I feel overwhelmed by the volume of digital messages coming at me from all corners of my life. And I am not alone. My 2013 prediction is that value is about to rapidly migrate once again in technology markets. Over the holidays I met a young woman in her 30s — a former boutique owner who now works at a leading retailer — who told me that she stopped using Facebook when she realized the postings kept growing in number and falling in sincerity. Also, she’s “unsubscribed” from retailers she buys from, finding that their recommendations based on past purchases more often insult rather than reflect her taste. She is tuning out to digital messaging much as I ignore the ads in newspapers to make my newspaper reading more efficient. Perhaps my message overload problem was not age-related, I thought leaving our conversation….
John Deere – Branding and business models at their best
The most powerful brands offer more than a unique, hard-to-copy and relevant value promise embracing both tangible and emotional benefits. They are also about more than the brand’s personality, although I will admit to loving beer brand Dos Equis “most interesting man in the world” personality. The best brands appeal to a shared aspiration that speaks to our deep hopes and dreams. When the organization’s actions authentically reflect this aspiration, you have a magical brand, like John Deere. Yes, the John Deere. The heavy off-highway equipment company serving the construction, farming and other earth-moving markets. Its award-winning communications campaign, You’re On, teaches many brand and business model strategy lessons. Start with Deere’s construction industry homepage, where you’ll see the message “Who says man cannot move a mountain?” as a Deere machine moves earth on a landscape surrounded by mountains. What a welcomed contrast…
The Wall Street Journal needs a remodel
All I wanted to do was change my Wall Street Journal digital Monday to Friday subscription back to a daily print subscription. Why? Because I found I was not reading enough of the business news as I had when the paper was physically delivered. I also wanted to retain my Saturday delivery subscription. Sounds easy to accomplish, yes? Four or five (can’t remember which) conversations later, I have effected the change. Why so many? Because the WSJ customer service functions are designed from the inside out to serve internal needs rather than from the outside in to serve customer needs. To make the change I needed to deal with three customer service groups: Saturday only Digital Daily print As I look at this list, I can envision the WSJ’s organizational structure and financial reports. Because of this business structure, I would have needed…
As CMOs become immersed in technology, beware of the CIO myopic thinking trap
If you thought that the move from the Industrial Era to the Digital Era was the last major economic transition that your business would have to deal with, think again. We are in the middle of yet another transformation of comparable magnitude. The slow but steady shift of power away from companies and to customers as we moved into the Digital Era will reach its zenith in the years ahead. Today’s customers, clients, and consumers are instrumented, interconnected, intelligent, engaged, informed and empowered. They want companies they buy from to know them, interact with them on their terms, and personalize marketing offers and customer support. They even want personalized products and services. IBM (my employer) calls this the Connected Consumer Era and it will lead into a digitization of the front office comparable to the back office digitization of the past two decades….
Four practices for creating an authentic brand
As an experiment, I followed the world’s twitters during the first Obama-Romney presidential debate. Amidst the flurry of messages passing by my eyes, I finally understood in my gut and not just my head how social media has changed the balance of power when it comes to controlling brand image. In an era when everyone single one of your customers can shout their opinions from an easily accessible “bloody pulpit,” how do you influence what these customers will say? They certainly aren’t going to copy messages from your mass market advertisements! The answer lies in making sure that your company’s actions live out the brand image you want to build. That is the only way to have an authentic message that will be repeated by customers you cannot control. How do you do that? Lessons about leadership apply. Leaderhip gurus Jim Kouzes and…
Curators: A growing business model opportunity
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the volume of information, options and messages bombarding your daily life, you are not alone. Enter the curator – a role that I believe will become even more dominant in the decades ahead, creating opportunities for individuals and companies alike. The term curator has traditionally been associated with the experts working at museums who bring together the right collection of pieces to convey new insights into a subject, be it an art movement or geological period. Normally, seeing a part versus the whole of something reduces our understanding. Who would envision an elephant from a tusk? The genius of museum curators rests in their ability to select, from an entire body of work, the right subset to deepen the audience’s understanding of both the part and the whole. There are many other types of curators all around…
Product-Service Business Model Best Practices
I had occasion this week to look through a number of business-to-business manufacturers’ websites and noted the growing role of services in company offerings. Some services link directly to the products (e.g., financing or warranty services). Others are complementary – e.g., “buy our power generation products and our service team will help you minimize your carbon footprint.” The additions of services to products make sense in a world where products are increasingly commoditized by excess global supply, growing customer power and a flood of copycat offerings. More and more of these services are must-have additions to a product line because customers have come to expect them. And that means product manufacturers best not remain stuck in product-centric business models. Furthermore, because its getting harder to differentiate individual services, product manufacturers best be savvy in how they add services. There are two myths associated…
Are your business model decisions aligned?
I had occasion this week to look at a number of different frameworks containing questions that help you design and innovate business models, each one developed by an insightful strategist and each offering advantages. While they varied in details, there was a singular logic that leaders, charged with ensuring their company is competing with winning business models, could benefit from. To illustrate, a story might fit the bill. All Pleasant Rowland’s advisors argued against her desired channel strategy. A former schoolteacher turned grade-school textbook writer, Rowland wanted to create a doll that would help mothers keep their daughters’ attitudes and dress younger, longer. An aunt herself, Rowland had observed how contemporary culture encouraged girls to consider make-up and the like at earlier ages than had Rowland. Rowland wanted to sell the doll through direct marketing (just catalogues at the time) in lieu of…
What JC Penney didn’t understand about the role of price in business models
Wizard of Oz protagonist Dorothy captures the shock of her post-tornado world in the memorable line, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Ex-Apple retail wizard Ron Johnson, now CEO of JC Penney (JCP), must be saying “I’m not in Cupertino, California [Apple’s headquarters] anymore” as he discovers the challenges of transforming his new employer’s retail stores. The first head has already been chopped: merchandising and marketing leader Michael Francis left JCP after less than a year on the job. We’ll now see if Johnson, who created the “shabby chic” value promise at Target and the stellar shopping and learning experience at Apple, has the chops to fix a troubled company in a category with excess supply. I thought Johnson had a great idea – reinvent the department store, which had offered wonderful shopping experiences when local high-end stores dominated the…
Reviving local retail through business model innovation
In the new Broadway-bound musical Hands on a Hardbody, ten East Texans seek to reverse their hard luck lives in a competition to win a Nissan truck. In one song, Used To Be, the contestants lament the loss of independent stores across Texas. “How will we know when we’re home,” the cast croons, “in a land filled with Walmarts and Walgreens and Wendy’s?” The musical captures much of what is hurting in America, the retail landscape being but one example. Office Depot, Staples and Office Max for example displaced local office supply stores while Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Target and other national chains displaced locally owned pharmacies. National retailers then pressured manufacturers for cost reductions, creating ruthless competition that’s driven every last penny and non-essential US job out of consumer goods companies’ cost structures. The change from local to national had advantages. A developer…