I hope so. I mean, your company and what you do rely on the integrity you provide to your customers. Just think if you were perceived as another Bernie Madoff?! Ugh!
In a recent article in CareerJournal.com, Stephen Covey stresses that you should (1) learn the skills that will earn you greater trust; and (2) don’t over promise what you can deliver. Particularly during these lean times with less resources and short personnel, that is great advice.
Categories: Public Relations · Vision · Work
Those were the days. Back in the 70s, 80, and early 90s, you could mail catalogs and marketing pieces to your hearts content, sit on your hands, and watch the returns come in. Oddly enough, several of my clients who are high volume marketers, until recently, were still using this model. They just couldn’t figure out how to readjust their marketing strategy. Honestly! As if they didn’t see the signs about nine years ago!
Certainly, we may see the USPS gone by then. The post office has almost put itself out of business by setting postal compliance with NCOA (National Change of Address), and other Move Update requirements. Now, postal workers may be going to a five-day delivery with fear of losing more than $6 billion in revenues.
But what will marketing look like in the future? Francis Anderson’s blog, Making a Connection, claims marketing may hit a wall by 2020, indicating that marketers will need to compete for a much smaller share of a large market. Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week, advocates marketing your products and services to a very narrow and niche market. Both Anderson and Ferris could be considered true visionaries!
What caught my eye this week was the NY Times article on the growth of marketers moving into statistics. Moving into Web 2.0 and the digital world, companies are now turning to statisticians for turning their data into meaningful information to chew on, then move forward with products and services.
I don’t have any profound assumptions or answers to this movement. All I know is that I’m going out in about ten minutes to buy a lottery ticket!
It’s been evident after the release of iPod and iPhone that Apple is stealing more market share away from Microsoft. It’s been reported last week that Microsoft has just closed one of the worst quarters in its history.
Apple, led by Steve Jobs, shaved off most of the complexity and made things much more simple by focusing on cell phone and MP3 space, in addition to their PCs. Microsoft can’t handle the competition. It is still too complex and cannot retain a focus. And, clearly Microsoft is unable to meet Apple’s match on cell phone or MP3 products.
Google is also struggling. The economy, yes, has much to do with it since people and businesses overall are still holding back on spending.
Google, too, is focusing on too much, creating many divisions within the corporation by taking on libraries, maps, utilities, and other off-shoots that are making Microsoft look like a simple cookie jar.
So, as an iPhone user, Mac lover, and Apple advocate, I promote being just like Apple. Keep it simple, stupid! Stay good at the core of what you do, do it well, perfect it, and market it well.
As for Google, well… I still use Yahoo!
Stay focused!
Categories: Branding · Business in general · Marketing · Vision
We have said it a million times: “We are on information overload.” In fact, we have been talking about this for more than a decade. In an article in Information Week in 1995, it appears that it was only going to get worse. It is.
As businesses grow, we have a variety of complex business partnerships. As a result, we have issues that develop in order to secure these relationships. Primarily
This may be good for streamlining business, but it is hard to secure. While organizations focus on the technical controls around network connections, they forget about the people, process, policy, and contractual controls necessary to secure these relationships – technologically and internally within personnel so that competitors do not intervene.
Then you have the issue of offshore outsourcing. Is sending logins and intellectual property overseas safe – just to ensure cost savings? What are the risks?
And, let’s not forget weather events. I happen to be in tornado country and the opportunity for a tornado to wipe out a computer system is likely. Not high odds, but likely.
I don’t recall the source, but after 9/11, there were voice lines and more than four million data circuits that failed due to infrastructure overload. Mobile cell phone calls were blocked, causing communications system failures.
Businesses that lose data from natural disasters are forced to fail, and/or close their doors. Businesses need a thought out plan in the event of natural disasters in the event something happens to their computer servers. I haven’t done the research, but it would be interesting to find out what the percentage of those companies that definitely have a written plan.
I’m overloaded. My head hurts…
Categories: Business in general · Vision
What does social networking site have to do with a cup of coffee? Well, first, if you’re not part of networking on Facebook, well, then why aren’t you? Is there something wrong with you? I mean, if you carry a cell phone, use only your debit card for transactions so you don’t have to carry cash, and email daily to communicate, why aren’t you on Facebook? Are you trying to make a statement?
Farhad Manjoo wrote a great article on the e-zine, Slate, indicating that if you’re not on Facebook, you are making a statement; you don’t want people knowing ‘your business.’
So what does this have to do with a cup of coffee? Well, isn’t that where we went to catch up with someone? “I’ll meet you at Starbucks” used to be the common thread. But, with Facebook as a meeting place to connect with friends and family, why go anywhere? Do you think this is why Starbucks is considering another round of layoffs? Have we all decided, with the recession, that we can make our own cup of coffee at home, while reading what is on our ‘walls’ (and everyone elses), rather than being part of a Starbucks environment?
Well, it’s something to think about.
Does your company focus on the customer? It’s seems so obvious, but does it? And, are you adapting to the changing times with the customer in mind?
James Surowiecki did a superb article in The New Yorker on how newspapers are slowing joining the railroad industry as a model for lack of focus on the customer. He clearly and concisely outlined how and why newspapers are becoming a dying breed, and that if newspapers realized that they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would not be joining GM in the bailout business model.
The problem is, we all crave information. We lean on the major newspapers for trends, issues, and breaking news. But, we want it now, for next to nothing, and want to eat it up at McDonald’s prices.
I happen to like the tangible. I like to turn the pages of newsprint, go back and forth with those pages, and cut out articles, coupons, and other tidbits. I’m a rare bird, I know. But, my mother did it, my grandmother did it, and my great grandmother did it. My boys don’t do it. But, then again, they expect to pull it off the Internet, send me the link, and then what do I do? I print it out.
However, I digress. The times are changing. The economy is in the toilet. Is your company making strategic decisions with your customers’ needs in mind? Or, will your company end up with one limited model, as the railroad industry did years ago?
Categories: Business in general · News · Vision
Be daring! Even now, when things look bleak, is when the competition is also down on their knees praying for an answer.
So, be like Apple. Reshape the industry! Before the iPhone, there were phones and networks. Let’s face it, all they sold were connections to bandwidth.
Today, you have phones, and a hand-held computer that allows you to do more than just talk and text. (I, personally, could not live without mine while traveling. Got to have my itunes!) Apple couldn’t have done it without some sort of partnership arrangement with AT&T. And there are drawbacks for AT&T as well – for example, what happens when the customer no longer walks into the AT&T store to upgrade, add features, or buy accessories.
Now if only the auto industry could come up with a plan to do the same thing…
What does your company going to do to reshape the industry in 2009?
Categories: Innovation · Vision
Now that we are near the end of a calendar year, and many companies are putting their budgets together, we are planning our 2009 budgets rather frugally. I don’t think there is one company that I have read about that is not cutting, laying off, slashing, or burning. Some companies are laying off in the coming weeks, prior to the New Year, while others are looking at the next six months.
Don’t layoff workers when there is another bad month of sales. Put a plan together. And, make sure workers know where the company is on a weekly basis.
What is your six-month plan, your 2009 plan, and your plan to tread water over the next few years while the economy comes back to some semblance of order?
Categories: Vision
The Gap. No matter what age, everyone wears jeans and T-shirts. Hell, even my 80-year-old father does! But, why can’t he go into Gap to buy jeans and T-shirts? When I walk into the Gap, I feel like I need a cane and a shawl with me from the look of the 18-to-24-year olds who infiltrate the store. So where in the world do the likes of us baby-boomers find stuff like that?
Just like Starbucks, The Gap claims that it grew too fast and ‘lost its way’. It now is redirecting its product development to go ‘back to basics’. Smart. But will it work? Along with losing your way, you lose customers. You lose consumer confidence. You lose revenue.
One assignment for all product developers/designers of Gap: go into the stores and talk to the sales people. What a novel idea! It is so prevalent in just about every industry that companies create an “ivory tower” approach to rolling out products. The one thing they leave out is talking to the sales staff to ask what they hear, what they experience, what the customers are telling them. Even the most anecdotal information brings on a need for change, or going ‘back to basics.’
It’s all so simple.
Go talk to your sales people. Talk to them daily, weekly, monthly. What are your customers telling you?
Categories: Business in general · Marketing · Vision
The mortgage crisis, the American car companies losing their shirts, and Americans paying $4.00+ for a gallon of gas (and climbing!), all bear the results of one thing: no future planning!
I grew up in the 1960s and experienced the gas conserving under Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.
Blind sighted? I think not. It’s called, “let’s just ride with the tide!” Eddie Lard’s column and blog say it best: “For years, we saw this coming: the perfect storm of fast-rising gasoline and diesel fuel prices, with no end in sight…” Couldn’t agree with you more, Eddie!
I often get from others who obviously don’t pay attention to world news over the years, “well, how did we know that this was coming?” Bad, bad, bad.
Ford and General Motors should have planned for such a time, because, let’s be honest, just how much oil does one think is in the earth? Just how long can that last, when Americans are using 25% of the world’s oil?
How does this reflect how we manage our business? Well, let’s just put it this way: If you can’t create a vision for your company down the road to bring about change, you will hit a problem. Yes, there are still people out there who are buying Hummers. (For crying out loud! These people don’t have a brain cell in their head!) But, IBM relied on the sale of typewriters, and they scrambled when computers became the means of operating businesses.
Are things going well for your company now? Great! Well, how well will it do in five years if there is a crisis in your marketplace?
Categories: Business in general · Leadership · Vision
