May 1996 – Present
My role is to provide strategic marketing guidance to clients to ensure their objectives are attainable, remain in focus and the communications solutions work.
My expertise is in how to realign goals-oriented brands, products, services or businesses to customer values to build loyalty, frequency and continuity.
I have spoken throughout this blog about the problems of the goals-driven enterprise, as opposed to the customer-driven enterprise. The goals-driven enterprise has one mandate: to leverage its assets to achieve maximum wealth. The fastest way to do this is to tender shares publicly. This is how the shareholder becomes more important to the enterprise than the customer.
In an economic downturn, in order to maximize shareholder value the enterprise cuts prices to stimulate demand and cuts costs to maintain a margin. Marketing investment becomes highly expendable. What the enterprise is effectively saying is, “My products and my customers are now worth less to me so I am going to invest less in them so that my shareholders don’t complain about achieving a lower rate of return on my customer investment.”
This is perfectly reasonable accounting view of the marketing cycle. The Corporate Treasury says “When I am profitable I don’t…
I have been doing a lot of reading on ROI lately and found that writings on this can vary quite significantly on how to address this, and yes it appears to be very muddy. At the end of the day though, the big question still comes down to “How do we know we are spending our marketing dollars effectively – and how do we demonstrate it to others?”.
When trying to answer this question, there is not one clear cut ROI formula that defines this that can be applied universally for all marketing activities. (I am stopping here but his comments continue in the forum)
Reply from David McNab:
Here is a thought that might incite fear in the hearts of marketing departments everywhere – instead of muddling around with a whole sloough of measurements of ROMI, ROI, ROC and the like for measuring marketing performance why not simply make…
What is digital flatulence? It is the unexpected, public, disruptive and frequently embarrassing electronic notification that someone (other than the person with whom you are speaking) wants your attention. It could be your mother, or about something of no immediate consequence. Either provides the same distraction.
The range of audio styles for this is so diverse that, unlike organic gaseous emissions, it is easily traced back to its source. It doesn’t matter how permissive the recipient is (opted-in) to receiving interruptions, the intrusion affects everyone in the vicinity. Therefore the onus of digital flatulence (no pun intended) falls to the sender, not the receiver.
We are only a few years into the popularity of this media, and there still exists in the minds of many users a certain cachet, that they are so sought after, or that the present moment is never as important as the interruption. This cachet is trumpeted…
My log-cabin beach vacation, cooking with charcoal, without TV, cell phone or laptop, using my own paddling power for water sports has given me a reaction to returning to life as I usually know it. But here goes:
Q. How do customers evaluate marketing hype?
A.
Perceived Customer Value = √ Brand Value Proposition (√ is the square root of)
Actual Customer Value = Retail Price LESS 40%
It is an automatic filter. We need the hype to penetrate any sense of value and we need the discount to feel it was worth paying for it.
Q. What is the reason that most customers don’t read either the blurb or the small print?
A.
Because they make a choice to believe in the realm of mythical marketing. Tolerance for myth and brand legend has been drummed into consumers through mass media hypnosis (a.k.a. hype-nosis?)
Q. Aren’t money-back, satisfaction guaranteed programs assurances that…
OK. You have a product, service or company that became successful based on your accurate determination of product/price/place/persona (brand relationship). But now competition has made inroads, or leapfrogged you. The market has changed. Your revenue curve is slipping, price-cutting is killing your margins, you don’t seem to be able to satisfy your customers, and they won’t reveal why. What do you do?
Reinvent yourself, rebrand your business, keep it fresh? One of the most expensive undertakings a marketer can entertain is a rebranding process. And it is commonly one of the most futile acts when it is to combat a negative trend in the business cycle. A valued former client in the computer manufacturing business went through this undertaking three times in the course of two years, and ended up being swallowed by another titan, after shelling out a tidy six-figure number to a NY-based rebranding consulting group.
When you define…
Borrowing from a recent article in the Nat Post Business Section (that applies the standard Mars/Venus equational imbalance), about a book called “Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy”, penned by Business Strategist Dev Patnaik, also founder and chief exec of Jump Associates, adviser to businesses on growth strategies:
“Companies often hinder their success by focusing too narrowly on selling products and not on their customers’ actual needs.” ibid.
He has written a book about a concept he describes as the ’empathy gap’ between employees and the customers they serve. Well, that saves me the trouble.
Dev specifies the gap as a chasm between employees in organizations and the people (customers?). I wonder if the euphemism was derived from actual experience of shopping at The Gap?
Not wanting to put the onus entirely on employees I was relieved to see he spoke of “Companies stamping out customer empathy” within…
In recent marketing history the belief was formed that rewards increase customer retention. Up to what point is the value of the reward negated by a price increase? Forget rewards – with any price increase, what is the melting point of intrinsic loyalty?
Questions:
Hypothesis: Wal-Mart unilaterally increases its pricing by 15%. Could the Wal-Mart brand handle a 15% bump in prices?
Fact: gasoline goes up universally 50% and is absorbed. At 100% it starts to topple one of the world’s biggest companies. What do you do next?
Experience: your insurance company surcharges you on your dental plan because your dentist increased his fees outside the range of their policy limits. Do you swallow the difference or find a cheaper dentist?
Air Miles Rewards offers to double its rewards on select brand name products. Do you buy them or go for the store brand at the lower price?
Your hair-stylist: on whom you depend doubles…
I recently went head-to-head with my toughest critic to argue that A.C.C.E.P.T. decision criteria accurately summarize the values that purchasers use, knowingly or unknowingly, in making a purchase decision, regardless of whether they are a consumer, a business or a procurement agency.
A quick refresher on the criteria:
> Achievement: will this purchase help me to achieve my goals??
> Convenience: how easy is it to buy this product/ service?
> Comfort: can I use this with peace of mind?
> Esteem: will my decision be respected?
> Pleasure: can I derive pleasure from the outcome?
> Trust: can I trust that my expectations will be met?
The first comment hurled back at me was “PRICE!!! How can you possibly represent purchase decision criteria and exclude price?”
So with my back up against the wall I had to explain how price is a value indicator that is relative to…
