Today is Day #2 of our review of French marketing trend notes for 2008.
(This whole translation business is actually not bad at all. I think I'm getting the hang of it.)
Read the original interview here.
Nicolas Riou (Brain Value):
As consumers grow less and less passive, brands must modify their approach in order to continue seducing them. (...)
Reading consumers is becoming very complex and presents a number of contradictions. We can no longer rely on traditional benchmarks. We forget the term "consumer" to replace it with "individual". (...)
Consumers, like brands, now express themselves on the internet. In fact, consumers now tend to trust other consumers' opinions posted on forums than actual brand communications. Power is changing hands. Brands are losing control over their own image but also take advantage of the content creation and associated buzz generated by consumers. Interestingly, some brands are attempting to regain control of this content creation by organizing contests. In 2007, Liebig organized a content creation contest that focused on recipes, and l'Oréal organized an advertising campaign design contest which promised its winners exposure for their work.
Consensus living is starting to gain momentum. Consumers are much more attentive to the way they make purchases and live their lives. Purchases of organic products reflect an trend towards all things natural, pro-health, and the reinforcement of ecologically driven imperatives. People are now much more attentive to traceability, recyclability, and the carbon footprint of products (as it relates to energy consumed during their production, distribution, etc.). This trend towards making products traceable from a to z is currently revolutionizing the food industry. Consumers can now look at a food product's packaging and immediately see the difference between a kiwi fruit which traveled 20,000 kilometers and a kiwi grown in a neighboring country. This product labeling model is gaining incredible momentum in Japan, notably with mobile devices, and should start showing up in France in two or three years.
Buzz marketing aside, the 360° phenomenon is growing quickly. Consumer touchpoints are multiplying and making use of increasingly non-traditional methods of advertising. Still, these new strategies are not necessarily replacing more traditional marketing methods to inspire emotional attachment to brands. Both as consumers and fans of entertainment we still crave the familiarity of TV advertising and big media.
The carbon footprint of a ribeye steak? Really? In the US? I'd buy that for a dollar!
Have a great weekend, everyone. :)
Photo by NASA.
Labels: buzz marketing, marketing communications, strategy, trends, user generating content
For the next three days, I will be bringing you interesting bits of insight from the other side of the big pond. Because I want you to be able to read and understand these posts, I will translate everything into English (yes, free of charge.)
How about that!
(If you want to read the meat of this post in its original French, the link go here.)
Jean-Noël Kapferer (HEC).
2007 was characterized by the success of extremes: Low cost and luxury brands in mass market like Apple, H&M or Nespresso. We observed a polarization phenomenon in the market.
On the one hand, certain brands positioned in the value-priced corner further discounted their products, like Ikea and Easyjet for example. The Logan, which was Europe's cheapest car, will soon be dethroned by a vehicle costing only $2.500 euros born of a partnership between Renault and an Indian manufacturer.On the other hand, middle-of-the road brands which not so long ago were known for producing mass consumption products are now becoming premium brands.
(...)Apple isn't technically a luxury brand but it employs luxury brand strategies. This is the case with iPhone: A single distribution partner, a premium price, an exclusive service package, messaging centered on living an ideal lifestyle… all of this to develop a unique experience aesthetic and a strong sense of community. The process is the same when Nespresso launches a boutique on the Champs Elysées.
Likewise, Air France is bringing back First Class in response to its Tempo Class being challenged by low cost operators. (The advantage of business class resides in that businesses, not individual passengers foot the bill.)
(...)
Sofitel is also following this model by repositioning half of its operations as luxury properties, under its Pullman brand. This tendency by mid-market brands to restructure "up" their existing stores, properties and product lines is important.
Indeed.
While many companies still remain in the soft, mushy center, the ones with a bit more insight into how the world has changed in the last couple of decades are taking steps to a) differentiate themselves from their competitors and b) stand for something. This is driving brand... or rather value proposition polarization.
As a brand manager, you really need to routinely ask yourself two basic questions:
1) Why should anyone do business with you instead of the guy across the street? Name 3 things. You have thirty seconds.
2) What's your value prop? Are you primarily value (volume) or are you primarily luxury (margin)? (Yes, even if you want to be both, you have to choose one.)
Examples of volume: Ford, Bic, Motorola, Coors, Sears, Magnavox, Sony, rows 10+, Food Lion, Dasani.
Examples of luxury: Jaguar, Mont Blanc, iPhone, Heineken, Polo, Philips, B&O, rows 1-5, Whole Foods, Perrier.
Some brands do manage to cross the volume/margin barrier, but they are few and far between. They are the Starbucks, Nike, Apple and other mass-market relative lovebrands of the world. (I say relative because being a lovebrand is neither here nor there: Nike may not be the lovebrand it once was, and Starbucks' star may not be shining as brightly a year or two from now as it did three or four years ago. Here today, gone tomorrow... Consumers, after all, are fickle.)
How to build a Lovebrand, in 5 simple (albeit major) steps:
Step 1) Start with a luxury value prop foundation.
Step 2) Develop volume-friendly products.
Step 3) Create a distribution channel that focuses on both breadth and depth.
Step 4) Love your customers even more than they love you.
Step 5) Keep your eye on the ball (Step 1)
Of course, the devil is in the details, but you have to start somewhere. ;)
Is there a future for middle-of-the road brands? Sure. Why not? For companies more concerned about maintaining a certain level of revenue this year - these are generally companies that take a "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" approach and don't put much stake in innovation or growth strategies. I don't see these types of companies disappearing anytime soon, but they should already be seeing a downturn in their market share, profit margins and new customer acquisitions. At best, they can expect to sustain perhaps up to 6% growth for another year or two - assuming they are already there now - before that growth suddenly slows and becomes negative.
Mark my words: that downturn will not be gradual. It will happen within a quarter or two at the most. Not good.
The soft middle may seem like a safe place to be if you're either too dumb or too scared to read the writing on the wall... but hey, some execs are happy to just show up and collect a paycheck until it's time to float their resume to the next flunkie status-quo company. That is the reality of this world. The tendency for proactive brands to clearly and deliberately realign their value propositition along the line of either value/commodity or its polar opposite (luxury/premium products) is as clear an indicator as I've ever seen of the impending doom of the soft middle's "business as usual" model - at least when it comes to mass-market products.
There is simply a) too much information available to consumers and b) there are too many convenient channels through which consumers can purchase products from a variety of pricepoints for middle-of-the-road companies to have a fighting chance against brands with clear and polarized value props.
Have a great Thursday, everyone. We'll be back with Part 2 tomorrow.
From this post by Seth Godin:
"The passionate worker doesn't show up because she's afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it's a hobby that pays."
So true.
I deal with three types of people on a daily basis:
1. Passionate people: People like me who can put every bit of themselves into their jobs because it is either exciting, fun or rewarding on a visceral level... or all of the above. Entrepreneurial poets living at the intersection of business, culture and design.
2. Jaded passionate people: People who used to be passionate about their work but have been beaten into relative apathy. Generally, the passion in these people can be ignited again with a simple idea or project.
3. Whomever doesn't fit in either of the previous two categories.
I don't have to tell you which two categories I love working with, and which one makes my job a drag.
Not to mention the fact that the first two always find ways to get the impossible done, while the third makes a point to make even the simplest tasks seem impossible.
In an economy so filled with passion, talent and brilliant ideas, give me a single reason why you should ever have to settle for either a boss or an employee who fits in category #3.
image by intentionalart
Labels: engagement, motivation, passion, passionate staffers
So, this weekend, the family and I decide to have lunch at a local Asian fusion restaurant, and because I have a cold, I order some green tea with my meal.
As the tea arrives, I pour myself a cup and notice that a strange greasy substance is beading all across the surface. A strange... bright yellow greasy substance. Kind of like... chicken grease, only thicker and shinier. Hmmm. Weird.
I lift the filter cap off the tea pot, and notice that the tea inside the pot also has a lot of the weird yellow stuff floating around. Perplexed, I stir the pot a bit, and that's when I realize what the yellow stuff is. There's something floating around in the tea. A rectangular piece of paper. No, a YELLOW rectangular piece of paper. No... a yellow rectangular piece of paper with letters printed on it: CRAYOLA.
The waiter brings us our food, and politely I jokingly ask him if he can please bring me a pot of tea without a dissolved Crayola marker inside. At first, he thinks it's a joke, but he looks inside and starts to freak out. Apologies start flying. He takes the teapot to the kitchen, and the manager gets involved. From what we can hear where our table sits, the teapot incident is now the topic of discussion in the kitchen, and the manager is NOT happy. Minutes later, the waiter emerges with a fresh pot of tea, apologizes a half dozen times, and tells us that our entire meal has been comped.
The poor kid got a good tip, and we'll be eating there again.
I would tell you what the restaurant is, but I don't want to give them bad publicity. The Crayola marker in the teapot thing is not the sort of thing that a restaurant wants to be known for. It's unfortunate, because they responded to the crisis perfectly, and I would love to give them their well-deserved props.
And Crayola markers are non-toxic.
The point of this post is this: Sometimes, businesses make mistakes. How they react when these mistakes pop up is perhaps more telling about them than the fact that someone in their organization made a mistake in the first place.
This business made a mistake, but corrected it immediately. The manager enacted new mandatory tea pot inspections within minutes of the incident. The kitchen was immediately briefed. The restaurant didn't only apologize, it also paid for our entire meal. We didn't have to argue. We didn't have to act angry. We didn't have to threaten... not that we would have. I wasn't all that bothered by the Crayola marker. I would have been happy with a fresh pot of tea and an apology. Frankly, the free meal was unnecessary... but not everyone is as laid back as yours truly.
Perhaps out of pure professionalism or out of fear that a customer could sue them or give them the kind of publicity that could gravely damage them, they didn't try to blow it off. They didn't try to pass the buck. They didn't offer us a free dessert. They didn't give us 25% OFF coupons for our next visit. They took care of the problem right away, and treated us like valued customers.
Well played.
If only more businesses did damage control and customer service as well as this restaurant, the world would be a better place.
Labels: customer experience, customer service, foodservice
This is pretty cool. Waste five minutes today playing with it. Why? Because it's fun, quick, and it'll tell you a thing or two about brand you.
Could this possibly the shortest brandbuilder post ever?Maybe.
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
In 1970, the average CEO in the US made 28 times more than the average worker. 35 years later, that number had increased to 465 times. Nice visual/interactive presentation over at Business Interactive.
I haven't done the math yet, but I suspect there might be a direct correlation between CEO compensation and the increase in CO2 levels in Al Gore's inconvenient presentation.
465 times the salary of the average worker. Wow. That would buy a lot of $0.99 junior Whoppers.
What does this post have to do with building brands? When the gap between CEO pay and their average workers' pay gets this wide, people start getting cynical about their company. Especially when benefits get cut every year. Especially when more jobs start getting outsourced. Especially when layoffs become common. Especially when the company's products, customer service and innovation quotient are suffering. Inequity doesn't exactly sell brands. Fatcat loser CEOs are seen as merchants of exploitation, and no one wants to be a part of that.
As the asian stock markets start to crash again today (hopefully, things will get back to normal in a day or two), I thought it might be fun to look at who won't be hitting the bread lines when the fit eventually hits the shan.
Wages 465 times greater than the average worker - in many cases, for playing a lot of golf. Brioches, anyone?
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
Labels: CEO, compensation, Inequity, salary
Someone tried to school me in the difference between verbal/written expression and visual expression today, and I feel like I am a much better man for it. Yes, I have grown today, if not professionally or... physiologiclaly, maybe spiritually. It's good to know that there are still brilliant, polite, thoughtful people out there who value the power of making positive connections and understand the importance of being cordial, positive, and friendly when reaching out to complete strangers.
Ahem.
So I was asked to remove an image from an earlier post this morning. The request came via an email threatening to take legal action against me. Ha.
Yes, good morning to you too. I am doing great, thank you. Would you like some toast with your tea?
Interesting thing, this blogging business. We're so used to cutting and pasting people's opinions that borrowing other people's intellectual property has become almost a non-event: Find a passage you like or think is relevant, copy it, paste it, write a blog post around it, give the author credit and link back to his/her blog/book/website so readers can go there and find more good stuff, and voila. Finito.
If you're a true web 2.0 rennaissance man, you even send them a note to ask permission to use their words, but that is seldom done these days. Credit given and a link are usually all that is required. (Still, most of us do this with images even when we don't with text out of some sense of duty or jurisprudence.)
To date, I have not received an angry email from a blogger or author threatening me with a lawsuit because I quoted them on my blog, and for good reason.
As a photographer, I understand the potential cash value of images. You can take a photograph and sell it. you own copyrights to it - or can share it with others at will. It's a slippery business, but ultimately, someone owns every image that has ever been printed - very much like every written word can become someone's property.
The reality of it is that both photographs and prose are modes of expression. Both are protected by copyright provisions. Some people use words while others use images to express themselves, but the only difference is in the medium, not in the level of legal protection. Those of us who write for a living value our written work the way a photographer values their visual work. The medium may change, but the principle is the same.
Yet here we are: Someone actually threatened to take legal action against me for having quoted them visually on the Brandbuilder. How sad.
I promptly removed the image (which wasn't that great to begin with) along with all associated credits and hyperlinks - and will replace it with another when I get a chance. Not because I am afraid of getting dragged into court, but because I have no want to give someone so stupid and arrogant any kind of exposure whatsoever. You don't want to be featured on this blog, I won't argue with you. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
What is funny about this whole little tangent is that a simple email politely asking me to remove the image would have sufficed. It would have still been silly, but whatever. At least the author wouldn't have acted like a rude little child. My email asking for permission to use her image was not rude at all, as I recall.
I have to wonder... would being polite really have killed her?
So anyway, to the young lady who sent me that threatening email this morning, I have this to say: If you don't want exposure, if you want people to discover your work, fine. Stick to submitting your stuff to any of the dozens of stock photo outfits that might be interested in buying it for mere pennies. (Not that they have, incidentally, since the email didn't come from them.) Knock yourself out. But then don't post your images on flickr and make them public. Jackass. And when someone asks for your permission to use an image, reply with a simple "no" if you don't want them to.
That being said, it is indeed your image, and you have every right to control how it is used and by whom. If you don't want me to borrow it for a post and direct people to more of your work, that is your right. I won't stand here and argue with you. It's your life. Have at it.
One thing you probably should know before I close this little monologue is this: Not only are you a crappy photographer who got lucky with one image, you're also rude, and a complete moron.
End of post.
As always, go to the home page to leave comments.
Labels: blogs, brandbuilder, copyright, photography, rant
Three words: Incredible.
Don't read about this movie. Don't look for teasers or spoilers. Just go see it.
Does Cloverfield live up to the hype? Let me just say this: I was on the edge of my seat for most of the movie, and some of the scenes just blew me away. As for the monster, you will see it in all its glory many times,so no worries. In many ways, the way that the movie doesn't focus on the monster the way you would expect a Godzilla movie to... but still allows you to get your fill is one of its greatest achievements.
This is a hundred times better than a Godzilla movie, by the way. Seriously. From the monster to the characters to the way it is filmed to the way the camera seems to shy away from the brilliant special effects, you will feel like you are in the streets of New York City as it is being inexorably taken apart by a giant sea monster and the US military, and yes, your heart will pound pretty fast at times.
Unlike Snakes on a Plane - which was a case of killer marketing tied to a terrible waste of a movie - Cloverfield concludes months of very effective buzz-making by delivering on its promise. It was actually better than I expected.
So put down that old issue of Fast Company, turn off the TV, and check out local times here. Time for a dinner and a date to a good old monster movie. Good to see they still know how to make them. ;)
Labels: cloverfield, entertainment, monster, movies
Via Jennifer Rice's What's Your Brand Mantra, Mark Hurst's brilliant little primer on the difference between Customer Service and Customer Experience:
"Customer service is the job of front-line workers, servicing customer requests for help - via an 800 number, e-mail, or a retail desk. It's important to invest in good customer service, but that's just the tiniest sliver of the customer experience.
"Customer experience is the job of everyone in the company. My customer experience was bad because the product, and the refund policy, are both broken. Everyone from the CEO and CFO to the product designers and manufacturing facility contributed to this bad customer experience; and as a result, they've lost a customer and generated bad word of mouth. The good customer service I received didn't - and couldn't possibly - fix the overall experience."
Go read the rest here and here.
Update: Marc points us to a cool little site called measuredup.com, where you can write and read reviews (positive and negative) about businesses, customer service experiences, etc. Great stuff.
Have a great weekend. :)
(As always, to leave a comment, go to the main page.)
Image by The Pack.
Labels: customer experience, customer service
Here's another reason why Tom Asacker has been one of my favorite bloggers these last few years:
"I've never experienced so much noise and so little signal as I do in the present field of marketing. Marketing is a mess. Marketing is broken! Half of marketers are on autopilot creating award-winning, irrelevant media noise, web nonsense and events. The other half is paralyzed - measuring everything to death and covering their collective butts. Clarity: Marketing's New Task."
Click here to read his 2-page mini-manifesto.
Evan mentioned this to me a few weeks ago, and I finally took the time to go check it out. If you're in the design field (or your work occasionally touches design) I recommend you do the same. You'll get a kick out of it.From the official site:
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.
Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.
The film was shot in high-definition on location in the United States, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium. It is currently screening at film festivals and special events worldwide.
Interviewees in Helvetica include some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world, including Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Wim Crouwel, Hermann Zapf, Neville Brody, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, David Carson, Paula Scher, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Experimental Jetset, Michael C. Place, Norm, Alfred Hoffmann, Mike Parker, Bruno Steinert, Otmar Hoefer, Leslie Savan, Rick Poynor, Lars Müller, and many more.
Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. In the late 1950s, the European design world saw a revival of older sans-serif typefaces such as the German face Akzidenz Grotesk. Haas' director Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to their line. The result was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica, derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, when Haas' German parent companies Stempel and Linotype began marketing the font internationally in 1961.
Introduced amidst a wave of popularity of Swiss design, and fueled by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica quickly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and myriad other uses worldwide. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984 only further cemented its ubiquity.
It sounds a bit geeky, but trust me, you'll love it.
(I'm waiting for the sequel - "Helvetica II: Comic Sans Strikes Back".)
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
If like me, you're fanatical about a) access to relevant (dare I say actionable) data and b) new ways of communicating or presenting this data, then you will love this site.I was trying to explain to a few colleagues the other day that I needs tools to visualize data and business processes in 3D. I'll bet that if I dig deep enough, this site will have what I am looking for. (Please please please?)
Eye candy for data brainiacs everywhere to be sure. Hopefully, you will never look at a lame little black and white line graph the same way again. (Shake things up a little!) Here are some cool examples:
Labels: visual data modeling
Mike Bawden (who was kind enough to quote me on his blog a while back) once wrote one of the simplest yet most astute observations about leadership that I have ever read:
"Too many times business owners seem to be satisifed spending their careers as managers rather than leaders. When you see real leadership in action, you're left in awe. Real leaders are active, engaged and motivating. They create an atmosphere that's electric - both fun and productive."
Management is static. Management fosters a predictable business-as-usual , don't-rock-the-boat, status-quo, bureaucratic environment.
Leadership is dynamic. It drives a business forward. It is unstoppable. You either commit to it and get on the train, or you get left behind.
Managers can become leaders, but managing and leading are far from the same thing.
There is no middle-ground.
Labels: leaders, leadership, management
Excellent post by Mack Collier over at Viral Garden (via Customers Rock):
1 - View your customers as a community, and join them. If there is a 'big secret' to how musicians create fans, this is it. Let's go back to the above photo. It was taken at a recent concert by The Donnas. But if you look closer, you'll notice that the singer on stage is just as excited and a fan of the music she is singing, as the people that are hearing it. Everyone, the audience, and the singer on stage, has their arms up, and they are cheering. Everyone belongs to the same community of fans.
But it's just as easy to join your community of customers in other industries. Willie Davidson explains that 'market research' to Harley-Davidson means spending a weekend on the open road with other Harley owners. Davidson is a fellow Harley owner, and as a result, is part of the same culture as his company's customers. The line between Harley-Davidson's customers, and the company itself, is very hazy. Since the company is participating in the customer's community, they better understand their customers, and as a result market to them more effectively. All of this makes it easier for Harley owners to be excited about the brand and proud to be a member of a very loyal and unique culture.
2 - Make sure you view your company and its products as your customers do. Hugh MacLeod had a great point once about making sure that your company is having the same conversation that your customers are. Apple thinks its products are cool, and so do its customers. Remember when the iPhone was introduced? Remember seeing customers proudly camping out for days outside Apple retail stores prior to the iPhone going on sale? Did you realize that in almost every case, there was a Cingular store close by selling the same iPhone, with no one waiting in line? But it was 'cool' to stand in line to wait for an iPhone, at the Apple store. Apple thinks the iPhone is cool, and Apple's customers agree, AND think that THEY are by extension cool because they have an iPhone!
3 - Empower your existing fans to market for you. Another secret to marketing like a rockstar is this: Evangelist=Fan. If you have evangelists, then you have fans. So obviously, you want to find your existing evangelists, and make it as easy as possible for them to tell others about you. Remember this post from last year about how Maker's Mark created their Brand Ambassador program? All the distillery did was organize its existing evangelists and empower them to better market for Maker's Mark. IOW, they made it easier for their evangelists to engage in pre-existing activities. These customers were passionate for the Maker's Mark brand, so the distillery empowered them to market for them. And remember, customers are far more likely to listen to other customers who endorse a product, than they are the company selling the product!
4 - Give customers input into your marketing. Dell's Ideastorm is a great example of this. The company has created a place for customers to not only submit their ideas on how Dell's products can be improved, but they then let other customers vote on which ideas are their favorites. Dell can look and see which ideas are the most popular, and then have a great idea of which improvements/changes customers want to see happen. And when the company acts on the changes that are suggested, it lets Dell's customers know that their input is valued and appreciated. It lets them know that they have some ownership over Dell's marketing. So naturally that leads to more customers giving more input and suggestions on what they want to see, which results in even MORE efficient marketing from Dell!
5 - Have FUN with your marketing! So how is Warner Bros. promoting next summer's hopeful blockbuster movie The Dark Knight? With posters and trailers online, right? Yes they are doing that, but they are also creating websites that must be decoded. If the lucky visitor can do so, they will receive an address of a nearby bakery, where a real cake is awaiting them, with a phone number to call written in icing, and containing a cell phone that receives both calls and text messages from 'Rent a Clown'. This is supposedly a company set up by one of the movie's main characters, The Joker! This is marketing, but it's also a great way to get people talking about, and excited about a movie that won't come out for seven months.
Labels: conversation, customer communities, customer relationship, happy customers
iPod finds its way into the world of Haute Couture: Vomit ensues.
Published 20080113 by Olivier Blanchard.
Here's some context for you (and some culture too, while we're at it):
The Years of Cristobal BalenciagaYears ago, when famed couturier Yves Saint Laurent was asked how many true Haute Couture houses there were, answered "only two: Balenciaga, and Chanel."
1918 saw the founding of Cristobal Balenciaga’s first haute couture house in San Sébastian, Spain. Local admiration for his designs was so strong that a second haute couture house was opened in Madrid and a third in Barcelona. In 1937, 10, Avenue George V became the Parisian home of Cristobal Balenciaga’s creative influence. Balenciaga’s Paris flagship store is still located at this address.
Balenciaga soon came to embody Parisian elegance. Cristobal Balenciaga was hailed as ‘The Couturier of Couturiers’ and ‘The Master of us all’’ by designer Christian Dior.
In 1946, the House of Balenciaga launched its first perfume, ‘Le Dix’, aptly named after its first atelier, 10, Avenue George V. ‘Le Dix’ attracted the same acclaim as the famous Balenciaga couture pieces, and the perfume soon even rivalled that of Coco Chanel herself. In 1968, Balenciaga closed his couture house, to the deep dismay of his favourite clients. Countess Mona Bismarck lamented the event by locking herself indoors for three days.
Transitional Times
Cristobal Balenciaga died in his home country of Spain in 1972. His nephews then took the helm of the business. In 1978, control of the House of Balenciaga, including the important fragrance business, passed to Hoechst and then to Groupe Jacques Bogart in 1986.
In 1995, Nicolas Ghesquière was hired by the House, initially as a designer for the licensed products activity. He became creative director for the House’s own ready-to-wear and accessories collection in 1997.
Balenciaga Today
In 2001, Gucci Group, in partnership with Nicolas Ghesquière as creative director, acquired the House of Balenciaga, now well on its way towards recreating the influence and respect that the house commanded in its former heydays.
Today, the House of Balenciaga creates women’s and men’s ready-to-wear, shoes and accessories, sold worldwide.
It's safe to say that Yves Saint Laurent and Dior have now added to that count. At any rate, it's pretty much a given that the house that Balenciaga built is still the house of houses when it comes to the world of Haute Couture.
Perhaps Cristobal would scoff at the idea of creating accessories for a techno culture icon like the iPod were he still around today, but... here we are: Balenciaga is now selling iPod cases.
Are we seeing the bastardization of once proud couture houses, (catering to a new breed of customers) or is this simply another illustration of the impact that iPod has had on our culture? I'll let you decide.
My two cents: Relevance by association may sometimes be a good strategy to attract new clients/customers, but in the case of very high level luxury brands, the trade-off can be dire. A house like Balenciaga was never about attracting the spoiled offspring of the super rich. It was about class and exclusivity, not selling out to a fickle crowd with money to burn.
This is how great brands choke and die.
Balenciaga "execs," here is my advice to you: More haute couture and less marketing. Your brand is about design and quality, not gimmicks and gateway products.
*sigh*
Labels: bad ideas, design, fashion, haute couture, marketing
"So I was wondering, what is that exact point where a company stops caring? Stops paying attention to their customers? Stops with the phenomenal customer service? Is it when they reach a certain sales figure? A certain number of employees?"
These were some of the pertinent questions posed by Brains On Fire's resident firestarter Spike Jones some time ago.
This is too big a topic to try to cover in only one post, but the least I can do is to try and get the discussion started. Here is a short list of what you might call purple cow killers. These business diseases can strike a perfectly cool little company with quasi-infinite potential, and turn it into a bumbling corporate flunkie faster than you can say "I.P.O.":
1) Routine
People lose their passion for things they love when those things become routine. Think about it. Your first day at a new job. Your first drive in a new car. The first time you see a good movie. A first kiss. Everything is exciting at first... but then you eventually get jaded. The excitement wanes. You lose some of your passion. Details become someone else's problem. So do your products. So do your customers. Deny it all you want, it's true... and it's inevitable unless you do something about it.
The trick is to keep the fire burning by keeping things fresh. If routine is a passion-killer, then build a corporate ecosystem that actively fights routine. Easier said than done? Nope. Quite the contrary. (But that's a topic for another day.)
2) Bureaucracy
The bigger you get, the more you start to rely on procedures. The more you start to say things like "no" and "can't" and "we'll have to charge you extra for that". The harder it becomes for the people at the top of your organization to stay in direct contact with their customers. That's bad. It shouldn't take thirty minutes for a customer to get a return authorization. It shouldn't take seven transfers to get a product manager on the phone. Nobody should ever get the runaround. Ever.
Bureaucracies slow things down and build walls between employees and between you and your customers. As you grow, take the time to develop systems that overcome this problem. Again, this isn't hard, but you can't let these things fall to chance. You have to be just as proactive in building your company's structure as you are in building its markets.
Don't lose sight of the fact that a company isn't a building or a logo or a set of rules. A company is always, first and foremost, a group of people united to pursue a common interest. And while you may not think of it that way, this applies to your employees as well as your customers. As a business leader, one of your jobs is to make sure these people are all connected. If your organization disconnects them from one another, you are majorly shooting yourself in the foot.
3) Comfort
If you've only worked on the agency side of the business, chances are that you've never heard these dreaded words: "We've been doing things this way for ____ years, and we've been successful at it, so there's no reason to change."
(Nails on a chalkboard.)
Yeah, well, in the wise words of Jack Spade, "Never believe anything you've done is successful." The minute you do, you're dead. End of story. In business, getting comfortable = getting lazy.
Reality check: Markets change. Technologies and tastes change. People grow old and younger ones take their place. Renewal = relevance. Even old-school luxury houses like Bentley and Cartier have adapted to new markets. (If you don't believe me, watch MTV sometime.)
If you don't constantly question what you could do better or where you might go next, you're done. Period.
4) Nepotism
It's natural to want to surround yourself with people you know and trust. It's another thing altogether to promote buddies and family members to positions they are neither qualified for, nor passionate about.
Furthermore, while surrounding yourself with people who won't ever challenge you might be a nice ego boost, it is certainly no way to keep your company moving in any kind of direction.
If all your key managers are passionate about are their 401K plans and their annual retreats to Tahiti, then it's no surprise that your company has lost its focus.
5) Fear
"Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time." (Lou Brock)
Yep.
The older you get, the less chances you are likely to take with your career. The larger your company is, the less likely you are to risk screwing something up.
Too much to lose, you see.
So you stop taking chances. You start worrying about what your "competitors" are doing. Instead of leading them, you let them lead you. Next thing you know, you've exported all of your production power overseas, your quality takes a dive, your customer service is anything but, every bit of talent you ever managed to hire has walked out on you, and you find yourself on the losing end of a price war. Other than just plain dishonesty, that's how great companies fail.
Well, bollocks. Playing it "safe" is the fastest way to screw yourself over. (And your customers.)
If you don't have the huevos to stretch the boundaries now and again, to be an innovator, a pioneer, and to sometimes be okay with making some people really hate your latest product, then you need to find another occupation. Being a leader isn't about staying put. It's about... well, leading.
6) Denial
Most companies who don't get it think that they do get it. That's the tragedy. Once your distribution channels are well-developed, once you have thousands of active accounts, once you've been a market leader for twenty, thirty, forty years, the sheer momentum of your growth can carry you into another decade or two. As long as your growth closely matches whatever opportune economic indicator you are following, things might look pretty decent.
You might be under the delusion that you have it all figured out.
So what if you haven't actually spoken to a customer in twenty years? So what if you don't even bother to use your own products anymore? So what if you've chased away companies that could have become your partners in a number of cool ventures, and they went to your competitors instead? So what if your best people are quitting, one after the other? So what if you have absolutely no idea what people are saying about your products, about your customer service, about your company, about your leadership?
No news is good news, right?
Right?
*sigh*
How do we end up in sad little places like this? Really. You'd think that by now, we'd ALL know better. Tsk.
Let me leave you with another Jack Spade favorite:
"The bigger you get, the smaller you should act."
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
So what if you haven't actually spoken to a customer in twenty years? So what if you don't even bother to use your own products anymore? So what if you've chased away companies that could have become your partners in a number of cool ventures, and they went to your competitors instead? So what if your best people are quitting, one after the other? So what if you have absolutely no idea what people are saying about your products, about your customer service, about your company, about your leadership?
No news is good news, right?
Right?
*sigh*
How do we end up in sad little places like this? Really. You'd think that by now, we'd ALL know better. Tsk.
Let me leave you with another Jack Spade favorite:
"The bigger you get, the smaller you should act."
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
Labels: bureaucracy, denial, fear, nepotism, routine
Continuing the discussion from the previous post...God bless our economy, but this very quick presentation by Chris Jordan (on Business Interactive) will make you wonder just how long we can sustain this kind of nonsense:
People in the US uses 60 thousand plastic bags every five seconds.
The US uses 200,000 plastic bottles every five minutes. (That's OVER TWO MILLION PLASTIC BOTTLES EVERY HOUR!)
US prisons currently house 2.5 MILLION prisoners. (That's almost the entire population of Chicago, by the way.)
200,000 Americans die from smoking every six months.
9 MILLION children in the US did not have health insurance in 2007.
The US spends $12.5 Million of taxpayer dollars every hour in Iraq.
I'm not sure what this says about brand "America" but it doesn't exactly spell two thumbs up.
The presentation is pretty intense as it uses incredibly large images to put these numbers in the proper context/scale.
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
Labels: excess
How every US household is liable for $516,000 of America's spectacular $59.6 trillion debt
Published by Olivier Blanchard.
For Chris:
Interesting and sobering article published back in May on yournewreality.com. (Yeah, I'm behind in my reading a bit.) We'll get to it in a minute.
Note: Because I am a worthless echo chamber (isn't that what we bloggers are?) I won't bother to fact-check, but feel free to do so at your leisure.
About this article, I will just say this: Alarmist vernacular aside, if you ignore the doomsday predictions and just focus on the numbers, our nation's current financial situation isn't good. Worse yet, our nation's financial future is not looking good at all. There might be a reason why so many CEOs are negotiating ridiculously high compensation packages and bouncing from job to job as often as they possibly can.Maybe they saw the writing on the wall long before the rest of us did.
Okay look, I know we all want to live in big houses, drive cool cars and dress like movie stars without having to work all that hard for it - and worry about the costs later- but there comes a point when you kind of have to wake up and accept that a) credit has its limits and b) financial responsibility isn't something you can put off. This applies to banks a whole lot more than it applies to consumers, but it does start with individual responsibility when it comes to our attitude towards borrowing. Without debtors' prisons around anymore to remind us that credit isn't infinite, we need to start giving some thought to how and why we buy the things we buy.
What does this have to do with branding? Two words: "Brand USA."
This has to do with future foreign investment in the US economy, in the fate of the US' workforce, and in the viability of its buying power twenty years from now - as opposed to say, Asia and Europe.
Put yourself in the shoes of an investor with a finite amount of money to invest, and do your homework. Then ask yourself this: Right now, are the US economy and the US Dollar really your best bets for a strong return on investment? Is the dollar doing well? Is the US creating more jobs than it is losing? Are the new jobs being created as good for taxpayers as the ones they are "replacing?"
The rub is that economic pressures tend to work as circular cause-and-effect cycles. Lack of confidence in US markets by foreign-owned banks can trigger the kind of economic downturn that our current overconsumptive lifestyles might not jive well with. Downturns shatter investor confidence. Low investor & consumer confidence means more slowdown.
It isn't brain surgery.
In the past, a good way to kick the economy into high gear was to get involved in a good war. War always stimulated economies... But in the global marketplace we live in today, we're more likely to stimulate China's economy by going to war than our own. What was true of the 1940's isn't applicable to the world we live in today.
For all the "reality" TV we consume daily, we're painfully out of touch with reality.
Brand USA could really use a big boost over the next 6-12 months... and neither the Huckabee-Clinton-Obama-McCain race to the White House nor the current state of things in Iraq nor the endless stream of bonehead "news" stories about Britney, Paris, Lindsay or whatever politician got busted doing something embarrassing in airport bathrooms is really helping.
Now news about the exciting research that American Universities and labs are moving forward with in fields like advanced robotics, superconductors, fuel efficiency, AI, smart materials, etc., about exciting emerging technologies and how they can be incorporated into our everyday lives, and how successful grassroots social programs could be used as templates for large scale federal programs in coming years might serve our interests as a nation a bit better.
As a nation and cluster of business communities, we really need to raise the level of the conversation just a tad.
Read this, and I'll let you figure out the rest.
Americans, on average, spend more money than they earn. How do they manage to do this? Easy credit, low interest debt.
Thanks to their magnificent consumption, soaking up the goods produced by tens of thousands of Chinese factories, Asia keeps offering Americans easily accessible credit and buys up the monumental debt wracked up daily by the American government in the form of Treasury bonds. Without Asia both offering credit, and buying up debt, the average American lifestyle as they now know it would cease exist.
But even though the US government, and federal reserve, freely admits to shocking levels of debt and losses, the true scale of America's extremely fragile economic situation is lost behind illusionary accounting practices, the kind that no corporation is allowed to get away with.
The true scale of America's extremely fragile economic situations has now been exposed :The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year — far more than the official $248 billion deficit — when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.
"We're on an unsustainable path and doing a great disservice to future generations," says Chris Chocola, a former Republican member of Congress from Indiana and corporate chief executive who is pushing for more accurate federal accounting.
Modern accounting requires that corporations, state governments and local governments count expenses immediately when a transaction occurs, even if the payment will be made later.
The federal government does not follow the rule, so promises for Social Security and Medicare don't show up when the government reports its financial condition.
Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.
Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities. State and local government retirement plans account for much of the rest.
This hidden debt is the amount taxpayers would have to pay immediately to cover government's financial obligations. Like a mortgage, it will cost more to repay the debt over time. Every U.S. household would have to pay about $31,000 a year to do so in 75 years.
It would seem almost impossible for the American economy to be facing disaster when the stock market is roaring past 13400 points, but most of this growth comes from the availability of extremely cheap debt. Get a big fat low interest loan and pour the money into stocks and bonds, and watch the stock market climb.
Mike Whitney is not alone in claiming the strength of the American stock mark is but an illusion, a simple con aimed at propping up the American dollar and holding back the financial devastation that will eventually break out across the nation.
The illusion, he claims, is shattered when you take a look at what's happening to American real estate, and it's not a pretty picture. When the real estate market completely disintegrates, so will most of the rest of the American economy :The real estate market is crashing faster than anyone had anticipated. Housing prices have fallen in 17 of 20 of the nation's largest cities and the trend lines indicate that the worst is yet to come.The entire thing house of cards is propped up by confidence. The confidence that says property prices will recover. The confidence that claims the stock market will stay strong. The confidence wishes, dreams, hopes, that jobs will grow, that exports will rise, that the inevitable crash and burn will never come.
March sales of new homes plummeted by a record 23.5% (year over year) removing all hope for a quick rebound. Problems in the subprime and Alt-A loans are mushrooming in previously "hot markets" resulting in an unprecedented number of foreclosures.
The defaults have slowed demand for new homes and increased the glut of houses already on the market. This is putting additional downward pressure on prices and profits. More and more builders are struggling just to keep their heads above water.
This isn't your typical 1980s-type "correction"; it's a full-blown real estate cyclone smashing everything in its path.
Tremors from the real estate earthquake won't be limited to housing--they will rumble through all areas of the economy including the stock market, financial sector and currency trading. There is simply no way to minimize the effects of a bursting $4.5 trillion equity bubble.
The next shoe to drop will be the stock market which is still flying-high from increases in the money supply. The Federal Reserve has printed up enough fiat-cash to keep overpriced equities jumping for joy for a few months longer. But it won't last.
Wall Street's credit bubble is even bigger than the housing bubble---a monstrous, lumbering dirigible that's headed for a crash-landing. The Dow is like a drunk atop a 13,000 ft cliff; inebriated on the Fed's cheap "low-interest" liquor. One wrong step and he'll plunge headlong into the ether.
The stock market cheerleaders are ooooing and ahhing the Dow's climb to 13,000, but it's all a sham. Wall Street is just enjoying the last wisps of Greenspan's low interest helium swirling into the largest credit bubble in history. But there are big changes on the way.
In fact, the storm clouds have already formed over the housing market. The subprime albatross has lashed itself to everything in the economy ---dragging down consumer confidence, GDP and (eventually) the stock market, too. The real damage is just beginning to materialize.
Perhaps spending more state and federal money on education, infrastructure, healthcare networks, and research might yield better ROI than supporting the Halliburtons and Blackwaters of the world. We just can't keep borrowing trillions of dollars from foreign banks to fund little more than day to day war-driven government services, an ill-managed federal budget and our purchasing power... and expect the bubble to keep growing and growing and growing without ever bursting.
Unlike the other olivier blanchard, I am not an economist, but as a guy who has worked for fifteen long years to finally get out from under a pretty decent amount of debt, this seems pretty obvious: Debt doesn't just go away when you ignore it. Sooner or later, you have to pay the piper. Yes you, not the next guy.
No one is going to bail us out of this mess. No one is going to come along to magically rebuild confidence in our economy or our government. Democracy only works if people take their civic, financial and professional responsibilities seriously. As a nation, we could be doing a whole lot better.
US Economy Overtaken By EU And Japan
Whitney : Doomsday For The Greenback
Chinese Taking Out Unsecured Loans To Invest In Stock Market
China's Stock Market Plunges 6.5%, Losses Continue Into Second Day
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Image source: China Economics Blog.
I found this perfectly timed gem over on Buzzoodle today:When a client, especially a new client, does not get what they are expecting, you are breaking an implied promise. Once you break that first promise, they will be calulating in their head how much more they will take before letting you go.
Here are 10 ways you may have broken a promise to a client.
You cannot create buzz when you are creating regret.
- Return a phone call when you said you would.
- Proposal or contract arrives the day you said it would.
- Reported back progress when stipulated.
- Delivered exactly what is expected.
- Clear pricing that does not go up for this and that.
- Built an ongoing, valueable relationship
- Failed to thank client for referral
- Did not follow up after delivery
- Miss a scheduled meeting or lunch
- Back-peddle on promises after sale
I love that post.
Labels: brand promise, customer experience, expectations
Hop on over to Kathy Sierra's blog for her post on bravery, confidence, and getting past the paralysis of uncertainty. Very cool stuff, as always:
"If your new Big Idea doesn't scare the hell out of you, it's probably not a new Big Idea. If it doesn't scare other people, it might be because you allowed the consensus (or what you imagined as the consensus) to smooth the pointy bits, buffing and polishing the idea into a nice safe state that displeases nobody and delights nobody."
(...)
"But--if we let the critics (or fear of criticism) talk us out of an idea we still believe in, the world will be more homogeneous. Smoother. Less interesting. Imagine where we'd be if people throughout history had always given in to the critics (or fear of critics). Imagine the ideas that would have beenlost if others hadn't been brave enough to stand up against smart people who disagreed. Nature needs change and diversity, but humans tend to favor the status quo."
... Well, not all humans. Some of us are wired a little bit differently. It isn't so much that we're difficult. We really aren't. It's just in our DNA to a) figure out ways to make things better for people around us, and b) to find ways to take these ideas and actually make them happen.
We just want faster wheels. Safer helmets. Sharper pictures. Easier web interfaces. Cleaner fuels. Smarter workspaces. Softer beds. Fun retail spaces. Cheaper orbiters. More powerful telescopes. Tastier drive-thru coffee. Food, clean water and medicine for every human being on the planet. Better advertising. Put simply, we have the skills to make these things happen, and don't feel like waiting for someone else to get around to it.
Kathy posted a link to the very cool ode to "The Crazy Ones", from Apple. Remember the ad? If not, maybe this will refresh your memory:
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Amen.
Related post: Fear Is Irrelevant.
Check this out. ;)
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From infosthetics.com:
Research at the University of NSW, Sydney, Australia, claims the human brain processes & retains more information if it is digested in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time. more of the passages would be understood & retained if heard or read separately. "The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster," Professor Sweller said. "It should be ditched.""It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind & decreases your ability to understand what is being presented."
This new insight clearly puts the recent report about using Powerpoint in Parliament speeches in a new perspective.
Interesting.
Some of the best powerpoint presentations I've seen so far have been extremely simple. They tended to focus on images, words and data so iconic, so clear, so easily understood in seconds that they a) almost required no input from the presenter and b) could have been framed and use as artwork. Slides with ten bullet-points and sub bullet points just put me to sleep. Bleh bleh bleh... bleh... blehhhhhhhhhh...
Do yourselves a favor and go to presentationzen.com. Learn something today... like ways to a) communicate better with ppt. and b) stop boring your audience to death. (Thank you.)Related reading: The PDF, smh.com
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
Labels: communication, language, powerpoint
I dig Tom Peters' blog. I dig it a lot. He's a genius, plain and simple.
But I don't always agree with him.
This piece is from a recent post of his:
"Leadership is all about love: Passion, enthusiasms for life, engagement, commitment, great causes, and a determination to make a damn difference, shared adventures, bizarre failures, growth, insatiable apetite for change."
Take PM (Master Chief) Renard, of the French FUMACOs, for example. I was his CO for a year during my 1990's stint with the armed forces, so I got to know him pretty well. A more natural leader, you'll never meet. Whatever makes a great leader, he had it: Confidence. Intensity. Courage. Determination. Charisma. Decisiveness. Competence. PM Renard never had to yell at his team. He never had to square anyone away. His guys just followed his every command because he inspired them to by his very presence. The guy was a leader through and through.
Yet PM Renard wasn't all that passionate or enthusiastic about anything. He didn't care about causes. He didn't care about making a difference. He never once showed the slightest sign that he favored change in any way, shape or form. PM Renard was a simple man with simple pleasures: The only things he seemed to enjoy were a quiet beer with friends, having the shiniest boots in the Navy, and occasionally a good cigar.
There's a kid on my son's soccer team who hardly ever says a word, but the other boys naturally follow him. He's the team captain. He drives their tactics. He's a leader on and off the field, but it has nothing to do with passion or an apetite for change. It has to do with those attributes I just listed above: Confidence. Determination. Charisma. Competence.
On the flip side, I've worked with a number of people who had all of the 'enlightened' attributes Tom mentions but didn't have the leadership gene.
(To be fair, Tom did list more TRUE leadership traits such as integrity, action and grace, but in a looser context.)
Now... bridge the passion and enthusiasm for life thing and the confidence and charisma paragraph, and whoa. Yeah. You'll have something very, very special.
Now, I don't want to seem like I'm beating up on Tom because I'm not. I just thought that his list only took into account half of the qualities that make a person a true leader.
As an aside, this piece from his same post almost made me cry out with joy because it is sooooo dead-on, and sooooooo important:
"I fervently believe that the capitalist dream comes true and profit is maximized when ... turned-on people are empowered to dream big and produce awesome products and service experiences for their customers and communities."
PS: If you want to see leadership in action, do yourself a favor and rent "The Thin Red Line" (Terrence Malick's 1998 version.)
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
The incredible photo above was captured by Tatiana Cardeal. (It isn't Tom Peters, BTW.)
Labels: leadership
CES 2008, Innovate of die, and life after Microsoft for Mr. Bill Gates
Published 20080107 by Olivier Blanchard.
Brand Central Station's Mike Bawden posted a great piece about the connection between innovation and brands on his blog last September, which I found again by accident yesterday. Here are some of my favorite passages:
"Why do we get the inspiration for innovation? I think it may be part of the human condition - that we're always trying to make things better. Sometimes it's a personal challenge to see if we can outdo what's been "done" before. Other times, it's a more practical reaction to a need expressed by someone we care for ... a customer, a co-worker, a family member."
"It's important to understand how innovation can effect the perceived value of your brand. Done right, innovations can keep your brand fresh and relevant to those people who already know and understand it. Innovation can also open your brand to new market opportunities."
Yep. Innovate or die.
Check out the full post here.
While we're on the subject of innovation, discover the hottest new tech products featured at CES 2008 here (Gizmodo), here (G4), and even here (Engadget).
Oh, and while you're at it, find find out what Bill (Gates) is planning to do with his free time once he leaves Microsoft.
Note: To leave a comment and read all of my other brilliant posts, head on over to the brandbuilder's home page. (Yes, now.)
Labels: brand valuation, innovation, perception
Tom Asacker brings us another priceless bit of insight about building brands in these chaotic times:
"And so I was wondering: what's new about this economy. A lot. But not everything in this new economy is new. Sure, it’s easy to get caught up in the drama: Information technology is ubiquitous and rapidly advancing. Global economies are opening up. Legacy businesses are transforming before our eyes. But when it comes right down to the essence of business, it’s the same as it has always been - understand what drives a customer’s behavior and provide an experience which will attract that customer’s behavior over time. It’s still all about building reciprocal relationships. The issue today is one of emphasis."In the old economy, business altering technological advancements were infrequent. In addition, consolidations, due to mergers and acquisitions, were relatively rare occurrences. The competitive playing field was fairly stable. But today, new ways of doing business - of providing unique and valuable customer experiences - are springing up like weeds in a field. This increasingly intense competitive activity creates a huge sense of confusion. The good news is that when business conditions get chaotic, your customers inevitably face the same inextricable conditions. They are also overwhelmed with choice, drowning in information, time and attention starved, and therefore, confused, skeptical and frustrated.
"Remember too, that today’s global glut of business model choice has created an explosion in expectations. Customers are demanding the same value propositions across product categories. You can almost hear them asking: “Why can’t I configure my new car (build-to-order) the way I did my computer?” “How come I can’t get my hamburgers delivered like I did my pizza?” “Why can’t I do an on-line search at the hardware store, the way I do at my desk?” What they’re asking for is growth in the relationship - growth that will allow them to either maximize pleasure or minimize pain.
"The companies that prosper in this new economy will therefore be those with business designs that are defined by customer motivations and redefined to address their rising expectations. Think of it as incremental relationship development. The key to your success is to truly understand and empathize with customers’ “feelings”, and to increasingly delight them with what Tom Peters has described as the ‘look and the feel and the smell and the taste’ of doing business with you.
"Let’s face it. Customers now insist on high quality, quick delivery, consistent service and relatively low prices. These “pleasures” are expected, and as such, are not relevant differentiators. The competitive environment has made marketing and selling much more challenging. Customers can compare suppliers in real time and at any time, which places them firmly in the driver’s seat. To stand out and build a superior brand in this new “customer-controlled” economy, you must give up the need to be in control of your situation, and instead, be other-focused and help customers improve theirs."
Read the full piece here.
Read this post again and again and again until it sinks in.
Read it every day, until your company has been infused through and through with this simple precept, from the bottom of the corporate ladder to the very, very top.
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
pomegranates by Matt A.
Labels: competition, customer experience, customer relationship, innovation
Resolutions Redux - Setting brand-building goals for yourself in 2008
Published 20080106 by Olivier Blanchard.
Making resolutions for a whole year seems so daunting... Which is probably why so few of us ever actually see them through.
Let's see... Lose weight. Stop smoking. Eat better. Learn a foreign language. Take the dog to the park every day.
Yeah, right.
If there's one thing we can probably all agree on about Western culture today, it's this: More often than not, we tend to bite off a lot more than we can chew. (Often, literally.) We supersize everything: Houses. Cars. Shopping malls. Credit. Meals... and yes, even New Year's Resolutions.
Maybe the lesson here is that the bigger the resolution, the less likely it is that we will actually make it happen. Likewise, the smaller the resolution, the more likely it is that we will accomplish our goal. (Losing 5 lbs by mid-February is a lot more likely a goal than say... losing 20lbs by July.)
Baby steps, grasshopper. Baby steps.
The process has to be incremental.
You have to start small.
Before you start thinking about your big goals for next year, before you start making your big resolutions, think about what you actually want to accomplish. Think about what you can realistically change once a day or once a week that will grow into something substantial by the end of the year. Don't just go for pipe dreams. Don't settle for what you think sounds good or grand or courageous.
Don't fall into that trap again.
Resolutions aren't about the finish line. They're about taking responsibility for the changes that will get us there. They also have to find their relevance in our everyday lives.
If you're at a loss for small resolutions when it comes to your professional world in 2008, here are a few simple ones you will find as rewarding as they are attainable. They can even be passed on to your employees and colleagues. You don't have to follow them, but they aren't a bad place to start. If only one will inspire you to make lasting changes this year, then this post wasn't in vain.
Here we go:
1. On the Frontlines: Every day, do something special for two customers. One in the morning, and one in the afternoon. That's it. Just two. It doesn't matter what it is. Give one a 10% discount on her purchase. Give another a gift card or coupon for their next purchase. Send their sick mother a bouquet of flowers. Upgrade their room reservations. Give them free concert tickets. Whatever. The idea isn't to win everyone over in the first month. You don't want to burn yourself out. You also don't want to eat into your company's margins. You just want to make two friends each day. Surprise them. Wow them. Just because you can. Plant little seeds of love.
Not one or three or ten. Two. That's it. Everyone else gets your best, but just not the extra V.I.P. treatment. (Pretty soon, you'll wish you could treat ten people to it, and twenty, and fifty... and the way you look at your customers will change. The way you interract with them will change too. For the better. But one thing at a time.)
Baby steps.
2. In the Ivory Tower: Once a week, pick one customer complaint and personally respond to it. Pick up the phone. Write a letter. Do it yourself. This shouldn't be a drag. It shouldn't be a hassle. If you don't care enough about your customers to do this one thing, something isn't right. Look into the complaint. Find out what caused the failure in the first place. Find out what it would take to fix the problem. Make it happen.
One per week. That's it.
Yep, baby steps.
3. In the Creative Suite: Keep your outlook fresh. Once a month, go watch kids play. (No, not in a creepy way.) Go spend twenty minutes at a McDonald's or a park playground or at an interactive toy store. Watch how kids interact with objects. Watch their hands, especially. Then go home, grab a #2 pencil and sketch a shape that kids would love to hold and fiddle with. Design a new toy with no moving parts. Mold it out of clay. Take pictures of it. Recreate it in photoshop or paintshop or whatever graphics program you feel comfortable with. Play with colors and textures. Imagine tastes and smells. Design packaging for it. Create ads and brochures for, just for fun.
Yeah, just for fun.
If you can't find any kids, design a dog toy.
Design a food bowl for cats.
Design a perch for cockatiels.
A doorknob.
A new shifter for your car.
A belt buckle.
A toothbrush.
Even if you're a copywriter, even if you have zero skill as a graphic artist, do this. Once a month, complete a project that is yours and yours alone. Explore your own creativity. Keep the process fresh. Hone your creative skills.
4. Managers: Once a week, ask "what if?"
What if we didn't make customers jump through hoops to return defective merchandise?
What if we designed cooler retail spaces?
What if we trained our employees better?
What if we did something that none of our competitors ever did before?
What if we rewrote the rules?
Each week, ask a question, and find the answer. If the questions are too big, then make it once a month.
Learn what works, what doesn't, and why. Learn your company's strengths and limitations. Learn what stands in the way of your organization's growth. Perhaps more importantly, learn about your own strengths and weaknesses. Learn about your own limitations and how to overcome them. Finally, learn about turning management skills into true leadership.
5. Everyone: Don't settle for average work. Ever. Don't settle for good enough. Don't settle for safe or comfortable. Always stretch the current limits of your talents. Always be on the lookout for new approaches. New methods. New ideas. You'll be surprised at how much new ground you'll break if every day, you push your own limits just a little bit. One word at a time. One concept at a time. One sketch at a time. One spreadsheet at a time. One question at a time.
Giving your customers or clients something to talk about - extraordinary service, memorable experiences, top notch products, etc. - is a decision you have to make every single day. Every single minute.
It isn't about grand declarations of intent. It's about the small decisions you choose to make throughout the day.
Baby steps. Baby steps.
Lastly, here's a simple new year's resolution for you: Just be better.
You don't have to suddenly become a superhuman version of yourself. You don't have to win the Nobel Prize. You don't have to cure world hunger. You don't have to write the Great American Novel. You don't have to lose 200 lbs. You don't have to be the supadoopah. Just be better.
A little better.
Not six months from now. Not three weeks from now. Just a few times today... and tomorrow... and the day after. That's it. That's all it takes.
Baby steps, kids.
Itty bitty ones.
If those don't work for you, that's okay. Check out Tom Asacker's resolutions here. Yeah, they're two years old, but they're excellent.
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
Labels: change, ideas, leadership, management, new year
Real excuses from real companies on why their earnings didn't meet estimates in the last quarter of 2006 - by Julie Teninbaum (Portfolio.com).
Classic!
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
Labels: bullshit, earnings, performance
So Roby is alive and well, but we may be out of contact for a while. His unit has a new mission and a new secret FOB... so we won't know for a while if he'll still have internet access. If he doesn't, he won't be able to post to his blog regularly, which sucks.War is hell, after all.
I've been collecting some of his recent photos, so I will post them regularly here, just as if his blogging hadn't been interrupted.
Bon vent, bonne mer, Roby. We'll see ya on the flip side.
To leave comments (and read previous, related posts) hit the brandbuilder's main page.
Images by Roby Di Giovine.
Labels: Afghanistan, Roby, war
"A Zune for everyone." That's our motto. (We're squirting music all over the damn place!)
Big daddy is coming soon. Its first public event might have to be an upcoming BLT at the OC's galactic headquarters.
Yeah, iPods are cool - if you want to be like everyone else - but Zunes can squirt. There's something to be said for that.
Words of wisdom from Adriana Lukas' Media Influencer, via the Only Dead Fish blog:
Yep.
"In the ‘channel world’ scale is in aggregation. In the networked world, scale is in distribution. That is why people from the former build platforms, people from the latter build applications that help distribution"
Yep.
Have a great weekend, everyone. :)
Labels: aggregation, channel, distribution, network, wisdom
Ethics and Business: Covalence's Ethical Ranking 2007 report
Published 20080102 by Olivier Blanchard.
Adding to New Year's Eve conversation about Switzerland's contributions to the world (chocolate, cheese, army knives, politeness, neutrality, precision watches, banks, cuckoo clocks, radar-cheating bicycles, ball bearings, possibly the world's largest naval force for a landlocked nation and the ubiquitous Ricola cough drops... but strangely no beer of any kind) here now is Geneva-based Covalence's Ethical Ranking for 2007:
If you aren't familiar with Covalence's ER report, it is extremely Swiss in both concept and execution. From their own press release:
Twenty multinational companies are analyzed in ten major sectors; the top ten performing companies are ranked in each category: Best EthicalQuote Score (positive minus negative news, cumulated from 2002 to 2007), Best Ethical Progress (positive minus negative news, cumulated from January to December 2007) and Best Reported Performance (positive news only, cumulated from January to December 2007).
Best EthicalQuote Score and Best EthicalQuote Progress are given by confronting positive and negative news. Best Reported Performance is calculated by quantifying positive news only – it shows how companies report on their ethical performance without considering criticisms and demands. Some companies being highly targeted by activists have a low EthicalQuote Score while at the same time ranking high in terms of Reported Performance. We can assume that “ethical demands” (negative news i.e. stakeholder issues, campaigns, expectations) stimulate “ethical offers” (positive news i.e. initiatives, reporting, communication by companies).
Environmental Impact of Production, Eco Innovative Product, Waste Management and Anticorruption Policy were all hot topics this year, while Social Impact, Social Sponsorship, Labour Standards and Human Rights Policy - hot topics in the past - started their slow march into relative oblivion.
The report is pretty thorough. here are some of the highlights:
Starbucks, Toyota, Intel, DELL, Hewlett-Packard were among the top 10 across all industries in the Best Ethical Score category.
Best Ethical Quote Progress across all categories counted Toyota, IBM, DELL, Walmart. Hewlett Packard, Intel, Honda and Dupont among its Top 10.
Best Reported Performance (again across all categories) counted WalMart, Coca Cola, Toyota, IBM, DELL, Ford and BP among its Top 10.
Toyota was the clear winner in the automotive category, followed by Ford and Honda.
HSBC was the global winner in the banking category, followed by Citigroup, Bank of America, and ABN AMRO.
In the Chemicals category, BASF and Dupont shared top honors, followed closely by Dow Chemicals, Bayer, and Air Products.
I was surprised to see that the Entertainment category did not include Sheryl O'Sullivan (from my 8th grade art class), but whatever. We're dealing with swiss precision here, so who am I to question the results. Top honors in that category went to Philips Electronics, Sony Corp, and none other than McDonald's. (No, I am not kidding.) LG, Nintendo, Sharp, and Pioneer were on the list, but Micky Dee's beat them out. It can't be the McToys that come with my Happy Meals, so I must have once again underestimated Ronald McDonald's entertainment superpowers.
Either that or the Hamburglar snuck into Covalence's HQ and altered the results.
God bless the Swiss.
Food and Beverage crowned Unilever, Coca Cola and Starbucks as the overlords of culinary brands. Other winners: Nestle, Danone, Kellogg, SAB Miller, Kraft Foods, Heinz and Cadbury. (Nope, no Sony or XBox. Go figure.) McDonald's would have probably won that one if it hadn't already been one of the winners in the entertainment category.
Mining and Metals: Alcoa and Rio Tinto kicked more ass than Xstrada, Nippon Steel and Gold Fields, which is pretty cool. I would love to be able to say "In 2007, we kicked more ass than Gold Fields!" If I worled for Alcoa, I would say that to at least one random person every day.
Oil & Gas saw BP, Suncor Energy, Chevron and Petrobras beat out everyone else.
Pharmaceuticals and biotech: GlaxoSmithKline ruled supreme across all three scores, followed by J&J, Abbott, and Bristol Myers Squibb. (Sorry Pfizer. At least you made the list.)
Retailers: (Drumroll...) Marks & Spencer shared the top spot with WalMart. Home Depot was 3rd, followed by Gap, Tesco and Carrefour. Best Buy and Target made the list. (Whew.)
Technology Hardware: HP, IBM, Intel and DELL beat out Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson, Apple, Sun Microsystems, Motorola and Xerox.
Again, to understand the way this study is compiled:
Covalence’ s ethical quotation system is a reputation index based on quantifying qualitative data, which are classified according to 45 criteria such as Labour standards, Waste management, Product social utility or Human rights policy. It is a barometer of how multinationals are perceived in the ethical field.Have a great New year, everyone. :)
The system integrates thousands of documents found among media, enterprise, NGO and other sources, for producing the EthicalQuote curves. These curves measure the historical evolution of the reputation of companies regarding ethical issues. They are created through the cumulative addition of positive news (documents coded as “ethical offers”, which are weighed as +1, curve ascends) and negative news (“ethical demands” weighed as -1, curve descends). The Reported Performance measure is given by cumulating positive news only.
Labels: ethics, hamburglar, list, ranking, switzerland
Ringxiety: I wonder of my health plan covers this as a disability yet.
Published by Olivier Blanchard.
Happy New Year everyone!
I am back in the office after a day of garage cleaning and remodeling - which is a pretty lame way to spend the first day of the year... but whatever. The family is still out of town, it was way too windy and cold for a bike ride, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. To get 2008 started on the right foot (no offense to left-footers), I thought I would share this pretty exciting new psychosocial disorder with you.
Ever heard of Ringxiety? If not, you're going to love this (from Josh Clark's article on Howstuffworks.com):
Ringxiety, first coined by psychologist David Laramie, is exactly what it sounds like: confusing the sound of a cell phone ringing with a sound similar to it. Since there's no harm done, aside from a bit of annoyance -- especially if a person struggles to locate his phone -- most people seem to regard ringxiety as a curiosity or a fact of wireless life. The exact origin of this hallucination has yet to be exactly pinned down, however.
Some researchers think that ringxiety stems from a constant state of readiness that could develop in cell phone users. Before the advent of wireless phones, no one expected a call while driving in the car, shopping at the grocery store or dancing at a nightclub. With cell phones, though, there's a potential for a call to come through at any moment. Because of this, it's possible that our brains are conditioned to expect a call constantly, and when a person hears a tone that reminds him of his cell phone ringing, he will believe that's the case.
Others believe that ringxiety -- or in this case, phantom ringing -- simply stems from confusion due to the frequency of most stock cell phone ringtones and the location of our ears. Most standard cell ringtones play at a frequency of around 1,000 hertz. Humans are particularly attuned to pick up on sounds at this range, especially if they're single-toned, like many ring tones. But because people have ears on either side of their heads, it's difficult for them to pinpoint the source of a sound, particularly at this frequency -- for example, from a phone or from a bird outside. To some, this explains the phenomenon of phantom ringing. This doesn't hold true for multi-tonal rings, however, such as an MP3 of a popular song.
... Which doesn't explain why I can't get that stupid Umberella song out of my head! But wait, the madness doesn't stop here.
Those who opt to set the phone to "vibrate" rather than "ring" aren't off the hook either. Even stranger than phantom ringing is the phantom vibration phenomenon. This is also a part of the ringxiety that David Laramie studied, although fewer ideas about its origins have been suggested. It's similar to phantom ringing, but phantom vibration is a physical rather than an auditory hallucination.
Are you kidding me? Phantom vibrations?
"Hey, um... are like, your trousers vibrating right now?"
"No... I think it's my phantom phone making an imaginary call to my pants."
But wait, there's more:
"Hey, um... are like, your trousers vibrating right now?"
"No... I think it's my phantom phone making an imaginary call to my pants."
But wait, there's more:
(Phantom rings/vibrations are) also similar to another, well-documented phenomenon called phantom limb syndrome. In this medically recognized condition*, amputees -- people who've had limbs removed -- report feeling pain in limbs that are no longer attached to their bodies. Is it possible that people have become as attached to their cell phones as they are to their own arms and legs?
* (as opposed to conditions like, say... Ringxiety.) To answer Josh's question, perhaps not most cellphones, but yes, if I could somehow adopt my crackberry as an organ, I would. (I would settle for making it a limb, but that wouldn't be as fun.)
According to a study published in September of 2007, 66% of cell phone users hear phantom rings. Sixty-six friggin percent!!!
Two thirds of us are therefore certifiably insane.
Worse yet, in just one generation, we have managed to go from good old trusty schyzophrenia (remember the good old days when we still heard voices - even if they came from our car radios or the TV static) to the sorry state of social isolation we're in today: Instead of human voices, we are now hearing cell phone ringtones. That's how detached from other human beings we've become.
(Me, I just hear phantom dog barks and parrot croaks, but that's a whole different story.)
In his study on ringxiety, David Laramie found a link between increased cell phone use and phantom ring/vibration experiences. He found that two-thirds of the people he surveyed for the study said they'd experienced ringxiety. Those who experienced the phenomenon the most -- 67 percent of the survey population -- also used the phone the most. They used up more minutes, had larger phone bills, tended to be younger and also sent more text messages [source: Newswise].
The fact that the people who spent more time using their phone experienced ringxiety more often comes as little surprise. But there is another aspect of Laramie's study that may be more revealing. He found that people who preferred to text others rather than call tended to be more lonely and socially anxious.
Does that mean the way a person uses his phone can predict his personality type? Possibly. Another study shows that phones may directly affect a person's personality. Specifically, wireless devices can make us less happy.
In 2005, psychologist Noelle Chesley conducted a study of 1,367 men and women who work, have families and use cell phones. She found an increase in stress and a decrease in family satisfaction among both men and women who use cell phones. Chesley believes this is due to what she and other researchers call a blurring of the traditional lines between work and family life.
This blurring occurs when role boundary permeability takes place. Under this condition, a person's role in one part of their life merges with another role. For example, a woman might get a call at work by one of her kids looking for the TV remote at home. In this case, the woman's role of mother has infiltrated her separate role as employee.Chesley's findings show that while people with cell phones suffer from increased stress and lowered family satisfaction, e-mail -- a more "passive" form of communication -- does not produce the same results. This suggests that cell phones are more intrusive than other forms of communication, and our happiness suffers as a result of this intrusion.In related news, lawyers jump all over this (as expected).
Related reading: The New York Times
Labels: mental illness, modern times, ringxiety
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