Aug 1, 2011 | Change, Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
There is a powerful new analytical tool on the block, “social network cartography” for lack of a better term. The masses of data now becoming available are able to be analysed with respect to the networks that exist amongst people. If your friends are obese, the your chances of being obese are greater, if your friends smoke, there is a greater chance you will. This can all be mapped.
Much of the pioneering work has been done by Nicholas Christakis and colleagues from Harvard Medical school over a 30 year period, starting with data generated by the Framington Heart Study, which is being reported increasingly widely, such as this piece on smoking in the Boston area, reported in Kelso’s Corner blog, as a tool for change.
Christakis presents his ideas in this TED presentation, along with more examples. This data cartography is a tool that is evolving rapidly, but appears to me to have an amazing capacity to create graphics that will demonstrate all sorts of complex arguments, and as you know, a picture tells a thousand words.
Jul 28, 2011 | Branding, Marketing
Sometimes asking a customer, or potential customer what they want is a bad strategy, as they can only respond from the perspective of what they already know and understand.
When you have something different and unknown to offer, there is not much point asking, you just need to get trial.
The elBulli restaurant run by Ferran Adria has been voted the best restaurant in the world for some years now, it costs a fortune, is very hard to get to, and has anything but a conventional menu, yet thousands are turned away each week. Chef Adria ignores customers, and they love him for it.
Several times over the years I have launched products that were genuinely new, and learnt very early on not to do any quantitative research at all, and no qualitative work unless those involved could see, touch, feel, and use at least a close prototype of the finished product. Only then can they offer an opinion worth listening to, but even then, there is little you can do to prototype the power of the brand which may evolve over time.
To continue the elBulli example. Had Chef Adria put some plates of curry ice-cream in front of a group of a group of people who ate at 5 star locations, and told them how much a trip to his restaurant would cost, and by the way, it was a 2 hour drive through treacherous mountain roads to get there, and they would have to wait 6 months for a booking that had nothing to do with when they may want to eat, it possibly would not get a gold star from the research group. How is it then that it is judged the best, and is probably the most famous restaurant in the world?
Just when you thought you had the rules of marketing nailed, something like this comes along!
Jul 25, 2011 | Communication, Leadership
Rupert Murdoch’s refusal to accept any responsibility for the behavior of his staff in tapping phones to get stories, was grand farce. Did he pay the pie-chucker?
When compared with the actions of the MD of Arnott’s some years ago when there was a poisoning scare and he was televised throwing boxes of biscuits into a dumpster, and Toyota MD Akio Toyoda recently fronting US congressional hearings to accept full responsibility for the recent Toyota quality glitches, and many others, Rupert’s gutless display leads me to a new verb.
To “Rupert”
This describes the situation where the one clearly in charge points at various and varying underlings and says “them, not me”. In all probability, those poor underlings accept the charge, as it appears young “Becky” has, in exchange for either “be quiet” money, or keep “your job” choices.
I think we can have some fun with this.
My local council, Burwood, is currently doing a “Rupert” on the approval in 2002 of a very dodgy DA, and the associated transfer of public land.
There is a bit of “Ruperting” going on in the Liberal party in relation to the support of the Howard Government of an ETS
The airport train yesterday was cancelled without notice, leaving hundreds of very disgruntled train passengers (me included) waiting for almost non existent buses out on Elizabeth Street to take us to the airport. I wonder if the new transport minister will do a “Rupert” today and blame the previous government?
Well, at least I like it!
Jul 19, 2011 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
Procter & Gamble is a huge branded consumer business, but seems to be able to maintain the agility and innovation capability of an SME. Supermarket retailers have to be nervous when they display a determination to build a direct business model for their brands, and when they start talking about “qualified retailers” it is music to my ears, having struggled in an unforgiving Australian FMCG duopoly for years. It is the other side of the coin from retailers developing their own brands beyond Housebrand status, noted previously.
P&G tried with Amazon, and the effort had its challenges, so they are quietly widening the approach with this facebook collaboration, creating a new descriptor in the process, “f-commerce” and recruiting Wal-mart as a “qualified retailer” (not bad for a start)
This also ticks facebooks boxes, as it is a strategy to monetarise their huge base of connections to consumers, and sets them against Amazon in the e-fulfilment business.
Poor old Microsoft, increasingly it seems to have missed the boat. Just a decade ago the US government had them in court trying to break them up to give others a chance.
What’s the old saying about roosters and feather dusters?
Jul 18, 2011 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Strategy
There is a new boy on the block to match Colgate, P&G, and other international brand owners, but one who does not play fair, one who controls access to consumers, removing their options of choice. Tesco. A retailer with the clout of Tesco that comes from its scale, with its ability to determine which products consumers will see on shelf, is aiming to develop international housebrands in competition with its suppliers.
Some will see this as just commercial common sense, Tesco leveraging their hard won position with consumers, whilst others will see it as the death-nell of brands, something to be opposed by any means.
I suggest it is neither, but neither is it something in the middle, there are other dimensions to the decision that will determine the outcome:
- Will a retailer be able to develop the deep consumer understanding that feeds a sustainable marketing, brand and product development effort necessary to build a real brand as distinct from labels on shelf?
- When a consumer has a problem with a Tesco branded product, and Tesco fails to manage that problem in a satisfactory manner, will the consumer just move to an alternative product, or move to an alternative retailer?
- Will the presence of Tesco branded products on shelf in a category further remove the incentive for proprietary brands to invest in category growth, and will the further removal of that support damage category profitability for Tesco? This profitability squeeze appears to be happening currently in many categories being demolished by retailer housebrands, will it just get worse?
This development is a logical evolution of the path retailers have been travelling for some time, the only real question is weather evolution accepts the change in the model, or will the model, having evolved past the point of sustainability, now wither and die in the face of more effective competitive models.
Jul 14, 2011 | Branding, Marketing
Brands are not uniform things, they are an amalgam of all sorts of contributing factors, patterns of attraction, that together make up an experience.
People recognise and relate to brands in a very personal way, and in the age of net communication, the opportunity to build and leverage from the notion of brands as patterns of behaviour and preference is building daily. People have friends who are all different, but looking behind the people, there will usually be a few common denominators, education, interests, a particular point of view, something that binds them together that may not be immediately obvious.
The brands people choose to engage with are no different to the people they choose to engage with, they contain a pattern of characteristics that is attractive.
