The Analogy Marketing is planting and raising the crops. Sales is harvesting the crops and cashing in. It’s that simple. So why do businesses have so much trouble understanding they need both working together? Because successful farming is very difficult. The basics of farming include field selection, preparing the soil, planting, cultivating, fertilizing, […]
I spent 30+ years at Oscar Mayer and parent company Kraft Foods. At that time, Kraft was the largest food company in the Western hemisphere and the most profitable in world. Kraft was a new products juggernaut introducing thousands of new or changed products every year. Much of my career had something to do with […]
Everyone (except your spell-check system) is probably aware by now of the astounding explosive growth of Pinterest (they’ve gone from around 600K unique visitors in June of 2011 to over 20M a little more than a year later). But are you there? Your target market probably is. Especially if your target market is higher than […]
Michael Porter, the famed professor of strategy at Harvard Business School, says strategy is deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value and that in turn must drive superior economic returns for sustainable competitive advantage (ref.). That’s a mouthful, to be sure, but to see this in action, one […]
Is it possible Bill Lee has it right in his HBR article? Is marketing dead? At least marketing as we have traditionally known it? Well, maybe not dead yet, but it’s certainly being transformed. No more so than at London based Burberry, the luxury goods provider that’s gone from stodgy to spectacular under the leadership […]
I’ve written before about how CPG manufacturers and retailers need to redesign their approach to in-store marketing because they’re wasting millions of dollars. But many of them just don’t get it. And I understand. People running large corporations often hesitate to embrace innovation for a variety of both personal and business reasons even when CEO’s […]
Lego put out a short animated video about it’s 80 year history. Very interesting and worth the 17 minutes it takes to view it. Especially, interesting to see the tenacious, entrepreneurial spirit of the founder Ole Kirk Chritiansen.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” So says Henry David Thoreau, American writer and philosopher. If Henry’s got it right, what are the implications for the hundreds of millions, billions, of dollars spent on in store displays? Turns out the answer is: abysmal. Especially if it’s also true that […]
People love a good reason to celebrate. Nearly 60% of Americans say they plan to watch a “great deal” or “fair amount” of the Olympics. Australians say they’ll spend $2.7 billion (USD) on Olympic parties. Add in 6 or 7 annual occasions (Superbowl, Valentines Day, Easter, Mother’s & Father’s Days, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, […]
The 12th annual Shopper Insights in Action conference sponsored by IIR USA was a huge hit last week in Chicago. It featured a terrific line-up of keynote speakers, all of whom did very well on stage, and literally dozens of practical, real-world sessions across five different tracks. Each session focused on how insights drive activation […]
