Features and benefits
How often we confuse the reasons our customers buy products, how easy it is to get carried away with the technology, the newness, the features of the product, and never consider the real, usually unstated drivers of consumption. Great marketing is always about the...
Challenge of the first.
In this digital age, the first contact in most situations is digital, where the marginal cost is approaching zero. This simple fact has changed the sales cycle, as this contact can evolve into an offer to become closer, or it can become a barrier, but each party...
Origins of “free”
As the web makes the marginal cost of anything that can be delivered electronically too close to zero to measure, the world of marketing changes. Convincing the boss that the capacity of the rack of servers he has just shelled out for should be given away is often a...
Copying is not enough.
It is pretty easy copying the machines, layouts, and the physical things that go towards producing something, and there are consultants by the thousand who will help if you need it. What you cannot duplicate easily are the management systems that are deployed. You...
Problem solving continuum.
The variety of approaches to problem solving appear to form a continuum, that looks a bit like: The "workaround" where you find a way around the problem, hoping by magic it will go away. Further along the continuum we have some sort of score chart which logs the...
Other consequences
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is one of disastrous proportions immediately, and into the long term as the environmental impacts become clearer. However, there are other consequences not talked about yet, that of the impact it will have on the willingness of...
Lessons from the buffet.
I had lunch a few months ago with a client, just at the local club, nothing fancy, as we discussed the very challenging problems of operational flow through his plant. It was a buffet, simple, serve yourself, and as luck would have it, a couple of tour busses landed...
Less is often more
Most marketers equate success to more; more ads, more locations, more customers, more Sku's, more appearances in the press, and so on. However, the quest for "more" leaves a lot on the table, as it disregards the value of what you have. Would you rather have an extra...
Knowledge worker productivity.
How do you figure out the productivity of employees paid to think? In the old days, productivity was measured by a range of quantitative measures, quantity, cost, conformance to standard, cycle times, and so on. Now, when the productivity is ideas, improvements,...
The power of a presentation
A while ago, I sat through two consecutive presentations on related topics, the first was energising, interesting, and memorable, the second was cold, dirty, dishwater. Thinking about the manner of the presentations, rather than the value of the words, led to the...