Sometimes the best marketing is to be silent

March 18, 2020

As the world whips itself up into a panicked frenzy about the coronavirus, there is an inevitable ripple effect. Airlines and hotels are emailing their most loyal customers, telling them what actions they are taking to protect their customers. Events and public venues are doing the same or canceling scheduled events altogether.

Social media is imploding with people sharing accurate and inaccurate information about the virus itself, how to protect yourself from the virus and how the virus is impacting everything from the Corona beer sales to the stock market.

Brands are itching to get into the action, but it is a slippery slope. Lush, the natural soap store, has invited the public to come into any of their stores to wash their hands. Their CEO was quoted as saying, “The simplest thing you can do to not get a virus is to regularly wash your hands,” he said. “So, we’re saying people can come in off the street and wash their hands in our place. We’ve got loads of soap and plenty of hot water.”

What was your reaction to Lush’s gesture? Did you think they were being altruistic, or did it occur to you that it was an interesting way to drive traffic into their stores?

The PR firm 5WPR released a survey saying that 38% of Americans “would not buy Corona beer under any circumstances now.” That headline got the firm a lot of international ink for their findings, which is the holy grail to a PR firm trying to prove they can help clients get media coverage. But, when you dig into their data, only 4% of people who had ever bought Corona in the past answered affirmatively to that question. So, most of the people who said they wouldn’t buy Corona now also never bought it before the coronavirus.

There are widespread reports of price gouging for products related to the worldwide panic. Hand sanitizers, latex gloves, and face masks are flying off the shelves, and some retailers are taking full advantage.

Some of China’s most prominent influencers are cashing in, posting photos of themselves in masks, and sharing buy now links with their audiences. They are offering makeup tips and fashion ideas to make wearing the masks more fashion-forward.

99.99% of all brands should remain silent, steer clear of this situation, and just conduct business as usual, especially if what you sell doesn’t have a genuine association with the virus and health issues around it. Anything you do, even if it is with good intentions, is going to have a tough time passing the whiff test. You are going to be accused of trying to take advantage of the situation for your own gain.

Advertising platforms are also trying to get this under control. Amazon has warned sellers that they are watching for price gouging around antibacterial products, facemasks, and other protective gear. Google has locked down buying specific keywords relative to the disease and products related to it.

The coronavirus crisis will pass, but consumers will remember who tried to take advantage of them when they were frightened. There are no doubt going to be companies who capitalize on the panic. In the short run, they’ll make a lot of money. But, they’re also going to be put on trial in the public forum.

We’ve seen this play out before right after 9/11, hurricanes, oil spills, tornados, and other crises. The organizations that help without looking for financial gain are always the heroes, and those who take advantage are the goats.

Whether you sell antibacterial hand sanitizer or not, odds are your business will make decisions tied to the coronavirus. Just remember that the world is watching.

Originally published in The Des Moines Business Record as part of Drew’s weekly column series.

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The upside to a recession

May 15, 2019

recessionWhen we talk about a recession, we don’t usually tell happy tales. We talk about struggles, cutbacks, and loss. If you were old enough to be in the workforce, own a home or business in that 2007-2010 season, you remember the challenges that we all faced, personally or professionally.

But from a marketing perspective, I think there are a few outcomes from that recession that we should actually be grateful for, as we look back on that time period. I’m not saying I’d like to go through it again anytime soon, but I do appreciate the discipline and learnings it offered us.

You had to be good to survive: In many industries, there was a glut of competition prior to the recession. People, products, and businesses could be mediocre and still survive. When the recession hit, it culled out those who were not offering services or products of high quality. If you were left standing it meant you were delivering something of genuine value.

The recession spotlighted trends we needed to be cognizant of moving forward: When every dollar is a precious one, people spend much more judiciously. It was a forced R&D era for many of us as we tried new offerings and stopped promoting the things that no one seemed interested in buying. Business owners and leaders got a clear understanding of how the marketplace perceived them and what they had to sell.

We learned how to demonstrate our value: There was no option – we had to sell based on value. Getting someone to even listen to your sales pitch meant you had to be proving an ROI or you weren’t going to get past hello. If we couldn’t clearly communicate how what we sold was going to enhance the buyer’s work or life, it didn’t get bought.

We valued and rewarded loyalty: The recession reminded us just how valuable our existing client base was to our business and our spirits. It was easy to get discouraged and worried back then, so when a client came back with their trust and their wallet – it not only helped pay the mortgage but it was affirming in a time when everything seemed so hard.

We got back to basics and realized the importance of them: When you are scrambling for sales, trying not to avoid having to lay people off and counting every penny, you scale back to the basics. This wasn’t just in terms of how we spent our marketing dollars but in how we ran our businesses in general. Marketing tactics like word of mouth were critical to our survival. To earn that word of mouth, we invested more deeply in our clients and solving their problems.

We lost our complacency and got innovative: When your back is against the wall, you get creative. Many companies, as they got very honest with themselves about their lackluster sales, re-invented some aspect of their offering. Our products and services improved as we fought to stay alive and earn and keep our customers’ attention and loyalty.

Our people got better: One of the best outcomes of the recession was that we had time to invest in our team. When sales were lean, we still had to keep everyone productive. Many organizations invigorated their internal culture to embrace more peer-to-peer learning and teaching.

The recession forced us to improve our offerings, our communications, and our team. The real question is, have you sustained those practices or has our recent economic good fortune allowed you to get a little out of shape again? Recessions are cyclical, and many believe we’re due for another soon. What could you do now to get ready?

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Surprise!

April 24, 2019

surpriseOne of the truths about marketing is that our work often hints at or takes advantages of cultural trends that are on the rise. I love that we get to leverage emerging shifts and mine them for the truths they contain. They’re like a little surprise waiting for us around the corner.

But to do that – we have to recognize and explore those trends.

One that I’ve been tracking for a bit is the idea of letting someone else make buying decisions for you. For a long time, we’ve known that giving a customer too many choices often leads to paralysis and no decision at all. There’s a reason why it’s often suggested that you give a client no more than three choices. But are the customers ready to have no choice?

An interesting new type of travel agency is cropping up and making the news. Imagine answering a few questions about where you’ve recently traveled, the kinds of things you like to do, and then paying for a trip without having any idea where you’re about to go.

Websites like Pack Up + Go, Magical Mystery Tours and The Vacation Hunt are offering this sort of service. They will plan domestic, international or an all-inclusive trips for you. You get an envelope you’re supposed to open at the airport (if you’re flying) or as you get into the car. Voila – that’s where you’re headed for vacation.

Want to hit the high seas? This isn’t just an US-based trend. In Great Britain, The Secret Sailaway will sail to six cities over about two weeks but, that’s right, you book the trip and have no idea where you’re going.

From the little bit of leg work I was able to do, it seems like these mystery travel companies have been around for a year or two. Sailaway just had its maiden voyage in March of 2018. If this does become a full-fledged trend, we’re on the early edge of it.

This specific trend may or may not grow to something significant. But what if it does? Could it change the way you offer your product or services?

That’s what I find most intriguing about trend tracking. Once you start to spot an emerging trend, you can’t help but try to apply it to your world. They’re certainly not all going to impact your work but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t sharpen our skills at trend spotting.

Rohit Bhargava, author of Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas and Predict the Future talks about the three traits it takes to be good at recognizing what is shaping up to be a potential trend.

Curate: This is about gathering information and ideas from many sources and looking for the threads that connect those ideas and bits of information. He advocates archiving these fragments using a digital tool like Pocket or Dropbox, so you can step back and look at the bigger picture over time.

Be Curious: Rohit warns that staying curious is getting more difficult every day. With artificial intelligence and algorithms deciding what we see/read, we have to force diversity into our information consumption. He suggests buying books, magazines and consciously choosing to watch programs that aren’t your normal fare and don’t appeal to your interests.

Be Fickle: Don’t get too enamored with any emerging idea. Try to stay neutral so you don’t influence your observations. As a trend spotter, our role is to observe and report without bias. Otherwise, we might dismiss something important.

Given the speed of change in your world today, it pays to have some idea of where tomorrow will land. As Wayne Gretzky suggested, we have to skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been.

 

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AI’S emerging role in harvesting and connecting disparate data to improve customer engagement

July 9, 2018

Whether you’re an executive at the source of product supply, in the engine room of shopper attraction, or at the point of commercial transaction, AI-enriched data analysis has now become an essential to customer engagement success.  
 
Yet, one in four marketing, commerce and supply chain leaders admit that there is simply not enough time, budget or patience to unlock all of data’s potential, notes a new report from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and IBM Watson Customer Engagement. The milestone study entitled, “Doing More with Data: Discovering Data-Accelerated Revenue Traction”, was released today. 
 
 
This turn to AI is not surprising considering the issues across data accessibility and quality that plague the organization’s ability to do much more with the data being amassed across systems. Thirty-seven percent of all executives surveyed feel that the current state of data accessibility is “hit or miss” at best, limited by selective connections across functions, systems and platforms. Once data is accessed, executives are further pressed to identify usable data as 39 percent of executives admit that data is often incomplete or only partially integrated across systems.
 
Among the top data issues executives highlight in the study:
  • 68 percent of leaders admit that second and third party data is only partially or barely integrated into current data systems, providing an incomplete view of a connected customer’s relationship with a product or brand
  • Dark data, defined for this study as unstructured, untagged and untapped data that has typically not been analyzed or processed, has frustrated stakeholders who are struggling to turn this data into actionable intelligence. Some 36 percent of respondents have yet to even tackle the issue of dark data while 30 percent admit that this valuable yet inaccessible data has emphasized how much the organization collects…but how little it actually uses.
  • Instead of streamlining operations, data has forced teams to spend massive amounts of time managing, manipulating or manually exporting and importing spreadsheets and reports. Other operational black holes of mundane tasks include content management and tagging (a time drain for 66 percent of respondents), journey mapping (41 percent) and forecasting (56 percent)
 “The question is not if data is important for any organization with customers…it is if the ability to do more with that data will mean the difference between engagement, profitability and success,” noted Liz Miller, SVP of Marketing at the CMO Council. “Each of the functions we surveyed have their own lens that colors and enhances their view into the organization’s data: Marketing, Supply Chain and Commerce will all interpret the subtle shadows and light differently, but in the end, they need to be looking at the same picture.”
 
While the disparate state of data has revealed gaps in both talent and technology, it is actually third “T” that has been most elusive: Time. Some 45 percent say that there are just not enough hours in the day to address all the transformation projects that are needed to activate data. But this is the exact issue that many executives hope new tools like AI can address and resolve, leveraging tools to ingest, analyze and recommend action in real-time, regardless of platform channel or functional owner.
 
Data for the study was compiled through an online survey in the second quarter of 2018. 
The 107 page full report, now available by visiting https://www.cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/reports/doing-more-with-data includes a key summary of findings, including analysis of differences in reaction and perception across marketing, commerce and supply chain executives, in-depth best practice interviews with leaders from brands including Nordstrom, Lamps Plus, REI, Ryder, The Body Shop, AT&T, TD Bank and more. 
 
To learn more bout The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council visit their website here.
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Reinvent your category – Be different

January 17, 2018

differentThis past year my daughter and I were in New York City and saw the play that took Broadway by storm – Hamilton. It was spectacular in every way imaginable, but it was also the antithesis of a Broadway musical in every way imaginable. It was different.

According to Broadway League research, the average theatergoer is a 44+-year-old, Caucasian, female tourist. 78% of these attendees have completed college, and 39% have advanced degrees. The average income of a Broadway attendee is $205,000 so clearly, this is primarily an affluent, white, middle-aged audience.

Which is why the traditional Broadway musical is such a hit. They’re packed with big dance numbers, elaborate sets, over the top musical performances and happy endings.

It’s also why most Broadway hits look a lot like each other. Many of them are based on proven stories like Lion King or use iconic music (Mamma Mia or Beautiful) from a popular entertainer/group. It costs between $5-$10 million dollars to launch a Broadway musical, so the risks are huge. Why would someone ever vary from the successful formula?

I think that’s the same question that we wrestle with all the time. When there’s someone in your category (or everyone in your category) that does something in a certain way, it feels smart and safe to do it the same way. The problem is that it’s pretty tough to stand out when you’re just like everyone else. The only way to compete is to outspend the competitors and for most companies that isn’t an option.

Or you can pull a Hamilton. Take everything I just said about a Broadway musical and turn it on its head.

  • The play’s primary spoken style is rap/hip-hop (hardly the language of the middle-aged white woman).
  • The storyline is based on the life of Alexander Hamilton, who is famous sort of. He was chief staff aide to General Washington during the Revolutionary War and our country’s first Secretary of the Treasury (hardly sexy roles).
  • The main character is not a typical hero – in fact, he was arrogant, and his blunders and ego cost him dearly, both personally and professionally.
  • There’s no happy ending to the story – as you know, Hamilton is killed in a duel.
  • The set is a simple, almost rustic wooden set with a single turntable to create movement.

Despite all the reasons why Hamilton isn’t like all the others and shouldn’t be successful by Broadway’s standards – it has broken every attendance record you can imagine. Tickets are impossible to get. It has sold out for months at a time not just in New York but all around the country, and the secondary market (StubHub and the like) sold the worst seats in the house for $700+. It received a record-breaking 16 Tony nominations and many people referred to the Tony’s in 2016 as the Hamiltonys because they were expected to sweep the awards show.

My point – people are not the lemmings we assume they are. What Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda understood is that being different is marketing gold. Being different means you have less competition, and every dollar you spend telling your story is amplified because it’s not competing with as much noise. He also understood that being different means you get plenty of media attention, which creates curiosity, interest, and momentum.

How can you take your product or service and turn expectations and “the norm” on its ear? How can you authentically (that matters a lot) give a unique twist to what you do so you stand out from the crowd?

I encourage you to identify the 3-4 places where everyone in your industry looks the same and figure out how you could deliver something different and fresh. Hamilton isn’t just a spectacular play; it’s a business lesson we should all pay attention to.

 

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Do you want to take a stand?

May 17, 2017

take a standThe Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage dominated the news, social media and most conversations when it was announced.  Regardless of where you stood on the topic – you couldn’t help but be immersed in it.  And that wasn’t true for just individuals but, interestingly, for businesses as well. Many of them made a point to take a stand on this issue.

There used to be an unwritten rule that businesses stayed out of political and social discussions.  Unless the issue was one that united the entire country, like World War II – businesses kept their heads down and just stayed focused on business.

But times have changed and consumers have made it clear that they want to do business with organizations that share their values.  It’s as though a third element has been added to the buying decision.  Consumers are driven by their emotions when it comes to any purchase.  That emotion is often tempered or inflamed by facts or features. But today, those two buying elements are influenced by the world around us. Consumer’s beliefs and values are having a bigger and bigger impact on how they perceive and interact with brands.

In the past, we’ve seen lots of brands embrace causes that are tied to their product/service like Avon’s fight against breast cancer or Dawn’s support of wildlife affected by oil spills and other disasters.  But all of that seems pretty safe in comparison to taking a stand on a controversial issue.

In recent history, we saw both Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby take a strong stance on social issues and that decision both cost them and earned them customers who were either aligned or repelled by their position.  In some ways, it’s the essence of branding – show your heart and attract your sweet spot customers who believe as you believe and will value you even more because of that connection.

Many brands spoke out when the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage came out. They quickly reacted to the decision and came out to show their support of the ruling within hours of the announcement being made.

There are a myriad of marketing lessons to be taken from that decision and the responses to that huge societal event.

Your company has a heart: Only you/your leadership team can decide if you want to take a stand and on what issue.  But recognize that whether you speak out or not – there are issues that matter to you and your organization. You’ll have to decide if that should be a part of your company’s public persona or not. The risks are real but so are the rewards of attracting and connecting with people who share your values.

It can’t just be for show: If you’re going to step out of the shadows and express an opinion on a social or societal issue – you need to truly own it.  These are vital topics to your audience and any sign of you being in the fight just for appearances or financial gain will bite you in a big way.

A mile wide versus an inch deep: You can’t fight every fight. And odds are, you don’t have a strong conviction for every fight. You also don’t want to be perceived as a brand that just runs from cause to cause, trying to capitalize on them all.  These kinds of issues are typically very complicated and take a long time to resolve.  If you truly want to affect change (otherwise, don’t get into the fight), know you’re in it for the long haul.

Bottom line – it’s your call. But if you’re going to take a stand, remember that you need to be smart about which issues should earn your resources and your reputation.

 

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Feminism as a Marketing Trend

January 4, 2017

Feminism

This time of year is ripe for trend reports and because it’s important to our work with clients, I’ve been digging through many of them to identify recurring themes. There’s one theme that has really caught my eye and seems to be something that should be on every businessperson’s radar screen. I believe we’re at the beginning of a groundswell (perhaps because of the recent election) that is going to only get louder and more powerful. The trend I’m referring to, believe it or not, is feminism.

I imagine you just glanced at the paper to see if you’d suddenly been transformed back to 1840. Perhaps I should call this a re-trend but that doesn’t negate its importance. In the 1840s it was about the right to vote and in the 1960s it was largely about the right to have more options professionally because at that time only 38% of American women worked outside the home and they had very limited choices in terms of careers.

But today’s feminism seems to have a very different slant. First, it’s global, rather than just US based. Second, it appears to be much broader in scope and influence. There’s not as much focus on one specific problem but instead, it’s about the whole of a person and the core concept of equality. Third, women and men are not combatants in this go around. In fact, men are increasingly being invited to the party, as true members of the cause. Emma Watson’s speech at the U.N. (Google it and watch it – she’s brilliant) put the international spotlight on the solidarity movement for gender equality. It’s worth noting that the program Watson introduced in 2015, HeForShe, is being sponsored by JP Morgan Chase.

The fight feels less antagonistic and more about the simple logic that equality makes sense and seems reasonable to expect in this day and age. Obviously, I’m simplifying the issues greatly and I know that women across the globe still face some horrific situations, but overall, the spirit of the fight feels more collaborative and open to all supporters.

Whether you are aligned with this new edition of feminism or not, it’s quickly weaving itself into our world in some interesting ways that as marketers, we need to watch.

Empowerment: I think empowerment is a word that is overused and probably often misused. But in this case, it’s about celebrating and selling the idea that women can do and be anything they choose. Toy manufacturers like GoldieBox are championing girl engineers and coders with their STEM-based toys and movies like Disney’s Frozen celebrate women helping each other, rather than being rescued by a prince. Both examples were out of the box megahits – meaning that their themes resonated with consumers in a significant way.

Gender neutral: We’re moving into an era where we consciously stop defining something as being made for a boy or a girl. President Obama created quite a discussion in December 2014 when he went out of his way to put toys that would have traditionally been earmarked for boys into the girls’ toy pile during a Toys for Tots appearance. Clothing manufacturers, especially those aiming at young adult consumers, have been purposefully developing clothing styles without defining who should or should not wear them.

Why should this be on your radar screen? I believe every marketer should be checking their own gender bias as they roll out new marketing initiatives. Our audiences, both men and women, will have far less tolerance for stereotypes that minimize either gender. Not only that, but I suspect consumers will reward those companies who go out of their way to recognize and celebrate equality in all it’s shapes and forms to a growing degree.

Marketer beware – the landscape is changing and you don’t want to be out of touch.

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How are your multicultural marketing strategies?

September 23, 2015

multicultural marketing strategiesCMOs acknowledge that they need to have strong multicultural marketing strategies but despite rapid population growth and strong support for initiatives within marketing circles, CEO and board support falls far short, failing to assist marketer’s ability to prioritize and fully fund their efforts.

According to Geoscape, the leader in business intelligence across the multicultural market, groups including Asian-Americans, African-Americans and Hispanics will grow to nearly 130 million by the year 2020. Furthermore, the non-Hispanic white population will become the minority, dropping below 50% of the population by 2042.

A new poll from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and Geoscape—entitled “Activating the New American Mainstream”—reveals that half of the 150 North America-based senior marketing executives surveyed feel there is some level of support for multicultural engagement strategies from the senior levels of the organization.

Here’s what I thought was one of the most telling factoids in the report — While 67% admit that the CMO has a high level of buy-in and support for multicultural efforts, 55% admit that the CEO does not share that opinion, failing to fully support initiatives.

This lack of top-level support translates into a de-prioritization of multicultural engagement programs as more than half (51%) of marketers admit that there are simply too many competing priorities. In fact, when asked to rate commitment levels, only 20% of marketers felt that multicultural strategies were mandatory and unanimously embraced across the organization, and just over one in four believed that the multicultural market was mission critical for the organization.

Specific to investments into multicultural programs, marketers indicate that:

  • 20% invest in excess of 15% of overall marketing budgets to engaging with multicultural markets; 28 percent spend less than 5%.
  • 53% of marketers believe their investment into the multicultural market will increase going forward; 15% believe this increase will be significant; only 2% anticipate a decrease in investment.

For those marketers who have deployed multicultural marketing strategies, the operational approach is one that fails to separate initiatives into significant segments. Only 16% of marketers are separating marketing initiatives for specific ethnic groups, a practice which would allow for a deeper level of engagement thanks to relevant communications based on cultural behavioral patterns and insights.

Multicultural marketing strategies must move away from the niche campaign mindset and become an engrained part of any personalized customer experience strategy,” noted Liz Miller, Senior Vice President of Marketing with the CMO Council. “This is no longer a scenario of replacing images or localizing content into a different language. This is about truly understanding the nuances of the customer, including any culturally distinct behaviors and buying patterns that can and must alter the way our brands reach and engage.”

Without doubt, the multicultural market in the United States is an increasingly powerful consumer. According to Geoscape research, Hispanics currently represent 18 percent of American households but were responsible for nearly half of the growth in consumer spending from 2013 to 2014. Between Asian-American and Hispanic markets, the groups accounted for two-thirds of the total economic spending growth.

“By understanding cultural nuances and marketing in a proactive and data-driven manner, marketers are positioned to grow ROI…however, none of this happens overnight,” added César M. Melgoza, Founder and CEO of Geoscape. “Targeting consumers without understanding their unique cultural behaviors and preferences risks growth optimization among the consumer groups that quarterly and annual budgets and success can hinge.”

Key findings from the 10-question online poll of 150 senior marketing executives are included in a 12-page complimentary white paper, now available for download from the CMO Council. Some 36% of respondents hail from B2B organizations, 29% are from strictly B2C organization, and 36% are from hybrid organizations. 43% hail from organizations with revenues in excess of $1 billion USD.

 

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Trends that will influence 2010 and beyond

December 15, 2009

94021801 Ad giant JWT has done a year-end forecast for the past several years and has just released their thoughts on what 2010 will bring.

Here's a glance at the 10 trends they believe will shape this next year.

Searching for Stability
While many indicators point to the beginnings of an economic recovery, consumers will continue to exercise restraint until they see more clear, dependable and closer-to-home signs of stability. Unemployment lifting will be a key barometer for consumers. (Example: People are still delaying big-ticket purchases.)
 
Reading the Fine Print
Consumers will be working harder than ever, putting more time and energy into finding good values, reading the fine print and learning the ins and outs of nutrition, environmental impact and ethical business practices. (Example: As banks, airlines and other ailing service industries impose a complex raft of fees and conditions on customers, failure to pay close attention will be costly.)
 
Maximum Disclosure
While manufacturers and retailers have become increasingly transparent in recent years, legal requirements and competitive pressures will force fuller disclosure about everything from ingredients and calorie counts to carbon footprints and sourcing. (Example: Walmart is working with its suppliers to develop a sustainability index for all its products.)
 
The Devil Wears Packaging
As the eco spotlight focuses on the environmental costs of packaging, brands will increasingly switch to bottles, boxes and other solutions that reduce, reuse, recycle, remove and renew. (Example: Kenco Coffee in the U.K. recently launched Eco Refills, which it says use 97 percent less packaging than its glass jars.)
 
It's BIC, and It’s Bigger Than Ever
The vaunted BRIC emerging markets are now down to BIC—and while developed nations remain hobbled by the financial crisis, Brazil, India and China are emerging stronger than ever, both economically and politically. (Example: As the appetite for luxury in the developed world wanes, it’s on the rise in China; in October, dozens of French luxury labels, including Christian Dior and Chanel, launched a Web site <http://www.ccolbert.fr/>  to promote their brands in the region.)
 
Trickle-Up Innovation
Products designed for emerging markets are increasingly filtering into the developed world, where consumers are welcoming them as cheaper and simpler alternatives to existing choices. (Example: India’s Mahindra & Mahindra is gaining market share against John Deere, offering suburban lawn-owners in the U.S. a lower-horsepower tractor at lower prices.)
 
Retooling for an Aging World
As the world’s population grows older than it’s ever been, watch for a proliferation of products and services that cater to this demographic as they strive to live independently for as long as they can. (Example: Thermador has designed a glass cooktop that automatically shuts off when cooking is completed.)
 
Life in Real Time
The Web is evolving into a constantly updating stream of real-time information, conversation, memes and images. This is creating an increasingly mass culture and shifting perceptions of “current,” moving modern life into the “now.” (Example: During the World Series, the Huffington Post created a real-time hub that collected the Twitter feeds of baseball writers, Yankees mavens and Phillies commenters.)
 
Location-Based Everything
With more location-based services and advanced mobile and mapping technologies hitting the market, the conversation will become as much about “where I am” as it is about “what I’m doing” and “what’s on my mind.” (Example: Foursquare, a gaming app, uses geo-tagging technology to help users find and share bars, restaurants and other venues with friends.)
 
Visual Fluency
The ongoing shift from words to images will accelerate, and we’ll see increasingly innovative ways to explain and illuminate complex topics. (Example: The animated online short “The Crisis of Credit Visualized <http://www.crisisofcredit.com/> ” blends storytelling, journalism and analysis to make a complex topic easier to grasp.)

If you'd like to read about each trend in detail, you can purchase the full report by clicking here.

Here's what I am wondering…which of these trends do you think will have the most impact on your business in 2010?  And…what are you doing to maximize the opportunity?

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To find your nerve, find your core

October 20, 2009

Shutterstock_33666787 A few months ago, I received an intriguing e-mail from a guy named Steve McKee.  He had an idea. 

He wanted to build "a website dedicated to supporting the community of corporate professionals who want to move beyond the economic morass and return their companies to the growth path. This grass roots effort is intended to help jump start corporations and, therefore, the economy."

Each day of the 4th quarter, they would have a different guest author address the issue of how do you get back your nerve and get back to some semblance of business as usual.  As you know, I've been rallying against the paralysis caused by the recession (here, here and here) for quite some time so I jumped at the opportunity.

My contribution went live today and I'd like to:

  • Share it with you
  • Get your feedback
  • Ask you to share it with others

Here's how I started….

When the recession hit, many companies lost their nerve. They began to second-guess their own decisions. They compromised on what they believed was right because right was too expensive. They chased after business that wasn't really a good fit — because any business was better than the potential of no business.

And they lost their way. A side effect of being lost is being scared. Sometimes being scared leads to being paralyzed. In my opinion, that's why this recession got so bad.

We got scared and we got stuck.

It's time for us to find our nerve and get ourselves out of this recession. I highly doubt there's going to be a bailout for any of us.

So how do we break loose from our fear and get some nerve? We get back to our core.

Please check out the FindYourNerve.com site to read the rest.

While you're there, check out the rest of the site.  There are polls, plenty of blog posts from some very smart folks, and some eye opening facts about the recession and advertising/marketing.

Also note that this is a very savvy effort on Steve's part to promote and sell his new book, When Growth Stalls. Rally the troops around something they're passionate about and they'll do whatever it takes to get the word out.  And sell some books along the way.

The site is well done, Steve's intentions are honorable and I encourage you to check out the guest posts.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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