Tag Archives: Strategic management

February 8, 2016 · 11:57 am

Any Press

There is an old expression that “any press is good press.” It has a couple of corollaries – “as long as they spell my name right” being one. I’d like to examine that in light of the most talked about ad of last night’s Super Bowl, Puppymonkeybaby.” This was a bizarre ad for a new flavor of soda and featured three lovable things – a puppy, a monkey, and a baby – mashed up into a strange creature. I’m sure you’ve seen the ad by now. 
According to iSpot.tv:

Mountain Dew dominated Super Bowl winning 1st place for the top performing commercial on game-day with its weirdly unmistakable “Puppymonkeybaby” ad. Even with so many ads, this unique spot captured nearly 13% of the big game’s Digital Share of Voice, generating over 244k social actions and a total social volume of over 272mm impressions and more than 2.25mm organic video views on game day.

No question that the ad made an impression. It finished, however, towards the bottom of the USA Today ad meter rankings (almost 20,000 pre-registered people weigh in) and, more importantly, lit up social media with comments ranging from humorous (adopt your puppymonkeybaby from a shelter) to the negative (I’ve never felt so uncomfortable watching a commercial) to the frightened (I don’t even know what #puppymonkeybaby was supposed to be advertising. All I know is the fear.) Generally, the comments were negative.

So is any press – or our 2016 version of press – social media – good press? I don’t think so.  Any brand that thinks just getting their name out there is following a terribly misguided strategy.  Huge amounts of  press for the wrong reasons can kill a brand.  The folks at the Stanford Graduate School of Business put out a study that said in some cases negative publicity can increase sales when a product or company is relatively unknown, simply because it stimulates product awareness.  Their thinking is that the negative impression fades over time and increased awareness may remain.  Given how most people research today using search engines, you can be very sure the negative impression will remain too.

Any press isn’t good press.  I won’t be buying the soda and I’m not buying that the negative impression made by the ad is a good thing. You?

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Filed under Huh?, Reality checks

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January 26, 2016 · 11:30 am

Ends And Means

The cynics among you believe that as a brand or as a company behavior matters far less than a low price and a quality product. If you provide a great service or a good product and price it as low as possible, consumers will buy. It doesn’t matter if you pollute the air or pay lousy wages. Consumers just want to know what’s in it for them. The good news, from my perspective, is that you are wrong. Here is the evidence to back it up.

The Havas folks did a study to understand how corporate social responsibility has evolved over the past decade. They looked at how are companies responding to consumer pressures to work toward the common good and what those consumers now expect from their brand partners. Most importantly, the studied how critical these expectations are to their purchase decisions.

As it turns out, consumers are extremely interested in this. Half of mainstream consumers and two-thirds of Prosumers (a term coined by futurist Alvin Toffler – a consumer who produces and consumes media – and who doesn’t?) avoid buying from businesses deemed to have a negative social or environmental impact. As the study states: “People still want bargains, of course, but it’s even more essential that products and services offer some sort of enduring value.”

Some other points from the study:

  • When we asked respondents how important it is for a company’s CEO to do certain things, paying workers a fair wage and providing a pleasant work environment received higher scores than earning profits or even being environmentally conscious.
  • People aren’t looking for businesses to act as quasi-governments. On the contrary, around two-thirds of our global sample actually fear the power big corporations already wield. What they want to see are all the world’s players—governments, corporations, NGOs, citizens—working together to tackle problems that no single entity can solve alone.
  • Two-thirds of our global sample agreed that businesses actually bear as much responsibility as governments for driving positive social change, and 62 percent said they’d like their favorite brands to play a bigger role in solving social problems.

The point is that if you believe that your brand or company can let the ends – revenues and profits – justify any means, you’re sadly mistaken.  The study shows that companies that do good are more likely to do well.  Isn’t that the end we’re all after?

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Filed under Helpful Hints

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January 22, 2016 · 11:13 am

Ripe

It’s Foodie Friday and this week’s post is inspired by my breakfast. My weekday breakfast almost always involves a banana, and this morning’s banana looked yummy until I actually bit in. It was not really ripe enough. The texture that too hard for my taste and the flavors hadn’t really matured. In fact, it was kind of tasteless and quite unsatisfying. The banana would definitely have benefited from another day or two of ripening. 

Despite my day not being off to a great start, a business point popped into my head. Many businesses suffer from the same phenomenon as the banana (although honestly I am not blaming the banana for being eaten too soon). We don’t let things ripen and we move overly fast. I see this with some clients who forget the original business plan when a new opportunity presents itself, losing sight of what had got the business to this point. That sort of action – moving too fast away from what was a good idea – does nothing but engender short-term thinking.

Failing to let the business ripen also means you’ve not got enough customer feedback. It takes time to scale, and even if you enjoy explosive growth, it takes time for both the business and your customers to figure out what feedback is meaningful based on repeat engagements, etc. You would much rather hear from a customer who has purchased and used your product several times that a one-time experience.

You need to ripen to assess the right size of your staff. You need to ripen to estimate what your real operating costs are and will be. To the extent scale improves product costs, you need to ripen in order to make that assessment. Finally, you need to ripen to ascertain what your real capital needs are. Early cash flow won’t be as promising as it will become down the road (hopefully) but those needs don’t present themselves right away.

I am all for moving quickly, particularly when a company is young.  Haste, however, can make waste when that speed and a failure to let things ripen means a loss of focus.  Make sense?

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Filed under Consulting, food, Thinking Aloud

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