Mar 15, 2012 | Category, Collaboration, Management, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Produce marketers are not all that different to most FMCG marketers, except that the power of the retailer in produce categories is magnified by the total lack of proprietary branding, effectively insulating the consumer from the producer, making brand building and innovation a greater challenge. This lack of branding power and engagement with the consumer puts them at the mercy of retailers.
In an effort to put some parameters round the problems, the Mildura Development Corporation funded a study that sought to articulate the challenges and choices faced by producers in the Sunraysia region, particularly by drawing the comparisons with the competitive environment in the UK.
The headline elements in the conclusions are:
- The power of the retailer
- Scale of producer operations
- The role of the business model employed
- The increasingly critical nature of data, its collection, analysis and leverage potential
- Marketing choices made.
These factors are all connected in cause and effect relationships with each other, and with the customers, and consumers of produce, but most forget, or get confused about the differences in the approach, which can be summarised as:
Sell to your customers
Market to your consumers.
Perhaps the report can add to your thinking, contact me for a copy, or discussion.
There is a downloadable copy of the report in the “Sharing” pages of this site, let me know what you think of it.
Mar 2, 2012 | Change, Strategy
Will Moore’s Law, validated over nearly 50 years in digital technology development, also apply to renewable energy? This notion has interested me for a while, and it seems that currently our consumption of fossil fuel is a mirror image of Moore’s law, the challenge is to turn the thing 180 degrees so it works in our favor.
Early days, but the jury must be considering the proposition, as the development of technology starts to make an impact, even as new sources of hydrocarbons emerge, from coal seam gas, and shale oil, and may tend to ease the pressure for change in our energy mix, particularly as governments feel the fiscal pinch.
Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountains Institute has been a persuasive advocate of alternative energy, his 2005 talk on TED has been widely spread, whilst recognising that fossil fuel is the foundation of first world prosperity, and will not move aside easily, so sensible strategy accommodates the evolution of one as the other ramps up. His current treatise “A farewell to fossil fuels” is as logical and convincing as his previous jottings.
In Australia, the debate has been absolutely debased into a school-yard standard populist name calling and distortion of the facts. It is clear change is coming, every industry evolves over time, it is just that energy is so fundamental to our prosperity, and so poorly understood, and so multi-dimensional and emotional, that it makes for good pollie fodder.
Feb 22, 2012 | Management, Marketing, Strategy
Into the new year, most companies that have June 30 as year end will start the tortuous path of setting the new budget. I have seen the budget process take 6 months, and be as useless as a water pistol in a gunfight when it comes to delivering meaningful outcomes.
Two simple questions are often not asked:
- Why are we doing this?
- How are we going to get the outcomes satisfactory to the short term needs of stakeholders, and that also set the business up for long term commercial sustainability?
In other words, have a clear business purpose, and know what you have to do to progressively deliver on the undertakings.
Feb 17, 2012 | Management, Strategy
- Which customers?
- Which markets?
- What is the vale proposition?
- What are the processes that are required to deliver the value proposition?
- What capabilities are required to deliver the strategy?
- What technology is required to deliver the strategy?
- What are the organisational enablers of the strategy?
And most importantly,
- How do we engage our people to participate in the definition of all these, then in the delivery, management, and improvement steps that follow?
Pretty simple really, or how enormously complicated, challenging, and ultimately rewarding, depending on how deeply you think about the list
Feb 14, 2012 | Strategy
Following up the post yesterday commenting on the changes the net has wrought in relation to Michael Porters ideas about substitutes. It seemed useful to add links to two useful articles by Joan Magretta, who has written a book on Porters work.
The first is the strategy mistakes Porters sees most commonly, and the second a great list of strategy do’s & don’ts.
There are many lists on the web, bloggers particularly know that response rates go up substantially with a list in the headline, but if you are going to take notice of anyone, it may as well be one of the giants of strategic thinking.
Feb 13, 2012 | Management, Strategy
Michael Porter transformed strategy development 30 years ago by asking two simple questions:
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- What are the drivers of industry profitability?
- What are the drivers of profitability of an individual firm in an industry?
He then provided a framework to analyse both, his “five forces“.
The possibility, and ease of entry of substitutes is one of the 5 forces that dictate strategy, and this remains the case, it is just that the possibility of finding an acceptable substitute is infinitely greater now than it was 30 years ago when the original thinking took place.
Almost every industry you can think of has been transformed in the last 10 years by the power of the web to offer substitutes. Access to substitutes of both the product of, and supplier to any business, immediately and transparently, is infinitely easier that just a decade ago.
Oh, and new industries have been spawned that have decimated, and changed forever those legacy industries, and most did not see it coming.
Porter’s framework got it right, it remains right, it is just that the time frames he worked with are now way shorter, and the entry/exit barriers lower. The net has completely altered the tactical dynamics, but the strategic thinking behind the model remains sound.
