This post goes back to mid 2012. A conversation yesterday with a colleague brought it to mind, as we were discussing the the opportunities to monetise Intellectual Capital of the sort represented by the 1200 odd StrategyAudit posts. “You know more about category management that almost anyone”, he said, “You almost invented what was then Trade Marketing 30 years ago, there must be a bob here somewhere”.
Perhaps self indulgently, I agree.
Holden, SPC, Alcoa, Caltex oil, and all the other industrial enterprises that are currently going out of business or leaving the country are doing so because they failed to keep up with the evolution of technology and management practice. Whilst labour costs, the $A, oligopoly control of retail supply chains, limited scale of the domestic market, and all the other reasons that are trotted out have played an important role, the underlying presence is a corporate failure to evolve in the face of these changes.
Well, SPC is not out of business, just. Woolworths have sent them a lifeline, but it is motivated by self interest, not benevolence, as they suddenly realised that without SPC, they had no local supply of canned fruit, adding uncertainty, inventory, 3 months lead time, and transaction costs to a supply chain where they had lost all leverage. They have also done a similar deal on supplies of milk, as they recognised, perhaps belatedly that they were killing their own supply chains.
Now the handouts have stopped, we are undergoing the corporate version of Euthanasia in manufacturing.
Painful, but unavoidable commercial evolution if you take the long view.
Governments seem to have made the choice (with some politically expedient exceptions like Cadburys) between retaining by subsidy an industry or enterprise that has no economically sustainable business model, simply to maintain jobs, and letting it die by cutting off the supply of taxpayer cash. This is not to make light of the emotional and financial challenges this places on the displaced families, particularly in regional towns that find their biggest employer closing.
There are many lessons for us all in this current flurry of corporate euthanasia, perhaps even the beginnings of a national strategy? Certainly, the space left will open up opportunities for others, innovative smaller businesses that use technology and agility to add value their larger less agile predecessors could not.
When you have nothing else to offer, price is what people use to make a judgement about which alternative to buy.
Yours or someone else’s alternative?
However, most people also recognise that you get what you pay for, and that what you pay for is not always just more widgets in the box. Sometimes the widgets last longer, fit better, are not the same as everyone else has, are the first seen, the box just looks better, and sometimes it is a bit of all of these, and many more factors that may influence the purchase.
Every person will have a different definition of what constitutes value in any given set of circumstances. Purchase of a box of paper clips has a different set of circumstances driving it than the purchase of a new car, but the process is the same.
Last week I watched a lady in one of those supermarket type office supplies places make a choice of a box of coloured paper clips over the standard ones, paying a substantially higher price for her choice. Same number of clips, same size and shape box, just a more colourful design on the box, and of course, the coloured clips.
Well you say, it may be just a couple of dollars, so it does not matter much, which is true, but when I chatted to her at the checkout and asked why she chose the coloured clips, she did not say they were only a dollar or two more, she said she “just liked them better”
Surely our job as marketers is to find those little things that lead our customers to say those magic words “I just like it better”, and give them what they like.
Price is so often used as an excuse for a lack of imagination that it makes me cry.
Hugh Mackay once told me as a young marketer something I have never forgotten:
“Allen, attitudes follow behavior, so work to change behavior, and attitudes will follow” .
He went on to give several examples to convince me that the advertising I was planning at the time was a waste of money, despite the promises of the ad agency, the determination of the MD of the business I was working for at the time, and my own naïve assessment of what was the right approach.
This pattern has proved true time and time again, and has a brother.
Expectation.
When we expect something, we are very likely to see it, much more likely that we are to see the alternative.
A bottle of Grange, all $600 bucks worth will always taste better than a bottle of its poorer half-sibling, Bin 389, at about $80, (Grange is Shiraz, 389 is Shiraz with a splash of Cabernet) except when you swap the wine in the bottles around. Do that, and by most people, the 389 will be assessed as better than the Grange.
The power of the expectation built by the brand.
So, ask yourself again if the investment you are making in marketing is properly directed? Should you take the easy road, and just discount the price to get the sale today, or the harder, long term road to build a brand that creates expectations that delight customers.
So much of life is boring, the same, dull, unemotional, repetitive, unimaginative, and missable crap….please miss me!!.
About the most boring, pointless and annoying “presentations” I have ever seen, are the safety announcements on planes before take-off.
Bbllllaaahhhhhh. Who does not know how to operate a seatbelt?
However, not only is it mandatory, I guess in an emergency, it just could be useful, if we took note, but how many of us do that, particularly if you travel a bit.
Same with any presentation, boring is forgettable, irrespective of how valuable the message may be.
So, take a leaf out of these books. TED presentations are often masterpieces of presentation technique, and always interesting, so the most viewed ones would have both something important to say, as well as saying it memorably. The Virgin America safety talk goes a few steps beyond the boring by rote “nothing” I see on Qantas all the time. I think there is a lesson in both.
An opportunity to present, to have peoples attention , to be offered up as an expert, tell a story, and have something useful to impart is gold in this world of never-ending noise, and distraction. Seems to me that when such opportunities emerge, it would be almost criminal to stuff them up by being boring, even at the risk of ruffling a few complacent feathers.
There has been lots of conversation about the value of social media, very sensibly proposing the case that simply getting a “like” is useless, you can buy them if you want them. The measure of success should be how much earned media you generate, how much of what you do is shared, reposted, linked, retweeted, rather than just “wombatted“.
Social media is an all encompassing term, it no longer adequately describes the range of options from facebook to E-bay, and everything in between. Each has a different role, and each finds themselves threatened by usurpers immediately they show some traction, just the way facebook replaced MySpace. E-Bay has a role, to provide a means to set a price and sell in a manner that has not been possible before the web. It is not social media as it is normally seen, it is a two sided marketplace, but the power is in the social network effect , not in the notion of an auction.
Facebook is inherently social, when on there, people are not looking to buy, they are looking to see what their friends are doing, a different mindset, and it is why Facebook is having trouble generating revenue, a process that is intrusive on a social occasion.
Pinterest is increasingly a commercial entity, it engages, informs, offers options, and often leads to a transaction, but there is no sales pressure, just information, and more information.
Then you have the various news sites, from authoritative, to the nonsensical, single issue brain-dumps. However, all these sites have in common the simple fact that you can take them or leave them, engage or ignore, download and share, or treat them as digital fish wrapper.
To be other than digital fish wrapper, the media needs to contribute to your day, your knowledge, or your network. If you are spending your most valuable resource, time and attention, and not getting value, throw the wrapper out.