Thursday, December 28, 2006

This New Year: Don't Enervate. Leap.

In beginning Walden, Henry David Thoreau writes, "What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations?"

A great word, enervate. It means the opposite of what it sounds like. It means: deplete.

What fails for Thoreau is the flaccidity of thought in his world. Once, for him, it meant that: "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."

That same flaccidity of thought is what affects current consumer product thinking about innovation. Every CPG company worth its salt or soap or detergent or food or cosmetic touts its Innovation Initiatives.

Thousands of employees are marched through innovation processes and told they too possesses the innovative capabilities that led Edison to invent the light bulb or DaVinci to codify his many inventions or took Franklin out into a rainstorm of brilliance with a kite and a key.

What flattery. What brilliant chest-beating. But now here's a true innovator's dilemma. No, not what Prof. Christensen described as the pressure for continual innovation. This innovation dilemma is more insidious. It is enervating because it really depletes the ability and the desire and the realization of true innovation. It pays lip service to progress and only results in incremental activities.

Here is how Thoreau characterized the innovation processes used by so many companies today: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."

In all too many instances, the results of these innovations are, in reality, merely line extensions of existing brands or services. Nothing truly novel. But gosh it really feels good to sit for hours with colleagues, playing games, free-associating and dreaming up the Simple Pleasures of Tide detergent.

Now Vanilla & Lavender Scented Tide laundry detergent probably sounded novel in that innovation session in Cincinnati. But Europeans have putting those scents in their pockets ever since they wanted to hide the fact that they were suffering from Plague. (Remember the Ring Around A-Rosy rhyme? What do you think those pockets full of posies were for?)

No, the real innovation was the discovery of Tide itself and synthetic laundry detergent in 1946 when P&G scientists added sodium tripolyphosphate. We end 60 years later with a scented line extension.

So, for beginning the new year, let's make a promise. No more innovation, if innovation only means progress by increments. Let's try and make this year and every year, a leap year, wherein we make "a sudden lively movement" that means real progress and real growth.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Hot Tip: Clean Your iPod with Dove Soap

My Body = My Software

Here is how I think about these products.

I go to Planet Fitness. I climb on the elliptical trainer, preparing for a journey of miles while staying in the spot. I put my white earphones on. Then I'm off on Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

Somewhere past U2's Where The Streets Have No Name and Soul Asylum's Runaway Train, I look around and I see that the vast majority of my sweating, straining, traveling compatriots are wearing the same white earphones.

But they are listening to the Beatles or Bach or Blige.

Each of us is doing the same thing on the exact same hardware but, for each of us, the music of our journey is unique to us because, for each of us, our tastes, our emotions, our desires and dreams fill our individual worlds.

From the Dove Soap web site: Dove believes that beauty comes in different shapes, sizes, and colors and that real beauty can be genuinely stunning.

The soap (great soap!) is the same for everyone. But what Dove realizes is that this mass market product cleans and moisturizes a world of individual beauties.

The hardware is the same. It is the application of that software that makes each consumer's use of and appreciation for that product special to them.

Are the products you use or make special to someone else? Are you capturing that specialness?

Excuse me, it's time to get back the trainer.

Friday, December 01, 2006

A Rose By Any Other Word Is My Cellphone

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."
- Juliet, Romeo and Juliet

"A rose is a rose is a rose."
- Gertrude Stein

What do you call that battery-operated device you carry around in your hand that lets you talk to other people, listen to music, watch videos, locate yourself and your friends, watch televised media and pay for your lunch?

Here's the flash: Whatever you call it, Motorola has sold in the last two years, 50 million Razr units almost EQUAL to the number of Ipods sold by Apple.

In the December 4 Business Week article on Upward Mobility, Motorla calls it the "device formerly known as a cellphone." Nokia calls it a "multimedia computer." Samsung says they are "mobile information terminals."

This is a lot like Adam, who, in the book Does G-d Have A Big Toe?, called a bear that "big, brown, furry two-eyed big-clawed, loud, scary beast." And he used that term only after he realized that he couldn't just assign a number to each of the animals in the world. Hmmmmnnnnnnn, kind of sounds like the electronics industry. And Adam called the bear a bear after the bear told him what he wanted to be called.

Do we really need a Carolus Linnaeus of nomenclature to figure out what to call one of the most potentially useful and profitable devices created by man? Maybe it is easier to name G-d's creatures than it is to name Man's devices.

And we all know what happens to Man when he is left up to his own devices.

This is the kind of mistake that is made by many technical industries. You get breath-taking technical breakthroughs but it takes years for the breakthroughs and consumers to catch up with each other.

Remember the billions that European wireless carriers paid to purchase G3 bandwidths?

Basically, it comes down to three simple things: Talk, See, Buy.

Within those dynamics, a myriad of permutations and services will be developed and offered to consumers -- and the risk, the huge risk, is continuing confusion that will force developers to under-deliver.

If you can't name it simply, then how can you simply use it? This where I would spend a lot of time and conversation upfront talking to consumers, understanding their needs and desires and price parameters -- and this has to be done holistically. If each developer only looks at what they are developing, they are missing the bigger picture of the choices that consumers can make and what their competition is offering. It isn't easy. And it is certainly a bear of a problem. But if you can't tell the difference between a bear and a rose upfront, you run the risk of either being a beauty or someone's supper.

Friday, November 24, 2006

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Raymond Carver, in his eponymous short story collection, goes not just for the concept of love but for how we think and feel about love. I like Jayne Anne Phillips characterization in her review of the book: we speak not of love itself, but of the delicate structures and distortions that support love.

That's why I was struck by the Advertising article in the NY Times today by Louise Story on W-O-M, word-of-mouth marketing. She notes how a new word-of-mouth firm, the Keller Fay Group, seeks to demystify consumer conversations about brands. Keller Fay asks people to keep a diary of conversations that mentions products or brands and later asks them for the details. She quotes Ed Keller as saying, "When you talk about engagement, as a lot of marketers are, people talking about your brand is the ultimate engagement." On average, Story writes, Keller Fay finds that people discuss dozens of brands each day.

Keller Fay is doing great work that can be very valuable to marketers. The challenge, though, is how do you go deeper to understand what those brand mentions mean. Like Raymond Carver's short stories, how do you understand the structures and the distortions that support the dropping of brand names?

I would recommend building on this initial research by seeking to understand the psychological and cultural nuances beneath the structures of the words. Wal-Marting in Texas is certainly different from Wal-Marting in New Jersey, especially when, from town to town and from state to state, the income levels and the needs of those customers can vary widely.

How do you contrast the power of highway billboard with that David Ogilvy-inspired long ad copy in The New Yorker?

Building up the context is critical in really getting to the heart of how consumers think and feel about your brand. Word-of-Mouth is a powerful tool. When I put together the marketing plan for Listerine Pocketpaks (and this was before Gladwell's The Tipping Point), I knew that no 30-second ad was going to convey the power of the product. My whole plan was predicated on buzz and sampling.

As marketers have become more sophisticated about using word-of-mouth to launch and build brands, the challenge is no longer how to surf along on the cresting waves of conversations. I think Keller Fay is doing a great job and providing a needed service. The goal should be to dive deeper into that sea of chatter and to understand what consumers mean when they talk about their brands. That is when you will get pearls of wisdom.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Muddy Waters: Who do you trust (online)?

Ain't that right? Muddy Waters singing Who do you trust? It's perfectly clear.

The Wall Street Journal published an article last week noting that the web site for Wal-Mart is in the top 5 for online retailers and that the growth rates for pure online retailers will be lower this Christmas vs. last Christmas. They noted that many consumers are using the internet to vet their choices for information before they go into the stores, and, if they want to buy online, they are more and more trusting the web sites of bricks-and-mortar retailers.

For many marketers, that big Directions for Use sign is becoming increasingly clear. Consumers want to buy from "trusted advisers" who also offer worry-free shopping experience.

The challenge online is in becoming that trusted adviser. The need is there to bundle together:
- Packaging information
- Advertising and promotion
- Frequent buyer programs
- Consumer education
- the Virtual User experience
- Friends and Family and Word-of-Mouth endorsements.

Five-star guarantees go to the best and the brightest in communications this holiday season. And it is up to many manufacturers and retailers to pay extra attention in how they communicate to earn that customer's trust.

One of the best ways of determining your success is hosting online site research, allowing real people to provide real-time reactions to site design, information and purchase experience.

There is so much unfiltered, diluted and poor information experiences, that those brands that stand out in terms of how they put out their products will be the real winners not just this season but for seasons to come.

Friday, November 10, 2006

The Power of Altering Perceptions

Last night I attended a reception for Equal Access, a non-profit organization. Equal Access provides information and education about healthcare and social issues through radio in developing countries. The organization is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Kathmandu, Nepal; Kabul, Afghanistan; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and New Delhi, India. It was founded in the belief that people everywhere are entitled to Equal Access to information and education and should have the opportunity to join the dialogue as both recipients and contributors of that information. The organization's radio programming focuses on healthcare issues like HIV awareness, women's rights, youth issues, teacher training and migration.

I have done some advising for Equal Access, and you can learn more about the organization by reading my Wikipedia article on Equal Access.

The reception was particularly noteworthy because it featured a reading by the Pulitzer-prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri. I was struck by the fact that Equal Access is all about providing people in rural areas with information that will help them change their perceptions of themselves, while, the characters in Ms. Lahiri's book of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, are changed by the discordant knowledge of how they see themselves and how others perceive them.

This is the truest impact of insight. Whether it is about how you think about brands, evaluate your health or perceive your status in society. Good communications possess the power to alter perceptions and drive growth.



Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Is Personal Care Geared For Boomer Gadgets?

Boys love gadgets. Girls say they don't but they do. Do either boys or girls want a straight edge in their hand that vibrates like a razor with Parkinson's? Let's go beyond the Fusion and move to Mach 50.

The number of US Boomer Consumers over age 50 is going to increase 25% from 89 million to 111 million by 2016, while the number of 18-49 year old consumers is going to remain flat at 135 million.

Have you seen those razor studs electronically trimming those whiskers like a hot knife through melted butter leaving their skin soft and smooth to their woman's touch? Or the women enjoying a glide as smooth as Botticelli's Venus rising from a sea shell?

Well, that's just fine if you want to target your product development and advertising to a consumer segment that is flat and your real goal in marketing is to steal share.

The last time I figured it men and women over 50 still shave, but who is taking the time to understand the changing dynamics of older skin care or older teeth or older hair.

Now there's a growth market that can be targeted by

- understanding the physical dynamics of body change
- adapting product performance to deliver superior benefits
- using built-in technologies to provide performance feedback
- offering clear, simple, "readable" directions
- creating design that excites and delights.

Every day 10,000 Boomer Consumers turn 50. If you captured those newly minted birthday boomer boys and girls via a promotion at Wal-Mart or Walgreen's, you would be thrilled with the incremental sales.

But if you gave them an small personal electric product that truly met their needs, looked good and felt good, they would be thrilled.

Now that's consumer satisfaction.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Hippes Hype Habits into Rituals

I listened to an interesting presentation by Jody Crane of New Solutions and Caroline Gibbons of Portico Research about how people adopt "new" habits for themselves.

They were making distinctions between habits, routines and rituals. I won't go into the details of their proprietary research, but here is what struck me about developing insights and pitching products to consumers.

Forget those Eisenhower-era marketing touts focused on functional benefits.

Those Hippies (now Baby Boomers) are more interested in the emotional benefits of products. Yes, they expect certain functional benefits, but functional benefits alone (those reasons to believe) are not enough in commodity product categories.

In an increasingly complex, threatening, multi-multi-media world, people want things that not only do good but make them feel good about using them.

Good design is an increasing cost of entry. And why not? Do you want a lime green tea kettle or a shiny, sleek Michael Graves tea kettle from Target? They cost the same. But which one makes you feel good about using it.

It all goes back to that Sixties revolution that asked for everyone to tune in. Today, the marketing translation of "tuning in" is an appeal to emotions. Eisenhower moms bought in to what worked best. Soccer moms expect that what they buy works; what seals the deal is the emotional appeal.

That soap in your shower. Lifebuoy, that gets rid of B(ody)O(dor) or L'Occitane's high-lather, citrusy Verbena soap. Unilever has got it down now with Dove. Real pampering soap for real women.

How do you transform your product from something that people use out of habit into something that becomes a ritual. Understand the emotions at play and play to them. Rituals operate at a higher level of involvement. That is where the premium play is.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

The CEO Plaint: A Better 100 First Days

. . .that soul imprisoned in a body, itself a prisoner within that dungeon, and from out that double incarnation of flesh and stone, the perpetual plaint of a soul in agony . . ..
-- Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

I was struck yesterday by a book I was reading, George Bradt's The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan, and an item in Business Week noting that 1,112 chief executives are gone this year and CEO turnover is on a pace to exceed last year's record 1,322 exits. So what do those 1,000 -plus new CEOs do to get themselves and their troubled assignments on the fast track?

In Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, Louis Gerstner, Jr. had a positively leisurely time going around talking to customers, senior managers and the rank and file before he came up with his strategy. In today's nanosecond business world, two Wall Street quarters go faster than a New York minute for troubled companies, and there wouldn't be a new CEO there if it wasn't a troubled company.

So I was struck by the single minded on-boarding focus of George Bradt. He's got it down. Like the pre-planning for Operation Overload's D-Day invasion of Europe, Bradt's approach comes from preparation (that T-minus D-Day planning), delivery and follow-through. He recognizes that the success of the CEO's team requires the alignment of people, plans and practices around a shared purpose.

It all sounds pretty simple. Bradt has a very clear approach on how to manage the different stages of on-boarding. I also checked out his website at www.primegenesis.com. He looks to increase the Tactical Capacity of the new leaders.

Interesting, huh. Tactical Capacity not Strategic Capacity. Oh yeah, you can have those long-night sessions to develop strategies or hire the top Big Think shops. The best strategies, though, can be written on a napkin in a bar or put together in forty-eight hours. Then what do you do in the next 2,352 hours (viz. 98 days)?.

Bradt's got it down. You define your
  • Imperative
  • Milestones
  • Early Wins
  • Team Roles
  • and Values
You execute like crazy. Heady stuff? Sounds too easy. Well, remember that 40% of new leaders fail in their first 18 months, according to the Center for Creative Leadership. And those men and women weren't stupid in the first place. They and the Boards that selected them thought they knew what they were doing. The cost of that failure is millions of dollars and possibly thousands of lives -- not just the life of the CEO.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins found that most CEOs don't get their businesses humming until their seventh year in office. Wow, if you're a new CEO, you better be good real fast. Those first 100 days could be a real agony of the soul for the toughest Al Dunlap. Good thing George Bradt's got it down because the best way better be up with some pre-planning and a sound tactical approach.

Postscript: Who's Looking In My Drawers

Truer than what I said the other day:

Today, the New York Times did a feature on Aleksey Vayner, an earnest 21-year-old Yale undergraduate who had sent a video of himself as part of his job applications.

According to the article, Mr. Vayner "submitted an 11-page resume and elaborate video clip to UBS. It then showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread to every corner of the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner’s athletic prowess, flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube. And the overwhelming reaction was mocking laughter.

Mr. Vayner is not amused. Instead, he said he feels like a victim. The job materials that were leaked and posted for public view included detailed information about him that allowed strangers to scrutinize and harass him, he said. His e-mail inbox quickly filled up, with most of the messages deriding him and, in certain cases, threatening him. Since the video surfaced on the Internet, Mr. Vayner said he has deleted at least 2,000 pieces of e-mail."

I rest my case.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Who's Looking In My Drawers?

There is a huge irony in the fears about privacy and identity theft and the rush to pose on the social networking sites of myspace, facebook, tagworld.

In the media, you read thousands of stories about people having their personal data stolen and the actions that major corporations are taking at the same time to get people to sign up with them while promising protection (uumm, sounds like a Mafia come-on).

Do you really want to bank online? Have a portable electronic wallet? Share your personal data? Sign up for massive online storage sites for photos and documents?

And at the same time, ensure that absolutely no one else has access to your personal vault of life, love, money and the pursuit of happiness.

Well, heck yes. (But what about those Citigroup commercials where the voices of thieves come out of the bodies of their victims?)

Most online-active adults over 35 years old want it both ways.

But what about those under-35? Social networking is booming. Murdoch pays a fortune for myspace. Facebook will eventually be sold. Tagworld is a start-up by serial entrepreneurs looking for a payday. YouTube (your face, your life, your antics) is bought by Google. They are waving their online underwear like flag signals on a 18th century Admiral's battleship. If you can decipher it, you will learn everything.

Do those people who sign anyway their offline lives for an online network really care about privacy and security? Maybe not because they don't have anything really stealable? Except who they are.

That poor page who was victimised by Mark Foley was outed by a persistent blogger because of an online data error.

So let's see how do we reconcile social networking with privacy and security with theft.

Maybe the only safe place to live is in Second Life. Or never put yourself online.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

How many Angels on a Pin or Messages on a M&M?

I want my M&M's my way. The coupon came in the Sunday paper today and I can get my M&Ms personalized. Also, I don't need New York Times or Evening News with Katie Couric or MSNBC.com. I have my RSS feeds so my information is delivered, filtered and focused the way I want it. And my cellphone is my life. I call who I want, get no solicitors and V-Cast gives me music, videos, email and news.

To paraphrase e.e. cummings: How do you like your blue-eyed blue now, Mr. Marketer. Emerging technologies and the delivery of media continue to spell Mr. Death for mass marketers.

The irony is that TV networks still charge ever higher rates for declining viewerships because they still aggregate larger groups than the other less trackable, less aggregated modes of communication.

However, like the elegant empty posturing in Agnolo Bronzino's 1569 mannerist painting of The Martyrdom of Saint Lorzeno, guess what? You're still going to die.

The challenge continues to be marketers, media mavens and technical inventors to develop the research tools and approaches necessary to identify trends and understand and meet the needs of their consumers.

Consumer goods manufacturers get this. They recognize the need to identify true consumer insights that will let them adapt exisiting products and develop new products to meet the needs of their consumers and to grow their businesses.

If technical inventors and the media communicators can come together and develop new research approaches, learn to mine and convert consumer insights into tools and message, then they will reduce confusion, competing formats, fragmented tools and messages and provide efficient, focused, relevant and motivating media.

Saint Augustine asked how many angels can dance on the pin? In a world of nanotechnology, the answer is infinite but the question is if the messages are hitting home. Really, it should be as simple as personalizing your M&M.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Does that pain mean I am going to die?

It is a deceptively simple question. When you get that first twitch in your shoulder, that pain in your stomach, that ache in your head, how do you know whether you should go to the doctor or go to the drugstore.

It is amazing how little pharmaceutical or consumer products marketers understand about decision-making when it comes to those death twinges (see previous post about all consumer products being about death or sex).

Pharmaceutical marketers are focused on developing clinical trials that deliver primary endpoints that mean something to the FDA and physicians. But those endpoints may mean very little to consumers who are meant to buy and use the products.

OTC consumer product marketers spend much more time mining for those consumer insights that will be a call to action. When you get that headache, think Execedrin. When you get that stomach ache, think Rolaids.

But what if you need Imitrex because you really have a migraine or Nexium because you have acid reflux disease.

Understanding the decision making that goes into healthcare decision-making can be a key driver to improved care and cost management. Am I consumer or a patient? Am I dying or not? That insight can save lives and money.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Sex, Death and Consumer Products

So this then is what it all comes down to: sex and death. The consumer products that we buy are really about just two things: trying to avoid dying and being attractive enough to the opposite sex to form a liaison. From food and medicine -- that living part -- to personal care and cosmetics -- that attractive part, almost all of our consumable activities line up behind those poles of life.

Think of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Do you see any fat Egyptians on those walls? Those drawings and the attendant stories were the Vogue magazine of the Nile cognoscenti.

Two other quick points. Woody Allen in his eponymous movie calls these poles: Love and Death. A friend of mine, Jim Carpenter, characterized the attraction, as it pertains to women, as seeking security. Men, of course, are more focused on just sex. So maybe I am being crass and Darwinian by focusing on procreation and surely we are better than that and seek more out of life.

This is still the challenge for marketers. They need to truly make an effort to understand their consumers, to identify and mine the insights of their motivations, going under their skin and into their brains, and to develop products and positionings that meet consumer needs.

I know this sounds so basic. It is the mantra breathed in many CPG companies. Yet other businesses like banks, insurance companies, airlines, automotive companies even industrial manufacturers, do not well understand this point. They are struggling to find their way in and even their buy-in. And some CPG companies themselves have a long way to go to understand people's coping habits, buying drivers and decision-making.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Time, Money and Pixels

"Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day."

When the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell wrote these lines in the 17th century, he was blogging what we already know about successfully reaching our customers (clients, consumers, patients, etc.)

This is what the world comes down in commerce: time, money and an exchange of satisfaction. Understanding those levers of satisfaction are critical for success.

Even if you enter a virutal world like secondlife.com, the trading can quickly change from virutal linden dollars to hard currency. It is the basic understanding of human motivation that stays the same: experience, expression, application of knowledge, acquisition of content (viz. knowledge) and simply living.

The challenge for many businesses is harnessing the concept of self-expression in their own lives and the relationships they have with their clients. If you can tie determine how to self-expression into your business transaction, you can harness a huge degree of satisfaction that will, in return, drive loyalty. And this will only increase your share of time, money and pixels.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Batter Up: Talent Management and Performance

Many companies talk about talent management but how many of us know of people who got promoted because they were friends of a boss. If you are truly competitive, you want to have the best athlete in the right position.

When I worked for Peter Harf, the then CEO of Benckiser, one night at dinner, Peter said to a bunch of us: "I may like you, I may not like you. I don't really care. All I do care about is that you know how to get the job done and you do get it done."

In baseball, team managers have known this fact for over 100 years. Why don't business managers know this? Despite all the lipservice about talent management and the efforts of HR departments, the best people don't get the best jobs.

This approach is an area where executive recruiters can be effective consultants for their clients. Get them the best people and tell them to forget the beauty pageant.

Here's what the magazine Fast Company learned from Jeff Angus, a baseball columnist:

FC: So baseball managers are people people?
Angus: Since the National League was organized in 1876, managers have known that they will succeed only on the drive, acuity, and sharpness of their players. In business, the thing that prevents you from being outsourced or downsized is keeping the talent you have from being commoditized. Tom Peters and others started talking about this in the mid-1980s. Baseball had a 90-year head start.

FC: Baseball hasn't changed much in more than a century. So how is any of this relevant to business, which changes all the time?
Angus: Baseball is a perfect example of making yourself over on a regular basis. Every off-season, they debrief, reassess, start a new cycle, bring up young players, try people in new positions. Look at the Atlanta Braves' Bobby Cox. Over the past 15 years, depending on the talent, he's made power teams, hitters' teams, pitchers' teams--and they've all been competitive.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Learning Dance Steps on Your Competitors' Graves

I was recently asked for advice from a friend of mine, who is a fashion designer. He was interested in becoming a master licensee for a famous European women's design name in the United States and targeting men. The potential gains seemed like a no-brainer: a well-known name entering a new market. He was all ready to go, but I asked him first if he had thought about other design houses that had done the same thing. What about Donna Karan? Liz Clairborne? Even a retailer like Talbot's? Were they successful? Yes, at first, but then the sales evaporated. I asked him if he knew why. He said no but that he was going to find out.

Then there were the goods. He was going to do belts, ties, watches and shoes, licensing the name out to sub-licensees. I asked him where he was going to focus. Which item was going to be the lead focus that would carry the entire line? What was the one item he would advertise? How much was the sub-licensee going to invest in this lead item? That licensee and their ability to deliver could determine the entire success of his line.

The biggest mistakes I see my friends making are in not analyzing and understanding their competitors and in not focusing their product lines. Competitive analysis helps you understand the landscape where you will be fighting. Focusing your line gives you the sharpest sword. Everyone learned this in business school. The challenge is truly spending the time and the effort to understand your market and then to understand which of your products will give you a competitive advantage in that market.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Internet Headlights Make Product Introductions Shine

Democracy in the marketplace is increasingly shaping the aspects, roles and popularity of products with the use of the internet. While this is not an amazingly astute observation, a pause for the moment to consider these developments can help direct future initiatives. Market researchers always understood this power: conjoint analysis has consumers assign degrees of attractiveness to various aspects of a product concept. With the internet, more and more people are anxiously willing to take polls, provide product reviews, write articles, adding their opinions, ideas and power to almost anything from the academics of Wikipedia to the electronicc reviews on cnet. P&G harnesses these views in seeking new product ideas, movie production companies build advance word-of-mouth through planned dialogues and politcial consultants endlessly poll, promote and raise money. Now, if you've got a new product, that is largely unknown, an interesting question is how you can build awareness, shape its introduction and secure its popularity by focusing on the relentless democracy of the internet marketplace. Unique points of difference can shine when consumers themselves turn on the light.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Why let drug retailers control a manufacturer's success in the souk?

I was doing store checks for personal care last week, and I continue to be amazed about the variability and vagaries of shelf sets, particularly in drug stores. Drugstore Headquarters demand the best deals and margins for their space and promise execution, and Manufacturers, knowing there is no other game in town for mass market distribution targeted to consumers who purchase prescriptions and their other needs at one location, pony up what is needed and then pray for success. Retail merchandising forces who go in and set the shelves help, but all too often the incremental revenues realized by using a merchandising force do not payback the expense. The answers continues to be demand, stimulating desire that, for the consumer, over-rides the hazards of navigating the drug store souk. Cut the promotional fees. Reduce line promotions. Forget the circular ad no matter how much incremental (and profitable) volume you will realize. It still comes down to simple demand generation in the best media reaching your target audience.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Robert Rubin and Uncertainty

This week Robert Rubin resigned from Ford to avoid a conflict of interest since Citigroup, where he is a director, is advising Ford on strategic options.

More interesting, though, is David Leonhardt's recent observation in the The New York Times that Rubin championed the idea, during the Clinton administration, that "uncertainty was an inevitable part of life and only the foolish imagine they could eliminate it."

Yes, Leonhardt goes on to write, you evaluate all the data, assess the risk and act. However, a good decision can still produce a bad outcome.

In an uncertain world, you have to hit for a high average. On any given day, you have to make ten decisions. I go for making seven good ones, two so-so and one bad. You just have to hope that the bad one doesn't kill you. Then you have to understand what caused the failure, learn from that and do better next time.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Freedom and Initiative is Good - But what about the discipline

Freedom is a powerful motivating idea. But motivation alone is not enough. The Greeks at Salamis fought better than the Persians because they were motivated by their desire to defend their land and their ideology.

In the same way, in a different war: the revolutionary war, the American colonists were ready at Lexington and at Bunker Hill to defend themselves against the British. However, throughout the war, there was a tension between amateur militia soliders (like those at Lexington) and the regular army led by Washington. Washington believed that only a regular well-trained, well-led army of regular soldiers could systematically defeat the imperial British army. He regarded the local state militias as auxiliiary troops to his regular ones. And in small skirmishes, in fight-and-flee tactics, the militias did well. But in pitched fights, sieges and attacks, discipline powered by ideology was more critical than ideology alone.

After his defeat in New York in 1776, Washington realized that he could not win a major pitched battle against British regulars (as much as he longed to -- to justify his strategy and his view of himself as a regular soldier) so he adopted the fight-and-flee strategy. The success of this strategy led to his victory at Trenton -- which started out as a successful pitched engagement, became a retreat when threatened by a superior reinforcing army and then became a battle again at Princeton, followed by a retreat across the river back into Pennsylvania.

In business, you can have great strategy and great passion, but, if you don't have the discipline of the organization to adjust strategy and to execute, you will not succeed.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Personal Leveraging Engine

Read an interesting article by Nancy Fox, author of the Sixty-Second coach. She writes how most of us under-leverage our resources and contacts to help us with our business opportunities. I think that the key is to do personal due diligience. We do our due diligence whenever we do a deal, and sometimes we close the deal and sometimes we walk away. Why don't we do this for our most crucial and critical personal opportunities?

Here are Nancy Fox's five top tips for revving up your personal Leveraging Engine:

-Shift your thinking.

Your results are not going to improve dramatically with only better time management, working more hours, or longer to-do lists. Once you embrace the perspective that all around you are resources to be leveraged, what blind spots are uncovered? What processes can you simplify or even eliminate? What relationships are waiting to be tapped to assist you in producing the results you desire?

-Make a list of your resources and review them once each month.

Spend at least one hour each month reviewing your resources. Brainstorm with other colleagues on this topic so that you speed up uncovering the blind spots.

Here are some examples of commonly under-leveraged resources:

Your computer (go beyond how you are currently leveraging your computer)
Your hobbies
Your special interests
Your unique areas of knowledge
Your talents (you have more than you acknowledge)
Your service providers, vendors, etc.
Your local college
A current project
Your colleagues
The person to whom you report
The people that report to you
Your entire contact base
Their contact bases
Your brand
Your coach

Keep adding to this list.

-Make one unreasonable request each week.

Very often, we don’t leverage others’ desire to be of assistance. We often give ourselves reasons why we can’t ask for something. However, most people do want to be of service. When you leverage this opportunity, you give the other person a chance to make a difference and be generous. You gain the experience of being powerful and not being stopped by “reasons.”

-Interview people whom you admire and who have accomplished the kind of results you would like to.

Leverage the knowledge and experience of others who have attained what you would like to accomplish. How have they done it? What mistakes did they make? What worked well? Often, people enjoy sharing their history and their path to success, as well as the pitfalls they wished they had avoided.

-Put an implementation program in place regularly.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Without implementation, most good ideas evaporate into thin air. Put a regular process in place weekly where you ask yourself:

What are the biggest challenges I am facing right now?
What am I not leveraging now that I could be leveraging? (What are my blind spots around this?)
What new results would that produce?
Write down your answers. (Writing them down gives them a concrete reality in your brain.)

Saturday, August 19, 2006

War Strategy - Ideology at Salamis

In 480 BC, the Greek sailors led by Themistocles soundly and horrifically defeated the Persian navy of Xerxes, even though they were outnumbered 2 to 1. The importance of freedom to the common Greek sailor, drawn and bound by a single national idea, was a more powerful driver of success than the mercenary payment promised the forced conscripts that came from all over the vast Persian empire. In his book, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, Victor David Hanson notes that the Greek ideas of personal initiative, free speech and flexibility was a critical motivator; in contrast, all these elements that forge the foundation of what we take for granted in Western demoncracy, were an anthema to Persian thought.

During the battle, Xerxes sat on a throne high above the seas and watched his navy destroyed, while Themistocles was in the lead ship, urging his navy onward.

Strategy, teamwork motivation and initiative are all hallmarks of how we like to think we can be successful. In the West, they continue to be fundamental to how we think and how we act.