Customer Crossroads

Building the brand in the age of cutthroat changes

I'm doing one of those projects that involves knowing "what's going on" in some topic. The problem is, pretty much no one knows "what's going on" in any area anymore, without doing a ton of research to figure out what is actually current.

Crazy, huh?

One of the analysts wondered whether retail examples were relevant to the background work. Heck, yeah. Retail is cutthroat, and has been for years. Imagine trying to compete with Amazon, for example?

• First they compete by having no physical inventory.
• Then they compete by having no physical product.
• Then they compete by outdoing Walmart at supply chain management.

Scary stuff, man. So retail is a hotbed of innovation these days. Retail is a great place to look for innovation and ideas.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Real facts on innovation

There is so much talk about innovation that it can be hard to separate the facts from the bs.

Booz and Company's global innovation 1000 study has some fascinating actual data to report.

The actual graphic is interactive.

One thing that stands out for me here is that these firms are getting feedback at EVERY STAGE of the innovation process. I believe this is a key to success, and am happy to see that the leaders are proving that.

"We are seeing the first signs of a digital revolution that will transform how innovation is done" - Booz + Co

Social media analytics

Customer sentiment analysis (using automated tools to analyze social media sentiment) is ranked among the least effective on the customer insight grouping (see lower left in the graphic).

There are now a couple of hundred social media analytics tools, ranging from the expensive enterprise quality stuff (e.g. Radian 6, Conversition) to the free ones (searching on Google, Facebook, Twitter), and a bunch you have probably never heard of.

The challenge is going from sentiment (I like Pizza Hut better than Pizza Pizza) to something that will help you with customer insight and innovation.

The thing is -- you CAN get a lot of good insights from social media IMHO. But automated tools are not yet at the place where they can replace the insights of a human brain. The tools are great for tracking (Are more people talking about Toyota or about Ford?) and they are great for ensuring a firm can respond quickly to problems on social media (think Yelp reviews, for example).

But you still need a person to actually dip into those samples and try to understand what is actually going on beyond "mentions".

On a more philosophical level, is it really a good thing to have managers so far removed from customer concerns that an analytics engine does their thinking for them? Not in my view.

R+D spending, and staying out in front

I also loved the charts that looked at R+D spending over a period of several years.

The companies on this list are fascinating -- most should make excellent investments over the long term, and all are known for innovation.

Booz + Co highlights the use of digital tools, such as Caterpillar's use of digital immersion labs, where users can interact with products not yet built. This makes a lot of sense for Caterpillar (who makes BIG stuff). But might not be as necessary if your product is a little more prosaic. You can certainly use the old fashioned face to face immersion labs for many categories with tremendous success.

The point, I think, is not so much the "digital", it is the "immersion" in the customer's world.

However, the study also highlights the use of digital tools to improve productivity. Using 3D printing, for example, makes a great deal of sense as a prototyping approach. 

Fascinating data.

 

How not to be boring: be creative with promotional items

I picked up a rubber bracelet at my biz school reunion. I thought it might be kind of fun. You'll recall these items became really hot in 2004 with the Lance Armstrong LiveStrong campaign. Once a promotional item reaches a conservative bastion like a business school, you can be sure that it is anything but trendy, right?

The bracelet says, "Ivey Business School 90th Anniversary."

[Truly, irredeemably boring. Why would I wear it? Why would I share it? Why would I even engage with it?] 

What a promotional item should do for you

Even something as small as a promotional item should have a genuine purpose. A promotional item like this can be used for a few purposes:

• Raise awareness of the brand -- simply show off your name
• Be a pass-along item
• Reinforce an emotional connection or association
• Reinforce existing positive brand associations
• Create new positive brand associations

I thought this could have been done a LOT better. So on the drive home, I tried to think of how to do it better, as an exercise in creative thinking. Then whiteboarded some stuff as seen in the photo above.

There were a few other things I thought the school might have done with this, to showcase the brand better. Some possible objectives that made sense to me were:

• Reinforce the sense of community that the school is always talking about.
• Say something brainy, or at least witty, in the message.
• Say something about the massive new building that was just unveiled.

Yes, your promo items should have objectives. If you are just buying something to give away, you are not making the expenditure work very hard. And in fact, it could be sending the wrong message (I.e. we're boring!)

Brainstorm it better

Here are the things I came up with during the drive home. If you are really doing an exercise like this, you should come up with at least 2 dozen ideas and then choose the best ones.

Ivey turns 90, gets a facelift    [witty reference to the new building]

22,930 graduates | 5,154 female grads | 98 countries    [select some interesting statistics.]

Campuses in London, Toronto, Hong Kong, Mumbai. Coming soon: Ubuntu    [global growth in campuses, and emerging efforts in Africa]

Kevin O'Brien, Sarah Morgenstern, Timothy Hodgson, and me    [Highlight current year alumni award winners, and suggest that the attendee could be among them in future]

Multiple bracelets could have been used to get people looking at each other's bracelets and talking, "which one did you get?"

Even small initiatives in your business can support your brand, if you give them a little creativity. Don't just put your logo on a pen. You can do better than that, right?

What have you seen that you thought was clever use of a promotional item? What made it work?