The Big Five.

I'm back in the saddle again. To those of you who have missed this semi-regular e-mail, I apologize. Things at ST have been busy. We have been venturing into wheat fields and cotton capitals and all the while helping to develop some pretty powerful brands. The last few months have been daunting, to say the least. A big part of my thinking lately has been taken up with the development of a new book that will explore the alignment between consumers, organizations and products. Obviously, that has taken a ton of my time.

And in that time, I've come to realize that you never write the same book that you start out trying to write. For my first book, I started out with grand visions of profundity, only to end up with 140 pages of crude jokes, goofy quips and occasionally something about marketing. My next book will be different. I mean, I hope it will. But don't you worry, all that seriousness is saved for the book. These newsletters will still be as crude as you love...

As I dove through materials on consumer attitudes, marketing strategies and successful implementation, I began to notice something stark. It became clear that the majority of firms successful in marketing a product or service seemed to adhere to a few rudimentary marketing concepts. Conversely, firms that saw their marketing ambitions fail to launch had violated at least one, and more often a few, of these simple marketing maxims.

So what are these concepts? Are they austere puffery about synergistic visioning? Hardly. Are they the ever-broadening decrees that, in fortune cookie fashion, suggest everything while saying nothing? Nope. They are a collection of brilliant, salient inquires collected from clients, fellow consultants, academics, nutcases and the occasional intern.

And now, ladies and gentleman, for your enjoyment (and hopefully the betterment of you marketing), the Big Five:



1) How are we providing value to those who purchase our offering above what is available from competitors?

Put more simply, why do we exist? The President of Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts, says consumers are over the "er" descriptors (fresher, crispier, tastier). Roberts says products need a soul or persona over competitive attributes. I call BS. If a product or service does not have an attribute or collection of attributes that legitimizes its existence, maybe it shouldn't exist. And, in time, it probably won't.

This doesn't mean neglect the brand. An entire structure of meaning can be built around competitive attributes. BMW says they build the ultimate driving machines and they do. Their brand is the definition of driving enjoyment. They back up this position with attributes like glued to the road handling and bi-turbocharged engines. Attributes and persona do not function at the exclusion of each other. They are dependent on each other to make and support meaning for the brand. If you don't have an attribute that makes your brand competitive, find one, create one or start over and don't stop until you have one. A brand does not live on image alone.


2) How are we further evolving the offering to match the evolving needs and desires of our customers as tied to our brand?

Many offerings start off responding to a need. Successful offerings seem to find that sweet spot where brand and attribute intersect and a star is born. Then comes Father Time intent on spoiling the party. Over time, attributes may change and be updated. Also, brand messages may get a facelift, or at least a little Botox. The problem, however, is that the two rarely evolve strategically in reference to the consumer.

Here's a decent example. Ford started as the company that made a car accessible to many Americans. They didn't invent the car, and the quality was good but certainly not on the level of earlier, hand built models. When more consumers wanted a truck, Ford put a good truck within reach of millions. Midsized sedan? The Taurus. SUV? The wildly popular Explorer. Yet today, Ford's products and marketing are a mixed bag. Sure, they still make the assorted every-person cars but they also make $65,000 trucks. For every time Ford has done a great job of making desired cars available to the masses, they've screwed it up trying to be the everything car company. And now, manufacturers like Hyundai and Kia are making popular features and designs available to more people and those people are driving past the Ford dealership in a new Sorrento.

Ford could have evolved its product and marketing strategy to something more like IKEA. Smart designs, good quality, no BS rebates or sales tricks. They could have evolved that simple principle of getting good cars within reach of every American. Today Toyota is doing that better than Ford. And if Toyota beats Ford in making a hybrid that is price accessible to the majority of Americans, it just might signal the end of the once great Ford brand.

And if you want to know what a dying brand looks like, check out this link. The devolution of Ford's brand (and brand culture) is truly sad. http://culturegarage.com/2008/01/11/ford-sometimes-i-think-you-want-to-fail/


3) What about us do our customers put up with because no easy alternative exists?

Somewhere, a cable TV executive weeps a little every time a late night talk show host talks about how crappy the cable company is...and is right. You wonder, had they known of the phone and satellite companies' ability to enter the TV market, if they would have thought twice about asking customers to wait between the hours of 10 and 3 on a Tuesday so the cable guy can come figure out why MTV is fuzzy.

Though amusing, plenty of companies do equally stupid things to customers and then are honestly shocked when customers flee in mass exodus to a slightly more sensitive competitor. Too many companies mistake purchase for loyalty, but there is a difference. Purchase may keep you afloat today, but it takes loyalty to weather the storms of the changing market.

I recently tried to track a parcel from our office, but could not find the tracking number. I searched the shipping company's websites and saw plenty of links for logistic solutions, but nowhere did it allow me to see the last few packages I shipped. I called customer service and they plainly told me, "We don't offer that". This company tried to offer me everything under the sun except what I really needed and what I felt was a pretty basic request. Let me tell you, the second their competitor installs that new drop box next to our office, I'm going to see what they'll do to actually earn my business.


4) How easy is it to buy from us?

I know. This sounds stupid. Yet there I was on the phone with a kid selling newspaper space asking him to send me a quote to run in all five of the papers he represents. "Just send me the quote," I said. He didn't care. His prerogative was to send me a rate card, along with an acre of useless promotional junk, like he did, fruitlessly, to everyone else.

My beloved mentor calls it, "The dog finally catching the bus". We are almost so shocked by making a sale that we either can't appreciate it or we don't know what to do, so we fumble. Tell me, why would we ever make it hard to buy whatever it is that we're selling?

Give your sales system an audit. Are your hours, locations, sales rep's schedules all reasonable? How about your quotes, invoices and billing system? Do you make it easy to do business with your company?


5) Do our long-term plans match the needs of our customers and current strategy to address those needs?

I am always amazed at how companies who become successful make such abrupt changes to their strategies and move away from the consumer's affinity. Like bars trying to become white table cloth restaurants or fast food joints trying to sell everything from pizza to Chinese food.

Planning is inevitable in business, but by the very nature of planning a certain amount of suggested input is required. Sadly, much of that input is from a financial perspective rather than a consumer perspective. The result is less effective customer strategies to meet an accounting goal conceived in a vacuum. GM fielded several cars of the same model with different names and even different brands, prompting their lampooning by the press (and most of the car buying public). This was not a marketing decision. It was an accounting decision dressed up as a marketing strategy and, moreover, it was a disastrous failure further watering down this once noble brand.



Give yourself five.

Take a moment and ask yourself and your company these questions. If the answers come easy, good for you. I bet you'll have plenty of success. That is, unless you're lying. For everyone else, this might be a chance to perform a little introspection into how your business operates and the efficacy of its marketing.

Take a moment and write out your company's approach to the Big Five. You should have plenty of juicy morsels about how Tom in accounting keeps derailing your new product rollout to save 50 bucks and how Susie still thinks it's the 1970s when it comes to graphic arts. You might even write enough to write a book. If so, send it to me. I could use the help.