Mar 1, 2010 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
It is very tempting for marketers to become all sweaty about the prospect of a message going viral, all that free awareness, when in the old days, it would take lots and lots of advertising, costing big dollars.
If only it was that easy, just make a funny video and load it up!
It is still a matter of deciding who you want to delight, executing, and then you have a chance that they will spread the word, but without the focus on the small group to whom the experience of whatever it is you are selling is compelling, it is unlikely anyone will make the effort to spread your word for you.
In the early stages, it is inevitably, “one at a time” marketing, and the web does not make it easier than it has always been, it is just a different tool.
Feb 24, 2010 | Branding, Innovation, Marketing
It seems that most innovation is aimed at getting more of the same for the same price, rather than making the experience with the product better.
Every time I see an ad for a new car, it seems to have more airbags, more electronic gizmos to go wrong the day the warranty ends, but who really needs it all to get from point A to point B reliably, comfortably, at a modest cost, which is the point of having a car.
Surely it is time to innovate backwards, do less, strip the glitter, simplify.
I used to shave with a single blade, now I am a poof unless I shave with five, my stringy beard is not five times tougher than when I was 21, just a bit more gray worked its way in.
Two businesses, Gillette and Intel have led the way in adding features that they think will give them a marketing advantage through differentiation, and then turning them into benefits.
For a funny, sarcastic view of the trend to complication, follow the link to the Onion site, and have a laugh.
Feb 23, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
How often is the “next big thing” hiding in your organisation without you knowing?
Fairly often is seems.
Probably the classic example, is the development of the first digital camera by a Kodak engineer , Steven Sasson in 1975.
Kodak, with a totally dominant position in the film market had a huge amount to lose with the development of an alternative, and ironically, many of the adjacent inventions such as advances in storage volumes, which enables the digital photographic technology to be realised, and which also made the computer industry as we now see it possible, were also developed in their labs, but put aside, as Kodak commercial management saw little of interest to their business.
Way after the digital camera market had been populated by the likes of Sony, Kodak woke up, but way too late to preserve their market dominance, or even have a role in the shape of it.
Meanwhile, the inventor toiled away inside Kodak, watching others commercialise the technology he initiated.
The lesson here is that you need to creatively engage with all stakeholders, whilst seeing the opportunities through eyes other than those that restrict the view to the status quo.
Feb 22, 2010 | Branding, Marketing, Sales, Small business
What will be the continuing impact of the development of housebrands by retailers, and the current heightened value awareness of consumers? Most FMCG suppliers lose sleep over the retailers undermining their profitability by hogging shelf space with far cheaper imitations of their brands, brought to market overnight without much concern about the long term health and development of the category, but delivering short term profitability to them at the expense of their suppliers.
This apparent duplicity, retailers demanding innovation and category building activity from their suppliers, whilst undermining their ability and willingness to invest has to have its limits. Clearly, the old mass market model of branding is over, but what has replaced it?
Increasingly I see the evolution of focused brands and retailers serving the more niche markets, and segments of larger markets where something different is being delivered to customers. Retailers are enabling a new breed of supplier with deep category expertise to emerge at the expense of the older mass market model, and they are in turn fuelling the growth of specialist retailers.
Feb 21, 2010 | Branding, Management, Marketing
Many brands over time have been built by using “mystique” as an ingredient, generally in the form of information withheld, scarcity, price, and the stories that surround the product.
In this connected world, we are bombarded with information, almost everything we could think of to ask is there, a few clicks away, and so it has become counter-intuitive to build a brand based on a lack of information.
Could we build Coca Cola from scratch today, its “secret” recipe held in a bank vault? Would that story hold, or would an employee be on a blog giving us the recipe, and dismembering the bank vault story.
There is a marketing trade-off to be made, mystique against a real, quantifiable product benefit, but how do you demonstrate a benefit that is essentially qualitative. Pepsi tried it with its “Taste Test” marketing, and came unstuck.
In the end it comes back to making the brand stand for something specific, and hard to copy, so it says something about those who choose to use it.
Feb 18, 2010 | Change, Management, Marketing, Sales
As publishing goes electronic, and the hype about the Ipad, Kindle, and other reader technologies, evolves, and drives behavior changes, publishers need to consider how they are going to market, as most consumption of books is still generated by seeing it, physically in the bookstore. This is particularly true in the case of gifts, which is a very large part of the book market. As stores go out of business, how do publishers replace the awareness of a new book, the “feel” of it from the shelf, the pleasure of the interaction at point of purchase?
Amazons Kindle generally allows the first chapter to be downloaded before purchase, but will that be enough?
As in most other retail categories, the probable answer is that the generalist, mass market shops will decline radically in numbers, partly replaced by both specialist retailers who carry a depth of range of a particular genre, huge mega stores in cheap locations, and perhaps hole in the wall retailers with a printer/binder where you can order and print off the book, or part of the book wanted on the spot.
Whatever happens, the status quo has been busted wide open.
