momorantings

New CMO.  New agency. New campaign. Same old meaningless justifications - this time reported in AdAge . "Consumer-centric brands must always evolve in order to keep pace with ever-changing customer needs and preferences." She added that "Avis is evolving as a premium brand to better meet those needs." The new tagline, she said, is "reflective of [Avis'] ongoing mission to be a customer-led, service-driven company, and presents the brand in terms of the customer experience and the advantages inherent in renting from Avis." Me neither. So let's move on to something I think I do understand - the removal after 50 years of the one thing people associate with Avis. Something I doubt will ever fall out of the list of customer needs and preferences regardless of how much they evolve. Something that reeks of that brand equity thing that marketers are always banging on about, and something that can't be explained away with this rationale: "W...

Outside the realms of tax efficiency, nobody starts a business in the belief that it will fail. However, a recent visit to a start-up incubator revealed mindsets that ignored the possibility while putting the cart before the horse and making some basic marketing mistakes. 1) What you've done in the past is of very little relevance to your future customers unless they were your customers in the past. The most bizarre example of this was the proclamation that their CEO is a biathlete and their COO a fencer. Egoes should be checked at the door. 2) Your marketing focus should be on what the customer perceives to be the problem, rather than on what you deem to be the solution. A dating site that was promoting itself as a place where you could be honest rather than having to lie was missing the fact that its selling point was verified profiles that other users could trust. 3) Being funded doesn't mean you've proven your business case. You've just convinced some people who a...

Today I tread lightly into the “new models” discussion which has recently been at the forefront of chatter among arts managers. For a good recap, please read the following: “ Why Arts Managers Short of Cash Are Looking at Detroit ,” by Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal “ Theaters Look for New Ways to Draw in Subscribers ,” by Nelson Pressley, The Washington Post “ The New Model, Part 2 ,” by Michael Kaiser, The Huffington Post “ Swimming Downstream in the Current of History ,” by Adam Huttler, Fractured Atlas Blog As Michael Kaiser states “the world is changing – but it has always been changing.” I agree with Mr. Kaiser to a point, but I’d like to point out that the amount of change organizations have faced in previous decades probably pales in comparison to the change they have confronted in the past ten years. In a one decade, pretty much everything we have been taught is now in question. How many of us were taught that the key to financial stability was saving money in order t...

We hear all about China and its inevitable rise, but how much do most of us know about the place? My answer to that question was virtually nothing, so it was a very nice surprise to receive this book some months ago. It's taught me a lot (subject to cross-referencing of course) and is a good mix of assertions and business and cultural examples. I find it hard to believe that Chinese cultural hierarchy is incompatible with creativity and innovation, but perhaps that is just an example of my uninformed pre-conceptions. And if you don't challenge your assumptions about the markets you're targetting,  you end up making big mistakes. You can never know enough and you need to be sure you know anything. Addendum: This is not business-related but as an insight into other people's lives (this time in the southern USA) it's remarkable.

I've been called a perfectionist, and until recently, I've always accepted that description as a compliment. However as a leader, one of my primary responsibilities is to help prioritize the work of the departments that report to me, and in doing so, it is very important to understand that most nonprofits are under resourced. In a world where there is never enough, either in terms of money or human time, where and how nonprofits commit their limited resources becomes very important. Perfectionists struggle in these environments because by nature, when we start something, it's hard to walk away with even the slightest flaw remaining. On the other hand, marketers routinely leave projects behind when a greater return on one's resources can be found in other places, bowing to the law of diminishing returns. To be both a marketer and a perfectionist has caused a few schizophrenic debates for me over the years, but I've come to learn to focus on core competencies, and...

Marketers constantly emphasise their humanity, yet insist on using the impersonal term consumer. It's inaccurate, it's distracting and it needs to stop. It's inaccurate beause the person to whom they're selling is not necessarily the person who actually consumes the product/service if, indeed, anyone does. It's distracting because to label him/her as the consumer distances the marketer from the person that matters, the person who makes the purchase be that on their own behalf or on behalf of their family or someone to whom they want to give a gift. It's their hard-earned money that is paying your salary and referring to them as your customers is a discipline that will remind you of that every day.

Many people in business don't understand statistics or finance and that's appalling. Similarly, far too many people neither understand marketing nor know what it is and that's marketers fault. Shel Israel's article   about how marketing is ruining social media is just the latest illustration of that. There's nothing wrong with the argument, it's just that it's not marketing that's at fault, it's bad marketers. Bad marketers are short-term salespeople rather than long-term marketers. Bad marketers see everything in terms of marketing opportunities. Bad marketers would rather do anything than opt to do seemingly nothing.  Bad marketers see people as consumers not customers. Bad marketers lack respect for other people's creativity.  Bad marketers see channels where people see entertainment or utility. Bad marketers overvalue the new and undervalue the present. Bad marketers do what they've always done. Bad marketers use all the jargon but unders...