Mike Ferry

How to Get Great Work from Your Ad Agency

2010-01-26T19:37:49Z

We all know its more important than ever to get the most out of your marketing dollars, and to do so you must get great creative from your agency. But in today’s frenetic world, many have lost the art of making it happen. Here are some important tips:

Get the “A Team” on your business. In my experience, every agency has their “A” talent, and their B/C talent. Its important to get their strongest performers on your account- even if you have to go to a smaller agency to do so. The A team at a regional agency typically is more creative, experienced, and talented than the C team at a national player.
Take the time upfront to brief the Agency on your business situation, objectives, and most importantly, your target consumer. A holistic understanding of the situation will lead to better creative and more insight.
While its worthwhile to work collaboratively on the creative process, it is critical to have a single clear decisionmaker. This is important for a couple reasons. First, having multiple decisionmakers tends to lead to the work getting “dumbed down” to the least common denominator. Second, agency creatives don’t make advertising for companies, they make it for people- that’s why its important for the client to get to know both the account team and the creatives.
Do consumer research up front with the brand team, the account team, and the creatives. This allows you to understand consumers together, gain consumer insights together, bounce ideas off each other, and build a relationship with the key players.
You’ll get better work if you treat the agency like a partner on your business, rather than as a supplier.
Be media agnostic. Work with the agency to determine what specific media vehicles will best accomplish the objectives of the project.
Write a clear, concise creative brief. The most important elements of this document are the target consumer, the brand benefit, key consumer insight(s), and the brand personality.
Ask to see a range of work. This allows you to get some “safe” work that is comfortable and on point, but likely not “breakthrough”, as well as some options which scare you because they are higher risk, but potentially higher reward. If it’s a major project, you may want to have multiple creative teams providing work.
Give the agency enough time to do great work. Most of us are linear thinkers, and are by nature, impatient. But the creative process works best when the creative have enough time to consider a broad range of directions.
Listen. When the agency presents their work, listen and ask questions to be sure you clearly understand the inspiration behind the work.
When commenting on work, speak in terms of objectives, not tactics. Nothing drives a creative crazy more than a client saying, “can we use this font, or this specific color”. A more appropriate comment would be, “I’m finding the current font difficult to read, can you consider other options which pop better?”
Throw them a bone. If the agency feels very strongly about work that you are lukewarm on, go ahead and include it in testing. You may be surprised how consumers react to it, and at the least, it shows you respect the agency’s expertise and are willing to work together. (Important note: this does not mean you should produce subpar work, it does mean that if the agency feels particularly strongly about a particular direction, you should get some consumer feedback on it.)
Celebrate success! Once you have worked together to develop powerful work that builds your brand, show genuine appreciation to your agency partners by celebrating success together.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, I welcome your thoughts and insights.
Mike

5 Ways for Market Leading Brands to Drive Profitable Growth

2009-12-28T18:38:17Z

If you have ever had the opportunity to work on a market-leading brand, you know from experience it is both a privilege and a challenge. On the positive side, market leaders typically have strong brand equity, excellent profitability, and score well on key measures such as awareness, trial, and loyalty.

Bounty - How Do You Grow a Market Leading Brand?On the challenging side, companies expect strong, consistent profitable growth from their market leading brands, and in many categories this can be exceptionally difficult to deliver. Trying to continue growing share when you are already the market leader often results in heavy price competition which has the unintended result of driving profit out of the category for everyone.

In many ways, it can be even harder to stay on top, than it is to get there, as the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. With that in mind, here are five suggestions to help market leaders continue driving profitable growth:

1. Rather than focusing on stealing share from competition, focus on growing the category.

Years ago when I was working on the Bounty paper towel business, the brand was market leader with a share nearly triple its closest competitor. Rather than seeking to simply grow share, our team recognized that the paper towel category had expandable consumption, and as market leader it was our responsibility to drive category growth. Read on for more detail on how this worked for Bounty.

2. Get in bed with your heavy users.

Really understanding what makes your heavy users tick has multiple advantages. First, it helps ensure you don’t do anything which will alienate them, which can have catastrophic consequences. Coca Cola would have avoided the whole New Coke fiasco had they shared their plans to change the formula of Coke with their heavy users.

In addition, studying your heavy users allows you to understand what differentiates them from your typical user, and can lead to strategies to get more users to adopt the heavy user behavior. In the Bounty example, the brand’s heavy users tended to use paper towels for tougher cleaning tasks than typical users, and tended to keep larger quantities of Bounty on hand.

3. Don’t define your competitive set too narrowly.

Step back and see how the consumer views your category, and what alternative products they consider when selecting your product. In the Bounty example, while heavy users were using paper towels for tough cleaning tasks like washing dishes, cleaning large spills, or scrubbing carpets, typical users were using sponges and rags for these tasks. By understanding that Bounty was competing with sponges and rags, we were able to show the benefits of using a disposable paper towel versus a durable product like a sponge, which can be a breeding-ground for germs.

Campbell Soup - Building the Business by Broadening the Category DefinitionA second example here would be Campbell Red & White condensed soup. If you define the category as condensed soup, Campbell has an 85 share, with little room to take additional share. Defining the category as all shelf stable soups and broths helps some, but doesn’t reflect how the consumer really views the category. By studying consumer behavior, the Campbell team was able to understand that the consumer is considering condensed soup along with other quick “minimeals” like a sandwich, frozen microwave entrees, etc. This insight led to sharper consumer communication on when and why to choose Campbell condensed rather than some of the other alternative foods.

4. Stretch your brand equity by launching innovative line extensions…

...but be sure not to launch new products which are inconsistent with your current brand equity. Continuing with the Bounty example, we launched Bounty Quilted Napkins, bringing Bounty’s strong and absorbent equity to the napkin category. A second positive example would be Crest, which figured out they could extend their brand equity beyond simply cavity protection to total mouth care. This led to a stream of new products including tooth brushes, oral rinses, and of course, Crest White Strip

Crest WhiteStrips - Extending the Brand's Equity with Successful Line ExtensionsOn the other end of the spectrum, Jif Peanut Butter, whose equity has consistently focused on “more peanutty taste”, attempted to launch a line of flavored spreads called Jif Smooth Sensations which came in flavors like Chocolate Silk, Apple Cinnamon, and Berry Blend. Jif’s brand equity could not be logically extended to nonpeanut flavors, and the line failed.

5. Optimize your product lineup to maximize productivity from every sku.

Finally, in the current world where retailers are closely watching sku count, it is critically important to take a hard look at your product lineup to make sure the every sku plays a meaningful role, and the whole maximizes productivity. On Bounty, for example, we found that productivity went up when we concentrated our lineup on larger sizes. Driving consumers to large count packs resulted in consumers’ increasing their in home consumption, and resulted in higher loyalty as measured by share of requirements.

A second example here would be Ensure nutritional shakes, which typically retail for $7.99 or higher per six pack. Consumers were often hesitant to spend eight bucks to try a product they might not like. By launching single bottle trial size, that barrier was overcome and overall brand volume went up.

In Summary

Certainly there are many more ways to drive leading brands to profitable growth than those we briefly reviewed here, but I have been fortunate enough to have a positive personal experience with each of these five. By the way, I hope you’re enjoying these posts and, as always, I welcome your comments. One last thing, don’t forget to read Randall’s Beard’s guest post on the surprising increase in television viewership.

Private Label Advice for Retailers from a CPG Leader

2009-12-15T20:32:38Z

Private Label products are one of the few beneficiaries of today’s tough economic conditions. Recent Nielsen data indicates private label is up on average +7.4% versus year ago, with an average share of 16.9%. Retailers- from Wal Mart, to Safeway, to Kroger, to Super Valu- are wisely turning to private label to drive growth and profitability at this time.

However, many retailers are not yet taking a long term, holistic approach to the role that private label products should play in their business. Here are eight suggestions for retailers to consider as they seek to profitably grow their private label businesses:

Remember to keep things simple for the shopper. Don’t proliferate sku’s just to fill shelf space. Safeway is guilty of this in the pasta sauce category. Besides carrying all of the national brands, Safeway has no less than three complete private label lines of spaghetti sauce- Safeway Select line, the Eating Right line, and O Organics line. (insert safeway spaghetti sauce pictures here). Why would consumers need so many lines of pasta sauce, with little or no differentiation?
Don’t launch private label into categories which aren’t big enough to merit it. Wal Mart, for example, has tested a private label diabetic shake product to compete with Glucerna. This is a relatively small category in absolute, and launching private label into it pulls down the velocity of all the sku’s in it- both branded and private label.
Play fair with the national brands. Let’s face it, in times like these it is tempting to focus all growth on private label by unfairly disadvantaging the national brands in shelving, merchandising, etc. But its important to take the long view here, and recognize that national brands have driven traffic to the category for years behind investing in building a relationship with consumers, product innovation, etc. Its important to balance growth opportunities between both private label and national brands for the long haul.
Don’t leave money on the table. It can be tempting to get VERY aggressive with private label pricing. After all private label products frequently have less expensive ingredients, cheaper packaging materials, no marketing costs, and limited R&D expenses. But its important to consider whether you are leaving money on the table by pricing the product lower than the consumer expects. In this situation, you are hurting category $$ sales, and category profitability. To effectively price private label products, its important to consider national brand prices, consumer expectations, and what other retailers you are truly competing with.
Take the time to develop attractive packaging. Most retailers don’t spend enough time ensuring their private label products are attractively packaged, which often sells what’s inside the package short. If it’s a food product, the graphics better produce appetite appeal. Using bland packaging with lots of white space and a purely descriptive name like “Frozen Toaster Waffles” or “Dry Dog Food” conjures up images of the horrible generic products of the 80’s. You may laugh, but many retailers still have packaging that’s not far away from that.
Choose a reputable supplier. Its more important to select a supplier who will provide high quality product, on time, in the quantity and variety ordered, than it is to choose the cheapest supplier. Remember you get what you pay for. Squeezing too hard on price will result in substandard product or inconsistent supply.
Understand your target and what he/she is looking for. Wal Mart’s Great Value line, works for the Wal Mart shopper, who will typically sacrifice bells and whistles to spend less. But that wouldn’t fly at Safeway or Harris Teater. On the other hand, a few years ago, Wal Mart tried to lead the market by launching private label organic baby formula before any branded organic formulas were out. Predictably, it flopped. Talk about not being in touch with your shopper.
Understand that over 60% of households have only one or two people in them. It can be tempting to offer private label in large sizes to drive transaction size. That’s an acceptable strategy, but it is also important to keep in mind the growing number of smaller households, and be sure you are offering products which meet their needs.

Private label is an important part of most retailer’s product portfolios and following these tips can help to optimize its performance. As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.

What are the barriers to CMO’s leading the Corporate Growth Agenda?

2009-12-07T03:29:19Z

Today’s guest post is by Randall Beard, a leading and award winning Chief Marketing Officer and General Management executive with 25+ years global experience across consumer packaged goods, financial services and high-touch service brands, including Nielsen, Procter & Gamble, American Express, and UBS. He is currently Global EVP & General Manager at Nielsen IAG, responsible for Consumer Packaged Goods. To read more about his thinking, visit Randall Beard’s Blog.

The CMO’s job is simple—to drive growth, right? As Lou Gerstner ex-IBM and American Express CEO once put it: the role of Marketing is to build the brand and deliver a great customer experience. But is it really that simple?

At the recent CMO Club Summit in San Francisco, I was part of a panel discussion with Joe Ennen, SVP Consumer Brands at Safeway and Scott Thurm, Management Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal, titled "CMO's as Leaders of the Corporate Growth Agenda."

Scott led off the discussion by reframing the topic, asking, “What are the barriers to CMO’s leading the corporate growth agenda?” Joe, Scott and I spent the session discussing and debating this important question.

Barriers to CMO’s Leading the Corporate Growth Agenda

CEO/CMO Alignment - I told the group that "the best CMO is a CEO who believes in Marketing." The CMO's ability to lead the corporate growth agenda starts with alignment with and support from the CEO. Not all business models and CMO’s are created equal. The role of Marketing in an organization can vary widely. And the CMO role can range from a narrow Marcom role all the way to something like a Chief Growth Officer. The CEO and CMO must be aligned on the role of Marketing in the organization for the CMO to effectively lead the growth agenda.

Growth Means More Than Marketing - The CMO has to think more broadly than Marketing. What are all of the potential growth drivers - Marketing or otherwise ? Companies such as Zappos.com have actually gone so far as to define a non-Marketing function like customer service as Marketing. A critical part of the CMO's job is to understand the business model and all potential drivers-whether inside Marketing or not. This is becoming even more important as digital and social media blur the lines between Marketing, Public Affairs and Customer Service.

At UBS, we learned from Corporate Reputation research that being “open and transparent” was a key driver of reputation, and that reputation scores correlated with “willingness to refer others” and other business growth metrics. This led the Marketing function to explore programs to communicate to stakeholders in more open and transparent ways.
At American Express, we learned that offering free “Special Merchant Offers” to consumers using their Gift Card drove significantly higher purchase intent. This led Marketing to spearhead the development of partnerships with key consumer preferred merchants—and to market these offers as a key benefit.

Voice of the Customer – In Joe’s view, another key barrier to the CMO driving the corporate growth agenda is customer neglect. The CMO needs to continually advocate for keeping the customer front and center. All CMO’s could learn from A.G. Lafley, ex CEO of Procter & Gamble, who continually reminded employees that “the consumer is boss.”

Customer satisfaction surveys not only measure satisfaction. They also measure the important factors contributing to satisfaction and quantify the relationship between those factors and satisfaction. Understanding these drivers enables Marketing to define areas outside Marketing that are central to driving growth.

For example, at UBS we learned that client contact frequency was an important satisfaction driver—more was better up to a threshold where satisfaction leveled off. Yet, the majority of client advisers were contacting clients well below the threshold. This led to a concentrated effort to improve contact frequency—and drive growth.

Connecting Customer Needs with Enterprise Assets – I stressed the important role the CMO plays in getting the organization to think about the entirety of the enterprise’s assets and capabilities. Connecting customer needs with assets from outside a business unit is a great way to drive growth—and one that organizational structure often stymies.

Crest: Consumers had an unmet need for whiter teeth, and paste formulations simply didn’t do the job. A smart R&D person connected this need with synthetic bleach technology from laundry and substrate technology from paper making to create—voila--Crest WhiteStrips.
Gift Card consumers wanted to buy the cards in retail. The American Express Gift Card group had no relationships with grocery and drug store chains. So, the organization leveraged the Amex Establish Services organizations retailer relationships to facilitate introductions and help gain distribution in over 70k locations in less than two years.

Keys to CMO Success

CMO’s clearly have a tough job, with an average lifespan of just 28 months. Lou Gerstner’s formula for CMO success is a good starting point, but CMO’s need to go further. Building the brand and delivering a great customer experience plus driving the corporate growth agenda can help CMO’s and their firms be more successful in the future.

Should Brand Companies Ever Manufacture Private Label?

2009-11-24T22:56:02Z

You would have to have spent the last 18 months lost in the jungle not to know that the economy is in dire shape, and that times are extremely tough for CPG companies. Leaders are looking under every rock for ways to deliver profitable growth to their business. You can only cut your way to greatness for so long and most companies have already passed that precipice.

So as you evaluate opportunities to grow your business, should you consider manufacturing private label products? Branding purists would say absolutely not. After all, private label products go completely against the core premise of a consumer brand—of investing to build an authentic, holistic relationship with your consumers—and instead catch a free ride on the backs of the national brands.

I would argue the answer is sometimes—if a core set of conditions can be met—it can make sense for branded CPG companies to manufacture private label products. First let’s consider the potential benefits of manufacturing private label:

It can strengthen your company’s relationship with key strategic trade customers, thus increasing your influence with the customer. Don’t believe it? Let’s assume your brand has a 30% share of the category, and accounts for 25% of your buyer’s profits. Now assume private label accounts for 20% of the category and 30% of your buyer’s profits. If you manufacture private label for your strategic customer, you are now responsible for 50% of his category and 55% of his profits—of course your influence is going to go up.
It can increase your capacity utilization, thus strengthening profitability.
It can appeal to a new set of shoppers who may not purchase your branded products.
It can drive top and bottom line growth. Don’t forget that private label products require much less overhead- there is no marketing spend, and minimal incremental costs associated with making private label.
It can increase your ability to control the relationship between private label and your branded product. For example, you have greater ability to influence the timing of when new innovations on your branded products are brought to private label.

So what are the core conditions that I believe must be met to consider manufacturing private label?

You must have available capacity that isn’t likely to be filled by branded product in the near future.
You must be able to earn a reasonable margin. Two things to keep in mind here: (1) PL products have no marketing overhead associated with them, and (2) you don’t necessarily have to offer the lowest price—more and more retailers are placing a premium on quality and reliability even on private label.
Don’t lead retailers into new private label categories; only agree to manufacture private label in categories they are already in or have made a definitive decision to enter.
Only manufacture private label for key strategic customers—these customers have the scale to make it worth the effort.
To keep things simple for your supply chain, create one master formula that you make available to your customers; don’t create a different formula for each of them. Make sure that formula is not the same as your national brand formula, and in fact is slightly behind your national brand in consumer appeal.
Agree up front with retailers that innovations on the national brand will not be brought to private label for at least 12-18 months after your national brand launches them.
Have a contract in place that spells out that the retailer covers incremental costs such as packaging, and ensures that the retailer must take all inventory so you don’t get stuck writing anything off.
Have a single point of contact who is in charge of managing the private label side of the business. This ensures that private label does not distract from the branded portion of the business.

In my experience, when the above conditions are followed, it is possible for national brands and private label to profitably coexist in the same company. Look for one more post on private label in the near future, this time offering advice to retailers. Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the Thanksgiving Holiday and, as always, I welcome your comments.

Five Lessons for the Leader of Tomorrow: Thoughts from “Good for Business”

2009-11-16T18:53:04Z

I recently read one of the most thought-provoking business books of 2009, Good for Business: The Rise of the Conscious Corporation, and believe there is much to be learned from its insight.

The world is rapidly changing and those companies that recognize how and why will have a better chance to excel in the future. Consumers, prospective employees, investors, and governing bodies all have higher expectations of companies than they did in the past.

Good for Business lays out 4 cornerstones for successful businesses of the future- (1) respect for consumers' power,(2) a people-centered culture, (3) having a purpose beyond profit and (4) a sustainable approach to business.

Let’s briefly consider each of these cornerstones, beginning with respect for consumer’s power. If you’re reading this, chances are you are well aware of the increased power of consumers as a result of the information age. Consumer’s use the internet to form opinions, research purchases, and share experiences regarding brands and companies. Its amazing the great divide between companies that understand and appreciate consumers’ increased power, and those that don’t.

A perfect example of one who didn’t understand the new world is the youtube video “United Breaks Guitars”. A United passenger witnessed baggage handlers mishandling his guitar, but despite trying for a year, he was unable to get the company to cover his damages. The following video has been viewed by 6 million people on Youtube at the time of this writing and it's producers are already well into their third song about the incident.

Moving on to (2), most companies would claim to have a people-centered culture, but for many this is just lip service. Hierarchical, command and control companies that try to make every decision in the corner office are going the way of the dinosaur. These top down companies often have trouble developing future generations of leaders as when every decision is made at the top, people never learn to lead. In addition, the authors of Good for Business rightly point out that there is a generational shift taking place, with millenials bringing a different set of expectations to the workplace. Millenials have grown up in the digital age, have less patience for hierarchical organizations, and will not hesitate to move on to new opportunities if they are not getting their needs met.

Companies that (3) “have a purpose beyond profit” tend to have fiercely loyal consumers, motivated employees, and positive reputations. The authors provide numerous examples of companies that live this value including Google, Whole Foods, and Green Mountain coffee.

Finally, the authors provide some interesting thoughts on (4) “a sustainable approach to business”. Clearly, managing the impact a company has on the environment is the right thing to do for the planet and for future generations. Interestingly, its also what your consumers and employees expect. A Euro RSCG 2008 study showed that 79 percent of people purchase environmentally friendly products and a 2007 Net Impact study showed 81 percent of MBA students thought businesses should work to improve society.

Good for Business is loaded with data, real world examples, and case studies which persuasively support the authors’ thesis. Written in a conversational, enjoyable to read style, I highly recommend it.

Five Key Takeaways for Leaders

Here are some final takeaways for leaders:

Leaders must be aware of societal shifts which will change the business environment, and proactively plan to address them.
Embrace the fact that consumers’ power has increased dramatically and work harder than ever to exceed their expectations and build an authentic relationship with them.
You must equip and empower employees to evangelize the corporate brand; the old approach of managing all communication from the ivory tower doesn’t work any longer.
More than ever, creating an environment employees can believe in and rally around, leads to an engaged work force. It can’t just be lip service- people will see right through it.
Corporations cannot ignore their impact on the environment- employees and consumers will no longer let them.

Are Brand Marketers Facing a Perfect Storm When It Comes to Private Label?

2009-11-02T19:42:15Z

There’s no denying that private label continues to grow. In fact, Nielsen 52 week data thru July 11, 2009 shows that private label is up +7.4% across the Food, Drug, and Mass Merchandiser channels, with an average share of 16.9%. But why is that?

We all know it’s a tough economy, with consumers eating at home more often in an effort to save money. So when the economy improves, we should expect to see private label shares return to historical levels, right? Well, not exactly. Consider the following:

Private label shares in the U.S. have historically been well below those of Europe and Canada, and even with the recent share increase in the U.S., that gap remains.
The “social embarrassment” associated with buying private label appears to have disappeared recently. Consumers used to “hide” private label products in recipes, while trying to avoid letting others know they use them. That is no longer the case. This is part of a larger overall trend going on in our country today where being thrifty and seeking simplicity is now seen as a good thing, and is being embraced by the masses.
The quality gap between private label and national brands is narrowing. This is dangerous for brands, as once consumers try a private label product, and determine there is minimal difference from the national brand, they become less willing to pay the premium that brands are used to commanding.
In today’s hypercompetitive, slow growth marketplace, many retailers share a common strategy of actively seeking to grow their private label businesses, as they are typically able to earn higher margins from private label versus national brands.
The line between private label and national brands is blurring. Well managed private label products are becoming “brands” to consumers. Well designed offerings like Safeway’s O Organic and Eating Right lines, as well as Wal Mart’s Parents Choice products, are often viewed by consumers as brands.
Departing from historical practices, retailers are beginning to broadly advertise their private label products beyond their weekly circular, with Wal Mart’s Great Value brand television campaign being a prime example.

Frightening, isn’t it? So what can brand companies do to stay competitive in this new reality?

First, continue to invest in brand equity, being sure to build an authentic relationship with your target consumers while stressing your brand’s point of difference.
Second, innovate, innovate, innovate. Staying ahead of private label products (and other branded competitors for that matter) gives your consumer a reason to pay a premium and maintain a relationship with your brand.
Understand how much your brand interacts with private label. Studies have shown that premium brands, with strong brand equity, often have less switching with private label products than second tier brands. This is important as you can then sell the retailer on how your brand attracts a different shopper and helps maximize the category closure rate for the retailer.
Understand and manage the price gap. In most categories, consumers are still willing to pay more for national brands versus private label. Where brands get into trouble is when they try to command a larger premium than the consumer thinks the national brand is worth.

Next time we’ll look at whether it makes sense for branded manufacturers to be in the private label business. Thanks for stopping by, and as always, I’d welcome your comments.

Marketers—Ignore the Boomers at Your Own Peril

2009-10-19T21:30:32Z

In this age of social media, many marketers are focusing on young, tech savvy consumers, on early adopters, and on emerging families. And rightly so, as it is critical to continually be bringing new consumers into your brand, and understanding and connecting with emerging consumers is a good way to do so.

However, another basic tenet of marketing is never take your eye off your heavy users. For many brands, their heavy user group is made up primarily of baby boomers. We’ve all heard some of the basic facts about boomers- that they are the 76 million Americans born between 1946-1964 following World War II. Most of us have heard that every seven seconds a baby boomer turns 50.

Digging A Little Deeper Into the Baby Boomer Generation

Did you know that while Boomers represent 28% of the U.S. population, they control 70% of the financial assets, and the vast majority of the disposable income in this country?

Did you know that boomers are three times more likely than their parents to get divorced, and together make up over 60% of all divorces in this country?

Did you know that as boomers become empty nesters, and/or divorcees, that the average household size in the U.S. is shrinking and will continue to shrink? In fact nearly 30 percent of all households are now single person households, and over 60 percent of households have only one or two people in them.

Did you know that boomers have very different attitudes than their parents did about aging? While the previous generation looked forward to retirement as a stage of rest and relaxation, boomers are extremely focused on staying young, healthy and active. Psychographically, they are “Forever 37”.

Implications for Marketers:

Boomers control the wealth- ignore them at your own peril.
With over 60% of households having only 1-2 people, it is important that brands offer product forms and sizes that meet the needs of smaller households.
The residential real estate market will see a significant shift over the next decade, as boomers become empty nesters and downsize from 3000+ square foot homes into 2-3 bedroom condos.
Don’t even think about showing 50-65 year old talent in your advertising targeted at boomers, they will see it as their parents. Instead, show 35-45 year old talent, which boomers believe represents them.
There is a significant opportunity for new product innovation that meets the desires and needs of boomers, for example:

Desired Benefit:	Sample Product:
Looking Young	Skin cream
Staying Healthy	Vitamins, probiotics, omega 3
Staying Active	Motorcycles, health clubs
Staying Energetic	Yoga, CoQ10

Thanks for stopping by and, as always, I welcome your thoughts.

Learning From A Most Unlikely Leader

2009-10-08T23:04:19Z

At first glance, E. Gordon Gee doesn’t look like a leader. He is skinny, wears glasses, sports a bow tie, and has a high-pitched voice that takes some getting used to. But Dr. Gee is one of the most impressive leaders of our era. He was the President of Ohio State University from 1990-97, before leaving to become President of Brown and later Vanderbilt. In 2007, the Trustees of Ohio State were finally successful in convincing Dr. Gee to return to Ohio State.

Recently, I watched Gee deliver a short speech to several thousand people at a charity event in which he shared the podium with several dignitaries including the Governor of Ohio, the Mayor of Columbus, and Lance Armstrong. Gee’s remarks were by far the best received, because he used humor (in the form of a Letterman-style Top 10 list) to develop rapport with his audience.

There is much we can learn from Gordon Gee, but I want to focus on the importance of setting clear expectations and operating principles for your team. In October 2007, as he assembled his new Executive Leadership Team at OSU, Gee wrote a memo to his team entitled “Rules of Engagement”.

I will paraphrase some of the highlights of this memo, as it offers sage advice for leaders:

1. The acid test of a leader is the ability to attract and keep Extraordinary people.

Gee defines Extraordinary as people who are:

Smart (ie. They listen well, use good judgement and communicate clearly.)
Get things done (and with a sense of urgency)
Nice (Life is too short to work with egotistical, abrasive people!)
Straightforward

2. In order to attract extraordinary people, leaders must:

Be smart, results-oriented, nice, and straightforward
Have the courage to deal with nonperformers
Be the kind of leader that people want to work for
Be genuine
Balance the “obsessive will to win” with humor, caring, and humility

3. To be successful in leading an organization, leaders must form a team by:

Inspiring trust (it is the oxygen of teams)
Valuing conflict (trust each other enough to disagree)
Collaborating (internal competition is toxic and undermines trust)
Making good decisions in a timely fashion
Holding each other accountable
Breaking down silos so middle management is inspired to work together
Measuring progress

Four Important Lessons to Live By:

So, what should we as leaders take away from Gee’s Rules of Engagement? Here are four important lessons to remember:

Set clear operating principles for your team, lay them out in writing, and discuss them together.
Hold yourself and your team accountable for building a high performance organization, including recruiting, growing, and developing extraordinary people.
Remember, you get what you incent. Measure your progress, and make sure you are measuring those things which are most important to success.
Some characteristics of extraordinary people include passion, energy, intelligence, a sense of urgency, and a commitment to excellence.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always, I welcome your feedback.

Refocusing On Marketing & Leadership Principles

2009-09-23T21:16:22Z

Marketing and Leadership are topics that I have tremendous passion for. I have been extremely fortunate in my career to work for some fabulous leaders and teachers, for some great companies, and on some iconic brands. Here are a few examples of businesses I’ve had the good fortune to help shape:

The inspiration behind this blog is to give back—to share what I have learned over the years, to throw out observations and ideas, and to challenge convention. It is my hope that this will lead to debate, and to growth. Philosophically, I believe each day we are either getting better—growing and learning—or we are getting worse, falling behind—its simply not possible to stay the same.

The business world is at an incredibly interesting time. First the economic reality we have all had to face:

Entire industries like banking and auto manufacturing have been turned upside down
Unemployment is at a peak
The stock market has become extremely volatile with several hundred point swings becoming commonplace and retirement nest eggs have been diminished
Discretionary income has declined as taxes and health care costs continue to rise and wage freezes/pay cuts become common- meaning consumers have less dollars to spend at retail

In addition, the consumers who drive companies’ economic engines have also evolved:

Consumer segments are becoming much more diverse in terms of ethnicity, age, interests, attitudes, and behavior.
How we interact has changed dramatically—social media and texting have replaced many face to face conversations
Technology has enabled extraordinary availability of information (both accurate and not so accurate), which has changed the way consumers make decisions.

While these unprecedented times call for some changes in how companies behave, the core leadership and marketing principles of successful companies should not change. Here are some of the most important marketing principles (we’ll save leadership principles for a later post):

Understanding your consumer and what motivates them
Building brand equity by creating an authentic relationship with your consumers
Always act ethically, and transparently with your consumers (and all your stakeholders)
Providing true value
Continue to innovate to meet consumers wants and needs
Resist the urge to cut marketing spending dramatically; instead focus on maximizing return on your marketing investment

In the coming weeks, I’ll delve deeper into these principles, as well as sharing thoughts on effective leadership. Thanks very much for stopping by, and please let me know what you think.