Mar 29, 2021 | Change, Leadership
We seem to accept that the world is getting faster.
The tempo of activity is picking up in just about everything in our lives, and the 2020 pandemic did nothing to slow anything down. Instead, it operated as a catalyst to an increase in tempo across the board.
Trends that were evident, emerging slowly, suddenly took on a huge leap in tempo. The pace of government decisions, the evolution from supply chains and business models, remote work, and others, all accelerated. Perhaps the most astonishing is the speed at which a vaccine for Corona has been developed, tested, and is into the early stages of distribution. A process that would normally take years, condensed down into 10 months.
John Boyd spoke about Tempo as being the determining factor in the OODA loop. The combatant that could realign their tempo quicker than their opposition won the fight.
Several Cafes in my local area of which there seemed to have been a pre-Covid oversupply, have not reopened. A characteristic of those that have reopened is that during and since the height of the closedown, they were able to evolve their business model. They introduced new products and services quickly, way more quickly than would have been the case in the absence of the virus.
In the natural world, the tempo of climate change appears to be quickening. The melting of the polar ice is now happening at a rate higher than the worst-case scenarios predicted just a decade ago. Compounding that is that the tempo of the melting is increasing as the seas warm, as a result of the reflective ice being gone.
All around us, the tempo of life is speeding up, and the speed is reflected in the speed at which changes in direction occur. As a result, it is becoming increasingly easy to be left behind, even when you are diligent about continuous improvement of your own operations, and in scanning the environment in which you compete for signs of ‘movement’.
It seems to me that long term survival will require significantly more attention to be focussed on the wider context of your competitive environment than has been the case in the past.
Finding the right means to deliver that wider and deeper understanding of the competitive pressures will evolve into a determining factor in commercial survival.
Tempo.
Tempo of activity, of decision making, of change, and of competitive action.
Do not be left behind, you will be shot down.
Header photo: John Bonham, legendary Led Zeppelin Tempo man.
Mar 22, 2021 | Communication, Marketing
Several of the advertisers who bought large packages of advertising in association with the recent Australian Open did themselves a massive disservice.
The ‘Exposure Effect’ is a double-edged sword.
We are more likely to be positively impacted by things with which we are familiar and comfortable. That is how advertising works. However, the flip side is that we also become bored and potentially contemptuous of those things with which we are extremely familiar and dismiss them.
Colloquially, we refer to this as ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’.
The marketing wallies at ANZ ignored, or perhaps more likely did not understand, this flip side of the ‘exposure effect’. They were persuaded to spend up big on ad spots by channel 9 sales executives in the mistaken understanding that ‘more is better’.
Those who watched the Open were probably at least sports fans if not specifically tennis fans, and they probably watched a lot of the tennis.
The negative impact of the exposure effect can come into play as early as after 5-7 exposures to an advertisement. Most of the viewers would have got that in the first hour or so of watching, after which, the familiarity desired by the advertiser, risked becoming something else entirely.
Diminishing returns from the advertising investment.
The ANZ advertising was grossly overexposed. The use of Dylan Alcott being introduced by the hosts ‘mucking around’ with his phone, seemed to be in almost every ad break.
Clearly the ANZ made a significant investment. It would have been much better used if some of that investment had been directed towards a variety of creative executions of their brand, rather than being all the same quickly boring, becoming really annoying, execution.
Personally, I became so annoyed, had I an account with the ANZ, I might have run down to the branch and closed it, as doing business with a bank that wasted so much money does not seem to be a good idea.
Not the impact I assume their naive marketing people were hoping for.
Mar 21, 2021 | Governance, Leadership
I have been dismayed by the quality of the language coming from our leaders, deteriorating as it has for the last 45 years I have been watching closely.
With several notable exceptions on both sides of the house, the standard, if measured by the insight and understanding delivered to the listener, has dropped to the level of a Sunday school teacher proselytising for their invisible friend.
“Political language……. Is designed to make lies sound truthful, and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind’
So said George Orwell in his essay ‘Politics and the English language’ published in 1946.
Orwell thought this manner of language use to be a ‘contagion’ devoted to hiding the truth.
It seems to me that the contagion has well and truly dug deeply into our political ‘leaders’ now, with Scotty from Marketing being the current flagbearer.
I almost miss Pauline Hansen’s outrageous mishandling of not only the language, but people’s common sense and the truth, when listening to Scotty blather on. It is easy to dismiss Hansen as a looney, of little consequence beyond a small and decreasing group of loonies. It is way harder to dismiss the impact of a Prime Minister defending the indefensible, taking credit for anything good that happens despite his ministrations, and abrogating any form of responsibility for those that tank.
A little bit of truth, transparency and humility would go a long way to restoring the shattered trust, we the electors have in those who end up in the various parliaments around the place.
Mar 18, 2021 | Branding, Marketing
Covid has created an unexpected brand building bonanza for big Pharma.
All around us we hear animated conversation about the relative merits of the Astra-Zeneca, J&J, Pfizer, Moderna, and other Covid ‘vaccines’.
Each has its own proponents who seem to be across the detail of the latest research emerging from around the world as we participate in the biggest drug trial in history.
Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca took most of the brand building honours at this early stage, but there are many others in the race. The Chinese and Russian versions, while cloaked in mystery were deemed ‘potentials’ but they carried little weight, at least in the ‘western’ world. The only common ground is the general dismissal of the Trumpian favourite hydroxychloroquine as a viable vaccine. Even if it was a genuine option, I suspect the celebrity endorsement of the former President would have seen it flushed down the loo.
This is a brand building opportunity the like of which I have never seen before.
The winner will have a huge position in the market for many years. The R&D has been funded and facilitated by unprecedented public funding, the usual clinical trialling time frames shattered by necessity, billions of dollars of free publicity, and an assured market into the foreseeable future, as well as the pole position in further publicly funded R&D.
Marketing nirvana.
Mar 11, 2021 | Change, Leadership, Marketing
Every successful strategy I have seen, heard of, read about, or imagined, has three common factors. The first is obvious, the second and third less so.
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- The strategy is implemented.
- The strategy is communicated widely as a story, that draws stakeholders in, giving them an emotional stake in the outcome. It is backed by research facts and figures, speculation, and opinion, but at its core, it tells a story.
- The strategy is modular, evolved from the bottom up, not delivered intact in final form by the hand of some commercial demi-god. One section builds on, and in turn relies on other parts of the strategy, for the wider impact. Each part is interdependent of all other parts, to some extent.
This organic structure enables strategic evolution in response to the changing external environment and internal learning as the strategy implementation evolves, without losing sight of the objective. The path to the end has many possible sub paths, but the end is clear.
A successful story has a beat, a rhythm to it that responds to some sort of incident, observation, or crisis, and a resolution, all built up in a series of ‘beats’ each of which has each of these elements escalating into sequences and a climax of some sort.
The emergent strategy, like an organic structure, has a range of base materials organised as self-contained units that combine to form an ever increasingly complex and interdependent system.
Developing a strategic model that has the potential and opportunity to evolve is not something that comes easily from a template, or ‘packaged’ advice. It is extremely context sensitive, fragile in early stages, requiring constant expert attention and nurturing.
Call me when you need some of this ‘strategic gardening’ to enhance your performance.
Header cartoon is once again courtesy of Scott Adams and Dilbert
