Oct 9, 2013 | Customers, Management, Marketing, Personal Rant
Definitions of marketing abound. A bit like a scratch in the morning, everybody has one!
The lament of President Roosevelt that if you had 7 economists in a room, you had 8 opinions, is equally true for marketers, except that to date, most have used smoke and mirrors and snake-oil rather than data to support an opinion. Most usually, you get the “5 P’s” regurgitated as a definition of marketing, easy to remember, but unfortunately irrelevant since the time of Don Draper.
Asked a few weeks ago what my definition was, I said “Marketing is the identification, development, protection, and leveraging of competitive advantage” To me, this covers all the elements of marketing process, collaboration, customer value, management discipline, and innovation that go to make up modern marketing.
Whilst the context of every marketing challenge differs, and the potential solutions numerous, the discipline necessary to tease out the core issues are pretty consistent.
As it happens, a day or so later, I came across an alternative definition, expressed as a formula that I also like very much:
Marketing = the creation of unique value.
That seems to say it all, and very simply.
What is yours??
Oct 7, 2013 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
Some years ago my Dad had a stroke, a nasty one that had a profound impact on his physical capability. We were assured by physicians that with intensive therapy and rehabilitation, he would regain a “quality of life.”
Compared to the prognosis without the therapy, this was certainly accurate, but compared to his life prior, is clearly nonsense. Never again would he walk a golf course, drive a car, take his grandsons fishing on the rocks, or just appear in public without being an object of curiosity.
Not a pleasant thought.
So, what brought this introspection on?
Recently I did a presentation at UWS that examined the 6 trends impacting on the balance between urban living, and the agricultural activity necessary to feed that urbanisation. Regularly over the past few years I have seen advertising for various developments that take farmland and turn it into massive housing estates, and the line used inevitably seems to be something along the lines of the “quality of life” they deliver. I saw another one last night, and gagged. it resembled an ad for a soap powder, or some other consumer product, full of hyperbole, “cutsey” pictures, and whimsical claims of the domestic bliss coming from buying an overpriced box on a tiny patch of dirt.
A short time ago this dirt was highly productive land that had fed Sydney for the last 150 years, and now it is an expanse of macadam, concrete, flimsy project homes, with a bit of green left for “family picnics” and a pond for any ducks that turn up to be fed.
At some point we need to define in what context we talk about “quality of life”, and how we will get on with that life without easy access to agricultural commodities, and the value added products they produce.
Oct 3, 2013 | Uncategorized
There has been lots of conversation about the value of social media, very sensibly proposing the case that simply getting a “like” is useless, you can buy them if you want them. The measure of success should be how much earned media you generate, how much of what you do is shared, reposted, linked, retweeted, rather than just “wombatted“.
Social media is an all encompassing term, it no longer adequately describes the range of options from facebook to E-bay, and everything in between. Each has a different role, and each finds themselves threatened by usurpers immediately they show some traction, just the way facebook replaced MySpace. E-Bay has a role, to provide a means to set a price and sell in a manner that has not been possible before the web. It is not social media as it is normally seen, it is a two sided marketplace, but the power is in the social network effect , not in the notion of an auction.
Facebook is inherently social, when on there, people are not looking to buy, they are looking to see what their friends are doing, a different mindset, and it is why Facebook is having trouble generating revenue, a process that is intrusive on a social occasion.
Pinterest is increasingly a commercial entity, it engages, informs, offers options, and often leads to a transaction, but there is no sales pressure, just information, and more information.
Then you have the various news sites, from authoritative, to the nonsensical, single issue brain-dumps. However, all these sites have in common the simple fact that you can take them or leave them, engage or ignore, download and share, or treat them as digital fish wrapper.
To be other than digital fish wrapper, the media needs to contribute to your day, your knowledge, or your network. If you are spending your most valuable resource, time and attention, and not getting value, throw the wrapper out.
Oct 1, 2013 | Category, Customers, Demand chains, Marketing, retail
It is pretty trite to point out, again, that the reason businesses survive is to satisfy customers.
In fresh produce markets, this has been pretty much forgotten as the share of the consumers dollar that ends up in the farmers pockets has progressively dropped over the last 50 years from around 50% to now 10% for the lucky ones.
This is below in many cases the cost of production, so there goes food security, at least at the prices we have become used to!
This squeezing of farmers has evolved as retailers have built scale, and managed their logistics to deliver margin from produce, and consumers have favored convenience and price over product “eatability”.
Now however, it may be that the worm is turning.
Some consumers, certainly a marketable proportion, are turning back to favour freshness, product provenance, and taste, and are finding those characteristics in farmers markets, direct home delivery, and the few specialist retailers who have survived. These consumers are driving the evolution of a transparent “demand chain” which is putting some leverage back into the hands of farmers, if they can figure out how to remove the impediments to transparency, and the ticket clippers who inhabit the chain.
The tools of the web are slowly turning the supply chain of old into a demand chain, a supply process that responds to consumer demand, preferences, and habits. Farmers being able to communicate with those who consume their produce, and respond accordingly disappeared when we moved en masse to the cities, as no longer were we living in the small communities that enabled the communication.
Now however, that ability is back, so use it, and eat better!
Sep 30, 2013 | Branding, Category, Marketing, retail, Small business
Consumers make purchase choices for a whole range of reasons, quality, size, experience, brand, price, freshness, produce provenance, and so on.
Supermarkets in Europe have for years been marketing their housebrands as much more than cheapo versions of branded products, they are brands themselves, with all the attributes of proprietary brands.
In Australia there have been housebrands for 35 years, I know, as I peripherally s involved in the launch of the first one, the now defunct Franklins “No Frills” margarine, in about 1978. For most of the 35 years since, Australian Housebrands were little more than cheap products, where the manufactures pulled out as much ingredient and packaging cost as possible, apart from the few regulated categories like milk where Housebrands did not appear until de-regulation of the distribution system, and ice cream where the dairy fat level is proscribed at 10%.
More recently, Housebrands have been repositioned to be more like “Brands” than cheap substitutes, and retailers are actively seeking to add product quality to the parameters, while still being extremely aggressive about product cost from the manufacturer, difference now is that the world is the potential source, not just Australian manufacturers.
However, the efforts appear to be flagging, as price remains the primary consumer purchase reason for Housebrands, but the consumers choice is being reduced as retailers allocate their shelf-space to their own brands in an effort to both build Housebrand sales and the enhanced margins they can deliver. Perhaps this is a contributor to the apparent renewed growth of specialty and niche retail, and the decision of many SME’s to avoid the two major retailers, and pursue alternative channels.
Housebrands are failing to be either guarantors of quality, as “proper” proprietary brands would be, and they are often no longer as cheap as they were, so consumers are getting confused.
In consumer confusion lies opportunity for innovative marketers.
