A product, service or brand that’s being raved about is all well and good until you try it out for the first time. With mountains of people talking so wildly about something, you’ve naturally put it in the remarkable box. But what happens when it’s not remarkable; when it’s only OK; when it doesn’t blow your mind?
Apple has this hype problem. Mac lovers sermonise so wildly about using them instead of PCs anyone taking one out of the box for the first time almost expects a Mac to do the work for them – or at least perform it by telepathy. I met a Mac newbie this week and they were seriously underwhelmed by their box-fresh MacBook Pro, “It’s not as special as everyone bangs on about, is it?”
Buy an iPad this weekend and see if it lives up to your undoubtedly weighty expectation. (What do you mean it doesn’t change nappies?)
Word of mouth is the pinnacle of marketing – until, that is, when it sets the bar too high. Then it leads to disappointment and a distrust of the next ‘big thing’ and marketing in general.
Hadfield Road in Cardiff is a haven for the car buyer. It’s just a mile long but straddling nearly every inch of it you’ll find over 20 car dealerships. This proximity to your competitors certainly isn’t unique – pub chains all gather together in city centres. So does the sex industry in London’s Soho, and jewellry in New York’s diamond district around 47th Street. All apply the same phenomenon of proximity.
A similar thing is happening with e-book readers. The iPad launched earlier this year and threatened to decimate existing readers like Sony’s Pocket Reader, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and, most notably, Amazon’s Kindle. But it appears to have done the opposite as sales of Kindle have trebled this year compared to the first half of 2009.
Amazon is now selling more E-books than they do hardbacks! Just think about that [undisclosed] number for a minute. In an interview with USA Today, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos said, “I predict we will surpass paperback sales sometime in the next nine to twelve months. Sometime after that, we’ll surpass the combination of paperback and hardcover. It stuns me.”
They’re releasing a new Kindle at the end of August that’s smaller, lighter, better and half the cost. I don’t know if it can launch an artillery strike but it’s going to further enliven their product life cycle.
All this should remind us that the next time competitors threaten to join our market or emulate our products, we should wonder if we cant use proximity to grow the whole together, rather than needing to turn into cannibals. It’s another argument for the thoroughly modern co-opertition, not necessarily competition.
Steve Jobs said, “This is really hot,” when he unveiled the iPhone 4 at his Worldwide Developers Conference last month. He wasn’t joking.
It took Apple 72 days to sell a million of their original iPhone when it launched in 2007. Last year, the iPhone 3GS sold a million units in three days, a benchmark it took the iPad took 28 days to achieve. But all these look positively lethargic compared to the iPhone 4 and Apple’s most successful launch in its history: they’ve sold over 1.7 million phones in just three days since its release on June 24.
Estimates for Q3 claim sales of 10.2 million units, rising to 12.2 million for Q4.
The really interesting thing is that 77% of those early sales were to existing iPhone owners. Over three-quarters of sales are to folks who are upgrading! That’s the very definition of a want, not a need.
As Seth Godin might say, seek out committed customers and harvest a tribe by finding/making products for them. Inspire and reship.
Steve Jobs is the ultimate tribe leader. Love him or loath him, make no mistake you’re watching the Pied Piper of tech, folks.
Old news: technology and consumerism are intertwined. Simple example, the cheque book and then the debit card were tech replacements for cash.
Today’s smart phones and the rush of tablets we’re about to see really are changing the landscape now, not just tomorrow. Watch Scoble interview the head of eBay mobile, Steve Yankovich to see how serious one of the globe’s largest retailers is about mobile.
They’re serious about augmented reality; serious about decoupling from the desktop PC; and serious about going truely global. It’s 25 minutes long but hang in there, the second half is more ‘business’ than the first.
Smith-Harmon has released a study of American retail email trends for last year. Unsurprisingly, 2009 saw record volumes distributed.
It states that the 100 largest retailers sent an average of 132 promotional emails to each of their subscribers. That’s an average of 11 emails a month and 2.5 per week, per subscriber (peaking at 15.4 in December). Overall, top online retailers sent 12% more promotional emails in 2009 than they did the year before—and 39% more than during 2007.
You’ve got to wonder if we’re going to kill the golden goose here. The overwhelming number of emails threatens to neuter your subscribers’ inbox. I’d argue consumers are becoming numb to special offers and super savings.
This is about perfecting frequency, not necessarily content. It’s a nexus that lies between maximum engagement (revenue in most cases) and maximum disengagement (unsubscribers). Think about consumers’ distain for physical junk mail promotional mail shots. It’s not too much of a leap to imagine that feeling about your inbox - even if you did volunteer your address.
If a salesman turns up for a meeting in new Porsche 911, he’d better be flogging footy players, not underwear or umbrellas to BHS.
Most salespeople understand the principles of the game: set a tone that’s both professional and in line with your brand and product offering.
That’s why I’m amazed at business people who rock up to meetings in £40k cars and then produce cheap, battered, old laptops from leather briefcases.
If you’re selling top-end tyres, tiaras, towels, till systems or toothpicks, surely it’s unwise to do so with dated equipment?
Salesmen want you to procure something with an intangible benefit associated with brand equity (think perfume for the classic example where a tiny fraction of the cost goes to production). My problem is they often do so while displaying a lack of desire themselves. Yes it’s shallow. And yes, playing the game is a branding exercise.
It’s the equivalent of a builder turning up at your house in a beat up old transit, while he tells you how much quality and added value he brings with his £30k conservatories.
Cheap is perfectly understandable – frugal is fine – but when you’re selling luxury, quality or style, know that you should display some yourself as well (let’s call it ‘acting out’).
Easy win: an £800 MacBook comes over way better than a four year-old Dell some folks would schlep around. (And, no, don’t kid yourself, it’s not JUST about the label.)
Following their best Christmas to date, the very on-form John Lewis was recently voted Britain’s best shop by Verdict and its 6,000 shoppers. Let’s be honest, what’s not to like? The stores are upmarket but unpretentious. They’ve a quality product offering and peerless customer service.
John Lewis is different from normal retailers. They’re known as a bell-wether for high street trading, not because they mimic other retailers but because they report sales figures weekly as opposed to the normal quarterly results from the likes of Tesco and M&S. They are incredibly transparent; a throwback to being a ‘partnership’, owned by its 69,000 employees partners. This transparency and an old fashioned willingness to ‘serve’ clearly run through this business.
Although, that said, the latest ForeSee Christmas E-Retail Satisfaction Index tells a slightly different story of their online offering. In this brief but excellent study of the top 40 retailers (according to traffic), Amazon trump John Lewis as clear overall winners.
JL did come out on top when looking at the multichannel category, ahead of Boots and HMV. Most surprisingly of the pure plays (Internet only retailers) ASOS rank seventh, behind QVC and M&M Direct.
Regardless, both polls show JL is getting it very right where its customers are concerned. If I were Andrea O’Donnell, JL’s Commercial Director, I’d be very pleased but a little puzzled as to how a cold pure play like Amazon could best me when customers can’t even speak to an individual, let alone be impressed by one. Email updates obviously go a long way.
It’s pretty much a given that SMEs are more likely to be passionate about what they do than lumbering corporates answering to the City. Let’s be honest, most SMEs don’t tend to start a gardening business if they can’t stand the sight of grass.
Unfortunately, that passion can overrun into myopia where those in business only play to themselves – the People Like Us syndrome.
I’m sure you hear it in your office all the time: I’d never buy it for my home (so I assume my customers wouldn’t either)… my wife wouldn’t like it (so let’s leave it out of the catalogue)…. I’m not sure we’ve the market for that here (because they wouldn’t pay for it themselves).
It’s said that ‘me’ and ‘I’ are some of the worst words to use in a sales pitch because the customer doesn’t care about you or your likes and dislikes relating to that car, that printer or that fridge freezer. They’re not buying for a complete stranger (i.e. the salesperson); they’re buying for themselves to satisfy selfish reasons.
People Like Us is the other side of the same coin to be avoided in business.
Charging for postage is the perennial debate of e-commerce. I think Amazon’s decision this week to extend its free postage charge trialled before Christmas might favour a good deal more consumers than Amazon serves. I can see other retailers having to follow suit as they look to win a friend and gain a client from their competitors.
You can almost see it as a cost per acquisition – how much would you pay a 3rd party to get you a customer? Is it cheaper than banner ads and affiliate percentages?
Then again, when Amazon can charge $3 billion for a Discovery Channel CD-ROM, maybe taking the hit on their postage bills wont hurt the P&L so much.
I used to work for someone who claimed proudly that he knew almost nothing about our product and he certainly wouldn’t use our products. He would even speak derogatorily of those who did. With pride he’d say, “I’m a businessman, I don’t need to know about a product to sell it.”
Of course there’s quite a parcel of truth in his arrogance: your estate agent didn’t live in your house before you bought it and Dr John Davis doesn’t really know what childbirth is like. But we all want our salespeople to be empathetic, don’t we? We demand advice and expertise and the only real way of gaining that is through experience.
Just how our teams communicate that to customers is as much a marketing issue as website copy or advertising budgets. And it might be worth reminding them that ‘do what I say, not what I do’ is even more unpalatable now than it was as a child. Would you take health advice from an obese, alcoholic, chain-smoker?
Yet another naval-gazing award ceremony took place last week where BSkyB were claimed Britain’s Most Admired Company from Management Today.
Clearly, MT’s judges didn’t base the trophy on Sky’s email campaigns. If they had, MT wouldn’t discover personal, relevant and timed messages – their emails are more like blanket mini-billboards.
Every week or so Sky point me to sport I don’t watch and movies I have no interest in. Considering they have the digital knowledge of everything my household has watched for a couple of years, they display zero wherewithal in their emails.
A few ideas for Sky’s marketing team to increase email PR (personal and relevancy):
Croudsourcing – people who liked X and Y (stuff my house has seen) also watch Z on Wednesday at 10pm Follow on – if you liked The Apprentice you’ll love our top three business programs (some you may need to pay for)
Bundles – we’ve prepared three bundles of viewing which we think you’ll like. Please pick and amend them. These can be uploaded to my box and amending them lets Sky’s brain know and next week’s bundles will be even more relevant.
DVD iLike – Sky should ask me about my DVD collection to better profile my tastes. You could even take into account my book collection as well (I always think Amazon miss a trick here by only tracking purchases).
I am infinitely more likely to engage with, and probably upgrade, because of the relevancy of the above. So why do they torture my inbox with High School Musical and the Ashes?
Thorough email PR like this is way beyond the data mining systems at SMEs but surely Britain’s Most Admired could up the ante?
I was asked this week, ‘What does a manager really do?’ It was a fairly innocuous, rhetorical, jovial question from a well-paid, senior person.
The graduate switch flicked and I immediately thought, ‘seeing that the company’s goals are met’. After all, it’s the leader’s job to define and create those goals and aims, and it’s management’s job to realise them. Right?
But managing people is rarely a squeaky clean affair. I’m not a huge supporter of lofty job titles as they can often cause internal problems, but anyone claiming to be a ‘Manager’ will find themselves wearing several hats (in no particular order):
go between
consultant (to those above and below)
amateur psychologist
negotiator
dispute resolver
idea instigator
organiser
governor
role model
decision maker (the buck stops and all that)
communications expert (surely THE key to management)
soldier (ever metaphorically fallen on your sword?)
captain
big brother/sister (you need to eat more, drink less, curb spending)
counsellor
teacher
steward
servant
policy pursuer
change agent
supporter (of others, of the different viewpoint – perhaps the weaker voice)
challenger (of the status quo)
It strikes me that a manager who only wants to manage isn’t anywhere near up to the job. The seven-letter title is low-balling the variety of commitment needed in all but the safest of environments.
On the right - Prevent search engines from indexing news content and have readers pay through a variety of subscriptions to recoup lost earnings from physical news sales. People have no right to free journalism and aggregator sites (especially Google News) are to news, what Pirate Bay is to music.
On the left –
If you build it they will come. The internet is an unparalleled open space where the common good is freedom of information without class divides. If providers open their content equally the market will ensure the winners are the cream of crop. Revenue will be made through increased attention and trust.
Further right against ‘Don’t be evil’ - Stop the Google vampire by embracing its largest competitor instead – Microsoft’s Bing.
If Bing courted enough content providers to bed exclusively with them (by paying, say, the world’s top 50 newspapers and top 1,000 magazines) that would be a huge boon. Would it be enough to grab 10 or 15 percent of market share?
Of course it’s all about money for Murdoch, not attention and that’s where he and the digerati are looking at same issue from different ends.
Piano maker Kemble & Co is closing after nearly 100 years producing over 350,000 pianos. They were the UK’s last large scale piano manufacturer.
It’s a reflection of yesteryear when a piano was a central asset in the home. Mum and dad would teach their kids the odd tune in the hope of lighting their musical spark. Much more likely now to see a Playstation and laptop alongside the Sky box. Even if it were still fashionable, I doubt many modern living rooms are large enough to house a piano. I’m sure Kemble is a wonderful manufacturer but they belong to a sunshine industry that is clearly setting.
Another sign of the times is the UK release of Amazon’s e-reader, the Kindle. If I were a newspaper boss I’d be doing everything in my power to have my subscription service available to e-readers and smart phones. If I want eyeballs, I need to be where they are.
So why on earth are only four titles available via Amazon? The Evening Standard and Metro are free in London, but not so here. Hello! Amazon’s profits were up 68% in Q3 with the Kindle now their largest selling item by value and by volume (that’s staggering!). The music industry was far too slow to realise digital was a game changer, you’ve got to ask will the publishing and newspaper guys have learnt their lesson?
I can’t help but think of the Royal Mail strikes in the same (dimming) light. With the CWU seemingly taking glee at delaying some 50 to 60 million items, surely they’re speeding up their own inevitable death march.
Right or wrong as the union’s position may be, letters are in the same ‘sunshine industry’ as pianos and newspapers. No picket line will change that.
Most people think the saying ‘first impressions count’ is all about clothes or hair. They’re wrong (to a degree). It’s more about attitude than anything else.
How you carry yourself when you enter the room; how you interact in the opening few seconds; your handshake; your eye contact; your confidence.
It’s the X Factor test. Contestants stroll out on stage and before they sing a note the judges have formed an opinion. I’m guessing that original sniff test of an opinion is correct in the vast majority of cases (Susan Boyle is the notable exception).
I had the horrific experience of calling an ambulance for a heart attack victim recently. Of course, just having the medics arrive released some of the pressure in the room (help had come!) but their attitude was exemplary. They were: calm, authoritative, professional, clear communicators, even humorous with an obvious chain of command.
It’s largely natural, but like most things, we can teach ourselves to improve our attitude. These medics clearly had.
All businesses want to control their own destiny. Surely, it’s natural. The old-fashioned classic is to cut out the middleman and access the wallet yourself. After all, why go to the trouble of producing a wonderful product, only to pray fickle retailers buy into it and run the gauntlet of the supply chain? It’s sorely tempting to improve margins and go B2C not B2B.
And, as retailers become ever more aware that globalisation is but a mouse click away, why would they pay top dollar for widgets they can source, spec and put on a boat from Taiwan themselves. Again, in the pursuit of margin, it’s tempting to bite the hand that’s fed you.
A couple of recent examples:
Fresh out of bankruptcy, General Motors are showing an eagerness for change and sales by trading on eBay. With no one denying the car dealer network needs napalming, will this be the air raid warning for their atrocious service?
And Which? are looking to raise finance to launch a range of own-brand products and services. This 52-year-old charity organisation is taking the goodwill of 1 million subscribers and completely reengineering their business model.
What’s next, the BBC’s political editor running for Number 10?
When a brand gets too big for its boots it can always change them for loafers. That’s what the Seattle behemoth, Starbucks appears to be doing by going all bohemian.
In an apparent throwback to their origins of the 70s, customers can listen to live music and poetry and even buy alcohol. But, more surprisingly, this pilot includes ditching the name at three stores in their hometown for a more neighbourhood “community personality.”
If this is a corporate makeover then it’s a radical one that may well throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water. McDonald’s modernised its restaurants recently but they didn’t dare mess with the brand name. A local focus is unquestionably sensible but with 38 years of growth in the name, are the connotations so negative that you’d want to turn your back on it?
The anti-globalisation consumer is as likely to boycott Starbucks’ 16,000 stores as they are Coke. If this is a play to engage them I suspect it might fail, rather like my three-year-old believing she’s become invisible by covering her eyes. The coffee aficionados of Seattle will be all too aware of the company’s facelift and could arguably shun it with double enthusiasm.
What do you guys think, is this retail smoke and mirrors or is it modern rebranding genius?
WARNING: this is a lengthy diatribe on ecommerce. If online retailing isn’t your thing then run away now. If it does float your boat then grab a coffee, my friend:
Scoble has been posting lately about the future of the Internet, calling it the Web 2010, others are more likely to call it Web 3.0. What will ecommerce websites look like in this future world? Amazon and the other ‘Web Whales’ don’t give us much of a clue what they are rolling out before the next Olympics, so here’s my take on some of it.
ECOMMERCE PROLOGUE
As the amount of data available to us grows exponentially, even the most naive of customers are suddenly morphing into prosumers (professional–consumer). Prosumers scan for information before actually shopping and they’re in your stores already. Armed with spec lists, reviews and price comparisons, they push back your sales team and POS with hard data and raw opinions.
Perversely, more data is seeing customers take longer to make decisions and impulse buys are now filled with doubt – “I should’ve checked the reviews on this.” It could be argued that retailers who engage the longest and build the most trust, will win the most favour (oh yeah, AND the most orders).
BLENDING
Firstly, from a marketer’s perspective, online wont replace offline. More than ever, we’ll see a blending of multichannel operations. Next.co.uk will still produce their very expensive catalogue and their website will outperform other channels, but their property managers will still have a job to perform. Ditto M&S and Tesco, but there is no question that the small and unremarkable of the high street will feel ever-more pressure from those dastardly dot coms.
DELIVERY
Free delivery is largely becoming the de facto choice online. With retailers pushing this, they’ll offer consumers in high street outlets the chance of delivery to home rather than carting it onto the bus. The visa versa of this is already becoming more popular but in-store collection is likely to be incentivised more as it’s a double opportunity for retailers: delivery is less costly as it remains within their own supply chain (they’re transporting from the hub to the high street anyway) and, as you collect, it’s far more likely that you’ll pick up that extra item (cross selling heaven).
MOBILE VALUE
Mobile web access will grow as smart phones continue to take hold but M-Commerce value will start from a low base – think ringtones and iTunes. However, these should see repeat visitors and as trust builds, value should grow. Until then, fears of data breaches and insufficient speed will prevent anything like widespread acceptance.
SEARCH
In-site search will gain intelligence as search engines are forever increasing shoppers’ expectancy of relevance, thanks to their ever-improving accuracy. Typing ‘white 16″ collar double cuff non iron‘ on next.co.uk results in “There were no documents that contained all of the words in your query. These results contain some of the words…” and they proceed to show me 225 products with a white luxury Percale bedset toward the very top. (Yes, they do list shirts with all those keywords.) Partnerships with the search guys are likely as algorithms need to improve.
SEARCH ENGINE PAYMENT
Facebook money and nano-payments are going to become a reality, but how about making your transaction on the search engine itself? If Google, Bing or Yahoo shows you a product you want from a five star retailer, there’s no real reason to jump through to the site at all. You could plug in your payment details right there, completing the transaction (Google checkout really starts making sense now, eh?). This will increase shopping speed where trust already exists.
AUGMENTED REALITY
Augmented reality will take place using your photo library. A plug-in will scan your local machine and online (esp Flikr and Facebook) to find an image that it can use to best display the latest wares from Asos.com and TopShop.co.uk. It will superimpose clothes onto you and put you on an exotic location, not a paid model, in true CSI style.
SIZE AWARE
Zappos, the US shoe mail order giant, budget for a 20% return rate. Size aware sites will pummel that kind of error. Using the augmented reality above, you could see yourself in specific sizes: perhaps the large (your normal size) is a little too loose and viewing the medium shows it to be more correct. Obviously, very accurate pixeling and measurements from the site are a prerequisite. Women will be addicted to this feature; men might well become extinct from the high street.
3D
Why wouldn’t future sites look like merchandised finished stores? We’ve all seen Second Life and other virtual reality sites. Well, imagine you could ‘walk’ the whole store or teleport to the men’s shoe department. The store’s branding could even change to suit your mood – upbeat and funky, or perhaps click to change the ambiance to sedate and sophisticated.
SOCIAL PLUG-INS
This is where the likes of Facebook are betting on the big money. You’ve seen the sonar picture in the Batman movie where Morgan Freeman can view the whole of Gotham thanks to everyone’s mobile phone acting as a radar device. Well, as you ‘walk’ through the 3D reality store and into others in the shopping centre (because they’ll collaborate, as retailers know proximity brings success), you will be aware of your social media contacts – Julie is 50m off to your right, David is in the café upstairs. Virtual geotagging would allow you to meet them/talk/show as busy.
FRIENDLY FOCUS
Social advertisers are of the mindset that if you like snowboarding, heavy rock and fast convertibles, they can serve you ads that will interest you i.e. heavily targeted. They’re also of a mindset that your friends wont be too far off that choice spectrum either. If you’re golf mad then it stands to reason some of your contact book will be fellow golfers, right? Therefore if they can define you, they reckon they can define your group.
If our virtual store knows that ten of your friends bought something from the homeware department, it might well show you an offering from that neck of the woods. If it knows two of your mates browsed a particular shirt and another one bought it, perhaps it might show you the shirt. But wait, you don’t all want to look the same (though you may well want to buy identical music and games) so the store’s intelligence shows you similar styles, but not an identical shirt.
4th DIMENSIONAL WEB
The focus on friends and your group above is referring to the social graph (a modern take on six degrees of separation, if you like). The problem with that graph is that as your social list grows, the trending becomes diluted. Let’s say you ‘friend’ two people you work with: one is into motorbikes and cooking and has married four times; another is a spinster and likes books and knitting – correlation is becoming far more difficult (simple example, but you get the idea).
You ‘friend’ people almost on a daily basis because you’ve touched each other in some way. But it is NOT an indicator of similarity. However, if you and I are connected *and* we’re both members of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Institute of Directors and we also list similar books and blogs as of interest, then the algorithm could rightly pair us on the same graph. The trouble is, which graph: perhaps occupation (to serve job ads), but music and clothing? How about sport and movies? Will we both like cricket?
Incorporating the social graph along with real time search is what the master mathematicians are coding right now. It will make the web more than 3D. The intelligence and relevance will mean no serious retailer will have a standard look. Very few visitors landing at the home page will see identical layouts and offerings. The big players will become more relevant and successful because of it.
VOTING RIGHTS Scoble had this down when he said, “So, if someone says “Pluto’s rocks” there should be an aggregator that lets you see how many people talked about Plutos. Obviously only people writing on their iPhones FROM Plutos on University Ave.”
He’s talking about your contacts (friends again) informing you of what’s well regarded, but there’s also the possibility of the wider view from perhaps the whole of Twitter or Friendfeed. I’d say this could split in two, similar to paid ads appearing above the SERPs in a Google search with your closest friends (easily ID’d beause of most interaction) biased toward the top. The intelligence knows that I’m biased to my friends views, but still shows me what the masses think.
MOBILE NETWORKING Jason Calacanis says that the Mobile SNS (social networking services) is up for grabs in the United States. I’ll take his word on that, and I’ll completely agree that social networking will shift from the desktop to your pocket. The phone coupled with geolocation tools will become networking nevada.
BRILLIANT BAR CODES
The cubic generation of bar codes is coming where data matrix squares will replace the traditional lined rectangle. But we’ll also see QR (quick response) codes more frequently in the UK (they’re common in Asia and North America). The QR code can look like art, but when scanned, usually by a mobile phone camera, it reveals data. These can take you to micro sites, or vouchers, or secret passages to hidden info (known as easter eggs) – like game cheats and movie trailers for example.
Gorilla marketers will appear to make these bleeding edge, scattering them around cities and towns, but within a year the Pepsis and Fords of the world will drag them to the mainstream.
CHANNEL CONFLICT
Manufacturers want greater penetration and control and they can achieve both by cutting out the middle man and going direct to the consumer. When your products are as hot as Apple’s you can do as you please. Retailers are still falling over themselves to tout Apple’s wares despite the possibilty of losing a sale to apple.com. However, the majority of brands have their hands tied by the threat of retaliation (i.e. refusal to buy) from their retail partners.
It’s thought that 50-60% of customers looking for a branded product begin their search at the manufacturer’s website. Manufacturers will look for ingenious ways of capturing that consumer rather than just being a megaphone of information. Ship to store is the most obvious route but the marketing steps ahead of that will be ingenious – hooking in TV advertisment widgets for instance.
BRANDS
Own brand products will become even more obligatory. Did you know Amazon has had their own private label line-up for five years? China’s best will also feature far more in Europe as they cash in on the knowledge we’ve given them. It’s bite-the-hand-that’s-fed-you time.
The recent reports of Tesco’s profit show they’ve been outstanding while others have cried ‘recession’. A 53rd week changes the picture somewhat, but lets round off profits at £3 billion. Bravo.
They’re launching a banking arm soon and it’s going to shake the big boys out of plenty of high street business, but what’s next? How about earning customer favour by taking green initiatives to their core business model?
I’m not talking about binning normal light bulbs for more energy efficient ones – arguably making the process counterproductive. Really go green, not create some spammy marketing half-truth, but a bona fide real deal. Court green ideas, embrace things that upset the status quo.
Here’s some examples:
1. Source the best designed solar panel that can be mass produced and put on top of Tesco’s buildings, helping them decouple from the national grid.
2. Offer a £1 million prize to the designing of a system that channels the energy of millions of shoppers pushing millions of trolleys around the stores. Possibly via some sort of dynamo/KERS system that downloads stored energy when in the trolley park (selling the surplus back to the national grid).
3. Train some of this year’s 600,000 school leavers (what percentage are to become unemployed?) to help manufacture the above, becoming the employer of conscience.
4. Find ways of better catching and using the rain water on site from roofs and car parks.
5. Recycle on a new scale altogether helping communities, suppliers, and possibly governments, better understand and practice this haphazard essential.
6. Lead the march on fair trade goods.
7. Employ a better infrastructure to source more local produce.
Note: I’m sure numbers 1, 2 and 4 have already been invented in Japan or by boffins at M.I.T.
The capital expenditure here would be scary but there is a future upside for both a marketing and fiscal tidal wave. Showing the world what an innovative, responsible, thoughtful corporation looks like could arguably see shareholder value fall, but that’s short sighted. Consumers will thank – and reward – Tesco dearly. What could that bring to their share price?
This doesn’t happen overnight, but Tesco could become the world’s poster boy for green retailing – in the same way Zappos is for customer service. Of course this isn’t easy and that’s why it would give them a massive competitive advantage. Or do you think others will beat them to it?
Complacent and lazy marketers know people like to follow the crowd. There’s safety in numbers, right?
They play this card as often as possible with their marketing messages. The company mindset can be, ‘Why do we need to do any better when product X sells just fine?’ It strikes me that the banking and motor industries have entrenched their businesses in this attitude.
The brave ones break new ground and create a tribe.
At the back of every great fortune lies a great crime (Honoré de Balzac).
My local Greggs’ bakery is a massively busy shop. So much so its small car park is log jammed from 11am to 3pm EVERY day. From day one I said they could have designed a drive-through system and probably made themselves even more successful (and certainly more efficient).
Well, it seems fast food won’t have the technique to themselves for long as Sears is the latest retailer in the States to test drive-through shopping. It’s a natural evolution from the reserve online, collect in store system pioneered so well in this country by the likes of Argos.
It appears to make perfect sense but others who’ve tested aren’t reporting positively. Personally, I can see out-of-town Argos extras and Tesco extras testing a drive-through system that would really help them at peak Christmas trading.
Your supplier is very busy. You know this because you chased your order and were told so with plenty of excuses and apologies.
I’ve always subscribed to the theory that if a customer phones you for an update on completion, you’ve failed. Not in a ‘call the administrators sense,’ but in a service world, the supplier should be driving the contact. If I’ve ordered a TV, a sofa or new roof tiles and I’m told I’ll receive them in 10 days, then it’s no surprise that’s exactly what I expect. On day 11, I’m on the phone. Unhappy.
Preventing my call with one of your own on day nine makes delivering the bad news so much easier. No, I’m not going to do cartwheels at the delay, but I’ll be more tolerant than if I’ve done the dialing. It’s a small but hugely significant difference.
After they take my ‘chase up’ call, your team will say the client was actually fine with the delay. That he wasn’t in such a rush anyway, that next week will be cool. They’re wrong. Just because no-one got blood on their shirt, doesn’t mean the disappointed aren’t thinking you’re useless cretins who don’t care.
Name it whatever you like: diary calls, client updates, whatever. If you’ve got 500 to do, an email template or two is in order but if you’ve got a handful then bespoke contact should be possible. One-man-bands can email me while eating their sandwich or after the kids have gone to bed. Tell me, ‘the news is that there is no news’ or that ‘we’re still waiting on the solicitor’ but tell me something… anything. Get in contact – it is a golden rule. Honestly.
I’ve seen too many organisations revert to the ostrich method: ignore the issues and it might just all come out in the wash. The trouble is, if you wait for the screamers to start deafening you, it’s too late in the game and both you and your business are in for a torrid time.
Yes, it’s time consuming and, yes, it interrupts the actual task of completion, but professionalism demands it. Better still, improve your time and project management and trump your own deadlines (with regular update contacts along the way of course). Photo courtesy of: Thunderchild tm
A business is an organic entity. Most stakeholders would wish their company to ‘grow’ but it can be ‘starved’ of orders, ‘bleed’ cash and ‘haemorrhage’ profits. Yet the biggest indicator of its living matter is the fact that people make a company (well, certainly the vast majority). The attitude of staff is the telling piece here and you’ll not find a more obvious example than Gordon Ramsay.
Look beyond the ‘shocking’ persona and you see a caring and driven business leader who believes in hard work across the board. He has a huge tribe of followers and all those who work with him seem to sign up. Sound like a bullying waster to you?
His latest show from the States is currently airing and is, as usual, over-edited thanks to Channel 4, but Ramsay’s work is excellent. No, he’s not facing challenges on the scale of a motor industry bailout, but he does cut to the heart of the problems and offers simple solutions that he proves can work – usually by making their lives simpler.
A regular SME superman. Perhaps it’s time Jose Mourinho passed on his Special One mantle?
By day, Nick Fluck is a director of Tredz, a bicycle retailer with a strong web presence. By night, Nick can be found moonlighting on Digitally Minded, waxing un-lyrically about marketing, business, new media, technology and innovation. This semi-personal, part-professional blog is a collection of Nick’s weekly(ish) ramblings as the wannabe business partner/love child of Seth Godin Want to know more?
A product, service or brand that’s being raved about is all well and good until you try it out for the first time. With mountains of people talking so wildly about something, you’ve naturally put it in the remarkable box. But what happens when it’s not remarkable; when it’s only OK; when it doesn’t blow your mind?
Clearly, MT’s judges didn’t base the trophy on Sky’s email campaigns. If they had, MT wouldn’t discover personal, relevant and timed messages – their emails are more like blanket mini-billboards.
On the left –
Piano maker Kemble & Co is closing after nearly 100 years producing over 350,000 pianos. They were the UK’s 
Most people think the saying ‘first impressions count’ is all about clothes or hair. They’re wrong (to a degree). It’s more about attitude than anything else.
And, as retailers become ever more aware that globalisation is but a mouse click away, why would they pay top dollar for widgets they can source, spec and put on a boat from Taiwan themselves. Again, in the pursuit of margin, it’s tempting to bite the hand that’s fed you.
When a brand gets too big for its boots it can always change them for loafers. That’s what the Seattle behemoth, Starbucks 
The recent reports of Tesco’s profit show they’ve been outstanding while others have cried ‘recession’. A 53rd week changes the picture somewhat, but lets round off profits at £3 billion. Bravo.
Complacent and lazy marketers know people like to follow the crowd. There’s safety in numbers, right?
My local Greggs’ bakery is a massively busy shop. So much so its small car park is log jammed from 11am to 3pm EVERY day. From day one I said they could have designed a drive-through system and probably made themselves even more successful (and certainly more efficient).
Your supplier is very busy. You know this because you chased your order and were told so with plenty of excuses and apologies.
A business is an organic entity. Most stakeholders would wish their company to ‘grow’ but it can be ‘starved’ of orders, ‘bleed’ cash and ‘haemorrhage’ profits. Yet the biggest indicator of its living matter is the fact that people make a company (well, certainly the vast majority). The attitude of staff is the telling piece here and you’ll not find a more obvious example than