Apr 23, 2011 | Innovation, Marketing
Fast Company’s innovation list is out again, the top 50 for the year.
It includes the usual suspects, Google, Facebook, Linked-in, and so on, but also 2 retailers, Californian Trader Joes at 11, and Britain’s Marks & Spencer at 36. Both are surprising, although TJ’s is well understood in food industry circles as one of the real innovators, and everybody watches them, but M&S was a surprise to me.
A 100% housebrand retailer, one who does not accommodate the innovation efforts of its suppliers by enabling a proprietary brand margin for them, but who is a copier, albeit a very good one, is listed!
Conventional wisdom would say that the innovation efforts of a 100% housebrand retailer would be seriously compromised by the unavailability of the innovation powerhouses of FMCG, the multinational suppliers to get their brands on the shelf, and who are therefore not in the slightest bit interested in assisting M&S to improve their position with consumers. Coventional wisdom it seems, is once again, not the most reliable measure.
Just for the record, Apple was number 1, no surprise there.
Apr 21, 2011 | Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Apps are a part of our lives, a very recent innovation, and they are not going away any time soon.
The commercial challenge is how to monetarise them, make a return, build a business. We have learnt since the tech bubble a decade ago that if you build it, no matter how virtual, the rules of commerce still apply, you need to add real customer value before anyone will fork out their hard-earned on it.
Some of the best minds around are experimenting with ways to turn an buck from Apps, some like Amazon, Zappos, Apple, Groupon, and a few others have been sensationally successful, but for every success, there has been perhaps thousands of failures.
It is relatively easy these days to get someone to “like” your post, or site, getting them to “buy” from it is much, much harder.
Apr 18, 2011 | Marketing, Social Media
Writing this blog for a couple of years, to a small (but increasing) audience, has made me think about Kevin Costner. Sad.
I started to write the blog, and for a long time no-one came, just as KC built the field, and no-one came. I continued to write it as a personal expression of what interested me, arguably just an indulgence that got “published” via the good folks at WordPress.
It became pretty obvious that just having the metaphorical field was not enough, there needed to be a strategy to let people who may be interested know it was there, to try and engage them and encourage them to come. Writing it was just a part of the process, important, but a means to an end, not the end itself. Being a marketer, I should have known I needed more, but was not sure what “more” was (I am after all closing on my dotage, so who could expect me to understand all this geeky stuff anyway).
SEO is not the answer, Twitter attracts a few fleeting visitors, “seagulls” in Aussie parlance, (fly in, look see, and fly off) so the answer seems to be engaging the few who return sufficiently that they respond, debate, disagree, and create content around the themes, and eventually create the themes for discussion themselves, leaving the blog just as a curator?
Long way yet, but the understanding is dawning as I engage using Strategyaudit’s blog as a door-opener.
Allen.
Apr 17, 2011 | Communication, Marketing
Marketing is mostly about storytelling, engaging people in the emotion of the value proposition, and every presentation you do is a selling opportunity, for an idea, a vision, and sometimes a product.
Presenting to an audience of strangers is for many people, an experience ranking with a session on De Torquemada’s rack.
Any speech, or presentation will be a failure, irrespective of the quality of the content, if the speaker fails to engage the audience, and like most things that do not come naturally, practice, preparation, and the assistance of those who have gone before, will make you better.
Here are 13 great tips on how to make the speech of your life, and once you get the hang of it, the buzz can be amazing, after all, how hard is it to get people to listen to you most of the time, and from time to time, if you get good at it, people will pay to hear you.
How good is that?
Apr 16, 2011 | Branding, Customers, Marketing
Most marketers will tell you what their brand stand for, premium quality, reliable performance, consistent taste, great service, and so on. Sounds a bit like a bunch of cliches doesn’t it?
However, it is just as valid to define your brand by what it is against, and often it seems the “againsts” are somewhat implied, allowing some latitude in interpretation.
The Green party in Australia is against native forest logging, Nike is against lounge lizards, Apple is against sameness, and closer to home, the SME Riverina Grove‘s brand is against average tasting mass produced “Italian” style packaged foods.
Think about it next time a branding discussion emerges, weather it be in a formal strategy session, or probably better, around the coffee machine.
