The strategy cliché, and 5 questions.
For perhaps the 1,000th time last week I heard the "strategy" question asked. It comes in many forms: What is your customer strategy? What is your google strategy? What is your social media strategy? and so on. All are valid questions, but the implication is that...
“Collective clarity” and “alignment” are different beasts
In some circumstances, "collective clarity" may be a synonym for alignment, but in others it is an entirely different beast. Currently I am involved in a project that aims to bring together a small group of specialist growers and retailers into a collaborative...
To be better, you also have to be different.
Recognising better is really hard when all offerings in the market appear similar. It follows then that you also must be different.This brings in another challenge, being different is not enough, you also have to deliver. Being different just offers the opportunity to...
How much is too much?
Mass marketing used to be about blasting messages to an ill defined supposed user base, "women 18-30" because that is about the best we could do. With the advent of social media, we have been led to understand that the analytics behind the scene enable extremely...
Create demand, or just fulfil it.
Some marketing activity is aimed at creating demand, alerting people to a value proposition. Other so called marketing activity is aimed at delivering an offer, an important but very different activity to demand creation.Consider the difference between most ads on TV,...
Sydney Harvest
The produce branding model used by the agricultural so called marketing programs run by industry bodies all fail the basic test of being consumer centric. Generally they are retailer centric, using grower levies to fund discounts, and sometimes display space, never...
Political inconsistency is trumps
So, the Treasurer has blocked the acquisition of Graincorp by Archer Daniels Midland. However, the acquisition of Warrnambool Cheese and Butter by Canadian group Saputo is OK. Go figure! These two businesses are amongst the last significant, strategically important...
New verb. “To Netf..k”
The verb that describes the process of retailers ignoring the shift to digital: payment, e-shopping, mobile selection of destination, on-line reviews, and so on. The business model is rapidly evolving, whatever your current model may be, nothing is set in stone, or...
New age entrepreneurs
There are now so many one person businesses emerging, SME's that employ no-one on a full time basis, but call on contractors and specialists when necessary, that I think we need a new term: "Solepreneurs". They are often entrepreneurs, but not in the generally...
Facebook in Beta circa 1517
In these times of abundance of marketing "stuff", bloggs, video content, on line advice and templates, what we are missing is a deep intellectual understanding of the marketing process. The tools have changed, but at its core, human behavior has not. We are still...