Mar 22, 2010 | Branding, Marketing, Personal Rant
Australia rode on the sheeps back in the 50’s, but in the 70’s & 80’s the sheep turned nasty, and we mostly got off, having lost our pricing power through the competitive growth of synthetics, and strategic stupidity.
When we dismounted, looking for an easier way, superfine wool was 19 microns, now, the leading edge of the few that left are approaching 11 microns, and there is now a substantial volume of wool in the 15-17 microns range, an astonishing achievement.
When Australia unwittingly “outsourced” the many processing stages in the wool value chain, largely to China and India, it was driven by the commodity pricing mentality, that still widely exists. Now, as we chase our tails to the bottom of the price curve, we are paying the price for that short sightedness, as we have no capability left in any stage of the value chain past —-growing the stuff, to leverage the leading position of the best growers, and to supply markets with a sustainable fibre with deep capabilities to meet and shape consumers needs .
Australian Wool Innovation, the current iteration of successive industry bodies charged with the responsibility to “market” the clip is in disarray again, as they try and treat symptoms they do not understand with medicine that did not work 40 years ago.
There is no point being on the leading research edge, unless you can commercialise the output and generate a return from it by reshaping demand, rather than just taking a small premium because you are marginally better at doing what everyone else does. AWI and its predecessors have done a good research job over the years, bit a very poor marketing job.
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 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 16, 2010 | Marketing, Small business
What do you do that others cannot?
What enables you to deliver value for a group of customers or potential customers with something in common, which is increasingly nothing to do with demographics, that your competitors cannot match?
Answer those questions, and the rest is pretty easy.
My old mate Louis Marangon at Riverina Grove produces wonderful Italian style products from fresh ingredient sourced as far as possible from around the Riverina region in NSW. Pasta sauces, tapenades, herb infused olives, and other delicacies, almost as if they were from his mothers kitchen. Doesn’t appeal to everyone, and hard to find, but for those who want an authentic Italian inspired product whose provenance is local, know that Louis will break his back to provide it, and they keep on coming back. Thats a CVP with legs, and it is probably the only thing that a small buiness can do as well as, and often better than, because there is less marketing “noise” around, than a large one with substantail financial and personnel resources.
Feb 7, 2010 | Branding, Management, Marketing
During the brand development process, to the extend that is it deliberate, most conversations are about the activities that supposedly drive the objective measures of success, sales, margins, market share, household penetration, and so on.
However, during qualitative research, brands take on human qualities, they are described using personal pronouns, they are young, old, male, female, a farmer, or a merchant banker, funny, quirky, reliable, and so on, but these responses are usually pushed aside, and minimised in order to give the spreadsheets some air.
Sitting in on many market and brand development conversations over the years, it is surprising how often we forget the human dimension, and the difference it makes to our activities, and priorities when we actively set out to describe the brand in human terms, and give the humanity of the brand a central place in our considerations.
