Apr 19, 2012 | Customers, Strategy
Observing and working with a wide range of clients and networks over a long period, it seems to me that there are three foundations of strategy that appear time and time again, present in the successes, and absent in the failures.
- Differentiation. Clear, sustainable differentiation from competitors in a manner that customers value is the essence of strategy. Differentiation comes in many forms, superior product, service backup, design, marketing and distribution, and many activities, often seemingly mundane, but a part of the process of delivering value to customers.
- Simplicity. Successful enterprises are simple to the extent that everybody understands what they are doing, why, what role they play, and what constitutes success.
- Intellectual capital development. IC evolves from learning from mistakes and experiments, continuous improvement loops, communication feedback mechanisms, cross functional, cross company, and increasingly cross geographic collaboration and behavior. All these things create a culture, a “way we do things around here” that becomes the driver of corporate DNA evolution, and the creation of Intellectual Capital.
Strategy is probably the most commonly written about subject in management, scary to think its essence can be distilled into three simple headings.
Apr 17, 2012 | Branding, Marketing, retail
Woolworths has “gone for the box”, advertising their “Select” range of housebrand products. The ads broke last weekend, (they have been removed from Youtube, curious) and to me appear to pretty effective, because they convey a single, simple proposition, that of top quality at a value price. Weather you believe it or not is another matter, and weather Woolies can deliver consistently on the promise is doubtful. Woolworths are retailers, not marketers, so by nature and culture their buyers are transaction focused, rather than customer relationship focused, making alignment with their marketing a probable headache for senior management.
The advertising adds to the social media and mobile marketing efforts, increasingly effective targeting of consumers based on the data collected via their store cards, and their cross category promotional strength flogging petrol. It also serves to further cement the duopoly of Coles and Woolworths at the core of Australian FMCG retailing.
Clearly the roadmap has been charted by the UK retailers, Sainsbury and particularly Tesco, who have supplied most of the senior management of their combatant Coles. The investment in brand building by the two gorillas is just another brick in the wall that keeps suppliers of proprietary branded products on their knees.
Apr 16, 2012 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Content is the new creativity.
In the “old days” a core part of developing advertising that had brand building as its purpose, was a need to be memorable, relevant, deliver a proposition, and cut through the clutter on TV (or magazines, or radio, our only choices) all in thirty seconds. Then you repeated the message, as the common wisdom said, until you were sick of it, because the punters were only just getting to recognise it.
All that is changed, now media choices are numbered in the thousands, and you need to engage punters, one by one.
The content of the communication therefore is the still the key, but you get only one shot at it in most cases, and you rely on, perhaps pray for, the recipient to pass it on to like minded people they know.
Makes it pretty hard.
How do you market a bookshop? Common wisdom would say get really deeply into a niche with a few enthusiasts, or get out while you can, as it is all going on-line.
However, every now and again, a piece of luck comes along, that when combined with creativity and truly great understanding of what your market, wherever they are, may be looking for, you get something like this short bit of brilliance from Barter Books.
Would you go anywhere else?
Apr 12, 2012 | Management
We all do stuff in business every day, and largely assume that it needs to be done because it is in the budget. In other words, we are making investment decisions at a micro level simply because there is an institutional requirement to consume the resource.
Rather than just proceeding as the plan says we should, we should be asking ourselves every day if the investment at any level we are about to make is strategically the right thing to be doing, will it enhance the longevity of the enterprise, and the manner in which it contributes to all stakeholders.
It seems to me that often activities of planning and delivering are almost mutually exclusive. A senior bunch does the planning, then hands the completed plan on to others to deliver.
All the analysis in the world will not substitute for getting on and doing things, analysis is too often an excuse for procrastination, and the fear of being wrong. Then when the competition gets in first, the too frequent reaction is to be second, at a discount in the hope of gaining the share squandered by indecision.
Apr 10, 2012 | Management, Personal Rant, Uncategorized
I kept a diary of how I spent my time recently, and noted a number of things I suspected, but did not have the “data” such as it was.
- Being “connected” had reduced my productivity significantly. My concentration was broken when emails came in, seemingly demanding just a look, people ringing, texting, just wanting an immediate response/decision irrespective of my current load, and capacity to appropriately consider the response.
- The discipline of the “to do” list had been destroyed. As a young bloke, I did a list for the next day, last thing every night. That list offered a priority guide, time allocation, a memory prompt, and a record of activity each day. Whilst like most plans it was a point from which to depart, it still gave structure to my day, week, and priorities. That discipline has effectively gone in the welter of competing tasks surfaced by connectivity.
- My “head-time” had been destroyed. In the dim, dark, unconnected past, I had time to consider options, seek considered input, and just allow a situation to stew in my brain over a period, which often led to options not consciously in the mix at the outset. This happened as I walked at lunch-time, sat in traffic, over the weekend, and just having a casual chat with colleagues whose council may have added a perspective. All that valuable head-time is gone, driven away by the access and immediacy of the devices in my pocket, and the expectation of others that an immediate response is mandatory.
Years ago, a mentor urged me to distinguish between the urgent but not important, and the important but not urgent, and act accordingly. Being connected has given the urgent a huge increase in leverage at the expense of the important, and it is taking a real effort to redress the imbalance.
I have reverted to a to do list that structures my day, turn off all devices in the middle of the day and take a hobble around the block and talk to myself or a colleague, and set out to do the most important thing on my list first thing in the day. This added discipline is proving to be much harder than I thought, but useful. My personal productivity seems to have lifted, as has my satisfaction with the tasks completed every day.
