Toyota’s tent joins Ford and GM in the boot.
As a little kid, the milkman used to deliver from a horse drawn cart. Even then, in the mid fifties it was outmoded, almost rustic, but endlessly engaging for a 5 year old boy. Much later, I was the marketing director of a NSW dairy co-operative as it wrestled...
Pitching an idea
The most powerful way to get someone to agree with your idea is to ask them the leading question, and have them give you the answer you want. Ronald Regan used this technique a lot. He did not tell the American people during his election campaign: “your economic...
StrategyAudit’s second law of SME success
Scaleable. My world is SME's, helping them to be more profitable, more commercially sustainable, more accountable, by being focused on customers and their own processes and priorities. The outcome is that most successfully remain SME's, avoiding the many death traps...
Brand value of SPC and Peters.
If ever you needed convincing that investing for the long haul in a brand was worth the time, energy, risk, and money, there is evidence aplenty in the remnants of the Australian food industry. It has been reported that the Peters Ice Cream brand is on the market,...
Give Charman Stone a medal.
The decision by the federal Government not to support SPC last week has opened a can of worms. This time, the worms have some grunt, as the head worm, Charman Stone has shone a light into the corners of the decision, and in the process, dumped on her party. Thank...
Social or Viral
One of the questions I am most often asked is "how do we make this go viral". To my mind it is also one of the silliest. The objective of "social" weather it be media, or a drink in the pub, is engagement with others. The objective of viral is, well... not sure,...
Lessons from SPC
Once the dust has settled, political mud-slinging completed, recriminations done, and blame been allocated over yesterdays decision by the Government not to support SPC Ardmona to the tune of $25 million, which would have triggered another $25 mill from the Victorian...
8 core questions of strategy
Carl von Clausewitz first said, "no strategy ever survived the first contact with the enemy" It was true in war, and is equally true in business, the only real difference is in the human cost. That said, not having a strategy is akin to setting off on a holiday, not...
5 most powerful management words.
This post emerged from the monthly company meeting of a small , but successful Australian manufacturing business for whom I do occasional work. One of their great practices, in my view, is the monthly "progress" meeting, where the results of the previous month are...
The year of analytics
In Australia today, January 26, it is "Australia Day", the day we Aussies, or most of us, think the place was started, conveniently ignoring the thousands of years of habitation before Captain Philip turned up with a bunch of convicts in Botany Bay. For most of us it...