The Full Blog

Entries categorized as ‘management’

Britain’s unemployed managers – the solution to SMEs’ problems

Wednesday 17 February 2010 · Leave a Comment

I’m back in the UK for a while and, inspired by the tales of the many struggling businesses in my local area, I’m trying to do my thing for SMEs .  I say “trying”, because, as my Granny used to say “You can’t help folks who won’t be helped”.

Most “small businesses” are small because they haven’t got what it takes to be big.  The deficiencies come in many forms and span all areas of business from lack of key skills like financial, operational management and marketing, to just being plain crap at what you do.  In a normal buoyant market there may be hope for even the least capable, but as conditions are now, if you aren’t sharp you won’t get to play.  As I have said before, this is a good thing.  Its the process of natural selection and we should come out of this experience, as a business community, smarter and better equipped.  However, I have my concerns.

Its no disgrace for an SME to lack a few key management skills.  If you are small, you are bound to be wanting in one area or another, its just a matter of where your strengths lie and what you do about your weaknesses that determines your destiny – that’s marketing.  My worries are two-fold.  Firstly, the natural instinct of far too many organisations in recent months has prompted an alarming HR trend and secondly, the support system for SMEs in the UK is failing miserably – and I’m not talking about the banks who seem hell-bent on some wild agenda to bring down the UK SME sector.

The HR trend I refer to is for firms to off-load senior people in pursuit of short-term payroll savings.  Its may seem an obvious quick-fix, but as I thought we all knew already, it brings only very short term benefit and beyond that its nothing more than the beginning of the end.   It affects organisations large and small in the same way, but simply because small businesses are less robust the effect it has on them is more often terminal.  Taking away managers (provided they are worthy of the title) from any organisation is like removing the rudder and the end result is invariably crash and burn.

In a similar way, organisations that think they are being smart by taking the Arsenal FC approach to business – hiring young inexperienced players and attempting to turn them into key strikers – are on a hiding to nothing too.  Inexperienced staff suck up key management time, involving them in micro-management that leaves them unavailable to perform their main leadership and innovation role.  It is also a customer satisfaction and operational efficiency nightmare that in times like these you just can’t afford.

To make matters worse, there’s nowhere for a UK SME that is short of management know-how, to go for help.  Years ago, a UK government initiative saw the foundation of an organisation called Business Link.  Basically, this was a joint-venture between the public and private sectors that was supposed to bring management skills to SMEs through a network of local consultancies.  Now, I have to put my hands up here and say that if I had my way they’d all be closed down and I bet nobody would even notice – apart from the exchequer who would immediately have a shed-load of cash to do something useful with.  Without exception, every SME that I have encountered, that has had any dealing with this bunch have nothing but disdain for them.  From what I have seen and experienced over the years they fail absolutely to operate as a network, they have no understanding of the realities of business and their methods are both outmoded and inflexible.  If ever there was a depository for no-hope graduates, with lots of meaningless qualifications and absolutely no grasp of reality, its Business Link – a typical public sector organisation in fact.  Anyway, rant aside, expecting Business Link to lead your SME out of recession is on a par with expecting Gordon Brown to win a personality contest – It ain’t going to happen!

Against this background I have been trying to get local politicians, government departments and business groups to consider ways of addressing some of these problems.  For example, most of the smart senior managers who have been victims of business cut-backs in recent months are still on the dole.  The managers with the very skills and experience that SMEs need right now are being paid (albeit a pitiful amount) to watch daytime TV and most of them are resigned to this reality for the rest of their lives.  That’s a fact supported by today’s unemployment figures and under-lined by a live phone-in on the BBC’s Radio Five Live this morning.    I approached one of the organisations employed by the Department of Work and Pensions to deliver Back to Work programmes for unemployed managers with the idea of devising a programme that would bring the need and the resource together and taking it to the DWP to seek funding.  It was like trying to raise the dead!  Rather than apply their minds to making something happen their every effort went into thinking of reasons why it wouldn’t work.  Just the kind of positive thinking we need to get us out of this mess!

I asked my local Tory candidate to help me get something going with the DWP and JobCentres, but got no reply.  I even offered free advice to a local trading group and received no reply to that either.  I approached the local paper and an independent employment agency with the idea of running a seminar for local managers of SMEs and neither were interested.

My mailing to a sample one-hundred local businesses offering them a free consultation that could get them thinking in the right direction had no takers and my follow-up calls revealed that they had mostly been approached by Business Link who failed them miserably and once bitten were put off the idea of consultants forever.

Its sad that our SMEs – our commercial future – are stuck like rabbits in a car’s headlights, while Theresa May the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary and the Employment Minister Jim Knight, who together have solutions to some of these problems in their gift, bitch about minutia and argue out party politics on national radio.  The inability to run a piss-up in a brewery is endemic in our society and clearly, it goes right to the top!  Maybe we should recruit our next government from the ranks of our unemployed managers?  Now there’s a thought!

Categories: Department of Work and Pensions · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · HR · Human resources · Jim Knight · Job Centre · SMEs · Small and Medium Enterprises · The Full Effect Company · Theresa May · business development · business strategy · change management · ideas · ideation · innovation · integrated marketing · management · marketing · natural selection · phil darby · recruitment

Are marketing services failing clients?

Monday 12 October 2009 · Leave a Comment

I don’t agree with Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts on everything, but there’s a big overlap in our thinking and, hey, differences are what prompts innovation and make the world go round, so that’s good.  Yes?

The thing is that on the fundamentals we are on the same page and its always reassuring to know, when, as we marketers do, you are ploughing the lonely innovation furrow, that someone of Kevin’s gravitas agrees with you, at least in part.  That’s why I was delighted to hear him make three key points in an interview in Singapore recently (he probably made many more) that really resounded with me.

  1. The current economic situation is causing far more radical change than most people still realise and it’s going to go on for a year or two yet.  As a result, business leaders are desperate for ideas, but nervous of change, so the ideas that we take to them have to be bigger, better and more than ever before, grounded in sound commercial thinking.
  2. Marketing services businesses (Kevin focusses on Ad. agencies, I’d put brand consultancies up there too but all the other disciplines are failing their clients too) are generally way behind their clients and end users/consumers when it comes to realising what’s happening and responding to it (which, given that we are paid to be thought-leaders, is pretty damning)
  3. Awards are becoming counter-productive.  They are encouraging agency people to entrench in old-thinking.  It’s almost as though given their failure to deliver in the real world, agencies are retreating to a world of mutual admiration inhabited solely by their peers.

Where maybe I differ from Kevin is that I believe that its our job to lead our clients.  Not just to give them great ideas, but to help them fully exploit them.  This requires bigger thinking.  I am trying to go much further than most agencies, by not only coming up with new creative ideas, but having ideas about how business can change and reshape themselves, communicate internally as well as externally and do new things operationally that will enable them to get more out of the ideas.  And I go further than that even, because, as I just said, business leaders are not only desperate for ideas, but nervous of change too, so its my job as a marketer (and if you are a marketer, its your job too) to help them along the way with implementation.  That’s why I spent months working with buyers at a supermarket group to get them to think differently about their role and what they were buying and why I just devoted weeks to convincing a software organisation to take another look at the environment their otherwise great software creates for users, before they take it to market.

Sure its a lot of work, but that’s the game we are in now.  Be sure about that!

Categories: Big Idea · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Kevin Roberts · Saatchi & Saatchi · Saatchi's · The Full Effect Company · advertising · agency management · brand · brand development · branding · brands · change · communications · difference · ideas · ideation · innovation · integrated marketing · integration · internal marketing · management · marketing · recession · the big idea

Innovate your way through recession

Thursday 6 August 2009 · 1 Comment

You might be persuaded otherwise by the actions of some organisations, but now is the time to innovate.  And before you respond with the old “we can’t afford it” argument, let me tell you that every piece of evidence proves beyond any doubt that far from not being able to afford innovation, you simply can’t afford not to right now.  If you think the recession hit hard and fast, you ain’t seen nothing yet!  If your organisation is sitting there with its metaphorical head between its knees, you’ll know what I mean when the recession starts to lift and your competitors who have had their thinking hats on for the last months kick your sorry backside!

The trick to innovating in recession is no different to the basic rule in boom times.  In fact its the fundamental of every aspect of all business at any time and if you’ve been on this blog before you’ll know what’s coming next … efficiency!  Efficiency is ultimately the only thing that separates successful organisations from unsuccessful ones and, by and large we are all pretty bad at it.  The thing is that most of the time we can get away with being … so-so.  In recession however you really have walk the talk! Yes, tough markets sort out the men from the boys, the wheat from the chaff and by and large this time around the recession is definitely reducing the number of half-baked businesses.

The starting point for innovating efficiently is the same as the starting point for efficiency in every area of your business – focus, and the kind of focus I am talking about is the kind that comes from having a clearly defined brand encapsulated in a concise and straightforward Brand Model, such as that which I create with my Brand Discovery programme.

Among many other things, a Brand Model gives any organisation the criteria by which to judge the suitability of everything you do and used properly will enable you to prioritise, cut those ideas that aren’t going to support your Brand Promise, help those you decide to run contribute something truly worthwhile to your business and ensure that tactical initiatives have maximum long term value – that’s efficiency!

Over that last few months I have seen an increase in the number of calls  from organisations who are fine-tuning their brands and this is encouraging.  How they go about it though is sometimes a bit of a worry.  I have just spent some time with a national UK set-up that brought in one of the big consulting firms at colossal expense to help them with this and the result was very disappointing.  The consultancy came in, helped them create something approximating a brand model, which itself left a lot to be desired, and then walked away and left them to it.  Sadly this is a common experience.

A lot of folks don’t realise that building a brand model is one thing, but bringing it to life is where the challenge lies.  The model is really just the working drawings.  To turn it into something concrete – and that includes leveraging its capability to generate business-building ideas – means taking a new perspective on your business.  This in itself represents a radical change for some organisations and involves introducing new practices and maintaining a high level of discipline, all while running the day-to-day business as usual.  Its tough and, believe me it rarely works unless you have to have someone dedicated to keeping it all on track.  Some organisations employ their own brand champion, which really should be at board level, because they need to carry that kind of weight within the organisation, but it makes sense for most businesses to bring in consultants and that’s what I do.

On this foundation you can start building your “ideas organisation”.  Canvassing ideas from within your organisation is a campaign in itself, especially if its new to your culture.  You first have to start by reassuring everyone  that regardless of their level or function, their ideas are as likely as anybody’s  to be that golden key to the future of the business .  I once turned an idea from a junior secretary into a successful new business unit for one of my clients and you could do the same.  Believe me the key to a really great future is probably rattling around the head of one of your employees as we speak.

Once you are generating ideas you’ll need a process for selecting them and developing those that show promise.  Your Brand Model will be an immense help in this, but you still have to set out your day-to-day approach.  I find that its useful for a lot of reasons to offer the person who came up with the idea a role in its development – its motivating and it helps them develop new skills.  You have to decide how you want to set up and run your project teams – one for each idea currently in development – at what points you review projects and what criteria you will introduce at each review.  Its also a good idea to have a reporting system that feeds back to your employees, to maintain their interest and commitment to ideation.

When you have an “ideas organisation” culture, the support of your employees and the processes in place to develop the ideas you’ll be generating ideas, assessing their potential and bringing the most promising ones to market more quickly and efficiently that you probably imagine.  You can fine-tune all the elements of your innovation programme as you go, but ultimately you can’t help but be successful.  Remember, ideas are the currency of business and the race is on to emerge from the recession like a bullet from a gun with all the momentum that only new ideas can generate.

Categories: Big Idea · Brand Discovery · Brand Model · Brand promise · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Processes · The Full Effect Company · brand development · branding · brands · business development · change · change management · efficiency · employees · ideas · ideation · innovation · integrated marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · strategy

The future is definitely grey.

Monday 1 June 2009 · Leave a Comment

I had an interesting meeting in London last week, with a few people from one of our bigger and better-known global organisations, who, like everybody else right now are looking for ways to stretch their budgets.

I have been saying for years, the difference between successful companies and unsuccessful ones is efficiency – nothing more or less.  Its a matter of what you can do with the resources at your disposal. What’s happened in the last few months to make this issues more critical is, of course, the recession.  Now the race is really hotting up and even the most successful organisations are racing to find ways to maintain or even increase pressure on their competitors while reducing their investment .  In other words everyone is desperate to increase efficiency in every area of their organisation and that puts Full Effect Marketing bang on target.

The people I was talking to were by anybody’s standard successful and their efficiency is probably about as good as it can get using contemporary practices, philosophies and models, but as more and more organisations have discovered recently this just isn’t good enough.  They cited three issues that they are struggling with right now, all of which boiled down to the same thing.

  • Too many short-lived propositions – or as I would express it, campaigns with no legs – so they were wasting time, effort and money setting up and running a continuous stream of short tactical propositions that are going nowhere.
  • Missed opportunities brought about by failing to recognise and plan to exploit all their options ahead of time.  This sometimes means that they have had to hold up launches while forgotten elements were nailed on (with the kind of compromises that you have to expect when this happens), occasionally they effectively plan-out potential that they have missed, so that to reinstate it later means cumbersome and inefficient delivery and also, from time to time they just miss opportunities altogether.
  • Inefficient execution or just failing to engage all the expertise within the organisation early enough to ensure that campaigns are delivered on time with all the Is dotted and Ts crossed.

As they said, no longer can they afford to invest in promotions and propositions that don’t milk investment for all its worth.  If only a few more organisations recognised that.  Their problem is that they were viewing these problems as training deficiencies, when the truth was far more fundamental.

Its a fact that executives in most organisations, like policemen, are much younger than they used to be.  This has its advantages, such as high energy levels and enthusiasm (although I sometimes wonder about this), plus, of course younger managers are usually cheaper to employ and hungry for success, which enables employers to apply the carrot principle with greater success.  However its not all pluses.  There are disadvantages too and the biggest and most significant, as far as the scenario we are talking about here is concerned, is a lack of experience.  While business is becoming more complicated with a full-hand comprising more and far more diverse disciplines, executives, because they are younger, have experienced fewer (simply because they just haven’t had time to acquire more) and as careers develop, the focus seems to be on depth rather than breadth of experience.  This limits both their understanding and their management capability and adds to the reliance many larger organisations (and this one was a case in point) have on processes, the only purpose of which is to overcome experience deficiencies, but, which, in the process, limit scope for free-thought.

The thing about establishing the perspective that allows us to see all the implications and opportunities of an initiative is that its pretty well impossible, to processise.  The vision that enables an executive to see all the opportunities and identify all the departments, specialists and skills that need to be engaged in efficient delivery is simply a product of experience.  So, if you can’t processise this stuff the only option left is to employ people with the experience.  I’m not saying that youth has no place in the modern recruitment strategy, but there’s no getting away from it, if you want to up your game to the kind of level that we all need going forward from today, you need experience too and that means creating a blend of young and older executives and creating a culture in which they can work together, combining everyone’s skills to deliver the solutions a modern business needs.

Categories: Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · HR · Human resources · Processes · The Full Effect Company · business development · business strategy · change · change management · management · marketing · phil darby · recruitment · strategy

Its time for us all to deliver our Brand Promise

Monday 25 May 2009 · Leave a Comment

gordon-brown1So, British parliament is learning about branding?  Or at least one of it’s fundamental principles.  With MP’s expenses becoming the subject of the worst scandal in British Parliamentary history, we should all take heed of the consequences of failing to deliver our promises.

Even in the current financial environment, most cases of poor brand performance and maybe most business failures, can still be attributed to failure to deliver Brand Promise.  Yet, if anything, the incidence of firms that I come across who focus on making their promise, regardless of their ability to deliver it, is increasing.  But in these difficult times this cavalier attitude is a recipe for disaster.  Current financial constraints mean gearing is very high indeed, there’s a hair’s breadth between astounding success and abject failure. If ever there was a time to review your brand and what it stands for, its now.

The position of British parliament has always been one of solid reliability, straightforwardness, behaving as one should.  Much of what is Britishness (or Brand Britain) has been the self-assurance that allowed us to poke fun at other nations whose corrupt governments and politicians made world headlines.  Now the joke is on us, our erstwhile trusted representatives have made us a laughing stock (even among nations that we have held to be fundamentally corrupt) and its no fun!  Now that we all now know for sure that Brand Britain has been a facade and the institution has been rife with self-interest and corrupt practices our management (Parliament) has been shaken to its foundations.

The most lilywhite of PM’s and the institution as a whole now face the daunting task of winning back the trust of voters, who, if last night’s BBC Question Time was anything to go by, are determined to strip the entire institution down to its foundations and start again with an entirely new build.  And who can blame us?  I for one believe that the system of PM’s expenses, should be devised by an independent body, employed by the people, with no input at all from MPs, who should be told what the system is and decide whether they want the job, based on these and other constraints.  At least this would reaffirm our position as the employer in contrast to the belief, apparently common among MPs, that the people are here to do their bidding.  So, how does an MP set about winning our support?

The answer is, of course, the same way that any brand is built and the first step in this process is to establish what you are capable of. Unsurprisingly, this is where my Brand Discovery programme kicks off.  We start by creating a Brand Model that pin-points the critical elements of any brand on eleven parameters and sum it all up in a Brand Promise that will be reflected in every action the organisation takes thereafter.  This is marketing operating where it should be, in the driving seat of a business.  Of course a brand model isn’t set in stone, it will change because any marketer worthy of the title will constantly review end-user needs and competitive positions and introduce initiatives designed to bridge between what customers need and what the organisation is able to deliver.  This might mean, among many other things, new products and services, a new pricing policy that will dictate manufacturing processes or new distribution routes.  As I said – marketing in the driving seat.

However, the big difference between Brand Discovery and what many people take to be brand development programmes is that once the Brand Model is established we introduce an ongoing corporate process, incorporating internal marketing and training elements, processes, brief formats and judgement tools, designed to ensure that the Brand Promise is represented consistently at every level of the organisation.  We go even further than this, in fact, by working with the organisation as it migrates from the old management paradigm to a marketing-centric approach.

It seems to me that this is just what British parliament needs right now, but as with many commercial organisations that I encounter, its hard to imagine how we will get ourselves on that track when the same self-interested politicians/managers who got us into this mess in the first place, are the ones who make the decisions about how we fix it.  On the other hand, if parliament does vote to re-invent itself, rather than just go through the motions, I suppose it will mean that by definition the majority of MPs are honourable and trustworthy, which is a rather better starting point than might appear to be the case right now.

While the politicians get on with their task, my advice to all managers is to take the opportunity to review the way you operate too.  A marketing-led business, with its consequential strong brand community, is by definition, more efficient than one that isn’t and the only real difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful one is efficiency.  What the recession has done is make the line between success and failure very narrow indeed, so its a no-brainer really.  You’ll only gain in the long-run and you certainly won’t lose short term either.

Categories: Brand Discovery · Brand Model · Brand promise · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Government · National Branding · The Full Effect Company · brand · brand character · brand development · brand name · branding · brands · change · change management · communications · internal marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · recession
Tagged: , ,

The community value of a one-pound pee

Tuesday 10 March 2009 · 2 Comments

desperate-for-toiletI have just been reading through the comments on a LinkedIn Post, which started when someone asked whether Michael O’Leary is right to charge a quid to pee on his RyanAir flights.  The comments, as usual range from the amusing to the folks who just don’t get it from any perspective, but that’s life.  So too are brands and, putting aside for a moment the misassumptions and misunderstandings of what Michael O’Leary actually said and in what circumstances, there couldn’t be a better example of what branding is all about.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again – brands are communities and we interact with them in a way that mirrors the relationships we have with our friends. – that’s why I call the relationships we have with brands “Brandships“

Its a fact, think about it.  I bet the people who you know who have a large circle of close friends all have vivid personalities.  Insipid people, though they may not upset a lot of people, equally don’t enjoy large communities of really close friends.  You know, the kind of friends you really love as opposed to those that you just hang out with because there’s nothing better to do.  And these are the ones that count.  They are the friends who, when times are tough, rather than just sympathise with you, will rally to your assistance with practical help and support.

When I think through the close friends that I have I see a number of people who sometimes piss people off with their views or style, but could never be accused of not telling it like it is.  I know where I am with them.  I’ve been put in my place a few times by some of them and I genuinely value their criticism, unlike the acquaintances I have who are always very politically correct, inoffensive and full of platitudes.  The latter group are motivated by the fear of rejection.  They just don’t want to piss anybody off and therefore succeed in neither annoying nor endearing anybody.

Brands are EXACTLY the same.  Look, around.  There are  insipid brands everywhere that people buy, simply because there is no alternative.  They are often brand leaders, which means both that they have been able to get away with this approach and why they are vulnerable to lighthouse brands that emerge.  The lighthouse brands being the strong characters in this scenario.

Right now the economic downturn has created a level playing-field and we find ourselves in the era of the lighthouse brand.  Its going to be difficult to succeed just because you don’t piss anybody off (although size and resources alone will enable the biggest to weather the storm).  Today friendships really count, we value the genuine help and support that comes with a close friend.

Of course, its not enough to just go shouting your mouth off, you do have to back it up with actions and those actions have to be consistent with what you are saying.  That way you reinforce your message, live up to your promise, reassure people that you are genuine and transparent.  Its that reassurance that you are someone who others can know and trust, derived from consistency, that makes for a really great friendship … and Brandship.

I’ve been thinking about this for a lot of years.  Full Effect Marketing with Brand Discovery at its core is firstly a process of self-discovery for brands.  Getting to understand the real you, not the “you” that you may have been trying to pass yourself off as for years because you felt that’s what people wanted to hear.

If it turns out that you don’t have what it takes to be popular we can set about addressing the issues, but we won’t create another veneer, instead we’ll make fundamental changes.  Its rare though that there won’t be something about you that’s interesting or attractive to others and that’s the foundation upon which we will build your new community of Brandships.

Making it work will involve firstly getting all your stakeholders behind the promise (your “Brand Promise”) that is inherent in your personality, and gaining their commitment to playing their part in its delivery.  Brand Discovery is the process that I use to achieve this.

So, how does this relate to Mr O’Leary and RyanAir?  Well, firstly I have to clear up the usual mess that has been make by the press, by pointing out that it wasn’t quite as reported. It was a TV interviewer who asked Mr O’Leary how far he would take his stripped-down travel model and suggested that he could charge for using the loo.  O’Leary took the chance to reinforce the RyanAir personality, which embodies fresh thinking, anti-establishment, not taking the press as seriously as they take themselves and a load of other stuff, by saying, in effect, “why not?”

Because you can’t be all things to all people, being true to your inner brand means that people will either take you or leave you, but at least their choice will be real and the result will be strong Brandships that’ll take you through thick and thin.  You’ll succeed if a lot of or most people like you, or if a minority that take you to their bosoms are able and prepared to pay handsomely for your product or services and, as I said, over time you can make adjustments.

Michael O’Leary did a great job of reinforcing his Brandships and in the process gave everyone a choice.  The facts speak for themselves.  RyanAir is an outstandingly successful business, with a very clear Brand Promise and a lot of people who just love them.

Categories: Brand Discovery · Brand Model · Brand promise · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · brand · brand character · brand development · brand name · branding · brands · change · communications · community · consistency · internal marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · promise

Hang the data, get the basics right!

Friday 20 February 2009 · Leave a Comment

abcI’ve lost count of the number of times over the years that I’ve come across businesses that have allowed data and analysis to get in the way of their business development, but in the last few weeks I’ve come across two. 

Don’t get me wrong, data is my friend, but I have a great deal of experience too, which, if the data should tell me to jump of a high building, will warn me that it will hurt!  Way back when I started in this business a wise old advertising sage introduced me to the principles of research with the words “This is a light to guide your way, not a lamppost to lean on”.  He was right and the same applies to any form of data, yet I’m increasingly finding people who won’t take a pee unless the data tells them to.

There are simple reasons for this of course.  The stakes are often high and there’s big money and jobs on the line, so its easy to see why we have become risk-averse.  Its made worse though, by inexperienced managers, both in SMEs and in the large corporates.  Its a fact that today’s managers are younger and less experienced than they were twenty years ago, and experience is the key to success.  To make things worse, there’s even more to know now.  Its no wonder managers look for data to support their decisions.  But supporting decisions is fine, its when it makes the decisions you are in trouble!

I liken it to the debate over teaching schoolkids basic skills like how to do sums and write.  The purists argue that they’ll need this stuff when … wait for it … we don’t have computers anymore!  Now there’s thought!

Its important to recognise that the law of diminishing returns applies to any investment in data and analysis.  The more you do, the greater the investment required and the fewer point-gains you’ll get from it.  If you are Proctor and Gamble or Unilever the optimal point is much higher up the investment scale than it would be for your local corner shop.  That’s simply because 0.001% improvement on a gazillion dollars turnover will pay for the investment (probably a few times over) while if your turnover is that of the vast majority of businesses, that kind of improvement wouldn’t buy you a decent lunch, so there’s no point.

While large and unwieldy organisations tend to lose the advantage that data (potentially) gives them when the time comes to turn insights into action, at the small and medium enterprise (SME) end of the scale, there is no shortage of modest, easily implementable initiatives you can introduce to great effect without data and analysis, if you have experience.  But that’s a problem too, because, by definition, SMEs have less experience and a narrower skills base.   While someone like me will help a larger concern to interpret data and plan appropriate responses, when I am consulting for SMEs is more likely to involve filling in the gaps in their basic skills and experience.

When I first started my business, as an introductory offer, I promised any prospect a bottle of champagne if I couldn’t find ten ways to increase their ROI, but I never had to make that trip to the off-license.  Every business makes mistakes and its too easy for someone with broad enough experience to spot them and come up with a remedy.  I guarantee I can make significant improvements to the performance of any enterprise, large or small, and in the case of SMEs, usually without spending months wading through data and setting up programmes and analysis processes.  All that comes later and will undoubtedly help magnify the results, but the gearing is such that if you are running on three cylinders, getting the fourth to fire makes a hell of a lot of difference.  The introduction of simple sound practice, based on experience and observation, can bring a significant improvement in the bottom line for most SMEs in no time at all.  The expense is in the fine-tuning that’ll have you humming like a Ferrari. 

I have developed Full Effect Marketing to the point where any business, of any size, in any sector, anywhere in the world can plug in and play it.  I purposely stripped away the mystique that some of the big consultancies seem to like, so that it makes perfect sense to anybody and before somebody from a big organisation says, if its designed for SMEs (which it isn’t) its too basic for them – bollocks!  Marketing is basic, Full Effect Marketing just strips away the frills that have been added over the years by insecure marketing people who have thought that by dressing it up, it’ll appear that they are extra smart!

The two examples I encountered recently were both businesses sitting on the recession time bomb.  As I have said before, the game now is all about survival of the fittest – Business Darwinism – and if you aren’t fit you won’t survive.  Neither of these businesses had the basics right, yet they were fixated on data and research and locked into a kind of commercial catalepsy, waiting for the data to tell them what to do.  The answer was obvious to anybody with the right experience.  I don’t blame them for not knowing, it wasn’t their area of expertise, but what was frustrating was when they had the answers they still couldn’t bring themselves to take action, because they were stuck in the data-habit and didn’t have any to support the actions.  As a result, the one has sadly and quite avoidably, bitten the dust already, simply because it didn’t move quickly enough and other is teetering.

Maybe the fact that I have seen two such cases so close together is a symptom of the current business climate.  As I said, things right now, happen fast to businesses that aren’t in shape and there are a lot of them around.  Why is this?  Well apart from the experience quotient (which if you read the research is lower these days than twenty years ago because managers are younger) its because increased entrepreneurship and a boom market have resulted in a lot of businesses getting this far even though they were half-cocked.  Its just a build-up of failures waiting to happen.

I can’t pretend to be sorry to see a few businesses disappear – recession is cathartic, but I still think that there are tremendous opportunities in this recession for smaller businesses and challenger brands and I’m really excited at the prospect of seeing new names and ideas emerge.  Most of all, I’m looking forward to working with businesses that are made of the right stuff, getting the basics right, making things happen and then adding the data analysis that will scale those things.

Categories: Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · SMEs · Small and Medium Enterprises · The Full Effect Company · analytics · business development · business strategy · communications · consulting · data · data analysis · decision · decision-making · ideas · indecision · internal marketing · management · marketing · phil darby

Foreign trade and the new consumer

Thursday 15 January 2009 · 3 Comments

Barely was the metaphorical ink dry on my piece about businesses in Central Europe struggling to remain viable in the vital international marketplace, when I caught this pod-cast by Phil Dobbie a Brit exiled in Oz, who I don’t know and who is not related to me, but who I find, talks a lot of sense.

Although its a far more mature market, Australia shares one critical trait with some of the emerging new Central European markets – they don’t have a lot of people!  As Phil and his panel of experts agree in this broadcast, no business in any country can afford to focus exclusively on their domestic customers and when your population is fifteen million or less, if you do so you don’t have much scope.

They recognise that smaller economies have tended to exacerbate their problems by making it difficult for foreign experts to operate and by resisting their advice, something that I often see in the Central European markets, especially the Czech Republic.  I have noted lately that the organisations that seek advice from people like me are more often foreign-owned or managed businesses themselves, while Czech organisations stick with Czech advisers, which rarely gives them the perspective they need.

In my earlier piece I also introduce a new consumer with new priorities and suggest that the businesses that emerge from the current financial downturn a success will be those that recognise this critical change and adjust their strategy accordingly.  Every organisation, big and small,wherever they may be, is in the same boat, but there are valuable and very real opportunities for everyone and there’ll be no excuses afterwards for those who fail. 

This point was echoed this week by Lee Scott the outgoing Walmart CEO at the National Retail Federation in New York who told the audience that young customers in particular have adopted a new ethic.  They’ll buy what they need, think more carefully about purchases, avoid unessentials, pay cash and avoid credit.  Its going to be back to the drawing board for customer-facing organisations whose sales rely heavily on credit and I doubt the plethora of products that we have seen over the last few years, that are unessential, impractical or fail to deliver on any level, will survive.  Glad you bought that lava-lamp now aren’t you? 

The good news is that I believe that service will come back into fashion.  Not the service that so many retailers advertise these days, which amounts to no more than a spotty youth with a badge to confirm that he spent half a day on a product knowledge course that covered little more than how to switch the product on, but real service, from responsible people with a depth of knowledge and understanding of their product and a determination to serve their customer.

So, how is your organisation going to service the new consumer, at home or abroad?

Categories: Australia · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Lee Scott · Phil Dobbie · Prague · Retail · The Full Effect Company · central europe · change · consulting · customer · customer service · customers · czech · export · management · marketing · opportunity · phil darby · retailer · strategy

New Year, New challenge, New consumer

Thursday 1 January 2009 · Leave a Comment

after-the-partyBefore we all sober up and start banging on again about how tough life is, I thought I’d nip in with a ray of winter sunshine.  I’ve never been much of a moaner.  Challenges like the current economic woes are what, as a marketer, I’m paid to overcome and this is just another day at the office as far as I am concerned.  A bigger, juicer challenge maybe, but hey, bring it on!

Among the many good things that will result from the current crisis will be the disappearance of organisations that had no place in today’s business world in the first place.  Businesses that have lost their way, like Woolworth, Adams, MFI and others in the UK, those that have become irrelevant, are badly managed or just never got it together will all disappear and we’ll all be better off for it – them’s the breaks and the UK government reckon that another 440 UK retailers alone will go to the big mall in the sky by April!

Clearing the decks of the dross though, isn’t going to mean that the businesses that remain will have an automatic ticket to ride the gravy train, because its all change as far as far as customer priorities are concerned too and unless your organisation is sensitive to this and you’re ready to make the necessary changes you’ll be back there with the no-hopers.

In 2009 strong brands will pay back the investment that has been made in them over the years, but I mean brands with real integrity not those that have been selling us a line for years.  In the last few weeks I have been listening to interviews with end-users from around the developed world who have expressed the common belief that what’s brought us to this sorry state has been our own irresponsibility and lack of real priorities.  Yes, our customers have a new perspective and if your brand has been built on selling people stuff that they don’t need you’d better think again!  We are about to witness the birth of a new business paradigm.

The new consumer seeks, products that meet a genuine need rather than the want that marketers have tended to stimulate in the past.  There’ll be a backlash against frivolous products and an even bigger one against brands that don’t deliver on their promises.  This will resonate along the supply chain to business to business relationships too.  Furthermore, the value equation will be modified with quality or practicality acing aesthetic. 

Opportunities will be there for well developed brands with a sound efficient support structure to expand into new territories where home-grown competition doesn’t measure up, but this doesn’t only mean opportunities for Western organisations in developing markets like Central and Eastern Europe and Asia because the businesses there that haven’t become greedy and are honest about their own strengths and weaknesses will be able to expand into developed markets where consumers are looking for lower prices and better value based on the practical formula.

Efficiency, low prices, quality and decent margins are the product of real integrated marketing, but you will only satisfy the emotional needs of customers, BtoB or consumers, if your brand has an honest face and an honest heart.  These are the real challenges that organisations face in the forthcoming months.  Are we up to the challenge?  Generally, I think the answer is “yes”, but its patchy and success will only be achieved by organisations with the self-discipline to keep the new objective in their sights.  Businesses that realise the game has changed, that understand they are a marketing organisation like everyone else.  Those who place the brand at the centre of their organisation and marketing in the driving seat.  Fasten your seat belts,  it could be bumpy.

Categories: Adams · Brand Discovery · Brand Model · Brand promise · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Retail · The Full Effect Company · Woolworth · brand · brand character · brand development · brand name · branding · brands · business development · business strategy · central europe · change · communications · customers · developed markets · integrated marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · promise · recession · retailer · strategy · transparency

The challenge of a Prague winter

Tuesday 30 December 2008 · Leave a Comment

prague-in-winterI am sure that in a former life I was a bear.  I say this because at the first sign of winter I get this barely controllable urge to hide somewhere warm and dark ’til spring … and today in Prague its minus 8 degrees C!  It sort of raises the question I find myself asking with increasing regularity these days – “Why spend so much of my time in a place where I was clearly not designed to be?”

Maybe its something to do with the summers, which, by UK standards are glorious and predictable – you can actually plan a weekend with a reasonable expectation of the weather being good enough to actually leave the house.  Or maybe its some of the quaint habits of the locals.  For example, yesterday I ventured into my local potraviny – the closest thing Czechs had to a supermarket before the real thing, in the shape of Julius Meinl, arrived from Austria, about the time the last Commie disappeared to his luxury mansion in the hills. 

Despite living much of the time in the beer capital of Europe I don’t drink much of the stuff, but I picked up a few bottles for the fridge and took them to the check-out where the lady growled (another Czech speciality) the price.  “Thirteen Crowns each”.  “But it says ten crowns on the shelf” I pointed out.  Three Crowns each for the bottles” came the reply.  I was tempted to make her day by suggesting that she “Forget the bottle.  Just wrap it up and I’ll take it like that” but I am sure the joke, and I’m certain the irony, wouldn’t have translated.  Czechs don’t “do” irony.  They do however have many practices, like charging separately for the bottle when you buy beer, that we would find odd … no ridiculous, even. 

Another Czech trait is their unequalled capacity for denial.  It probably stems from fifty years of Communist rule when you just kept your head down and did what you could to live around the rules.  Or maybe its goes way back.  What we now call the Czech Republic is, after all, the most invaded and occupied real estate in Europe, so maybe folks here have developed an ambivalent gene that enables them to carry on regardless of who is sitting in the big chair. 

The ambivalent gene would certainly explain the tough time I have getting people here fired up about anything (besides ice hockey).  This was underlined a couple of weeks ago by three surveys that revealed that despite suddenly not being able to get mortgages, having their factories closed, thousands of lay-offs and apartment blocks being only 20% occupied twelve months after completion, that Czechs still don’t believe there’s an economic crisis!

I mean, even if you’ve never seen an economic crisis (as they haven’t of course!) you’d have an idea that something was up when your house is being repossessed.  So it has to be denial, don’t you think?  Its both quaint and sad.  A bit like watching a small furry animal walking down the street from a perspective that allows you to see the out-of-control steamroller on a tangential course to the next intersection. 

A friend of mine who runs a pretty big concern in the Czech Republic told me this week that he’s had calls from two separate banks involved in two of his deals, to say that they just don’t have the money they had promised him.  He’s also divested himself of a number of companies.  One, which was making only two million Crowns a year on a multi-billion Crown turnover, had been the subject of productivity concerns for some time (understandably), but despite receiving a number of addresses from my friend, the work-force were, to a man, gob-smacked when “time” was eventually called.  It seems that either nobody quite belived the warnings or they were in denial.  After all, the business was still making two million a year, which, to many (possibly most) Czech-owned companies would represent pay-dirt.  I’ve said before, that many of the Czech businesses I come across are not really viable.  No, sadly, Czechs are still struggling to understand the rules of capitalism and after fifteen years in an economic rose-bed (very much at the expense of other EC members) they are about to learn some hard lessons.

I still believe though, that there are some terrific products and ideas here, that, despite the economic uncertainly, with a bit of western know-how could support some exciting, international even, businesses.  The question is, are locals able or even bothered enough to grab the opportunities, or will their general complacency mean that they just let them pass by?  I think we are about to find out.  With smart and resourceful Western organisations already assessing the soft underbelly of Central Europe’s developing markets as a target for off-setting their projected 2009 home market short-falls things are going to get tough here and if they are not movin’ and shakin’ it like they’ve never moved and shaked before, half the Czech commercial world is going to find itself eating dust!

Hey, is it chilly in here or what?  Pull that boulder over the entrance as you leave!

Categories: Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Prague · The Full Effect Company · business development · business strategy · central europe · communist · efficiency · employees · management · marketing · phil darby · recession · strategy