Jan 3, 2013 | Social Media
Where Social Media Will Grow in 2013 (and Where It Won’t).
This is a really good list. Every senior executive who still thinks social media is just where their kids post inappropriate photos should think about it.
Whilst you are at it, read this Forbes article as well, and have a look at the GE video. It may be an ad for Salesforce.com disguised as commentary by Beth Comstock, the GE marketing honcho, but the weight of GE is enormous, and their record of picking the trends over the last 20 years is extraordinarily good.
Jan 3, 2013 | Customers, Management, Sales
Some informal research I completed recently amongst businesses in my “patch” turned up a surprising result.
One the questions I asked was “what is the most important job in your business?
The surprise was that so few respondents nominated “sales” at all, let alone in the top three.
When you think about it, without sales to pay for the apparently more important functions like, HR, Marketing, OH&S management, engineering, NPD&C, and all the rest that got a mention, all those more fashionable functions will not be around.
Has “Sales” become its own metaphor?
Sales is often an entry level role personified by the keen young bloke (or gal) with the brief-case, glib tongue, and “crash or crash through” attitude to human relations, and as a result is being left behind in the corporate furr-ball. Do well in sales, and you might be promoted to marketing.
Perhaps we should rename sales “Revenue Generation”. Call it what it is, focus more on those carring the direct responsability to conduct conversations with those who write the orders, and perhaps that might focus the mind a bit better?
Jan 2, 2013 | Branding, Change, Marketing, retail, Small business
This is the first post of the new year, so it seemed appropriate to hop on a hobby-horse, the indiscriminate use of the word “iconic”, in all sorts of situations.
My beef today is specific to the food industry.
The call to receivers to sort out “Rosella” has created a lot of noise, of the “another “Iconic” Australian food business goes to the wall” type.
Whilst it is true that the Rosella brand has been around for a long time, it has not been owned by an Australian company in my memory in the food industry, which is disturbingly long. Rosella was owned by the British/Dutch multinational Unilever for many years, who sold it to the Dutch trader Stuart Alexander probably 15 years ago. They failed to give it the breath of life, and on-sold it to the South African group that ultimately owned Gourmet Food Holdings, as their vehicle to assemble food brands. They also owned Aristocrat, which in my memory was owned by an Australian family who actually cared about their products. Problem was they had a factory in Chatswood in Sydney, now prime real estate, and insufficient marketing grunt to maintain retail real estate,
So, what makes an “Iconic Australian business”?
I might be persuaded that “Rosella” was an Australian brand, as you could not buy it anywhere else, but certainly not that it was an iconic Australian brand, or Australian business, which is the other epithet often used.
To me “iconic” has a number of dimensions:
Longevity.
Market share, but more importantly than share, the potential to shift markets due to consumer trust and loyalty.
Consistent delivery of value to customers/consumers.
Over time, it has managed to evolve so that it accurately reflects the core proposition of the brand in a manner relevant to the customers/consumers of each of those times.
On all but the first of these parameters, Rosella fails the test. Ask yourself “who will miss Rosella?” and the real answer is very few.
So why the hand-wringing?
Simple. The demise of Rosella in another example of the decimation of the Australian food manufacturing industry, particularly the small manufacturers. Here we are, in a geographically enviable location close to the burgeoning Asian markets, with advanced R&D, skilled workforce, high and transparent standards, able to produce commodities at world competitive costs, but we are failing to feed our own people from our own resources, huge amounts of manufactured food is now imported, (more than $10 billion last year) and the trend is accelerating.
We have White papers dealing with the Asian century and our place in it delivering cliches, and task forces examining the woes of the food manufacturing industry, and making grand recommendations, but not much activity that is useful, so I guess we have to kid ourselves to feel better.
Happy new year, I hope it is “iconic” for you.
Dec 20, 2012 | Marketing, Personal Rant, Small business
Yesterday in the midst of a sizeable gathering, one person was moaning about the rip-off represented by Christmas hampers, specifically one she had received the previous day. “Full of stuff I could have bought and probably cost half as much, what a wank”
Unfortunately for the moaner, the business that had given her said hamper was a client of mine, so I was aware of the thought, time, degree of personalisation, and genuine care that went into the construction of the hampers as a means of acknowledging the value they placed in the relationship. They did not have to give hampers, they wanted to. Whilst the costs incurred were important, the real importance to my client was elsewhere, a point entirely missed by the moaner.
It seems my client wasted the money they spent on that particular hamper, misjudging the total lack of grace of the receiver, but hopefully she was one of a very few who failed to recognise the intent.
I can say for sure that the mistake will not be made again with that particular person.
Merry Christmas to all my readers, I cannot send you all a hamper, but I can send you my genuine thanks for coming, commenting, and generally participating in making the writing of this blog a joy rather than a labour.
Merry Christmas.
Allen
Dec 18, 2012 | Change, Governance, Management, Social Media, Strategy
Like most newspaper groups, Fairfax has failed to evolve to accommodate the depredations of the digital revolution. Their business model is broken, and the way forward is unclear.
The one spot of light in a gloomy future was the NZ auction site “Trade Me” which Fairfax bought for $700 million in 2006, then floated 34% onto the ASX, and a further 15% last year, raising $422 million, leaving them with a 51%, share which they are now selling for $616 million. The proceeds of the sale, are being used to pay down the debt accumulated to keep a redundant business model alive, offering an opportunity for it to change before being terminal.
Trade me was delivering profitability, superior return on funds, and an important toe in the digital water, but is being sacrificed to keep the legacy business afloat while it tries to adjust. In addition, Trade Me, along with Fairfax’s other less prominent digital assets offer the opportunity to experiment, test, to learn how to survive and compete in the digital environment.
The lesson in all this is that if you do not cannibalise yourself, somebody else will accommodate, and the pain of chewing your fingers will pale into insignificance against the pain of being chomped around the waist by a white pointer. The irony however is that the only digitally sustainable asset in the house has to be sold to buy some time, but leaves the business without any significant cash generator in the digital space. At least Fairfax shares rose yesterday, so directors are probably happy this morning.
