Tag Archives: Business and Economy

November 2, 2015 · 12:15 pm

Preservationists

I live in a town with a lot of old houses. By the town’s definition, that’s 50 years or more, although there are a lot of homes that are well over 100 years old. I should know: I live in one. Oh sure, a lot has been changed, both in my house and in many others, but the original structure and feeling of the building has been preserved. It’s part of what I liked about this town until recently. While there is plenty of new construction, much of the work was about adding on and/or renovating.  

I used the past tense because the trend over the last few years has been to knock down the older homes and build overly large new homes – they’re known as McMansions here. In fact, a local website features a Teardown Of The Day photo of some old home that is destined to be destroyed. Fortunately, we also have a Historic District Commission, and plans to rip down any home that’s over 50 years old are reviewed to be sure that no historic buildings or ones with historical value to the town are destroyed.

What does this have to do with business? I was reminded by it when I came across a quote from the critic Ada Louise Huxtable. She noted almost 50 years ago, “What preservation is really all about, is the retention and active relationship of buildings of the past to the community’s functioning present.” The same is true of sound business principles, which all too often are discarded like an old house as new technologies change the nature of the businesses.

Some of what I do with clients when I begin working with them is to clarify the “old” business thinking that needs to be preserved as we add on the new stuff. It’s akin to upgrading the electrical system and insulation which leaving the sound structure intact.  Sure, some of the old stuff needs to be tossed – you aren’t dependent on others for content distribution, for example, or your marketing can’t be a bullhorn, constantly blasting “buy me” messages.  Still, the underlying principles behind distribution and marketing haven’t changed since I’ve been in business (and I’m very much one of those historic houses at this point).  Confusing tools with the business just does not work.

I guess that makes me a preservationist.  I believe in retaining the sound old stuff and placing it into a present context.  What about you?

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October 30, 2015 · 8:55 am

Recipes

This Foodie Friday, I’d like to talk about recipes.  Every family has them, as does every great chef.  Obviously, the difference between the results those two types of cooks deliver is large, even if the recipes they use aren’t really all that different.  What’s the difference, then?  The answer is a good business point.  

Let’s think about music for a second.  The musicians are combining their ingredients – the various sounds their instruments can make – based on a recipe given to them by the composer – the sheet music.  Just because you have the sheet music doesn’t mean you can play the tune.   Listen to even an accomplished high school orchestra and compare the results of their playing a symphony to the New York Philharmonic or any other world-class orchestra playing the same piece.  They’re quite different.  Successfully completing the recipe – making beautiful music – takes practice and technique.

It’s the same with food.  You might wonder why many great chefs share their secret recipes so freely.  It’s because they can give you the recipe, but that doesn’t mean you can cook the meal. You make lack their skill, you may lack the quality ingredients they use, you may be missing the tools they have (try comparing a steak done in a home broiler which might be 500 degrees to a steak house steak done at 1000 degrees).  I can almost guarantee you that what you produce and what they produce, even following the same recipe, will be very different.

That’s the business point too.  Just because you think you understand a successful business doesn’t mean you can replicate it.  I can explain my business in great depth, but that doesn’t mean you can start one up to compete with me.  The key for any of us in business is to develop the things that are difficult to steal.  Your team, your culture, and your relationship with your customers and partners are good places to start.  Amazon didn’t have the first online store, but the product they produced from the same recipe as others was just better.  The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player, and there were many issued after it, but none with the same success even though the recipe was basically the same.  There are many other examples.

Great recipes are a basic requirement for success in the kitchen and in business, but don’t make yourself crazy protecting them.  Focus on what makes you really better.  Agreed?

 

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October 28, 2015 · 10:54 am

Misreading Their Minds

Every so often a piece of research comes along that asks the same questions of consumers and marketers and then compares the answers.  It’s instructive to see the differences in how the folks who are responsible for knowing how their consumers see the world vs. how those consumers themselves see it.  The latest example of this comes from the folks at Spong, and their 2015 Brand Reputation Study.  Their release on the information begins with this:

An organization’s brand is one of its most valuable assets. Greatly influenced by the reputation of the organization, the strength and weaknesses of a brand can have a direct impact on every aspect of the business, including the bottom line. But when it comes to evaluating what is most important or least important about a brand, a new brand reputation study from Spong indicates that marketers may not really understand what consumers care about and think.

Hmm.  That doesn’t sound particularly good, but what does it mean in real terms?  First and foremost, it turns out that marketers overestimate how often consumers talk about brands.  Marketers seem to think that consumers chat about what companies are doing a poor job, with 88% of marketers saying they think consumers do so daily or weekly.  The reality is that fewer than a third (31%) do so.  While a little paranoia is a good thing, I suspect this thinking leads into another data point the survey found.

Marketers underrate editorial and overrate social as a source of information, with 14% of consumers calling editorial a top source of accurate brand information.  Only 6% of marketers think consumers see it that way.  Conversely, we’re smarter than most marketers are about the accuracy of social media.  27% of marketers think consumers use it as an accurate source of brand information; the real number is less than half that (13%).

Consumers also put more importance on whether a brand is local far more often than marketers think consumers do. 30% of shoppers said they would always or most of the time choose local over national brands, all things being equal while only 12% of marketers would expect that sentiment. I guess the point is that once again, those of us who are supposed to have our finger on our customers’ pulses have missed the boat. As they summed up:

The research paints a picture that should serve as a wake-up call for marketers, whose stock in trade is understanding what triggers consumer behavior. As the research reveals, marketers over-valued a few key customer concerns at the expense of the wide range of other issues affecting their decision-making.

I agree wth that.  You?

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