Sep 5, 2010 | Change, Communication, Social Media
In a generation, electronic communication has grown from initial inception to ubiquitous, the fastest adoption of any technology and supporting behavior change ever.
I have heard all sorts of babble about why this is, but it seems to me that there is one simple reason, the removal of the transaction costs in earlier forms of communication.
It now costs virtually nothing to send a message via email, and no more to broadcast that same message to hundreds, often thousands of geographically spread recipients.
The downside of course is that our in-boxes have become clogged by stuff we do not want, and did not ask for, but the delete button is pretty effective.
Sep 2, 2010 | Change, Customers, Marketing, Operations, Sales
We spend lots of time dreaming up new stuff, but there are almost always things that we take as given, things that we do not question, usually because they are so basic, that we never think to do otherwise.
Many years ago, a part of my responsibilities was for the marketing of Ski yoghurt in Australia. At that time, all 1kg yoghurt came in round tubs, it was easy, cheap, all the filling equipment was designed for round tubs, as it was the cheapest shape to produce and print, anything else was a dumb idea, and would cost a motzza. I changed Ski to a rectangular tub, and sales tripled overnight, and the market was changed. Consumers for a number of simple, practical, but to then unspoken reasons, preferred a rectangular tub
The whole industry had been dependent on the manufacturers of the filling equipment, who supplied machinery designed to deliver the least cost option, nobody was silly enough to even consider an added cost alternative, so round tubs were the standard, all operational equipment was optimised for round tubs, and the suggestion that you should retool a factory for an alternative was never considered. It’s just that consumers when given the choice abandoned the round tub overnight, and retailers, reaslising a rectangulat tub offered better shelf utilisation, were happy to put them on shelf.
When looking for opportunities, consider the things that are just “there” that are part of the fabric, and are as a result taken for granted, and find one to change.
Sep 1, 2010 | Communication, Management, Personal Rant
PowerPoint, the Microsoft program has become such a part of the daily regime of sharing information sharing that it has impacted on the way we communicate, and it has its detractors, of which I am one.
Some time ago, I was at a conference where a senior bureaucrat was presenting her departments position. The presentation was replete with animations, and the various tools in PPT to the point where she was prattling on about the great features of the program. What dross.
PowerPoint is the default position now in many situations, but is becoming a crutch, as illustrated in the NY times story.
The lessons are simple:
- Use minimum words on a slide,
- Dump most of the tricky features that just distract from your message,
- Use the opportunity to sell a simple proposition, not to do a “brain-dump” of everything you know,
- Watch and respond to the audience, connect with them,
- Use the program to illustrate your points, not just list them .
Aug 24, 2010 | Communication, Innovation, Social Media
Conventional wisdom of the past decrees that copyright is essential to the well-being and motivation of the suppliers of the publishing stock in trade, authors.
This self serving position is contrary to mountains of evidence accumulating as the web goes into its teenage years of development beyond the geeks. There are thousands of new authors of everything from childrens fiction to scientific treatises on many subjects, and everything in between, things like this blog included.
In this Speigl article, the argument is made, convincingly so given the current evidence from the web, that copyright law is in fact an impediment to publication, and its benefits, rather than a protector.
Aug 19, 2010 | Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Commodity markets have two things in common:
- There is plenty of business to go around, that is why it is a commodity market. In a mature, saturated market, the challenge is to attract some of the business that is around, not build a new market.
- Customers focus aggressively on price, usually because none of the suppliers in the market give them a reason to focus on anything else, and it is an easy common denominator.
Finding a sustainable point of differentiation is never easy, if it was, everyone would be doing it. The starting point is to understand what the commodity you sell is used for, understand how the product adds value to the customer, and restructure the offering around the source of value.
For example, hiring a car is an exercise in price comparison and the convenience of pick-up and drop-off, not much else. A hirer wants a car to give them mobility, flexibility, and economy of time, and money (compared to taxis). Why doesn’t someone charge by the Km after a small base charge to cover insurance and availability. Suddenly, the game is changed! Same with car insurance, we all pay the same differentiated only by the age and location of the driver, and type of car, but cars are about offering mobility, and logically the more you drive, the greater the chance of a claim, so charge by the Km driven after a small base charge to acknowledge the other variables. What about advertising, why not charge by the response, putting some responsibility on the medium to deliver what it promises, even something as basic as printing services, differential pricing based on turnaround times, response rates (even for printed leaflets, brochures, and so on) is possible.
When you charge for the value delivered, as seen by the customer, rather than just the production, the market loses the second of the characteristics noted above, and differentiation has emerged.
Aug 18, 2010 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
A newspaper asks itself “why should I publish this??”
It costs to publish, time, management resources, labor, time on presses, ink, paper, and so on, so it is a key decision, with implications if you get it wrong. An individual by contrast can now ask themselves ‘Why not publish this?” There is no cost, just a bit of time, and the return is you can be a “published” journalist or Photographer or movie-maker, the downside is zero.
The removal, by the availability of the web, of the organizational and transaction costs required to assemble the physical materials to publish a newspaper has driven this reversal. It costs nothing to write a blog, put a photo on Flicker, so why not just do it?.
This simple reversal, “why, to why not” has changed the world.
