Aug 17, 2010 | Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
The word curator brings to mind an old bloke (mostly) running a museum, deciding what is displayed, and how, what gets bought or created, what gets thrown out, and what gets saved for another day.
The job of an editor in the one-way media (print, radio, TV) is effectively as a curator, making those same decisions. But the world has changed, now the web is a two way street, those decisions no longer have to be made, now everything can be published, by anyone, so in effect, the role of curator has lost most of its power. But there is a wrinkle, there is so much stuff out there, that a curating role is emerging to trawl the web for items of value, and to create and edit material that goes to a specific set of interests.
One of the best is the Eureka Report, run by a group of Australia’s most credible business journalists and commentators, who have created a conversation with the “tribe” whose interests are around business, politics, and wealth creation in Australia.
It is the newspaper of the future.
Aug 15, 2010 | Branding, Customers, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
How do you compare prices in a range of stores when standing in the aisle of your local supermarket?
The easy answer now, is “on your iphone“. A crowd called Red Laser have an app that scans the code, compares the product/price to others scanned (presumably there is a data base somewhere out in the cloud) and using google maps is able to compare prices in your general location.
This development has the potential to re-write the equation between brands, the value of things like location and parking, and price in the retail space, and with effectively an FMCG retail duopoly in Australia, it will consume some headspace in Co-op castle in Melbourne, and the Taj in Sydney.
It is a “pity” we wasted millions on a “Grocery Watch” white elephant, a technology/populist bet in the early days of the Rudd government, when a couple of years down the track, a similar thing can be done better on your phone. We now have the same sort of thinking making a 45 billion dollar bet on the NBN, a bet that will impact on generations. Hope they get it right this time!
Aug 11, 2010 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
“Banksters”, an emotive term coined by Father Charles Coughlin, a commentator in the early thirties as the practices of bankers and financiers during the boom in the lead up to the Wall Street crash in late 1929.
It seems that the Banksters are back in 2010 as the financial position of much of the developed world stutters, banks are making heaps by creating a mountain of debt.
Greece is effectively bankrupt, the UK and US have public debt at a level just below their GDP, the overhang of retail housing debt in the US is huge, and at some point the Germans will get sick of having their economy effectively underwriting the value of the Euro, but the bankers are back from the brink, especially in the US, making lots of money for themselves while the financial systems remain broken.
In Australia, small businesses are starving for capital, Governments appear generally incapable of responsibly running public finance in the face of the temptation to pork barrel regularly due to the election cycle, but we have a bogus debate about the evils of public debt at around 6% of GDP, when it is dwarfed by private debt built to fund the banksters lifestyles, at around 150% of GDP. The clincher, yesterday the Commonwealth bank announced a profit of 6.1 Billion dollars. I have no problem with profits, even large ones, but this one is in the context of a government guarantee of deposits for the major banks during the crunch, which led to a flight of capital from those who could provide competition to the big 4 banks, reducing competitive pressure, and fattening the remaining banks margins as a result .
The real question is “will we wake up in time?”
Aug 10, 2010 | Communication, Management, Small business
Sitting around many board and advisory tables over the years, I have observed that those that are successful follow what I have started to call the rule of thirds. Actually, there are four rules, but the first is generic to all meetings: have an agenda, follow it, take minutes, allocate a specific time to end, and follow up. The other three relate to the manner of organization of the agenda and are:
1/3 review the financials, the past period, and coming periods, with particular emphasis on cash generation.
1/3 Consider the immediate issues, gain agreement on actions, outcomes and timetables,
1/3 Consider the longer term issues, all those things that will not impact on the immediate performance of the business, but are in the medium to long term critical for survival.
Most board meetings tend to spend considerable time on the first, a bit on the second, and little on the third, but organizing the time allocated, and being disciplined about the manner in which the time is spent will pay dividends.
Aug 9, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Perhaps I am dreaming, but there appears to be a “nudge” (not yet a trend) amongst the manufacturing firms I talk to towards a review of the cost/benefit of overseas sourcing of manufactured products.
At the end of the spectrum where ownership of IP, and innovation are important, firms appear to be reconsidering the value of “off-shoring” recognising that keeping the processes that create value closer to home, where they can be developed, and leveraged with a more sensitive hand over the long term is better than taking a short term cost benefit.
This is not to say that there is any real future for commodity manufacturing in a high cost environment like Australia, apart from the very few areas where we should have a natural advantage, wool processing for instance, but there is a rich future for the development of sophisticated, market sensitive, innovation led manufacturing, so long as we are able to grasp the drivers of that success.
Aug 8, 2010 | Management, Marketing
Watching the current federal election campaign from both major parties, it seems they both should go back to marketing 101, and consider what it takes to engage with those to whom you want to sell something. Both to my mind are failing badly to create a brand that has a proposition that is attractive to those who take the time to consider their “purchase” rather than just buying the same one they bought last time.
From a different perspective, I had the pleasure of meeting with a couple of NSW shadow ministers with a group of business people last week. Their problem is that although the current NSW Labor government is so on the nose that is seems inconceivable that they will be reelected, very few in the electorate know anything about the alternative, and they have great difficulty gaining any media traction, so unlike their Federal counterparts, their problem is awareness, and how do they generate it, not that the product appears to be in tatters.
