Jun 10, 2013 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Small business
Most customers could not give a rats arse about your vision, values, your customer value proposition, and all the other stuff highly paid consultants rant on about (obviously not me).
What they do care about are the little things, the ones that affect them.
I bank with the same bank I have since they were the only ones who would lend me money for a house 35 years ago, and have just not bothered to change, I usually buy the one brand or petrol, not because it makes the car run any better, but because they are around the corner, and the restaurant I go to most is a little suburban French place that does seasonal vegetables in an ever changing vinaigrette as a side. I love it.
I used to always buy my books (yes, I still buy real books) at the same bookshop where one of the staff seemed to be able to read everything that came through the door, and was able to steer me towards stuff I might like with considerable accuracy. Now however, the store owner is cutting costs, staff has been reduced, and the recommendations of the 15 year old casuals are just not up to the mark.
So, before you spend all that money on the marketing consultants with the new bag of clichés, and web enabled tricks, exercise a bit of common sense and consider the small things, why people come to you, why they choose you instead of the place down the road or over the web, how do you deliver value to them, and what keeps them coming back.
It helps to ask, most people are happy to answer honestly, and the simple fact that you care enough to ask is valued.
Jun 6, 2013 | Branding, Demand chains, Innovation, Marketing, Small business
Coles limited engagement in an “anti factory farming” campaign is indicative of the strategic and marketing tightrope the food industry in this country is walking.
On the one hand we have an effective duopoly of FMCG retailing exercising their power to increase their returns to shareholders, and service their customers by both maximising margin and minimising costs. A core part of this strategy is to absorb the proprietary brand margin by aggressively allocating shelf space to housebrand products that are just globally sourced copies of the proprietary Australian products.
On the other hand we have an Australian dollar that has effectively given a 50% price subsidy to the international competitors to the Australian supply chain, at a time when all other domestically sourced input and overhead costs from labour, power, various rates and taxes, freight, and risk costs have all increased substantially. Double whammy!
An added complication is often that the (usually young) buyers in the retailers take the “fast moving” part of the FMCG literally, and fail to recognise the time and investment often required to reflect even a minor change in their product specifications through the supply chain. The consumer end may be fast moving, but when it takes 7 years to mature a fruit tree, and many generations of animals to reflect spec change in the end product, it can be anything but fast moving.
Now Coles have, quite legitimately, moved to build a sort of “animal provenance” into their produce supply chains, as a competitive positioning strategy against Woolworths, increasing the costs of their suppliers, as well as requiring added investment by suppliers for which they need a reasonable chance of a competitive return. This is at the same time they have reduced consumer prices substantially (consumers have been very grateful) in some markets like milk. Whilst Coles, and Woolworths who followed them, may have sacrificed a bit of margin, the supply chain has borne the brunt of it, despite some spin to the contrary.
The small guy has little chance of succeeding against these odds unless he is very smart, and does not have all his eggs in the chain basket, as just competing on the grounds dictated by the chains is a no-win choice.
There are however, strategies that can be deployed to succeed, but they require a re-engineering of the supply chain into a new beast, a Demand Chain that is driven by consumer demand, not supply, and is managed through a chain “community” where information is shared, and is agnostic in some way of the power of the big chains.
Having been a bit gloomy so far, it is however encouraging that the big two retailers are now differentiating themselves competitively, as consumer niches that can be accessed by agile and innovative suppliers. will evolve.
PS. Just after posting, it was announced that Simplot had put its Bathurst and Devenport plants into a wind-down for closure, and McCains had cancelled potato contracts with three big growers. if we needed more evidence of the parlous state of food processing, it just arrived.
Jun 4, 2013 | Branding, Collaboration, Communication, Leadership, Social Media
Hugh MacLeod
There are many people I would like to meet, but a special group of them are the thinkers in the “new media” space.
Brian Solis is one of them, along with Clay Shirky, Hugh McLeod, Mitch Joel, and Seth Godin. These are all people who are shaping the manner in which we perceive the explosion of connectability that is driving our lives, enterprises, and the world we live in.
A current report of the Altimeter group of which Brian is a principal is called “The evolution of Social Business: Six stages of business transformation”. The report, and embedded slideshare presentation puts a framework around the bumbling most organisations are experiencing as they grapple with the opportunities, complications and costs of social, and socialised media.
Two last guests. First, someone who does a fantastic job of curating the content and thinking that is going on, is generous enough to share it all, and who knows all of the above blokes in person as a result of that generosity, Mike Stelzner. Second, an Aussie bird, for a bit of balance to the testosterone, and an alternative way of looking at things, Bernadette Jiwa.
What a truly great dinner group, the conversation would redefine “out of the box”, what pity I suck as a cook.
May 29, 2013 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
This afternoon I saw the best example of marketing I have seen in ages, a metaphor for what it takes to be successful in this crowded, commoditised world.
Two youngsters, dressed in jeans and the T-Shirt of the Cancer Council were stopping people in the street and trying to have a chat with a view to extracting a donation. Both were working hard, were well presented, earnest, spoke well, and had big welcoming grins on their faces. However, one was far more successful than the other in both successfully stopping people, engaging in a conversation, and then extracting a donation.
The less successful was approaching people with the grin, and welcoming patter, only to have most people just brush by. The second did one more very simple thing, he offered his hand, and in almost every case, it was taken, the person stopped, and a conversation started.
The automatic reaction to the simple generosity of offering a hand in welcome was almost irresistible, even to total strangers, in a situation where they knew the “bite” was coming.
Amazing.
Think about your marketing, traditional or social, do you offer the metaphoric hand? Is the follow up “conversation” sufficiently interesting that it has the chance of engaging a potential customer to the point where they will give you their business?
I think offering a hand is the original Social Media, and it still works better than anything else.
May 27, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Social Media
While writing the future proofing of marketing post recently , it also occurred to me that we have a generation of kids now becoming serious adults who have grown up immersed in the web 2.0. They are a different breed, even different to their almost generational siblings born in the late 70’s and 80’s who were around in the development days, these kids leaving school now did not know a world without an i in front of it.
iadults?
The sale of 6 year old Tumblr, created by a young high-school dropout David Karp for $1.1 billion, to Yahoo this week just highlights the point. Whilst there are not many smart enough, motivated enough, and commercially capable enough to create a startup that turns into a billion dollar baby, we are not teaching our kids anything like the creativity, agility of mind, and determination necessary to do so.
It scares the daylights out of me, as we are spending billions trying to educate our kids into the mould that made us.
Wrong.
Ken Robinson is clearly right, the traditional, industrial age education is failing our kids, we are not giving them the tools to be successful and happy in a world we cannot forecast. How can a cariculum designed in the nineties be relevent to the intellectual tools and practises necessary on the 2020’s and beyond?
All we talk about is the money it costs, not what we get out the other end, education is not an expense, it is an investment, and we better figure out how to be better at it.
May 21, 2013 | Branding, Category, Marketing, retail, Sales, Small business
I am old enough to remember doing warehouse withdrawals by hand. Heavens.
Then we had early data managers automate the process, an evolution that pottered on for 25 years, through to category management based on scan data, some of which can dive remarkably deep.
However, we ain’t seen nothing yet!.
The combination of retail data, personal card data, social media and the proximity capabilities of mobile applications will set off another revolution promotional and sales strategies.
Some of the technology is becoming pretty standard, the components of so called Big Data, and there is plenty around to tell you what to do, like this McKinsey article.
However, it takes resources and deep capabilities to effectively leverage the emerging possibilities, so how do SME’s compete?
It seems there are a few strategies that will become mandatory for those who actually want to survive:
- Develop scale. This does not just mean individual enterprises, which is by definition not possible for SME’s, but I see the emergence of “data co-operatives” groups of category marketers (some may even be competitors) who contribute to resourcing the necessary data science.
- Develop deep domain knowledge. This is like suggesting breathing is good for health, but the transitory and superficial culture surrounding product and brand management counters deep knowledge. This is a challenge of leadership, and personnel management, difficult topics for most businesses up to a substantial size. It is however, an opportunity to absorb the skills of the baby boomer marketers that are around, whose Intellectual Capital is becoming available for hire, as a contractor, consultant or often as a Director.
- Do extensive “Environmental Research“, and learn from what is happening elsewhere. For 30 years I have pretty well predicted what will happen in the Australian market by deeply engaging with 2 sources. Firstly the trends originating in the UK, which almost inevitably translate to the Australian scene at some point, and secondly being wrapped in social research, the stuff that details the behavior and attitudes of Australians. The original and still the best is the McKay Report. Hugh McKay has an enormous ability to articulate the complication of peoples lives and break them down into things you can use.
- Recognise and act on the simple truth that marketing is now fully accountable. No longer can marketers argue that the impact of their decisions are too hard to tie back to specific activities and costs. The ROI on marketing activity is now almost as transparent as that on capital expenditure, you just have to understand how to go about it, and get the right tools and capabilities in place.
- Differentiate. Notwithstanding the point above, you still need to stand out from the crowd, and the only way to do that is to be noticeably different, to engage with and serve consumers better than anyone else. The genuine creativity needed to do this will attract a premium, simply because it is so rare, and now the impact can be quantified, albeit after the fact.
Need help thinking about all that, give me a call, I have been there before.
