Feb 10, 2014 | Change, Communication, Marketing, Small business
The most powerful way to get someone to agree with your idea is to ask them the leading question, and have them give you the answer you want.
Ronald Regan used this technique a lot.
He did not tell the American people during his election campaign: “your economic situation has deteriorated over the last 48 months”, instead he asked the famous question: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”. The answer was a resounding “NO” which led to the obvious follow up question:” What do you need to change?”
Resoundingly, he was elected.
Asking a question compels a response, and the formulation of the words to convey that response in turn provokes a deeper, more intensive processing of the question, and leaves less room for ambiguity in the way the receiver responds.
It is the beginning of an engagement process.
However, it does not always work.
Ever noticed how pollies never answer the question asked unless the answer suits them?
Watching the 7.30 report a few minutes ago (Aussie readers will know what that is) the Opposition leader, in response to pointed questioning about the announcement by Toyota today that they will cease manufacturing cars in Australia, simply pointed out that in the 5 months since the Abbott Government had been elected, all three car-makers had announced production would cease. As if the last 25 years, overvalued $A, and small scale of the domestic market had no impact.
To anyone with half a brain watching, his failure to at least address the question in some modest way, simply corroded his credibility.
So, answering a question well is as much an art as asking them, and can be used to turn the tables.
Next time you see a really good salesman, just watch and listen, and learn.
Feb 5, 2014 | Branding, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
SPC factory circa 1925
If ever you needed convincing that investing for the long haul in a brand was worth the time, energy, risk, and money, there is evidence aplenty in the remnants of the Australian food industry.
It has been reported that the Peters Ice Cream brand is on the market, again, and being scrutinised by the losers in the WCB takeover by Canadian Saputo, Bega Cheese and Murray Goulbourn.
This makes absolute sense as ice cream is a great product in which to store the value of that highly perishable raw material, Milk, almost irrespective of its consumer profit margins. Way, way better than cheese and milk powder, those other value stores currently favoured by Bega and MG
Peters was clearly going to be for sale at some point, having been bought and sold many times over the last 25 years. It is currently owned by a Private equity group, who bought it from Nestle, who bought it from National Foods, (themselves later flogged off to Japanese brewer Kirin) who bought it from Pacific Dunlop, who bought it from Adsteam, and so on. A venerable Australian company started in 1907 by Fred Peters, but passed around like a like a turd in a game of corporate pass-the-parcel.
Through all that ownership turmoil, restructures, factory rationalisation, re-engineering, asset stripping, and a whole bunch of other cliches, the brand still holds a very significant place in the billion dollar Australian ice cream/ice confection market.
Similarly, while SPC the company goes to the undertaker, SPC the brand now owned by Coke in Europe has a significant place in European food markets based on the heritage of canned fruit from the Shepparton region. From almost the formation of the company in 1917 to 1973 when Britains entry into the EU locked out agricultural imports, SPC built a brand that 35 years later is still worth a marketer the calibre of Coke resurrecting. Now of course, SPC branded product in Europe is grown and packed in Spain and North Africa.
If Australia is to be a serious player in the provision of sustainable long term food supplies for ourselves and export, we desperately need to recognise the role of branded value adding. We need the vision and commitment, emotional, technical, managerial and financial to stop just flogging the tradeable commodity, as we will never be the least cost producer, the only ones who survive in a commodity race to the bottom of the price scale.
Feb 4, 2014 | Change, Governance, Leadership, Marketing, Operations
Charman Stone Member for Murray
The decision by the federal Government not to support SPC last week has opened a can of worms. This time, the worms have some grunt, as the head worm, Charman Stone has shone a light into the corners of the decision, and in the process, dumped on her party.
Thank heavens!!.
For the first time as another important business in the Australian food processing industry seemingly disappears, there is some debate about the facts, and analysis of the implications, rather than just having emotion and ideology spewed at us. Anything other than facts, and dispassionate analysis based on those facts, is meaningless if we are to come to grips with the real commercial issues, rather than those of political self preservation.
All this has been sparked by Stones vigorous defense of SPC in her electorate, culminating this morning in an interview in which she as much as called the PM a liar.
Pretty strong, even from one noted to be a bit outspoken
Over a long period, the Australian food processing industry has been gutted by a range of factors, from the globalisation of supply chains, the power of the retail duopoly, years of drought (drought is really the new normal) short sighted, risk averse, and spineless management, union intractability, subsidies of various sorts recieved by international competitors, and the high $A. Some we can address, some we can’t, but allocating blame is not a helpful strategy.
Hopefully, some further intelligent debate will evolve, but the inconsistencies in policy, highlighted by the Cadbury decision before the election, and announcement today of support for Huon Aquaculture will do nothing for the confidence of investors.
Charman Stone is aggressively putting her case, lets see some other pollies grow some backbone.
Feb 3, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
One of the questions I am most often asked is “how do we make this go viral”. To my mind it is also one of the silliest.
The objective of “social” weather it be media, or a drink in the pub, is engagement with others. The objective of viral is, well… not sure, apart from entertaining shocking, scamming ,infecting and occasionally informing people we do not know, will probably never meet, and who will have no impact on our lives.
However, the manner of the diffusion of content on the net logically has an impact on the level of engagement an individual will have with any piece of shared content.
Something that is “e-broadcast” to everyone on a list by an unknown person or institution to the individual receivers, is unlikely to have high open and resend rates, so will not go far. By contrast, something sent selectively to individuals with whom there is already a connection of some sort will have a higher open and resend rate.
It is these open and resend metrics that count, in effect an endorsement from a sender you know that it is worth your time to open the link.
The return on effort is definitely with social, not viral.
Jan 27, 2014 | Change, Governance, Marketing, Small business
In Australia today, January 26, it is “Australia Day”, the day we Aussies, or most of us, think the place was started, conveniently ignoring the thousands of years of habitation before Captain Philip turned up with a bunch of convicts in Botany Bay.
For most of us it is also the start of the working year, the end of any summer holiday, back to the grindstone.
For me, thinking about the coming year over everyone else’s break (we self employed do not get one) I came to the conclusion that 2014 was going to be the year of Analytics, Big Data if you prefer, the year when we finally recognised the now central place analytics hold in our commercial and private lives.
It does not have to be the geek version of analytics. Most of the businesses I work with are small, some tiny, but every one has potential assets hidden amongst the various databases they collect, usually without trying. Riverina Grove, a manufacturer of fine Italian food products in Griffith has 6 years of pretty simple data held on excel that can describe by line item every transaction over that time by a range of parameters. Not hard to collect, as it comes out of their standard accounting software, not hard to analyse, Pivot tables in excel do a great job, certainly not “big data” by most measures, but Gold to an SME, should they choose to use it.
At the other end of the scale, is Netflix, an institution in the US, disrupting totally the movie rental industry, and whilst it has not always got it all right, their use of analytics has driven their recovery from stumbles, and success with customers. This long piece in “The Atlantic” outlining Netflix’s data capability to turn data into useable marketing information is a “must read” for marketers.
Data is the secret weapon of organisations, the challenge is to use it, to approach the data with the view that somewhere in here are answers I need, but to get them out, not only do I need the data skills, but the creativity to find ways to extract and enhance them. Josh Wills has a definition of a data scientist, that new profession that has emerged in the last few years I like, “better at software than any statistician, and better at statistics than any software engineer” that comes from this terrific Slideshare presentation on data science.
As Warren Buffet so famously said, “In God we trust, all others bring data”.
It is up to us all to figure out how to use it, but while you are procrastinating, your competitor is probably ramping up his capability.
Happy Australia Day.
Jan 23, 2014 | Communication, Governance, Management
Peoples reaction to a question, choice, or situation is always coloured by their experience, education, background, and a myriad of other qualitative factors. Where there is a divergence of views, it can become heated, as people invest emotionally in an outcome consistent with their existing mental frameworks. This step from a simple divergence of views to an emotional disagreement can be very small, and quick to make.
Mediating many disagreements over the years ,I have found that arriving at a sensible conclusion rather than just a compromise, is usually achieved in a three stage process:
- Recognise and agree on what is data, supposition, and opinion.
- Understand what the data tells you, and what you can agree on
- Ask what would have to be true for the parties to the conversation to alter their position on an issue.
This simple device of separating what we think from what we know, identifying the gaps, then filling them with data that is agreed serves as a useful tool to both diffuse volatile discussions, and usefully identify information gaps needed to be filled for a sustainable decision to be made, rathe than a compromise reached that falls apart under pressure.
Try it, next time ask “what would have to be true” when faced by a decision, emotion, and a lack of objectivity.
