October 5, 2016. Five years on.

October 5, 2016. Five years on.

Oct 8, 2016 | Leadership

Last Wednesday, October 5 was the 5th anniversary of the death of Steve Jobs, on October 5, 2011, aged 59 .

How time flies.

The words of the great Apple ad that started the ball rolling again when he returned from exile in 1997 to the company he created with Steve Wozniak on April fools day 1976 are  reproduced above by Hugh McLeod, the sage of the Gaping Void.

Having read Walter Isaacsons terrific biography of Jobs, I am glad I did not know him, but the world is a different place, and most would contend a better place,  as a result of him being here.

Not many of us can say that.

It is pure fantasy, but I wonder what else would have changed that now remains the same had he lived to the ripe old age of 65, which would only be a couple of more months from now, February 2017.

He has been missed, even by me, and I do not use Apple products at all.

Is ‘Proprietary Housebrand’ an oxymoron?

Is ‘Proprietary Housebrand’ an oxymoron?

Oct 4, 2016 | Branding, Marketing, retail

Is this range of McWilliams wines a housebrand or not?

it is exclusive to Dan Murpy’s, so ‘yes’, but it is a proprietary brand, so ‘no’. At the very least, the trading terms conversations would have been interesting.

It is also claimed to be an ‘Innovation’ which redefines my understanding of what that word means. Housebrands do not innovate, they copy, some may say act as a parasite on the innovation activities of proprietary brands.  Product innovation is one of the two key competitive options (the other being the opportunity to now connect with their consumers digitally) available to FMCG suppliers by which they can differentiate their products from their housebrand competition. Supermarket chains have done well squeezing costs out of their supply chains with process innovation, usually to the cost of their suppliers, incapable to this point to be effective with product innovation.

Exclusivity has always been a demand of retailers, difficult in Australia with just the two of them having such overwhelming dominance, but in unbranded categories like produce, they have successfully developed strongly preferential supply arrangements. But wine? one of the most brand sensitive categories around?

From  Woolies owned Dan Murphy’s I got the above offer the other day for an exclusive to Dans branded McWilliams Bagtown range, from the Griffith area. All the hyperbolic language and story telling that goes with the wine category, but an exclusive range to Dans. it seems Woolies have started something I have not seen before in Australia that has the potential for wider use. For years in Hong Kong, you dealt with one or the other of the two major FMCG retailers, but not both. Problem here with that strategy is that there are only 24 million of us, and widely scattered so the twisted economics and trading term requirements surrounding proprietary branded retail chain distribution have simply not allowed a similar development here. Till now?

The McWilliams sales manager will be having an interesting conversation with the Liquorland buyer the next time he visits, although it is reasonable to expect he will get a phone call, and probably lose either some distribution or a promotional slot, or something that reflects that McWilliams have crossed a line, and Liquorland will not be left out.

As an aside, the Dan Murphy’s 90 point label badge borders on the dodgy. You can expect a 90 point wine (Silver medal) judged at one of the major shows to be pretty good, warranting a place in any cellar. The wine in this case might be OK, but it has not been judged by anyone outside Dans staff, and they are unlikely to tell the boss that his choice sucked. Griffith is not known for its cabernet, the climate is all wrong for the grape variety, and the few I have tried were well short of 90 points. Hopefully this one is an exception.

The compelling essence of leadership demonstrated yesterday

The compelling essence of leadership demonstrated yesterday

Oct 2, 2016 | Leadership

Yesterday the Western Bulldogs won the AFL grand final.

I am not an AFL fan, my game is the one they play in heaven, sadly not much down here any more, but that game yesterday stirred emotions in even one who really did not care about the outcome.

For the Dogs to win they overcame the odds in all sorts of directions, too numerous to list. However, in overcoming the odds they clearly demonstrated the truth of the old cliché about the team of champions vs the champion team.

There is one word that describes how that phenomenon is achieved:

Leadership.

The single act of the Dogs coach Luke Beveridge putting his premiership medal around the neck of injured club captain Bob Murphy embodies all it means to be a leader.

The work of Simon Sinek in articulating this stuff is to my mind the benchmark. Do not bother reading the libraries of dusty academic tomes written, just watch the Sinek presentations to hear all you need to know.   The one linked above titled Leaders eat Last is a great story, distilled into one 30  second act by Beveridge yesterday.

If you were an aspiring AFL player, why would you want to play anywhere else?

My apologies to readers outside Australia, you will have no idea what AFL is. Does not matter, just watch Sineks presentation.

How will Australia regulate for ‘Culture’

How will Australia regulate for ‘Culture’

Sep 28, 2016 | Governance, Leadership

As a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, I look forward to the events put on by the institute, and attend when I can, when the topic of discussion is of particular interest.

Annually there is a general ‘Director Update’, the 2016 version is currently rolling out, and I attended in Sydney last week.

Amongst the items of interest, one particularly took my attention. The emerging focus on ‘Culture‘, has belatedly come onto the radar because the legislators are beginning to use the word.

This begs the question of how you define ‘Culture’, certainly those in Canberra writing the rules have no idea, despite setting out to legislate for it. It is a bit like legislating for ‘Motherhood’. Everyone agrees it would be great to have it, successful people have benefited from it, but definition is a bit tricky.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is now a commonly used phrase, shortened from the original by Peter Drucker who wrote: ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast, technology for lunch, and products for dinner, and soon thereafter, everything else too’

Lou Gerstners view expressed in his terrific insiders view of the turnaround of IBM  “I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game – it is the game. In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.”

Building a positive culture depends on leadership, not regulation. Absolutely not regulation.

This remarkable TED talk by Simon Sinek is talking about leadership and the culture good leadership builds. I think anyone in authority should watch it and absorb the message, and set about trying to articulate what it means in their context.

ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) Chairman Greg Medcraft in his speech opening the 2016 ASIC Annual forum failed to give any hint about the definitional questions around Culture, simply pointing out that it led to good commercial and social outcomes. He did add that “We are incorporating culture into our risk based surveillance reviews’ which is terrific but it would be nice to know how one of the key regulators is going to measure it. Back to the politicians?

On occasion I have been critical of the AICD for its focus on the compliance issues of listed companies and their directors, often seen as the ‘big end’ of town. This focus is not unreasonable given that every organisation has to focus on what is seen as the main game in one way or another. However, it does tend to marginalise the unlisted and family company block which constitutes the vast majority of enterprises, and the overwhelming majority of those in the role of ‘Director’ often without knowing anything about the fiduciary responsibility that goes with it.

However, in this case, starting to talk about Culture, the Institute has kicked over a rock that requires a lot of consideration and debate, so well done.

I look forward  to that conversation.

Credit: Thanks once again to Hugh McLeod for the inspired cartoon.

Things I do not do to make money from blogging

Things I do not do to make money from blogging

Sep 26, 2016 | Customers, Strategy

StrategyAudit has been going now for quite a long time, almost 1,500 posts to date, averaging between 2 & 3 a week. Every month there are  around 1,000 unique visitors, who consume on average 1.8 posts each visit.

By some standards these are pretty modest numbers, but at least I am reasonably consistent and persistent.

I am asked from time to time how much money I make from the effort, and most are surprised at the answer:

Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

There are so many blogs out there that have no purpose other than to squeeze a bob, I am reluctant to add another. Besides, my purpose is to capture, organise and record my mostly random musings on various  matters of interest, and to make my living providing insight and advice to my clients, not flog stuff to random visitors led to the posts by PPC ads.

It makes me a better confidant and consultant to my clients, as well as sharing a bit of the love around.

I have however, thought about it, and been very tempted from time to time. I thought about it again over the past weekend, and decided against it, again, but in the process, assembled a list of ways I thought I could ‘monetise’ the effort, should I decide to do so, at some point.

Affiliate marketing.

This requires that you either put an ad on your page for the affiliate product, or put in a link that sends a visitor to the sales page directly, such as to the Amazon site. There are many variations on the theme, and there are many products available to sell as an affiliate. Most responsible bloggers restrict their affiliate efforts to products that their specific niche may be interested in. Were I to do it, the sorts of products might be business books and courses, website hosting, and various tools such as autoresponders, and CRM software that automate parts of the digital marketing  ecosystem.

Affiliate marketing is the most common and biggest money spinner for most bloggers. The two biggest affiliate sites are Clickbank and Amazon Associates, but there are many others.  Before you venture into it, consider the sorts of things that you might sell that are consistent with your niche, and that your audience might welcome being able to get from you. Generally it also comes with some level of implied endorsement, so caution is warranted.

Google AdSense. 

Google makes it very easy for you. All you have to do is sign up, they will stick ads on your site, and give you a fee for every click from your site. For a small blogger like me, the amount is pretty small, and Google controls which ads get placed on your site. When you work hard to service a niche, risking them being alienated by ads for the flimsy promise of a few dollars does not make much sense to me.

Sponsored posts and reviews.

Some bloggers get paid to write a post, or review of a sponsors product, presumably favourable, which is the point. There are many books and writers that I am happy to endorse, but I have never taken a buck to do so, as that would compromise my right to absolute independence.  Similarly, paid guest posts are a great way to build a ‘list’ trading on the readership of others. This certainly does work, and I have guest posted a few times on sites relevant to ‘my patch’ but never been paid. (it is also true that nobody has offered to pay me, but don’t tell anyone)

Paid directories.

The double sided nature of the web means that assembling links and content that others might like to use is a service that can be sold. It is easy enough to use a WordPress plugin to enable such a service, but then to my mind if you are to make any useful money from it, marketing the service has to become the focus of the blog. Not interested.

Create a product and flog it.

This is an extremely useful strategy, but contrary to all the hype from those seeking to profit from your efforts by teaching you how, is it very difficult. The 1400 plus StrategyAudit posts give me a significant well to dig into, and clearly I have done a lot of writing work to get there, but it is still not easy, as my several efforts to collate my musings into still unpublished books will attest.

There are many options, give away e-books as lead magnets,  e-books for sale on Amazon and others, hard cover books and guides, courses, membership ‘clubs’, the list goes on, all designed to generate so called ‘passive income’ a really attractive prospect.  All however take effort to create, curate, and market the content on an ongoing basis. One day perhaps.

 

Be an expert.

This is the one thing I do set out to do. By writing and publishing those sometimes random thoughts, I hope to demonstrate rather than just talk about the expertise and experience I have gathered over 40 years of commercial life, and just life itself. The ‘urgers’ around tell me I am just trading time for money, without the option of scaling, and that is true, but it is also comfortable. Perhaps that is the problem, I am genuinely setting out to help others, not just myself into their pockets.

 

Let me know what you think, am I mad??