Storytelling & Branding

I just came across an article by John Quelch in Marketing KnowHow from this mornings HBS newsletter. The points John makes are just as relevant to B2C marketing as they are to B2B.

An HBS research team recently conducted a study of top B2B global brands. They shared the following six characteristics:

1. The CEO is a willing brand cheerleader, loves the brand heritage and is a great storyteller. The CMO sees his or her purpose as helping the CEO achieve this role.

2. The CEO understands that building brand reputation reduces commercial risk, insulates the company in a crisis and provides the common purpose that can bond all the company’s stakeholders.

3. Efforts are focused on a single, global corporate brand rather than individual product brands.

4. The payback on marketing expenditures is measured rigorously to the satisfaction of the hard-nosed engineers and finance staff who run the typical B2B enterprise.

5. Coordination of company websites worldwide to present a consistent face to stakeholders is the best way to get control of marketing communications that may have become too decentralized.

May be the CEO involvement is relatively small but by no means any less significant than for a B2B brand.

Believe it, the Wal-Mart savings could be TRUE!!

Last year when I read The Wal-Mart Effect I was very impressed at the scale of transformation a single corporation can have on a generation. I took the time to follow-up on some of the research mentioned in the book. I visited Dr. Emek Basker's website at the University of Missouri to read her analysis and ensuing publication on, The Causes and Consequences of Wal-Mart's Growth, (Journal of Economic Perspectives 21:3 (Summer 2007) 177-198). This morning when I read the article "What Wal-Mart Savings Claim Doesn't Tell You" in Ad Age I had no reservations believing Wal-Mart.

I say cheers to Wal-Mart economics!

I strongly believe most products at Wal-Mart are Okay, Available and Cheap but the innovation it forces and the price pressure it creates on its suppliers establish a certain Wal-Martian socialism.

I am no fan of any socialistic system but it has worked. From making products available to Americans at an affordable price, to creating a consumer culture globally to developing unsustainable practices of consumer use and throw of products and even the Salmon farming example from Southern Chile; Wal-Mart has made a profound impact. One that is well beyond the $2500 savings the retail store claims to generate for every American household whether they shop at Wal-Mart or not!

BCG - Leadership Perspectives

I was browsing the web when I came across a mention of George Stalk of BCG. His retirement speech was published in a the 'BCG Perspectives' in April 2007.

Here some nuggets of wisdom -

• All investments must be Fast, Focused & Fundamental
• Say Yes or No, but never say Maybe
• Keep your people - Employees, Customers, Suppliers & Financiers - informed
• Leaders don't get more than one chance.

C&D - P&G's Innovation model revisited

From Harvard Business Online: Connect & Develop - Procter & Gamble's Innovation Model.

The Idea in Practice:

Know Where to Look

Before scouring the world for ideas you might develop into profitable products, clarify what you’re looking for:

• Identify consumer needs. Ask business unit leaders which consumer needs, when satisfied, will drive their brands’ growth. Translate needs into briefs describing problems to solve. Consider where you might seek solutions.

Example: P&G unit managers identified a need for laundry detergent that cleans effectively in cold water. They decided to search for relevant innovations in chemistry and biotechnology solutions that enable products to work well at low temperatures. Possibilities included labs studying enzymatic reactions in microbes that thrive under polar caps.

• Identify adjacencies. Ask which new product categories, related to your current categories, can enhance your existing brand equity. Then seek innovative ideas in those categories.

Example: P&G expanded its Crest brand beyond toothpaste to include whitening strips, power toothbrushes, and flosses.

Leverage Your Networks

Cultivate both proprietary and open networks whose members may have promising ideas.

Example: P&G’s proprietary networks include its top 15 suppliers, who collectively have 50,000 R&D staff. It created a secure IT platform to share problem briefs with these suppliers—who can’t see others’ responses to briefs. One chemical supplier, for example, may have ideas for making detergent perfume last longer after clothes finish drying.

P&G’s open networks include NineSigma, a company that connects interested corporations with universities, government and private labs, and consultants that can develop solutions to science and technology problems. NineSigma creates briefs describing contracting companies’ problems and sends them to thousands of possible solution providers worldwide.

Distribute and Screen Ideas

You’ve identified ideas for refining and further commercializing existing products or for employing technology solutions to create new products. Now distribute these ideas internally—ensuring that managers screen them for potential.

Example: At P&G, product ideas are logged on P&G’s online “eureka catalog,” through a template documenting pertinent facts—such as current sales of existing products or patent availability for a new technology. The document goes to P&G general managers, brand managers, and R&D teams worldwide. Product ideas are also promoted to relevant business line managers, who gauge their business potential and identify possible obstacles to development.

Promote Openness to External Ideas

Encourage use of outside ideas. For example, P&G rewards employees for speed of product development. Incentives thus favor innovation developed from outside ideas, since these often move more quickly from concept to marketplace.