Tag Archives: Strategic management

October 1, 2014 · 11:30 am

Rubbernecking

Is there anything more frustrating than rubberneckers? You know who I mean. Drivers who slow down to gawk at an accident thereby causing traffic jams behind them. Make a note: they’re one of my pet peeves. They’re also something from which we can take a business thought.

Wikipedia reminds us that according to a 2003 study, rubbernecking was the cause of 16 percent of distraction-related traffic accidents. I’m sure you’ve had that sinking feeling when someone behind you isn’t paying close attention to the fact that an otherwise wide open lane has come to a screeching halt.  Maybe it’s due to someone changing a tire on the other side of the road and a police car has pulled in behind them to flash lights for safety. More than once I’ve heard the screech of tires as the dolt behind me is trying to slow down and waited for impact.  You wish the cop would deploy a massive screen, upon which is written “nothing to see here – move along.”

I’ve never understood the phenomenon, either in a car or in business.  It manifests itself in a couple of ways off the road.  First are those companies and brands that try to create a rubbernecking situation where they do something to cause partners and/or consumers to slow down and gawk.  One could argue that, in fact, the old-school way of thinking about marketing was exactly that.  Think about your response on the road, however.  How angry are you when you discover that there is NOTHING causing the situation that’s keeping you from getting where you want to go?  Our messaging needs to add value not be a distraction.

The other way rubbernecking impacts business is when we allow our efforts to get distracted by something going on elsewhere.  Maybe you are spending time rubbernecking what your coworkers or other departments are doing.  Slowing down to look at the next new thing probably is just keeping us from the destination we’ve chosen.  Most of the time there is nothing to see.  Obviously I don’t mean we ought to operate in vacuums.  We can’t let situational awareness become a distraction what brings our movement to a crawl.

Don’t rubberneck in your car.  It’s even worse in your business life.  That’s my take.  Yours?

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September 30, 2014 · 10:56 am

Ready – Fire – Aim

Yet another piece of research that caused an eyebrow to rise up bubbled up in my news stream yesterday.  This one is from the Ascend2 folks via MarketingProfs and concerns strategy in digital marketing.  Two thirds of the marketers survey think they’re doing an OK job with another quarter believing they are doing a great job.  It’s what they identified as challenges that piqued my interest and which is our topic today:

Marketers say a lack of effective strategies is the biggest obstacle to success in digital marketing… More than half of marketers surveyed (51%) cited strategy issues when asked to list the major factors preventing them from fully achieving their digital marketing goals. Budget constraints were the second most cited obstacle (picked by 38% of respondents); lack of training/experience was next (32%), followed by inability to prove ROI (30%), and useless metrics/analytics (25%).

Budget is an issue for everyone it seems no matter what your company or role.  Given the constantly changing set of tools, I can understand the lack of training.  The other items on the list are more concerning.  First and of greatest concern is that over half feel they lack a strategy that works and yet they seem to be executing anyway.  That’s firing without aiming.  This finding doesn’t really shock me given experiences I have had with clients.  There is an appetite to jump into new spaces without giving much thought as to why or how.  What’s of interest as well is what happens when marketers are asked about what does seem to be effective:

Some 54% of respondents rate email as one of their most successful digital marketing tactics; 48% rate websites as a top tactic; 47% search engine optimization; 43% social media. Email is also seen as a relatively easy digital marketing tactic to execute, with only 11% of respondents rating it as one of the most difficult channels.

No surprise – email is well understood by most companies since it’s been around for a long time.  It’s also in wide enough use that one can benchmark and learn from the mistakes of others.  Much easier to aim before firing, right?

“Why” needs to come before “how”.  Aiming needs to come before firing.  After all, no brand has that many chances with consumers and if you can’t hit the mark the first time there might not be a second.  You agree?

 

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September 26, 2014 · 8:30 am

Food For Thought

The folks at Eater provide our food for thought on this Foodie Friday.  They ran an interesting piece on 72 ways food can change the world.  It’s a collection of brief articles from chefs, farmers, scientists, and others.  It’s worth your time.

One piece that got me thinking was an interview with a food scientist from Washington State University.  This quote, in particular about working outside of the mainstream commodity system, resonated:

If you had a big truck with twenty tons of wheat and went to the grain elevator they would look at the stuff we work with and say, “That’s purple, that’s a different shape, and that doesn’t work for the commodity systems,” which are built on the notion of a huge amount of virtually identical, interchangeable product. By focusing on non-commodity varieties, we can pay attention to things like nutritional value and flavor—things that that big commodity farmers and programs tend to not care about. For them all that matters is yield.

There’s a great business point in there for all of us. The farmers with whom the professor works think about the game differently.  Rather than allowing the vagaries of the market to dictate their product they bypass the large, proven markets and focus on aggregating niche markets.  They control their product and find buyers as opposed to bowing down before the commodity system.  This gives them the freedom to improve the product – grain in this case – since they are not growing to product specifications imposed on them.

Over time, one or more of those niche markets may, in fact, become mainstream.  In other markets we might call them “early adopters.”  It’s not hard to remember when a high-definition television, a tablet computer, or a hybrid car were niches.  The “farmers” behind them didn’t try to make a mass-market product out of the gate.  They made something better knowing that if it was good enough the market would come to them.

Food for thought!

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