10 rules for small retailers to out-compete chains
Chain stores dominate our grocery shopping environment, they have developed all the advantages of scale, and use them to the advantage of their shareholders, by delivering returns, and to customers by delivering low prices. The model works, in Australia 75% of the...
My greatest marketing mistake
One of the most memorable, and biggest mistakes I made as a young product manager was to redesign a pack. The product was an old fashioned, relatively low value product on supermarket shelves, it had a small niche to itself, and the sales ticked over, pretty...
9 thoughts for SME’s on Friday 13th.
Walk under any ladders yet? It seemed appropriate to have a think about some of the silly superstitions that infest the world of marketing, and proffer a view about the reality. "The internet will never be a good marketing tool". Hello, the jury came back a...
1 social media tool for maximum impact.
There are many contenders for the most effective social media too around, and just as many promoters. "Email marketing" and "Content marketing" usually occupy the first and second places, but to my mind are one and the same. Email does not work without content,...
Everyone is in Marketing & Sales!
We all know the world of sales has changed. Consumers now have virtually all the information they need to make a purchase choice without any assistance from a "sales assistant". Before a significant purchase, consumers now review all sorts of web based resources that...
Outcome defining metaphors
Marketing is about telling stories, engaging people with them, which builds awareness, affinity, preference, and with luck, persistence, and good management, can lead to a transaction, or two. Metaphors, when well used can make a complicated point in a memorable and...
Managing complexity.
I am not a car nut, but as a young bloke, I used to fix my own cars. There was not much you could not do without a reasonable set of Sidchromes, a block and tackle, mechanical manual, and a jack. No longer. My kids would no more set out to fix their own cars as fly,...
7 ways to argue constructively
Debate and argument fills a vital role in all parts of our lives, it is what makes us human, this capacity to be able to think and communicate, rather than just react. For an extended period with two different employers, I reported as marketing manager to a...
Energy, Innovation, technical capability, and common sense.
It seems to me that the most important emerging driver of success in the economy that must drive innovation and value delivery, is the intersection of technical capability and power generation. Oil has driven the geo politics of the C 19 & C20. The US became a...
Call centre to Social centre
On Friday I got another of those calls from an offshore call centre flogging a product I did not need or want. Some poor person obligingly named "Kevin" whose first language was not English, scrolling through a prepared screed that bore no relationship to the...