Perspectives - Selling Shoes story

Long time ago, i attended a creative training. The trainer was not impressive - the session was boring in fact. However, one takeaway for me is this story he shared with us which i remembered to this day. Here's the story.. but i modified it a bit..

One day, John the GM of a shoe company assembled David and Tom to his office. And he told them that he intend to find new market for his shoes. Separately, he sent them overseas toa developing country. David who flow off first reached the place and was dismay to find that the folks there were so backward that they dont wear any shoes. Tom arrived a day later and found the same conclusion. However, he was happy with his findings.

A week later, back in John's office, the GM asked them for their assessment. David, in his rather depressed tone, said that there is no market as no one there wore any shoes! GM then turned to Tom who was grinning all this while. When it's Tom's turn, he said he saw great potential there as no one wore any shoes! So there's a huge market to be filled. A very big market gap waiting for them to develop! ;-)

Lessons learned: (i) see things thru different lens, (ii) employ people who view things differently from you, (iii) always challenge your beliefs & creativity

Branding & Marketing, Advertising

Studies show companies that market their products or services without first establishing their brand identities are not likely to achieve return on investment. "If you're spending money to advertise and market without being connected to a brand position, you might as well pile the money up and burn it," Guge says.

Rob Frankel, a branding expert and author in Los Angeles, calls branding the most misunderstood concept in all of marketing, even among professionals. Branding, he says, "is not advertising and it's not marketing or PR. Branding happens before all of those: First you create the brand, then you raise awareness of it."

extracted from businessweek.

Marketing concepts

4 Ps / 4 Cs - Tactical

1. Product. Customer value

2. Price. Customer cost

3. Place. Customer convenience

4. Promotion. Communication

STP - Strategic

1. Segmentation

2. Targeting

3. Positioning

note: Above marketing concepts from Philip Kotler.

Marketing, PR & Branding pointers

Adapted from Philip Kotler and plus my own understanding, the 5 dimensions of a brand:

1. Attribute - function, feature, style
2. Benefits - solving a problem, serving a need, or fulfilling a want
3. Personality - like human characteristics people can identify with
4. Values - if it's corporate brand, it's the corporate values
5. Image - the look and feel.. aesthetics. the physical appearance.

• The art of marketing is the art of branding.
  
• Brand price premium you can charge is 10-20% today.. unlike early days of up to 50% were gone.
• Customer's attitude towards a brand can range from dislike, indifferent, slight preference to strong preference, to devotion.
• There was a book written on the fall of advertising and the rise of PR.

PENCILS for PR:

P - Publications

E - Events

N - News

C - Community Involvement

I - Identity tools

L - Lobbying

S - Social Investments

Harry Potter Marketing

been reading the Feb 2007 HBR (Harvard Business Review) and found many treasures in this edition. will try to capture as much knowledge as possible and to keep it here for quick reference..

Traditional marketing in consumer products e.g. retails, probably focused on age group. For example, in cosmetics, usually the firm would focus on certain age group. But when these group of customers aged and passed their target age group, they will have to find new customers of that age group to replace the existing ones.. As we all know by now, it's expensive to find new customer than maintaining existing ones.

Now comes Harry Potter marketing. It's a new concept following Harry's success. The concept simply follows the customers.. in the cosmetic example, the firm's brand/products should grow 'old' with the customers - shaping the marketing message to suit the aging customers. For example, in the beginning, it could be targeting customer in their 20's. The message would be on skin whitening and smoothness. But when the customers reached their 30's or 40's, the message may be tuned to focus on retard aging and skin maintenance.. The product composition will have to be adjusted as well..

The pros are that it grows with the customers (which u probably already know them well) and save money to find new customer (existing customers cheaper to keep).

The cons are that product/brand will grow 'old' and die off one day and new customers who dont belong to that generation will unlikely to be your customer.

In a nutshell, Harry Potter marketing is an interesting new marketing concept which is suitable for certain products/services only. It will not be suitable for, say in the machinery equipment marketing, or even Walt Disney fixed target on children. Alternative marketing strategies would be to develop product lines or brands that carries the customers from one brand maturing to another brand thru the use of clever marketing creating a seamless transition unconscious to them.. but that's another discussion or topic.. ;-)