Leading Worlds

As I have few times for actively blogging (which is stressing me somehow), I prefer to chose articles or presentations that I liked.

Disruption is universal and is impacting all activities. Sometimes, you have major disruptions which have an influence on all businesses like railways, Internet or nanotechnologies.

Laurent Bouty Uncategorized disruption

Yes the world has changed, yes we can manage the turn as great leaders or … we can hit the wall as poor followers. If you want to manage it, just drop us a mail (lbo@futurelab.net).

Laurent Bouty I have loved, Some thoughts

Word of Mouth is certainly the primary commercial dissemination vehicle. We forgot it during decades (TV brainwashed us) but now that TV might not be as efficient as it was supposed to be, we are recovering our memories. An interesting presentation on this subject on Slideshare:

I discover on the web that WOM has also an association: http://www.womma.org/ where the subject is discussed.

Laurent Bouty Weekly review WOM

How to effectively build strategic scenarios based on a client briefing (”the question”)?

1. Understand the question. Most of the failures are usually coming from the fact that we have not understood the question or the question as stated by the client is not what he/she really wants to ask.
2. Plan the journey. If you start the exercise without having defined the journey (the answer redline with a plan), you will certainly be inefficient in your effort (spending time on unnecessary information and not enough time on key information)
3. Research information. Based on your redline and methodology, you can start looking information. Common failure is to research information without knowing clearly what you are looking for.
4. Information is not knowledge. Your added value is in bringing an answer and not listing 1000 sources of information.
5. Framework and information are knowledge. A key/mandatory element of a good scenario is to be capable to associate relevant information with the right strategic framework in order to highlight potential options
6. Strategies without numbers are useless. Seems quite obvious but a strategy based on pure qualitative assumptions is not sufficient (sort of show me the money rule)
7. Challenge yourself. Ask you the question: “So what!”. If the answer is: “in fact, it does not add anything, then drop the point”.
8. Dare, be different, be unique. Building an option that is mainstream will not help you to make the difference. You need to find what can really make the difference (it does not have to be a complex innovation but more something that nobody can do like the client).
9. Care, check with your stakeholders. For avoiding surprises, it is highly recommended to regularly check with all your stakeholders (is it what you are looking for? do we understand the same thing?)
10. Convince, avoid dead by Powerpoint. If your options are badly communicated, nobody will understand it!  All your efforts will then be lost.

Laurent Bouty Classrooms Classrooms, Rules, Strategy

In an interesting article of Adage on Marketers and other board members, the idea is that Marketers are mainly right brainers while other board people are more left-brainers (link here).  The final conclusion is “The “Right-brain marketing people should think conceptually but present those conceptual ideas to left-brain management with analogies buttressed by logical, analytical explanations“.

Do we need to limit Marketers or other board members to 50% of a brain? We need both!! We have lived 50 years of left brainers and now we are moving full speed to pure right-brainers. My guess is that we should better use both side of the brain

Why?

1. Build a brand with your left brain might lead to something very chaotic
2. Do your marketing financials with only your right brain and you might have a cash issue
3. Build a vision with your left brain only and probably no one will understand it (example in adage article is very interesting: To be one of the most well-known and respected organizations in the world known for nurturing and inspiring the human spirit)
4. A customer experience with your left brain will certainly annoy them
5. But a marketing plan without metrics is what right-brainers are doing

Typically Adage coming from Advertising is defending right brainers. The truth is that we should use both sides of our brain in harmony.

Laurent Bouty Weekly review Marketers, Weekly review

When building your Marketing strategy, you need to chose a pricing strategy. Amongst the different tasks of Marketing, this one is certainly the most impacting on the bottom-line (show me the margin). The simple framework below might help you in this exercise:

Marketing Pricing

The basic idea is that: the more unique you are, the more you can price versus the others in the same industry and versus the other industries. Tips for pricing:

1. The more you satisfy a need, the more you can price higher (perfume)
2. The more your product is linked to high-value brand, the more you can price higher (e.g. mini cars)
3. The more there is no other option, the more you can charge higher (bottle in the middle of no where)
4. The more the experience is unique, the more you can charge higher (a coffee with your wife in Rome)
5. The more you are compare, higher the risk of having to charge less (shelves in an hypermarket)
6. The more irrational are the satisfied needs, the higher you can price (fashions, jewelry)
7. The more difficult to get your product, the higher you can price (not applicable for commodity)
8. The more your distribution channels are high-value, the higher you can price (Via venetto or retail store outside the town)
9. The more your product are expensive in second-hand, the higher you can price (BMW or Mercedes)
10. Finally, the more share of voice you have, the more you can price (presence, P&G strategy)

Laurent Bouty Marketing Plan, Some thoughts Marketing Plan, pricing, uniqueness

What would be the components? We can read thousands of books on Marketing Plan but let me present you my personal vision (simple or simpler) of it:

Chapter 1: Understand what the world around you is expecting

From Shareholders to consumers organizations, environment, social responsibility, … What they want you to integrate in your business

Chapter 2: Who are you?

Why you are unique? all the stuffs around your brand DNA including the customer journey …

Chapter 3: Your value propositions

For whom (segments) based on what insights, build in an unique way (price, features, physical evidence…)

Chapter 4: Your marketing equation

The money trail: user * usage * price: how and where you make money

Chapter 5: Your Go To Market strategy

Your channel mix approach (where do you sell including channel remuneration), your promotional approach (you give for having more at the end) and your communication strategy (you say when and where it is appropriate that you are unique)

Chapter 6: Your enablers

People, Processes and Systems needed for supporting previous chapter in the real life

Chapter 7: Governance

Metrics, dashboard and rules for managing all this

That’s it,no more, no less. You can start writing it whenever you want but at the end if there is no story from 1 to 7, you have an issue!

Laurent Bouty Marketing Plan, Some thoughts Marketing Plan

Did you one day forget to pay an invoice from one of your service provider like energy or telecommunication? Not because you were out of cash but you were so busy that you lost it or you forgot it! What happen usually if the revenue insurance process has been designed by someone totally not interested in customer satisfaction: you receive an anonymous letter (dear Mr x…) with a standard message nearly threatening you to stop the service in 15 days if you don’t pay. Even if you paid the last 36 months on time, the company is not interested to understand this or the person/department in charge doesn’t even know that you are a loyal customer.

Let me tell you a real example:

• I paid my energy bill but I forgot to add the structured communication.
• 20 days later I receive a letter (”Bill reminder”) asking me to pay the invoice. In the meantime, I had already paid the next one with the correct communication. I discover on my bank account statement that I paid it but without communication. I called the company called center where someone (they never give you a direct number or email for following-up) told me that I should send a fax with the bank statement as proof of payment. I did it directly.
• 20 days later (yesterday, I have received a second later telling me that if I don’t pay right away they will stop my services). I was very angry, sending them an email and preparing a letter. Before sending it, I did a final check in my bank accounts where I discovered that the company reimbursed me the money 10 days ago.
• I pay again but….

Conclusions

• I am very angry and will churn/change the provider
• No customer respect in this process (pay or we will fire you)
• No link between the call center and revenue insurance process
• No customer lifetime management: I paid on time during 36 months, forgot to do it one time and nobody take the time to follow my situation even when I have called them.

Do you think you can have an efficient marketing without being involved in revenue insurance process? No! Without at least respect with your existing customers, your profitability and brand value will go down.

Any similar experience are welcome. I called them TOXIC CUSTOMER PRACTICES

admin Customer toxicity Customer toxicity, Loyalty, Marketing Performance

When building your marketing plan, you have to decide how you will allocate your budget. We could look at this decision like this: How much money you will use to amplify your commercial effort (PUSH) and how much money you will give as advantages to your customers (PULL).

This week, I had an interesting discussion on what is PULL and what is PUSH. Let’s first remind the general definition of push and pull provided by thefreedictionary:

• Push: To apply pressure against for the purpose of moving
• Pull: To apply force to so as to cause or tend to cause motion toward the source of the force (definition )

In PUSH, we have Channel remuneration budget (money you give to your channels for selling your products), Channel communication budget (trade marketing expenses or money you give to your channel for having some visibility), Channel animation (money you spend to increase the animation around your products in the channels like promo boys,…).

In PULL, we have the abundance you add in your product compare to the competition (examples are 600g instead of 500g for the same price or 3hours communication for free in your monthly subscription), additional features (like an insurance for your travel or bag with the laptop). We have also the promotion budget (extra you give during promotional periods abundance/features or price discount).

The interesting discussion we had was about communication: is it pull or push? The main assumption from the audience was Pull but we look at this from our definition: is it really a customer advantage? I would argue no however the brand as such might be considered as customer advantage as it is delivering emotional benefits (like I feel rewarded with premium brands). Media budget (communication opex) is definitely not a consumer advantage and I would classified this in the PUSH bucket.

The question you might have then is: What is your ration PUSH/PULL on a 100% scale (30% push or 30% pull)?

What is sure is PULL with 0% PUSH is not easy to achieve (you give a lot to your customers but you don’t say it anywhere).

In a next post, we will try to understand how to play with these buckets.

Laurent Bouty Some thoughts budget, Channel remuneration, Customer advantage, Marketing Plan

“Reconsidering The Advertising Industry is a 60-page conversation starter which focuses on the disconnect between what agencies offer, and what their clients are looking for.

In the report you will find practical insights and recommendations which can prepare your agency for the new marketing realities.  In specific, you will read about the:

• 14 areas where agencies get it wrong
• 12 remedies to set things right
• 10 agency models which still offer a future”

Free slideware can be seen on Futurelab! Enjoy

Laurent Bouty I have loved Advertising, Agencies, Report