Challenges of Produce Marketers
Produce marketers are not all that different to most FMCG marketers, except that the power of the retailer in produce categories is magnified by the total lack of proprietary branding, effectively insulating the consumer from the producer, making brand building and...
Go where your customers go
Rarely does anything happen behind a desk, so why do you spend so much time there? Just like the old saying "the harder I work, the luckier I get" small business owners should say "the more customers I see, the greater chance of an order" Most small business owners...
Margins Vs R.O.F.E. for retail
Retailing is under pressure, all the established retailers are suffering declines in profitability, and the media is full of retail CEO's bemoaning the eroding margins. Australians appetite for flat screen TV's over the last couple of years were is amazing, we now...
“We must be on Facebook”.
This is a pretty common call amongst the junior marketing staff of my clients, most of them are familiar with facebook, they use it in their personal lives to fill a whole range of functions. When asked "Why must we be on Facebook"? there is usually an awkward...
Social media records shattered.
The phenomena that has been the Kony video over the last week, garnering over 67 million views at the time of writing this, on Sunday morning in Australia, has rewritten the Social media and charity fund raising record books. If there remained any doubt about the...
FMCG business model disrupted.
Out with the old mass market advertising and business model, and in with the new. I shave, it costs a fortune, so much that I switched to disposable shavers without all the fatuous claims and high prices of the big brands. Each morning when I look in the mirror to...
Customer eyes and voice.
As a marketer my basic mantra has been "see it through the customers eyes", simple and effective. Recently while mentoring a great young sales person for a client, I noticed that even though she asked the right questions at the right time, and used the information...
Social media is just a toolbox.
The social tools of the net do not create collaboration, that urge is hard-wired into us. The net simply removes the barriers, and changes the rules about the means. Now we no longer have to be able to have personal "face time" be in the same geography, or even share...
Intellectual bravery
It is pretty easy to avoid making that confronting customer call, stand up and articulate an idea at odds with the boss, conduct an experiment conventional wisdom says will fail. The price for not doing this stuff is pretty low, few will critisise, but there will be...
Your “elevator pitch”
If you cannot state your mission in a very few words, perhaps less than 10, able to be expressed in 30 seconds, the time it takes for a ride in an elevator to the 30th floor, where the big boys live, try again. I see many mission and purpose statements that are full...