What is a brand?
A brand is the expression of consumers equity in a product offering. This offering is a mix of tangible and intangible factors, a bundle of benefits, each being inter-related to the others in ways that may vary depending on the differing consumers. Brand strength =...
Responsiveness and responsibility go together.
In a small business, every action has someone responsible for it, whereas in a large organisation , or worse, a public bureaucracy, nobody has responsibility for the dumb things they do, they just become an automatically imposed "rule" that carries the sanction of...
Successful alliances manage the dissimilarities.
Alliances form because organizations have similarities, and commonalities that promise synergy. However, most alliances fail because they fail to manage the areas if dissimilarity. Leo Tolstoy remarked that happy marriages were the result of the manner in which...
A tiger of an opportunity
Ironic isn't it, Tiger Woods has had his squeeky clean image trashed, and in the process has dropped hundreds of millions in endorsements, but his profile has never been higher. Gossip columns, serious discussion in the business pages, piles of stuff on the net from...
Resilience is a requirement for demand chains.
Evolving a demand chain requires great resilience from all parties involved, it is new territory every time it is addressed because all situations are different, and developing a set of rules for implementation has not yet been done well, almost not done at all. A...
Breadth of kaizen
Over many years, the best marketers I have come across have been trained as scientists, in a wide range of disciplines, many had no formal marketing training. Took me a long time to figure it out, the scientifically trained people had as a part of their automatic...
So, a new decade.
Is it just a date, or does it signify a new beginning? A bit of both I suspect, and forecasting the future should be left to the ladies in tents at the circus, but a couple of things we know for sure: Firstly, the infrastructure of the world economy will undergo a...
Happy 2010
Business is basically simple, it is people that generate the complications and distractions, and us that allow the distractions that make it complicated. The simple rule: spend less than you have coming in, and work like hell to bring it in. Now the economic sun...
The real value of Christmas.
Christmas is a great opportunity to contact people you have not had a reason to contact for a while. Old friends, former colleagues, former clients, those who share an experience or passion and people you just like. In this world of electronic communication, when...
Merry Christmas
It is Christmas day, so I wish the best for 2010 to the dedicated few and the black dog who dip into this blog on a regular basis. I hope that what I write touches a nerve, brings a grimace, stirrs a laugh, or motivates some action. The worst outcome is that it gets...