Encouraging evolution
Process improvement is all about slow adoption of the tiny opportunities that arrive, by any number of means, that together enable adaption of the system to the environment around it to improve performance. My favorite metaphors usually come from the natural...
Go to the Gemba
"Gemba" is a Japanese term, literally "the real place" and is a term used extensively in lean management, meaning, in effect, go to where it happens and look to understand. This originally meant the manufacturing floor, but just as easily translates to anywhere real...
Trade-offs required
"We will reduce the carbon going into the atmosphere, but it will not cost anyone (who votes) anything". Sound familiar? How about "The budget calls for increased sales and margins, which means we will have to do more with less people and put prices up ". Never have I...
“Advertainment” and brand building
The line between advertising to build brands and entertainment continues to blurr, and a whole new arena for creativity has emerged in our marketing mix, unheralded amongst many of those who run the corporations that create most of our old fashioned mass marketing....
Innovation top 50 performers
Fast Company's innovation list is out again, the top 50 for the year. It includes the usual suspects, Google, Facebook, Linked-in, and so on, but also 2 retailers, Californian Trader Joes at 11, and Britain's Marks & Spencer at 36. Both are surprising, although...
Social “Apponomics”
Apps are a part of our lives, a very recent innovation, and they are not going away any time soon. The commercial challenge is how to monetarise them, make a return, build a business. We have learnt since the tech bubble a decade ago that if you build it, no matter...
Marketing, blogging, and some introspection.
Writing this blog for a couple of years, to a small (but increasing) audience, has made me think about Kevin Costner. Sad. I started to write the blog, and for a long time no-one came, just as KC built the field, and no-one came. I continued to write it as a personal...
Presentations that work.
Marketing is mostly about storytelling, engaging people in the emotion of the value proposition, and every presentation you do is a selling opportunity, for an idea, a vision, and sometimes a product. Presenting to an audience of strangers is for many people, an...
Brands work two ways
Most marketers will tell you what their brand stand for, premium quality, reliable performance, consistent taste, great service, and so on. Sounds a bit like a bunch of cliches doesn't it? However, it is just as valid to define your brand by what it is against, and...
Scenario planning deserves a rethink.
Scenario planning was a popular tool 20 years ago, but seems to have been supplanted by other tools, and priorities, or forgotten. In an increasingly unpredictable world, it makes sense to step back, and consider a range of perhaps unlikely scenarios, after all, those...