January 11, 2007
"Thin-slicing" marketing plans
There is a new 5 "things" meme going around and I have just been tagged for it by Mary Schmidt. This time the idea is "thin-slice" a particular topic - a term coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his latest book Blink, and described as follows:
"Thin-slicing is a neat cognitive trick that involves taking a narrow slice of data, just what you can capture in the blink of an eye, and letting your intuition do the work for you."
My task was to thin-slice a marketing plan - so here we go:
1) Do you really need a marketing "plan"?
Very often people just need to get out and engage with customers, prospects, influencers and connectors. There is no need for a marketing plan to do that. Often times marketing plans are just produced by marketing luddites as a CYA document. Granted, for some very large projects that involve large teams of people a plan can be useful - but more as a check-list than as a marketing roadmap.
2) Does the marketing plan show the addressable market being in the billions of dollars?
Any VC will scoff at these numbers - yet they won't invest if it is not true. Don't talk about the total addressable market, tell me how you will get your next 10 or 100 customers. Who are they, what do they do, where do they live, how will you reach them? Give me real life scenarios of potential customers and how you will help them solve their problem. Don't give aggregate figures that have zero meaning.
3) Are you pretending or intending on being a leader in a category that nobody ever heard of?
Most companies I have worked with consider themselves the category leader in a category with one player - themselves. A category is recognized by others as a category and has other players in it. You can "create" a category, but you need help to create a new one - including help from competitors. Show me how you will create a new category, and who you will enlist to help with the creation? Show me how you will change the rules of the game in that category, how you will change the players or change their respective value as you enter the category - now that's interesting!
4) Does your competitive review result in your company or product being in the upper right hand corner of some diagram?
Do I need to elaborate? You and everybody else lives there...it must be pretty tough to compete there. Show me where you are on the BS curve compared to others - that would be much more interesting...
5) What part of the plan deals with how you will deal with change?
The biggest danger with plans is that they become "bibles" - and once they are approved nobody can deviate from the chosen path. Yet most successful marketing programs are emergent in nature, they are like a jamming sessions...and so back to point 1) do you really need a marketing plan?
And now my turn to tag:
- Tara - how about engaging communities as part of your marketing plan?
- Pito - what about product plans?
- Jackie - how about word of mouth marketing plans?
- Chris - what about customer service strategies?
- Tom - what about brand strategies?
- [updated] I decided to add a 6th one as I care about PR and Europeans :) - Neville, what do you think?
[Tags: thin-slicing thin-slice marketing plan blink]
Posted by francois at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
November 28, 2006
Bruegger's is listening! I am a fan now...
As many of you will have noticed, I have had my fair share of mishaps with my local Bruegger's. The last time I wrote about my experiences, Scott Hughes, the VP of marketing posted a comment on my blog asking for more information so that they could address the problem.
We went back and forth on email a few times and then two weeks ago I noticed that they put a new general manager in charge of the store. Not only has the service improved considerably, the whole mood of the store has brightened somehow. And then yesterday I get an email from Scott to inform me that they had made some management changes at the store and asking for my business, saying: "I hope you give us another opportunity."
WOW - Scott thank you for listening! You just turned me into a big Bruegger's fan!
And btw - your new Ciabatta's are great too!
[Tags: bruegger's customer service bagels]
Posted by francois at 8:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
December 5, 2005
Firms of edearment returns surpass "good to great" companies
David Wolfe over at Ageless Marketing has started chronicling the stories of firms of endearment - in advance of his upcoming book, which should be published early next year (here and here).
Firms of endearment challenge Milton Friedman's premise that companies only have one social responsibility - maximizing shareholder return. Firms of endearment do not favor any particular stakeholder, but rather treat all 5 stakeholders on the same footing - employees, customers, suppliers, society and shareholders. David believes that firms of endearment are forerunners of a new business model - one that could very well change capitalism at its core.
And how are the firms of endearment doing compared to the S&P 500 or good-to-great companies? Check for yourself...
[Technorati Tags: social responsibility capitalism business model]
Posted by francois at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
October 11, 2005
A great customer service experience
After writing about so many bad customer service experiences, I felt like I should document this positive one as well.
I have been hosting this blog at 2M Host. Their service comes with Movable Type, 500MB storage, 25,000MB monthly transfer 20 sub-domains with FTP 50 pop 3 email addresses and some more stuff - all for $6.95/month.
Having increasingly been the subject of SPAM lately, I thought of upgrading to MT3.2 with the new spam plug-ins. I logged a support ticket on Saturday asking if they could upgrade me. They responded almost instantaneously instructing me to do a site backup first. Since they use cpanel as their user admin console, it took me two clicks to get my full backup. I emailed support again on Sunday telling them that I was ready with my backup and got another quick response to inform me that they were working on it, followed by a message the next morning that my site had been upgraded.
To me, that's an awfully smooth customer service experience for a product that only costs $6.95/month! Forgive me for being impressed...
[Technorati Tags: customer service customer support]
Posted by francois at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
July 31, 2005
At Skype, simple is beautiful
After reading Bob Cringley's article about Skype being "almost" bought for $3 billion, I had to find out more. So the obvious place to start was Skype Journal. There I found a link to the blog of Vincent Oberle which contained a fascinating glimpse into life at Skype, posted after his second week on the job (here) . Vincent talks about his delight in working for a company that understands how to empower its creative minds by providing them with the "right tools." This excerpt from his post was most revealing: "Strangely too, there are no names of shared drives to remember in order to find documents. Project management files, functional specifications, etc, just everything is on the company wiki, and it cannot get any simpler. Everybody uses the wiki, and is happy with it. The information there is up-to-date for most of it. Nobody has outdated specifications on his laptop. Mac and Linux users aren’t excluded. And everybody knows what a wiki is…"
Vincent reminds us that simple is beautiful when he says, " I could go on about many great things[at Skype], but let’s just mention the pleasure it is to use the right tools. You know, the simple tools that get the job done, that make you a little bit more productive instead of shamefully slowing you down. One the main quality of Skype (the product) is its simplicity and this applies also in the tools we use daily."
Posted by gabe at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
July 28, 2005
Three reasons why good strategies fail...
Execution, execution, execution. The current issue of the on-line newsletter Knowledge @Wharton has a thought provoking article on why good strategies fail.
It is usually pretty obvious why bad strategies fail, but diagnosing what sinks good strategies is a little trickier. An example cited in the article is that execution of a strategy is often derailed because the focus of the strategy is allowed to shift over time. The attempt by Hewlett-Packard, after it acquired Compaq, to compete with Dell in PCs through scale is a classic example of goal-shifting -- competing on price one week, service the next, while trying to sell through often conflicting, high-cost channels. The result: CEO Carly Fiorina lost her job and HP still must resolve some key strategic issues.
The article's key premise is that the challenge of execution is synchronization--getting the various elements of an organization "in-sync" with one and other primarily through clear and consistent communication of a strategic objective, and not allowing the strategy to shift over time.
Posted by gabe at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 29, 2005
NextBillion.net - development through enterprise
If you want to contribute (words, thoughts, ideas...not just money) to a site that seeks to eradicate poverty through profit - go to Development though Enterprise - via business week's tech beat.
Their stated mission is:
"Our goal is to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world's poorest citizens."
[Technorati Tags: poverty]
Posted by francois at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
May 11, 2005
Institutionalizing Repeatable great customer service
While picking up my coffee at Starbucks this morning I witnessed an act of outstanding customer service. A woman with a child – apparently a regular – was about to enter the store as she was talking on her cell phone. At the last minute she decided to hang outside for the call and finally moved away from the store. When one of the Starbuck employees saw that, he fixed her usual drink, ran after her in the street and gave it to her with compliments of Starbucks. WOW…
You may disagree, but I happen to think that this was not a random act of kindness. I believe that it reflects the hiring and training policies that Starbucks has with regards to customer service. Some companies are just better at institutionalizing consistently delivering excellent customer service than others. And I do not believe that you can only achieve that in luxury retail chains. There was actually an interesting article reviewing just that in the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review (here).
...hey Verizon...pay attention!
[Technorati Tags: starbucks customer service marketing]
Posted by francois at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
