Social Media Triage
During times of stress, when there is too much to do and too little time to do it, we find ways to sort the tasks into categories to better manage our time. In medical terms, Triage. Treat now, can wait till later, no hope so time is better spent elsewhere. Running...
Marketing does not create brands.
How many times have you heard from marketers "my job is to create the brands", (often followed by the "yours is to sell it" when they happen to be talking to sales people) Many marketers use it as the rationale for their existence. Pity it is nonsense. Customer...
Manage, or sell change?
Much has been written about the management of change, and it usually focuses on the challenges, acknowledging just how difficult change really is. When you turn it around, and consider what happens in successful change programs, there is very little management, and a...
Ethical sourcing. Cost or marketing investment?
Why are we so hung up about ethical sourcing of coffee?? What about the electronics industry, and shoes, rare earth minerals, and many others? Who bears the responsibility for the conditions of workers in the supply chains of successful businesses.? Apple is the...
Social life of the brand.
The oldest market research technique in the world is to ask a group "imagine brand X is walking through the door, tell me about him/her". This enables respondents to describe the brand with human terms, words that reflect the human characteristics to which we all...
Governments and marketing
The current Australian government has a marketing problem. Their other problems, trouble with the hung parliament, zealous credit card expenditure by MP's, inability to out-communicate the drivel of the opposition, a rebellious electorate, a failed "moral Imperative"...
Brand loyalty a two way street.
I have been having trouble with bloody Optus, again, my exclusive supplier of communication services. They simply cannot seem to get anything right, clearly the left hand has no idea, and I suspect do not care what the right hand is doing. Their customer service does...
“Intellectual Capital on demand”.
This is a term coined by Peter Drucker when talking about contract management, particularly in relation to older contractors who bring a wealth of experience and hard won wisdom to the table. Using contractors, particularly high level ones brings a number of huge...
Lipstick on the pig
Last week I was talking to a headhunter seeking to fill a senior contract management role for which I had been recommended. I had polished up the resume and sent it as requested, and he had browsed my blog and Linkedin profile, but the conversation was awkward,...
Category management steroids
Data mining as it is evolving in retail is a fascinating exercise in identifying behavior characteristics that apply to very small percentages of the shopper population, and doing something with them. Progressively retailers are getting better at leveraging the data,...