What did Henry Ford know about twitter?
In the welter of new media arriving almost daily, is there an element of individuals being empowered to exercise their right to make their own choices after a lifetime of being told what they want by others. Boys are taught from an early age to want a sports car by...
Identify the advocates first.
It is easy to create something, post it on u-tube and sit back and hope it goes "viral" giving you a turbo charged marketing program for not much money. This rarely happens, as the punters know an ad when they see one. The real challenge is to first identify those...
Brands engage people.
November 10 was the 40th birthday of "Sesame Street" perhaps the most influential television program ever produced, and it still brings adults a laugh, amongst the serious messages to kids. I noticed early in the day that Google had Big Bird on their masthead, but did...
Elimination of risk = boring
Our society is obsessed with the elimination of risk, even little ones that really make no difference, and we spend huge resources insuring ourselves against the possibility that something will impact on us in a way we do not like. Local councils ban kids riding...
The two dimensions of a brand.
Every brand to be successful has two dimensions. Generic attributes, those things it must do well to survive in its category. A car must have 4 wheels, be reliable, and not leak in the rain, a watch must tell the time, accurately. Differentiators, those...
Why are we here?
Various expressions of the basis for an organsations existence, Vision, Mission, Purpose, and others, all have different meanings, and certainly different meanings to different people, and have all been misused for years. Some time ago running an agricultural industry...
The fad and fact of transparency.
Suddenly, post GFC, transparency has become a buzz-word. Regulators are calling for "transparency" in financial products, shareholders (and regulators supposedly on their behalf) are calling for "transparency" in executive remuneration schemes, and so on. Those of us...
If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Right?
It is a truism that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Largely those who have practiced measuring and then managing for improvement have done well, Toyota with their TPS have taken over the world auto industry, and 6 Sigma, first embraced by GE has driven...
Loud Vs right.
New communication mediums have allowed small groups, and individuals to make a lot of noise, but the volume of noise does not necessarily relate to the logic or accuracy of their position, just to their ability to make noise. Listen for the validity of a point of...
A point of view.
We talk about vision, mission, and all the rest, but at a more fundamental level, evolving a point of view, shared throughout the firm, about the "shape" and trends of the industries we are in, and those of the industries we intersect with, is a really basic thing...