Hold your horses

In 1942 Britain after 3 years of war was almost on its knees.

Since 1940 it had been fighting Germany on its own.  And although the USA and Russia had now joined in, it was still having to fight and resist on three fronts.

In Europe. In the Middle East. In the Far East.

As a consequence Britain was facing a manpower crisis. It was under pressure to find more fit men of fighting age for its army, navy and air force.

Without taking too many men from vital war industries.

To find the men it needed the War Ministry initiated a review of everything it did to identify duplicated and needless tasks.

This is the kind of thing that today many businesses hire expensive consultants to do to strip out costs.

One of the activities reviewed was the manpower requirements needed to fire a field gun.

The study concluded that it required four trained artillery men to do this.

And yet each battery contained five men.

No one knew why each battery was fully staffed with five. But the commanders insisted that each battery required five men because that was the standard artillery doctrine, the way it had always been done.

With equal adamance those doing the research argued that only four were needed.

A stalemate ensued between the advocates of the status quo and the advocates of progressiveness.

Until some eagle-eyed subaltern identified the reason for the extra man.

For centuries artillery had been taken into battle by horses.

And on the battlefield someone was required to hold onto the horses so that they did not flee when the cannons started noisily to fire.

This was the role of the fifth man.

There was only one problem.

In the years between World War 1 and World War 2 virtually all the horse drawn artillery units had been mechanised. Artillery was no longer taken into battle by horses. There was no longer any horses  to hold. There was no need for a fifth man.

This was a sacred cow.

But it is not just in the military that you will find dogged logic, persistent thinking. Many brands, many businesses share these traits.

A common set of beliefs can be a strength for any brand but having a dominant logic can lock the brand into a narrow way of thinking. And can lead to group think.

This is not good.

We need to develop and systemise an uncommon sense. A different way at looking at the business and its markets.  New thinking to provide competitive advantage.

But to get there requires the sacred cows, the common assumptions of the business and the market in which it operates to be identified, challenged, tested and destroyed.

And by discarding the sacred cows when examination exposes them to be untrue, a brand can liberate itself.

Sam Walton was once told that you don’t place ‘good sized discount stores into little one horse towns’. He did.

And he credited his success to his destruction of this market assumption, this sacred cow.

So what are the things that you never question or challenge in your business, in the markets you serve?

Making a list of these will be a start.

To ensure you are not the one left holding the horses.

Stuff your face

How many hot dogs can you eat in 12 minutes?

Believe it or not the World Record is 62.

Every year there is a contest to determine the fastest speed eater of hot dogs. The challenge is to see who can eat the most hot dogs in 12 minutes.

For years and years the record had steadily crept up, one hot dog at a time.

By 2000 the record stood at 25 hot dogs. Still impressive.

The technique adopted by most competitors had stayed the same year after year.

It was simple.

To stuff as many hot dogs as greedily and as quickly into the mouth as possible.

Presumably he or she with the biggest mouth won.

In the early years of the new Millennium a new face had come onto the scene. He adopted a new approach.

For Takeru Kobayashi it was not just about speed. It was about breaking down the approach and seeking improvements across the technique.

Instead of eating the hot dog whole, he tried breaking it in half. He found that it gave him more options for chewing, and freed his hands to improve loading.

Then he experimented with eating the dog and bread separately.

Next he tested dipping the rolls in water, then water sprinkled with vegetable oil, then he videotaped his training sessions. All designed to help find new ways to eat a hot dog as quickly as possible.

Finally he looked to find different ways of chewing and swallowing to create space in his stomach in order to avoid vomiting.

In 2000 when he first turned up to compete he didn’t look the part. He was slight and short, unlike his supersized competitors who had been gorging on hot dogs for years.

He wasn't taken seriously at first.

But he smashed the competition and the world record out of sight, eating an incredible 50 hot dogs.

In one year he had doubled the world record.

This thinking, this approach is called Marginal Gains Theory.

Where the little things matter.

Where by looking for continuous improvement across all the small things we do, we can create a cumulative effect that can be significant and substantive.

And by breaking down the process and the thinking into its constituent parts we can find new ways of thinking, new approaches, to the challenge. Finding marginal gains as we go.

Each gain might be small but the cumulative effective can be revolutionary. Transformative.

All it requires is a creative and marginal gain mindset and the will to challenge established ways of doing things.

And if it can work in improving hot dog performance, it can work in improving marketing performance.

Where are your marginal gains?

Be brief to be creative

After a few months away I am delighted to be back.

So let us start with a short story about creativity.

In some people’s eyes Ernest Hemingway is America’s finest writer. He certainly liked to be at the centre of the action. This is what makes his writing a great read.

When America entered World War 1 he enlisted immediately and was sent to Italy. On his first day he was dragging shredded bodies away after an explosion.

Later he was seriously hurt by mortar fire suffering serious shrapnel wounds to both legs. He feared that he might never walk again.

His experiences of war, life and death inspired his novel, ‘A Farewell to Arms’.

He was sent as a journalist to cover the Spanish Civil War which he did from the front lines. If there was a battle or a war you could bet Hemingway would be there.

His time in Spain inspired ‘Death in the Afternoon’ and ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.

In World War 2 he was present at the Normandy landings, fought his way through France, was there at the liberation of Paris, and covered the Battle of the Bulge.

He won a Bronze Star.

His Big Game hunting experiences in Africa, when he nearly died, inspired ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’.

And in 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

He was an author. A journalist. A soldier. A real life Action Man.

And yet the piece of literature he considered his finest consists of 6 words.

In the 1920s he was challenged by some literary friends to compose a short story with no more than six words.

The result.

‘For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.’

Which only goes to show that creativity and innovation does not require much.

Indeed it might be said that less is more when it comes to creativity and imagination and innovation.

Creative thinking is far more likely when there are restraints and constraints in place.

Restraints and constraints forces people to step back. To look at the big picture. And make connections between ideas, concepts, stuff they might not otherwise make.

This is the hallmark of creativity. And the way I believe creativity and innovation should be uncovered.

The tighter the brief the better the output.

The less time, the less money, the less resources we have at our disposal, the better the solution we can come up with, provided we think things through properly.

Too often in an effort to cover every base, to ensure we include everything, to quite literally throw the kitchen sink at a problem, we can fail to focus our thinking.

Great strategic thinking, brilliant marketing, is about deciding what not to do, who not to target, what not to say, as much as it is about deciding what to do, who to target, what to say.

And it is about looking hard for connections and opportunities that might not be as apparent if resources are in abundance.

If you have no constraints, impose some, and see where your thinking takes you.

You never know, you might just come up with a Nobel Prize winning solution.

 

Respect.....

David Ogilvy once famously said ‘the customer isn’t stupid, she is your wife’. So would you call your wife ‘a punter’?  I very much doubt it.

And yet too often in many businesses there is a tendency not only to consider customers as stupid, as morons, as cash cows. Look at the recent furore over the launch of England’s World Cup strip to see how prospective customers think they are being treated by Nike.

But not only are customers seen in this light but there is a tendency to refer to customers as ‘punters’. I so hate that term for the people who pay our wages. And if anyone doubts this consider what Henry Ford said ‘it is not the employer who pays our wages..we only handle the money..it is the customer who pays our wages’.

Surely then we should treat these very important people with more respect.

According to the OED  a punter is a prostitute’s client. Is that how we think of ourselves? As a prostitute doing anything we can to make some money? Hardly a noble profession.

Alternatively a punter is a person ‘who gambles, places a bet or makes a risky investment’. Do we really think that someone who buys our brand is making a bet or doing some risky? Surely the brand is more confident and self-assured than that?

So we would not refer to our wives as ‘punters’.  Surely we do not see our profession as akin to prostitution. And nor do we would consider anyone buying our brand as doing something risky.

Therefore it is not appropriate to call our customers ‘punters’.

So let us show due respect and deference to those who buy our brands, our products and services, and let us call them customers.

And maybe then we might stop thinking of them as stupid. 

You do the maths...

Last week I was in conversation with a young business school student I know who was specialising in marketing. Consequently he was less keen on the financial and accounting aspects of his course. He was rather surprised that despite his indifference to the numbers he was still getting ok marks in these papers.

This attitude is wrong.

Marketing and finance are not mutually exclusive concepts. It is important that marketers of all ages get the financial aspects of the business.

For one thing marketing is all about profitably meeting customer needs. How can you do this if you don’t understand the financials behind the proposition that is being marketed?

And for another thing marketers hoping to reach a general management position and even the board, and some marketers can and do reach such exalted positions, must have an understanding of the business model of the business in which they work and its commercial drivers, including the financials.

And lastly it is no use any marketer bemoaning that the finance people don’t understand marketing. Make them understand. And just like making any foreigner understand what you are saying, it helps so much if you speak their language.

And that is why marketers must learn to understand, appreciate and love the numbers. You will be a much better marketer if you do. And it really is not that difficult.

And if anyone wants to better understand the importance of being able to read the books. Watch ‘Dragons Den’. The one thing that lets anyone with a great and innovative idea down? They don’t get the numbers. Brilliant idea, brilliant marketing, brilliant sales but no idea how to monetise the marketing and make money.

So don’t give up on the numbers. You never know when they might come in handy.

Pope Idol

I was struck at the weekend when reading an article about the effect the new Pope is having on

the Roman Catholic Church. According to reports there has been a surge in attendances and confessions since his appointment, reversing years of decline. In the UK, in the 8 months since his appointment, for example, the church has seen attendance rises by almost 20% as new and lapsed members find their way to their local church.

And he has done this by being true to his brand, by living its values and by being seen to do so.

For a brand which ought to be built on humility, for many years it can be argued that this is a brand which has lost its way. Pope Francis has put a stop to this with brand defining ‘legends’ such as travelling by bus instead of a chauffeur driven car; carrying his own suitcase; living in a humble flat rather than in the grandiose Papal apartments in the Vatican; washing the feet of female prisoners; even taking a ‘selfie’  which went viral. This truly is a Pope with the common touch, a brand that recognises the importance of the authentic gesture.

Many businesses and brands can learn much from the Pope’s example.

Research has long shown that 65% of communication is done non verbally. In other words it’s not what we say that matters but what we do. This has important implications for all of us in business and in brand management.

Too often business leaders will proclaim their values to the business along with their Mission Statement and in too many businesses it is expected that the mere act of proclamation will lead to the values being lived and shared by all the business.

But it is not what it is said that it is important but what is communicated through the eyes and until and unless our people see the values being lived and demonstrated by their leaders, both remote and close at hand, why should they bother. This is why it is important for leaders to build stories and legends, just as the Pope has done, that will cross organisational boundaries, that will take root within the organisation and that will demonstrate that the values truly are being lived and being demonstrated.

And what is true for our people is also true for our brands. It is not what our brand says when it speaks to customers through a 30 second TV spot or its Facebook page or its press releases that matter but how it delivers on its promise day in, day out across all its touchpoints.

Despite the hype around hares and bears, brands at the end of the day are not judged on what they say but what they do, just like the Pope. John Lewis is not a great brand because it does great ads. It is a great brand because its leadership and its people have a ruthless focus on earning and keeping the trust of its customers across every channel and  through every interaction.

And if the Pope gets this simple truth surely some of the finest business brains around should get this too. There is no excuse for any business to have anything but a great brand. It is not about investing in advertising but in the people that work there, the manufacturing processes, the support infrastructure. It takes ruthlessness. It is about having real insight into what the customer values, the emotional and rational need the brand fulfils. And more importantly a critical understanding that non-verbal factors are a far more important means of communicating than the verbal ones.

This is what Pope Francis gets. This is a great case study in modern brand management.

And this might be the first time you will read this but marketers really can learn from the apostolic successor of St Peter.

Shop till you drop-from funnels to fishbones

Is the High St dead?

It has recently been reported that vacancy rates in the High St are at an all time high with a significant number of these vacant lots being described as ‘long term sick with little or no prospect of reoccupation as shops’.

It’s really easy to be gloomy and to blame politicians, the state of the economy, out of town shopping, the internet and a host of other factors for this situation. The reality is that consumer behaviour has changed and it is not going to change back no matter what the politicians and planners do or how the economy recovers.

So shops RIP?

No. And here’s one reason why.

A few weeks back a friend of mine bought some tiles online to be collected from his local DIY store. When he went to collect the assistant advised him that he had checked all the tiles to make sure they all had the same batch number; asked if he had the right grouting; advised him on the right tools to buy; and provided some advice on how to do a good job.

Brilliant.

And lest anyone thinks that this thinking is only relevant to the traditional retailer, think again. Such thinking also applies to anyone who sells stuff. And that must be just about every business in the land.

But for High St retail to survive it must learn to think differently about what it does and how it does it.

The traditional way of thinking about the role of the shop has been as a stage in the Sales Funnel, the place where consumers came to buy. And as a customer journey this was seen as a total linear process. The internet and in particular mobile connectivity has changed all that and with it new retail business models, think click and collect, have emerged and will continue to emerge. As someone said ‘if you are in bricks and mortar you must be in digital too…or you are dead’.

Consumers now will come into the shop armed with all the latest knowledge, will look at the products, will go back online to read reviews, compare prices and hopefully buy. This journey looks less like a Purchase Funnel, more like a Purchase Fishbone. And must be understood.

Consequently whereas in the past the bricks on the High St were the place the shopper went to buy. But going forward the store will be the brand and product showcase that drives revenues across all channels, less a profit centre and more an essential brand overhead that helps build meaningful product and brand saliency.

In this world the store is a destination that will augment the brand experience and will be focussed less on driving sales and more on engaging the customer through dramatic customer experiences and in-store theatrification.

And in this environment the role of the sales assistant is vital. As customers become increasingly well informed they expect more from the service they receive in store. They expect their store assistants to be empowered, informed and able to match the high level of knowledge of the consumer but also add to it and provide additional value. After all, if automation can take care of the purely transactional or navigational aspects of service, then investing in a human had better offer something more for their money and give customers a compelling reason to venture into a bricks-and-mortar store.

And if you want to see the future take a peek inside a Nike store, an Apple store or Selfridges. These stores direction sign the future and for any local High St to survive as a retail centre every butcher, baker and candlestick maker needs to examine these trends and think how these might be applied closer to home.

The connected, always on consumer is here to stay as are out of town shopping centres. And as we can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube, everyone with an interest in the High St needs to embrace these changes and think long and hard how to respond.

So what do you think about the future of retail? Do you think it’s on its last legs? Where have you seen examples of great retailing that fills you with optimism for the future of the High St.