Is it on sale?

Who are the people that buy products on sale and what is the difference between them and loyal consumers? Who provides the most value to the products or brands? As a marketer I am extremely concerned when it is suggested the only thing left to do is to discount. Unless of course I was marketing a discounted brand model, like say Jetstar (recently hash tagged as Jetstarsucks). Then it would be perfectly legitimate because we truly would have nothing else to give the consumer except the cheapest possible price ... and because of this the minute that a consumer could book a cheaper flight they would. So for a discount strategy to work well it has to be a consistent approach, the business has to be "set up" to regularly deliver a discount.

Once you start conditioning the customer on the hope of the big discount it is extremely difficult to successfully stop discounting. Like a chronic junkie everyone involved sees the benefits of coming off, but just can't execute it for very long. However as usual Tom Fishbourne's Groupon Post (12th June 2011) sums up promotions perfectly http://tomfishburne.com/2011/06/holy-groupon.html

"The sales windfall is tempting, but cautionary tales abound. One cafe owner recently described a Groupon promotion as “the single worst decision I have ever made“. Not only was it unprofitable and a bad fit for her business, it attracted mainly one-time deal hunters.'

Discounting is occuring in businesses more often than we might think, and not always with a profitable return to the bottom line. In terms of the brand, discount promotions are against the basic principles touted by marketing experts on how to build a brand and the benefits of doing so to a business. Does brand equity still hold value in a depressed retail environment? Maybe not, but also is a depressed retail environment a permanent declining one or is it cyclical. I'll be sure to ask Phil Ruthven (IBISworld chairman, and regular BRW columnist) next time I see him which one is more likely.

So do I have the answers? No. Have I ever had the balls to run a business, be a CEO or go it alone? No, I'm just one of those side liners that wants to comment on things I have little financial investment in. For what it's worth customer service needs to be any company's biggest priority - marketing can sell a dream, create a need, and put a solution in your face when you most need it. They can build a brand and work to cement an emotional connection to it, but at the end of the day if the products aren't available, if the quality is faulty, if the service is not available then maybe all that's left is to rebuild the business model (take out training, customer service, maintance, quality and push the bottom line in every possible area) and follow Jetstars lead.

Can you please advertise on TV?

Every day for some years my day to day job has been to convince people that advertising does work. However most of this time is spent convincing the sales department that advertising is not TVCs. The sales department in many companies I've worked with would love nothing more than to create TVCs and run them 12 months of the year in prime time. Sales to marketing, "yes we agree the target market is x, but can you explain again why TV isn't part of the campaign?" As we know TV is not always an option for smaller communication budgets and targeted communications campaigns. In fact not using TV means the agencies and marketing guys are working harder for their pound of flesh. Pause while eyes glaze over, or roll around. At this point going into the rest of the planning rationale is pointless; the only way to save the meeting from here is to put forward a discount deal or something quick and easy. At least give the sales guys something to work with! Thank you Tom Fishburne http://tomfishburne.com/2011/06/holy-groupon.html for your timely blog and accompanying cartoon this week about groupons, which is essentially the same as a blanket discount deal that I'm talking about here.

Marketing has evolved and changed with better tools for planning, measuring and communicating and the best way forward is work together with sales. This requires BOTH departments putting forward things they can do and own too, then together look at every angle until we can all see the best way forward to achieving all the key objectives. And that's not just this year's sales target either. Mr Fishburne finishes his blog with: Instead of rushing to “mark down”, think about how to “market up”. Create value rather than devalue. Instead of investing in a race to the bottom, invest in your brand’s experience.

So wouldn't it be lovely occasionally to hear a sales team put forward some options that they could own and that supports the brand position, “we could get the merchandisers to this or that, or the sales team will be taking every opportunity to reinforce a high service standard throughout their training process and reflect the brand values.” Or we could just sit around and debate the merits of TVCs again!

Do you have a personal filter to live by?

Ask most of the colleagues you've ever worked with, what kind of personality they think you have and would you agree or disagree with their answers? What if the questions were more specifically about your management, leadership, or team principles and how you behaviour? Personally I have known for eons that being more tactful would deliver amazing benefits to my interactions with people, both at work and personally. It has however taken the last 15 years of concerted effort to truly understand these benefits and only the last 12 months of implementing some more solid strategies to do it.

If you are still reading by now, you're thinking "what the?" The ultimate answer came from a very savvy colleague of mine and is all about creating your own personal filter. Once you have decided what your true values in life are (what you would live and die by) use them as your filter to guide the way you act and behaviour in every single circumstance everyday. Be true to your filter. It's a bit like creating your own personal religion, that only you can hold yourself accountable for.

To give an example around this, taking responsibility for my own destiny is one value I want to live by. Being a chronic victim is not a desirable trait. Therefore when I'm in a meeting and someone makes a comment or remark blaming my department for for an issue or mistake, I can chose to sulk around like a victim, complaining that no one understands and that I'm getting singled out. Or I could choose to accept the circumstance, or determine whether I can control, change or improve the circumstance.

Unfortunately like all good theory it took way, WAY, more to get it in to practice, and a lot of time now is still spent contemplating what should come out the other end of the filter. Thankfully I can refer back to my savvy colleague, who amazingly has the best answer every time - thank you. But I still live in hope that if I practice this technique enough it will eventually become part of me, an organic part of my personality. So I am now practicing to rise above my old petty ways by regularly asking myself "what else can I do to rise above my circumstances and achieve the results I desire?"

Do you have a guiding filter?

When work and home provide similar lessons

It appears to me that the more I read and experience, in terms of professional development, the more similarities can be drawn about what we do at home and what we do at work. Sound familiar?
October's Management Today had a great read about team development, by Peter Cullen and Terri Hunter. It likens the stages of a soccer training session for building a successful team.
Recently I have also read Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence". (And to be frank I think you need to have a fairly high Intellectual Intelligence to get through it). The reference to toddlers and children, to draw out examples is prolific. This book tends to focus on individual characteristics and how to adapt to them. This whole book, in my opinion, is based on a 12 month visit with an cognitive behavioural therapist (CBT), nothing wrong with that.
Another example, drawn from personal experience, was some time ago when I attended a "dealing with difficult people" seminar. That evening I had the pleasure of assisting at a 5 year old's birthday party. What I had learnt that day was so applicable for dealing with a bunch of boys at this party and gave me a good opportunity to try out a few tools.

The examples are endless. How about listening skills - how important is it to listen? I found myself reading books to my son the other night called, Listening, Sharing & Helping. Lots of examples of how to listen actively, the importance of acknowledgement, waiting until the other person has finished speaking and so on. Maybe I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on courses, management magazines and books, instead just be way more present in the day to day activities of my own developing child. I'm definitely putting this method down on my personal development plans for the future.
The best advice from the article by Cullen & Hunter is that team commitment will come from a clarity of goals. And coming together as a team should only be done when joint work from the team is needed - if you bring your team together just for an update or informal session it could leave members uncommitted, overloaded with information, and lacking focus.

How often have you forced a meeting with no agenda and no winning outcome?

How would you prepare for a career of the future?

Lots of my favourite reads have published articles on jobs of the future. No huge surprises with what is coming out, I wish I could be more creative to pose some crazy suggestions. It is already happening whereby people who have great admin experience have transferred these skills to managing peoples lives. Data storage, data filing etc. Wouldn't you love to have someone come into your house and clean up your hard drive or wherever you keep stuff? I've got files of photos, resumes, and goodness knows what else, lamely filed in different places. Along with that comes the supplement of papers, real photos (photo albums-remember these) filing cabinets full of warranties and paper stuff that I may never need or use.

What other employment opportunities will there be? The CMTO was mentioned at a recent marketing conference (Chief Marketing Technology Officer) with interesting possibilities. Technology and the environment have been the catalyst for most of the future thinking. So while their is an abundance of business journals and papers written summonsing the future of employment using careful research, analysis and real stuff, most of my own research has come from two great movies. My most favourite movie of all time is Gattaca and a more recent addition to my movie greats is WALLE.

GATTICA has been on my top favourite list for 13 years. Opportunities for jobs, DNA mapping, selling your urine, blood, etc - love it (cash jobs? what will we use for cash?). The best quote from the movie; Vincent I' ll never understand what possessed my mother to put her faith in God's hands, rather than her local geneticist. A greater emphasis on genetic counselling maybe? More recently WALLE emphasises the importance of waste management, the environment and health.

One fair assumption could be the career that has lasted for centuries may still be around in one form or another. Would prostitution and the sex industry be in demand for another 20 centuries?

Is there a career or job you would like to do in the future that may not be popular today?

My apology to Cold Callers - I'm Busy

Dear cold callers, I'm writing this post today to apologise that I will likely not call you back, return your email or accept your Linked In request. I am truly apologetic about this, but I can't physical do it. I don't really know who you are, if I've met you or if we could genuinely give you some business. You see it is nearly time for the next monthly BOSS publication to come out and I'm still just trying to get through last months, let alone all my regular reads. The beautiful thing is that the guru was responding to a question this month on dealing with the increasing demand of our own organisations and existing business relationships due to better technology, but didn't really have a solution to this either. The emails get bigger, become quicker, and increase, but storage does not. So another new time waster is deleting the never ending assault of emails that I have collected to date.

The business solution options are increasing, everyone has opened up their own boutique creative agency, research agency, DM solutions, digital assistance, print shop and strategic consultancy, and I don't doubt that they are all very good. The scary thing is that we had a bigger and quite well known PR agency contact us via twitter to tell us they could help us set up in this very space and then list a bunch of things they could help us with, all of which we had been doing for some time.

The best advice I received from my own Linked In contacts was to invite all these people to come out to my office (quite some way out of the CBD) on a Friday afternoon between 4pm and 5pm to show their wares. After some thought I've decided, I really don't want to be confined to the office every Friday afternoon between 4 & 5pm waiting for them to turn up. Selfish of me.

Everyone deserves a chance, but isn't it fair for these people to come to the table with something that demonstrates they may understand our business needs? And no I'm not going to see you just because you keep talking about a fabulous new strategic plan that you can't discuss over the phone.

Am I bitter and twisted, I've given some a break before and have been let down. Once bitten, twice shy maybe?

What's the answer? Any thoughts?

The future of education for children

This months BOSS magazine, from the AFR, has so many great stories in it. These include, Youth vs Wisdom - Which bosses are best, Project Turnaround was great, and many more I haven't got through yet. One story that I loved was titled The Real Education Revolution, written by Fiona Smith. The basis of the story is research and insights around education and teaching methods, that educationist Greg Whitby has discovered. The classroom looks less structured, but the education is well planned, tailored and varied. Also a mention on the federal government's Primary Schools for the 21st Century program. We have all heard a lot about this, the magic $25,000 figure for a building, favouritism and wroughting, but has all this distracted us from the fundamental rationale around this policy and its strategy? The article suggests the implementation of this program is already outdated.

Two things came to mind as I read this. First was, I want my child to go to a school like this. I am currently wandering down an important decision path about schooling for my own little boy. What is best? Private versus government? How do you even judge a school, or work out the value from the school fees versus day to day costs of public schools? Based on this article I drew distinct connections between development at work and home. There are many employees whose love or hate of their work often comes down to the manager at the time, not always the organisation. And this holds true for schools. It is not solely the school name that makes it good or bad, it is also about the individuals that teach there, plan lessons and develop the curriculum. So how do I find out about the teachers? What other lessons need to be used during this school hunting time? Where do I find help?

The second thing I thought of is, do I buy my son an i-pad for his third birthday? With this came some other benefits, such as, this morning I was a lot more relaxed when he insisted on playing with my iPhone.

At the end of the day I'm still always amazed when I read business journals and corporate case studies, to find they have such interchangeable messages between work and my family life.

Thanks for this thought provoking story BOSS, it gave me more ideas on how to come to a final decision on a school and was also inspiring, by providing hope of a future progressive schooling system for my own son - But still looking for any more advice.