 50 years, not only on her own behalf, but her creation Harry Potter, spawned a whole new genre of stories, and yet, she was for a long time a “failure”
Now she is sharing her experience with Harvard graduates, usually associated with extravagant success in a commencement speech, not to be missed.
