Little Labor Friday

Happy Happy Friday before Labor Day! In honor of “doing very little,” please note my new fee structure for today only:

QUESTIONS ANSWERED AND PROBLEMS SOLVED:
1. Simple .50
2. Guesses $ 1.00
3. Intelligent $ 2.50
4. Honest $ 5.00

Dumb looks are still free

Business advice from Van Halen

Branding Boundaries

Understanding the boundaries of your brand. What you can or cannot do and what you should or should not do with your brand when it comes to launching second brands.

In my consulting practice, I work with big companies, small companies, old companies and new companies. While the actual laws of branding never change, what laws are most relevant for a particular client often do. What might work for one brand is not necessarily going to work for another.

The most frequent troubles occur with the law of the second brand. Launching a second brand is a powerful tool in expanding the power, success and growth of a company. However, companies often misunderstand when a second brand is necessary. Companies that should launch second brands often don’t and companies that shouldn’t launch second brands often do.

A company should launch a second brand when its initial brand is so strongly positioned in the mind that the new idea will undermine its meaning. But sometimes launching a second brand while strategically sound would undermine the focus of a company and overtax management’s time and attention.

Here are five brand attributes to analyze before your company launches a second brand:
1. SIZE- Bigger companies have more to gain from second brands. Smaller companies have more to lose from second brands.
2. AGE- Older companies need to launch second brands to enter new markets. Newer companies need to dominate an existing market before moving on to a new market.
3. COMPETITION- Companies with many focused competitors need second brands more than do companies with fewer line-extended competitors.
4. OPPORTUNITY- The bigger the opportunity, the more important it is to use a second brand. The less significant the opportunity, the more confusion a second brand will cause.
5. RESOURCES- The man who chases two rabbits catches neither. Unless he hires another man. Can your company afford the resources required to launch a second brand? Resources don’t just mean the money for a second marketing budget, but also the additional drain on management’s time and attention.

Coca-Cola would have been wise to make Diet Coke a new brand instead of a line-extension. While Snapple would have been foolish to give Diet Snapple a new brand name. (Big companies should generally launch second brands. Small companies should not.)

General Electric, a company over a century old, can survive with one brand because in most categories it does not faced focused competition. But GE got slaughtered in mainframe computers because it faced IBM and other focused competition. (Companies with focused competitors need second brands.)

Toyota needed a second brand to move up-market into luxury automobiles (Lexus) and a third brand to move down-market into cool, hip machines for the younger crowd (Scion.) Lexus smartly keeps its brand focused by using model numbers instead of new brand names for its sedans, SUVs and sports cars. (Both luxury cars and cool cars are big opportunities that deserved new brands.)
Understanding the world of branding is important, but knowing where your brand (and therefore your company) can go is even more important.

In the effort to capture our WHOLE audience…

Opportunity is Knocking…

… but sometimes I don’t answer. The following is a monologue on the top three words/phrases I LOVE to hear.

“Thou strong seducer, Opportunity,”
says 17th century English poet and literary critic, John Dryden. And, I have to agree with him. How many times do you sit in meetings and attend conferences where someone is attempting to lure the audience with the siren song of OPPORTUNITY. Coincidentally, or maybe predictably, “opportunity” has the same number of syllables as “oh, $#!t, I screwed up.”

My other favorite word (yes, I’ve already had a sarcastic sandwich this Monday morning) is PARTNER. People are always wanting me to partner on their projects. 99.999% of the time means me giving away all my intellectual property for a long period of time (like years) in hopes of successfully launching their company, and then I get to enjoy a smaller percentage of the profits. Well, it was their idea in the first place. I’m supposed to disregard the fact that they never could have gotten it off the ground without help. Ugh.

Finally, “I’D LOVE TO PICK YOUR BRAIN” about my idea/ my business/ my whatever. I know that attorneys, accountants, psychiatrists, and other professionals whose work IS their brain experience this onslaught almost everyday. I know that most people don’t mean any harm. They aren’t trying to actually steal from my livelihood; they just need a little enlightenment. So, my response is, “I’d love to sit with you and learn more about your idea so that I can give you some ideas to assist in your project. That’s why I created my ‘Power Hour.’ Just email me a few times this week that are convenient for you. I’ll send you an invoice for the $250 consulting fee and we’ll nail down a time and location. Sound good?”

… My, my, my. Yes, I DO love it when I hear the knock at the door.

Favorite ad-copy Friday!

As a marketer, I’m always on the lookout for companies with print ads that REALLY grab you. Maybe it’s their images, maybe it’s their creativity. Most of the time, for me, it’s their wordsmithing. Here’s just a few of my favs…

“Being boring is a choice. Those mild salsas and pleated khakis don’t buy themselves.”

“Confidence doesn’t whisper. It grabs a bullhorn.”

“Dear Ketel One Drinker– If aliens ever land here, chances are, you’ll be one of the people they want to talk to.”

“Life is a banquet, and most dumb bastards are starving to death. Get thee to the table… your seat is waiting.”

“Look behind you… that’s the pecking order.”

“Prefers now to never. Always plays hard to forget.”

“Live vicariously through no one.”

Have a great weekend!!

Coming at you from all sides

Image Adjustment? Market Shift? Redefining the Strategic Core

Yes, it is vitally important to stay true to your company’s strategic core. However, with technology innovations and globalization changing the business environment at lightening speeds, fundamental redefinition is sometimes a necessity rather than a distraction.

Revamping your core strategy is one of the greatest challenges a CXO can face, and with all the pressure and marketplace uncertainty, it can be tempting to reach for something entirely out of the box — leap into a new market, attempt major acquisitions, or push for massive corporate innovation.

Yet, why not take a calm inventory of your company’s existing strengths and capabilities. Most likely your company has hidden assets that can be tapped to get you through even the most fundamental business changes. These assets generally fall into three categories:
1. undervalued business platforms
2. untapped customer insights
3. underexploited capabilities

Prime example: Apple. When the company’s computer sales flagged, it used its underexploited capability to produce “cool” user interfaces to develop the iPod (and now the iPhone). These new devises now account for 50% of the company’s revenues.

So, if your current growth strategy is no longer working and you’re facing the need for a strategic overhaul , before you go flying off into the wild blue yonder, stop a moment to consider if your company has hidden, underutilized assets closer to home.

Life Flies By and Dreams Wave Back

Thoughts from Mark Stephens, CEO of MSCO. I can’t agree with him more…

“Everyone has a dream. Martin Luther King’s was a Mother of a dream. Yours may appear petty in comparison…to everyone but you. It is yours, and it is magnificent, sweeping, and grand. But the question is, will it ever make the cosmic transition from dream to reality? The truth is, life races by and the dreams wave back. And you keep promising that you will turn the dream into reality, but you don’t.

“You blame it on the gods and circumstances and religion and tradition and other people, but it’s you that builds the wall you refuse to pass through. Just you.

“I walk into countless meetings and hear of dreams. I fly in planes and hear of dreams. I attend conferences and hear of dreams. And, I love dreamers beause they have the electricity of life. But, so often it remains static electricity. ‘My career would be what I really want it to be, but…’, ‘My company would break new ground in our industry and achieve truly dramatic breakthroughs, however…’

“Dreams are like snowflakes. They dance from the sky and powder the world with possibilities, and in most every case, they melt and disappear, leaving nothing but what might have been.

“Rosa Parks dreamed of sitting in the front of a bus. And, with the threat of death all around her, that is precisely what she did. At this moment, in companies and firms and homes around the world, billions of dreams are out there, in holding patterns, waiting to take flight. Will yours?

“Will life softly fly by? Will your dreams wave back? Like snowflakes of the mind…”

How to Validate an Idea

Here’s the scenario: I have a new client who is working on “tightening up” their business idea. At this time, they need validation from people related to their industry. So far, they haven’t been unable to connect to the right people for validation, and they’ve reached a stage where they think they can’t go ahead with the idea. It’s like a dead-end - wanting to launch an idea but can’t validate it and yet don’t want to proceed without validating it. Advice?

My proposal to them:
1) Organize a focus group. For each of the criteria described in the paper, ask the following questions : a) do you personaly consider this criteria important b) do you think our idea fulfils this criteria c) do you think our idea fulfils more this criteria than some other competiting ideas that you’re aware of.
Marks would go as follows : strongly disagree = 0.25 / partially disagree 0.5 / half agree & half disagree = 1 / partially agree = 2 / strongly agree = 4

2) For each respondent multiply all the answers to get a global mark. Calculate the average global mark on all respondents and the root mean square. The average will tell you if the idea can work : the higher above one, the best chances. The root mean square will show you if it will work on all the targeted population or if you will only reach a sub segment of it.

3) By finding the commonalities between those who’ll adopt the idea, you may be well inspired to take note of the demographic details (age, gender and all kind of details that you may find relevant) that will help in refining the idea.

4) Share the idea with members of an industry professional association and garner their feedback. Identify who is to benefit from this idea. Then, identify who among this segment will be open to play a part in validating it.

Throughout this process, it is important to let go of any selfish interest and agree to part with a little ownership or credit to the validating party as well. Keep the emphasis on the benefit that this idea will bring to the validating party as well.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: If you are unable to identify people who might benefit from the idea, then maybe you reall don’t have an idea at all.

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