Mar 24, 2010 | Personal Rant
Listening to the PM and Opposition leader the other day, “debating” the future of health care in this country, I felt a bit woozy.
One of the biggest items in the budget, and certainly the item of huge interest to most Australians, and what do we get, nothing but more of the same crap!
The PM’s scheme to take some greater control over expenditure is doomed to failure, even if he could get the states to agree, how can a pack of weenies in Canberra deliver hugely complicated system like health; would you like a pink bat with that?
The opposition is determined to be a policy free zone, OK, this tactic has won elections in the past, but health is too important to be a political pissing contest.
The real challenge is to go back to basics, strip away the layers of vested interest, from all in the game, and redesign it from the ground up, with the only objective to build an infrastructure to deliver patient outcomes into the long term.
Over time, the vested interests, bureaucracies & bureaucrats, doctors, nurses, private investors, equipment and consumables suppliers, employees and their unions, the list goes on, have all taken positions that have narrowed the options of sensible management of the system for patient outcomes, a bit like the plaque build-up in the arteries leading to the heart, and the heart of the system is in real trouble. Each action taken to protect a small bit of turf anywhere in the system reduces the opportunity of the whole system to grow and innovate, it is a sacrifice of the potential for greater good on the alter of self interest.
One bit at a time, the system has become narrow, brittle, inefficient, and ineffective, just like that artery with a bad case of sclerosis. We need a radical by-pass, it will be painful, dangerous, and require more practical skills, will, and vision than I suspect are currently available, but there is little alternative if we are to have a system that is effective, affordable, and equitable.
Mar 23, 2010 | Branding, Management, Social Media
The phenomena of social media is one that businesses need to understand, and be ready to respond when, rather than if, it gets difficult.
The Nestle Facebook page has been overrun by new “fans” after the publicity surrounding their practices of using palm oil sourced from Indonesia from areas with questionable sustainability practices. On Twitter when I checked a short time ago there were many entries, most about the palm oil, and all of them unhappy.
Justified or otherwise, businesses need to be on the front foot to be able to respond positively, and proactively to the potential of social media to undo brand integrity overnight.
The destruction of a brand, or in Nestles case, many brands is much easier than their construction,
At some point, all organizations will come under the scrutiny of groups utilizing the tools of the social media if they leave any openings at all, and these groups are currently better organised, better focused, and better able to mobilise support. Being proactive is no longer the task that should be given to the graduate trainee, but should be a board issue, as it is a major risk to the Intellectual capital and therefore value of a business.
Mar 22, 2010 | Branding, Marketing, Personal Rant
Australia rode on the sheeps back in the 50’s, but in the 70’s & 80’s the sheep turned nasty, and we mostly got off, having lost our pricing power through the competitive growth of synthetics, and strategic stupidity.
When we dismounted, looking for an easier way, superfine wool was 19 microns, now, the leading edge of the few that left are approaching 11 microns, and there is now a substantial volume of wool in the 15-17 microns range, an astonishing achievement.
When Australia unwittingly “outsourced” the many processing stages in the wool value chain, largely to China and India, it was driven by the commodity pricing mentality, that still widely exists. Now, as we chase our tails to the bottom of the price curve, we are paying the price for that short sightedness, as we have no capability left in any stage of the value chain past —-growing the stuff, to leverage the leading position of the best growers, and to supply markets with a sustainable fibre with deep capabilities to meet and shape consumers needs .
Australian Wool Innovation, the current iteration of successive industry bodies charged with the responsibility to “market” the clip is in disarray again, as they try and treat symptoms they do not understand with medicine that did not work 40 years ago.
There is no point being on the leading research edge, unless you can commercialise the output and generate a return from it by reshaping demand, rather than just taking a small premium because you are marginally better at doing what everyone else does. AWI and its predecessors have done a good research job over the years, bit a very poor marketing job.
Mar 21, 2010 | Marketing, Small business
Yarning to an old mate last week, the usual wide ranging stuff you examine with someone you know well, he said “you know, what you do is forensic marketing, exhuming the deeply held assumptions that distort the outcomes, simplifying the jargon, identifying the make-work activity, seeing with a fresh eye the alignment of priorities”
It struck me as a very useful description, so I constructed a simple list of the starting points:
- Who are your customers?
- Why are they your customers?
- What do they buy?
- How much could they buy?
- What do various customers have in common?
- Why do they buy from you, and not your competitor?
- How much & what do they buy from your competitor?
- How do you define their Wallet?
- Is it the same as they would define it?
- What keeps your customers, your competitors, and you awake at night?
- Which customers have you lost, and why?
- What would you have to do to get them back, and is it worth the cost?
- If you were seeking to enter your market now, how would you do it?
- What are the barriers to better performance of your products?
- What are the markets where your capabilities rather than just your products have relevance?
- How do you communicate with customers?
- How do they communicate with you, and what is the quality of that communication?
- How engaged are you with your key (not necessarily biggest) customers?
- Where are the markets that have evolved that use different versions of your key pieces of capability?
- What can you learn from them?
- How do the demand chains work?
- Where in the chain does the real leverage reside?
- Where are the sources of waste in the chain?
- How do you innovate to eliminate them?
- How can you turn those who inhabit your demand chain into collaborators?
- What are the key competitive capabilities of your competitors?
- How do competitors react to the tactics you employ?
- How effective are their reactions?
- How has their response fed into your planning?
Once I started the list, I found it just went on, and on, and on, pages of it.
What changes is the way elements interact, apply differently to different situations, and the means by which experience, deep sector knowledge, and the wisdom that comes from hard lessons steers you towards a smaller range of drivers that warrant deeper analysis in any given situation.
A review of marketing, that can be best described as “forensic” can deliver real benefits from the insights that evolve.
Mar 21, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing
Guvera, an Australian start-up, has evolved a business model that is a bold but necessary experiment for the music industry.
Music downloads from the site will be free, paid for by advertisers who get the opportunity to connect with consumers of particular songs, or music genres. This has some very attractive possibilities for marketers of a wide range of products.
Seems a way better solution to the piracy travails of the music industry than their reaction to date which has been modeled on King Canute’s control of the tides.
