Apr 12, 2017 | Customers, Demand chains, Marketing
The nature of competition has changed dramatically in the last decade.
We no longer live in a world where information is limited and controlled, where the old truism that information is power gave the few power over the rest of us applies.
It is no longer a competition amongst a few cashed up suppliers to use the power of advertising in a few tightly controlled communication channels to stuff the supply chain to limit our choices.
It is no longer a supply chain controlled by a very few of those who are able to supply, it is a demand chain, under the personal control of those who have a need.
It is now a competition for our attention.
Those with the money in their pockets, or at least access to it, have all the power, as there are literally millions of channels by which we can be reached.
I love the work of Hugh McLeod, have been following him for a long time, as those regular readers of StrategyAudit will know from the numerous times I have used his images as headers. It is because he is able to do with a few squiggles, what Albert Einstein recommended when he said ‘everything should be made as simple as possible, no simpler‘.
This post, and the borrowed header, I felt really reduced the marketing task down to its simplest form. Gain the attention of people who care, those to whom your value proposition is relevant, and you have a chance to make a difference.
Jul 9, 2015 | Branding, Customers, Demand chains, Marketing, Strategy
All those brand stories: gone.
Every now and again I see something so stupid, so irrational, and so destructive of a valuable brand, that I think that perhaps the loonies really do have the keys to the asylum.
One of them happened yesterday.
There was a radio news report that Akubra would cease to buy any of the raw material required for their hats, rabbit skins, from Australian suppliers.
From here on they would be using 100% imported skins.
One of the honchos from Akubra was interviewed, and he was blathering about looking after all stakeholders, that sacrificing 4-5 jobs in Kempsey where the hats are made was worth it to ensure the business remained viable, and that the 5,000 retailers around Australia needed to be assured of continuous supply, or they would be in trouble.
Blimey, stone the crows, 5,000 retailers rioting because there is uncertainty about the viability of a supplier of .00000001% of their sales.
Then it turned out that just 10% of current skin supplies were local anyway, as the khaleesi virus has cut a swathe through rabbit numbers, for which we are all thankful. Then a supplier was interviewed. He breeds rabbits for the table, the skins to Akubra are a very useful addition to his cash flow, important even, but not make or break, so now the skins will go to landfill.
How much better it would have been to set about supporting the Australian industry, modernising their equipment, working with their suppliers, so that this Australian icon could continue to grow, particularly as wild rabbit numbers seem to be increasing as the virus becomes less effective.
What a positive brand story they could have created and spread, reinforcing the existing position, telling the stories that are the foundation of their brand, but instead they chose to trash their brand, built up over 100 years plus.
Your brand is an amalgam of all the stories told about you, your products, the situations encountered, and the experiences users have with the products. The stories Akubra could tell are legion, but instead they choose to self-destruct their most valuable asset.
Next thing you know, a global brand like Coke will replace itself. Oh, poop, they already did.
Sigh.
Let the loonies go free.
Jul 11, 2014 | Customers, Demand chains, Marketing, Strategy
Water will become the frontier of conflict and innovation in the C21
Few things are more important than how we feed ourselves, and get access to clean water. Without these, our species will not survive, our numbers are increasing rapidly, as the resources of the planet, particularly available water, are being consumed faster than replacement rates.
According to the UN, 6-8 million people die every year due to water related disease or disaster, 2.5 billion do not have access to sanitation, and nearly a billion do not have clean drinking water. I suspect water will be the root cause of much of the international power plays over the next 50 years.
During this last week, there was an international Peri Urban conference in Sydney. Much earnest discussion amongst the disappointingly low number of attendees went on, but there were some lessons that need to be learned beyond the gravity of the emerging crisis on water management:
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- For the message to get out beyond those in the room, the facts need to be told as stories to which the public can relate, and engage, creating pressure on decision makers to allocate some priority to the questions raised. Dry academic papers read by Professors with limited story-telling skills, accompanied by PowerPoint slides as comprehensible as the Rosetta stone will not cut the mustard. The presentations I saw reminded of Sir Ken Robinsons classic line that “the only purpose of academic bodies is to get their heads to meetings”.
- Marketing is not just useful, but required. Twitter is now routinely used by conference organisers to get their message out, and there was a handle for the conference, #periurban14, which attracted 1 tweet. Enough said.
- For Peri Urban agriculture to be a reality, it is required to be economically sustainable, as well as ecologically sustainable. Discussion of the barriers and challenges to economic sustainability would appear to me to be of vital interest to the topic, but beyond some minor consideration of the evolving organic market, little was said, the vital role of consumer demand ignored.
I presented at a workshop breakout session. A short presentation that set out to make the point that whatever happens in the growing part of the agricultural process, you still need a customer to make the whole thing commercially sustainable. There were so few people there that clearly the issue of commercial sustainability being a vital foundation of change has not yet resonated.
Conferences are a vital part of the process of creating and disseminating Intellectual capital. The presentations are just a small part of the mix, the relationships built with other conference attendees, and the opportunity to leverage the messages to wider audiences via social media are the real reasons conferences are worth the time and expense.
Feb 25, 2014 | Branding, Change, Collaboration, Demand chains, Marketing, retail
A pilot program I have been recently involved with, setting out to assist the evolution of a” Sydney Harvest” brand of local produce has not delivered the results hoped for.
After years of agitation by produce growers in the Sydney basin, beset as they are by aggressive competition from the chain stores, lack of scale and high operating costs as a result of being in semi urban areas, governed by urban concerns, the pilot was created. It was a collaboration between a small number of Sydney basin growers, and specialist retailers aimed at delivering the freshest and best possible produce to those discerning and demanding customers who choose to shop at the specialist produce outlets.
The value proposition was simple : “You know it is fresh, because it come from down the road, you know the retailer, and here is the grower, guaranteeing product provenance and farming practice sustainability”.
In considering the reporting of the exercise, part of the shortcoming of the pilot was that there was little commitment beyond the verbal from the participants, even though the verbal commitment was strong. This is very common in the early stages of collaborative exercises, everyone says “yes” and waits for others to do the lifting. The emergence or otherwise of a “champion” someone who takes on the challenges at a visceral level, can be the main bellwether of success.
Watching a presentation by Seth Godin last night, he articulated just the situation we had.
There was no “connection” between the participants beyond the superficial, the human connection was not there.
Godin calls Connection “The asset of the future” and in a connected world, it would be hard to argue against this proposition. He further identified 4 pre-conditions of connection occurring.
- Co-Ordination. There was co-ordination in this pilot, but it was managed from the outside, by me, there was little skin in the co-ordination part of the game by participants.
- Trust. Trust evolves over time as a result of behaviour, it is never given, it has to be earned. In this case, we underestimated hugely the role to be played by trust, and the preconditions necessary for its evolution.
- Permission. Seth is talking about permission being given by the subject of a marketing effort, so this pilot is a different set of circumstances, nevertheless, whilst” permission” was given in the sense that all signed up to the pilot knowing exactly what was going to happen, and the role they were expected to play, when it went away, nobody missed it. The “permission” whilst given was nothing more than a superficial “OK”
- Exchange of ideas. In this case, whilst there was superficial buy in, the subsequent behaviour did not include interaction amongst the participants. They were too busy and pre-occupied with the normal business to put the time aside to exchange ideas, and get to know on a human level the other participants ,exchange ideas and experiences, and learn from each other.
This stuff is really, really, hard, and the only way we learn is by jumping in and having a go.
Oct 22, 2013 | Change, Demand chains, Marketing, Strategy
The success of the last 250 years in western economies is based on the economies of scale. Harnessing technology to deliver greater productivity per unit of input, capital, labour, and raw material.
All industries have been disrupted from the cottage stage to industrial, and the change has spawned industries unimaginable even to our fathers.
Agriculture has been no different, “factory farming” is the standard, even it is it still outside in a paddock.
It now would appear to me that there are the beginnings of a reverse disruption, accompanied and enabled by the removal of organisational and arbitrage barriers enabled by the web. Words and phrases like “Local” “sustainability ” fresh” “product provenance” and “demand driven” keep on coming through. A small but increasing number of consumers are seeking out products that deliver these promises, and a few specialist retailers are suddenly seeing the emergence of a consumer group who will not be seduced by the giant retail chains.
A semantic disruption?
Agriculture in the Sydney basin has been under pressure from development for the last 50 years, and with some exceptions concentrated in intensive industries, has become increasingly marginal. There is not much left to meet the demands of this consumer driven semantic disruption as it evolves. However, those who are left, both producers and specialist retailers, have an opportunity to alter their business to leverage the emerging disruption.
Oct 1, 2013 | Category, Customers, Demand chains, Marketing, retail
It is pretty trite to point out, again, that the reason businesses survive is to satisfy customers.
In fresh produce markets, this has been pretty much forgotten as the share of the consumers dollar that ends up in the farmers pockets has progressively dropped over the last 50 years from around 50% to now 10% for the lucky ones.
This is below in many cases the cost of production, so there goes food security, at least at the prices we have become used to!
This squeezing of farmers has evolved as retailers have built scale, and managed their logistics to deliver margin from produce, and consumers have favored convenience and price over product “eatability”.
Now however, it may be that the worm is turning.
Some consumers, certainly a marketable proportion, are turning back to favour freshness, product provenance, and taste, and are finding those characteristics in farmers markets, direct home delivery, and the few specialist retailers who have survived. These consumers are driving the evolution of a transparent “demand chain” which is putting some leverage back into the hands of farmers, if they can figure out how to remove the impediments to transparency, and the ticket clippers who inhabit the chain.
The tools of the web are slowly turning the supply chain of old into a demand chain, a supply process that responds to consumer demand, preferences, and habits. Farmers being able to communicate with those who consume their produce, and respond accordingly disappeared when we moved en masse to the cities, as no longer were we living in the small communities that enabled the communication.
Now however, that ability is back, so use it, and eat better!
