No pottery, no barn, no crates, no barrels

Is Crate & Barrel a good name for an upscale home furnishings store?

Does it bother you that Pottery Barn has no pottery for sale and that their stores look nothing like a barn?

In my experience, one of the most frustrating experiences one can have in business is to go through a naming exercise for a new product or service.

I worked on developing a new specialty store concept several years ago and during the search for its name, our CEO came into my office virtually every day to either throw out some idea he came up with the night before (“what if we call it ‘Cool Stuff’?”) or to get my reaction to some existing store name that baffled him (“what’s up with Banana Republic?”).

Of course the issue is that so often we become obsessed with the name, rather than focusing our attention on building a brand. A name without a relevant, differentiated and compelling set of experiences, delivered consistently, over time, risks becoming just a meaningless description.

Now, experts in branding will tell you that there are qualities that make for better names–things like being unique, memorable, easy to pronounce, evocative, supportive of your positioning and the like. And, I certainly recommend that you incorporate this advice into your naming process. By now it’s clear that BlackBerry was a better choice than sticking with the product’s original more literal name PocketLink.

So go spend some time on finding a “good” name. But spend far more time and effort on creating and executing a great brand.

And if you need some inspiration, go do a Google search on your Apple.

 

 

 

 

 

When the vehicle becomes the destination

If you read most marketing magazines, attend a typical industry conference or listen to professional service firms pitching their latest offering you hear mostly about tactics and techniques.

Whether we’re talking about social media, mobile apps, big data analytics, cross-channel integration–or whatever the buzz-phrase of the moment happens to be–there is a tendency to glom on to how something works and whether whatever is being sold can deliver ROI as a stand-alone investment.

Yet the reality is that your journey toward impactful customer-centricity, toward being truly channel agnostic, and ultimately delivering on the promise of a frictionless customer experience, isn’t merely about picking the right individual component pieces that move you closer to your vision.

This is not to say that individual investment decisions aren’t important or that one should completely ignore ROI calculations.

But the remarkable brands of tomorrow are likely to be run by leaders who understand where they need to get to and are committed to work through the ways to get there. They realize that their brand is an eco-system and creating it requires ruthless experimentation, making some bold investments, driving a culture that puts the customer first and aligning the organization and metrics against that end vision.

In an ever-changing and fast-moving world the vehicles we choose are likely to come and go.  When we hold too tightly to them we  risk losing sight of the destination.

Less bad, not yet good

Unless you are the #1 choice for your core customers, with staggeringly strong loyalty & advocacy ratings and nary a competitive threat on the horizon, you’re probably working to close performance gaps between you and the market leaders.

But here’s a potentially big problem. There’s a pretty good chance you are working to become less bad. But don’t confuse that with actually being good.

I worked at one major retailer where we analyzed a mountain of consumer research, identified key drivers of market performance and rated ourselves against our “best in class” competitors. On a scale of 1 – 10–across key purchase dimensions–we had lots of “5′s” and “6′s” whereas the market leaders had primarily “8′s” and “9′s.”

At a meeting of our top executives our recently anointed leader breathlessly announced, with considerable fanfare, that we would drive all our efforts (all of them!) to close the gaps versus our targeted competition. He was confident that with the right focus and intense commitment we could quickly improve our scores to “7′s” across the board.

In other words, we would still suck. Just not quite as much as before.

Inspiring.

He didn’t last long.

In my experience, way too much time, energy and money is spent in search of mediocrity.

And even on the rare occasions that a company is successful in closing the identified gaps, by the time implementation occurs, consumer expectations and/or competitive performance has shifted. The cycle begins anew. And you’re still #2. Or #3. Or worse.

Compelling, customer-centric growth strategies aren’t about shoring up your weaknesses. They are about being remarkably relevant and differentiated on the key dimensions of current and future customer loyalty and advocacy.

If you have major gaps to address, clearly you have to pass through the chasm of mediocrity to get closer to the other side.

But don’t kid yourself that you don’t have more work to do. Ultimately a “less bad” strategy is never a good idea.

Built for me (Part 2): Treat different customers differently

In my last post, I suggested that the most powerful brands elicit the feeling from their core customers that the business was designed around their unique needs and wants. That is was built for them.

This idea is a core tenet of strategic business model design. But it extends to tactical execution as well.

I’m hardly the first person to espouse the “treat different customers differently” mantra, but embracing it is essential to putting “built for me” into practice day in and day out.

Built for me can extend to how you deliver your customer experience. One size fits all approaches rarely yield superior customer service marks. When you don’t pay attention to–and act upon–my unique preferences, I’m less and less likely to return.

Know me, show me you know me and show me you value me.

Built for me should be a driving force behind just about any brands marketing strategy. More and more, mass promotion fails to move the dial or gives the illusion of prosperity when all you are doing is chasing sales with no potential to be profitable–or chasing customers with no potential for loyalty.

Leverage analytics and insight to deliver a progressively more personalized set of messages, offers and experiences.

There is no question that pursuing a built for me strategy introduces cost and complexity. But more and often than not, failure to embrace this path eventually leads to middling performance and consumers who are more than happy to take their business elsewhere.

 

Built for me

We’ve all been there.

We walk into a new store, check out a just opened restaurant, surf a recently discovered website or perhaps slip into the front seat of that new model car and instantly it hits us: whoever designed this must have had me in mind.

The overall feel, the tiniest details, the careful editing, all seem built around our particular wants and needs. We can’t wait to come back and there is a pretty good chance we’re eager to tell all our friends about our new-found love.

Contrast that experience with the brands we engage with infrequently, or try once, never to return. In many cases–as a point in strategy–that’s not only fine, it’s desirable. It’s not supposed to be for us. Walmart is not trying to get the Saks customer. And vice versa.

But if you aren’t winning with the consumer segments your brand is supposed to be for, than clearly you’ve got work to do.

More and more, building deep engagement, loyalty and “remarkability” in a world of constant connection, ever-expanding choices and a blitzkrieg of marketing communications, demands that you become the signal amidst the noise.

Increasingly retail is shifting toward  ”Me-tail.”

If your core customer segments don’t resonate with a “built for me” notion,  you need to get at the root cause. And you need to get busy.

 

 

Consumers and producers

At any given time we are likely one or the other.

As consumers we read what somebody else wrote, purchase what someone else made, ponder ideas someone else created, observe problems we hope someone else will fix.

Going to a movie, listening to music, attending a sports event, relentlessly checking Facebook or keeping abreast of the latest scores on ESPN are all about taking in content generated by someone else.

Being a consumer is typically passive and enjoyable. Little is required of us.  And it’s almost always undeniably safe.  I might feel a bit guilty about spending my Sunday afternoon watching golf on TV but hey, no harm, no foul.

As producers we are doing the work, writing the blog post, making that new product, bringing our art to the world, challenging the status quo, being the change we wish to see in the world. But as Seth reminds us, this might not work.

By its very nature, producing takes more energy, more focus, more grit and is riskier than mere consumption. Producing something with the potential to be truly meaningful and remarkable is more challenging and riskier still.

Of course we are all consumers and producers. There is no such thing a pure consumer or a 100% producer. On any given day, we will spend our waking hours engaged doing some of both. Life is a mixture of give and take.

So it’s not about being one or the other. And it’s not about labeling consumption as inherently bad and production as fundamentally virtuous.

But I do think it’s worth thinking about whether we’ve got the right mix.

And working to produce a better outcome.

 

I’m indebted to Reverend Aaron White of the First Unitarian Church of Dallas for his recent sermon that inspired this post.

Who cares?

Before you sit down to work on that business plan or send that tweet or gird yourself for the big sales pitch, maybe it’s worth spending a bit more time focused on one question: “who cares?”

Of course, one way to think about it is whether it’s the least bit important or relevant at all.  The world will probably be fine not seeing one more Facebook post along the lines of “so excited just got the cutest ballet flats ever!”  And frankly nobody really needs to see that Instagram of what you had for dinner.

More substantively, however, is taking the time to really zoom in on each word in the question.

First, getting real clarity on the “who.” Are you crystal clear on the customer(s) or audience(s) for your product or service?  Not just in some pithy, simplistic, high-level demographic view, but in a way that meaningfully differentiates the customer types whose attention you wish to command and whose specific wants or needs you intend to address in a compelling and unique manner.

Then it’s all about “cares.”

If you aren’t resolving a compromise I know I have–or addressing a want to need that I can connect with in powerful way–I’m not likely to listen in the first place.

But even if you get my attention for a moment, I won’t stay engaged if you I’m not inclined to care in the first place.

Squirrel!

Massively easy. Precisely wrong.

Most of the year turn on the TV, open your Inbox, wade through the Sunday paper and just about all you see are advertisements filled with store-wide sales and category-wide coupons and double points this and double points that.

During this Holiday season it’s even worse. More advertising. Promotions layered on top of promotions. Door busters. Early opening specials. And on and on.

It’s the retail industry’s equivalent of carpet bombing.

Why focus on best fit consumer segments? Why worry about reinforcing–or at least not denigrating–your brand positioning? Why fret about profitability? Let God–or the Finance department–sort it out after the fact.

The typical defense of this approach is that it works.

Really? Show me the data.

If your definition of “works” is market share, rather than building progressively deeper relationships with valuable customers, I will grant you that. If it’s about revenue, instead of profitability, okay you win.

But the real reason is that it is easy.

Developing actionable customer segmentation methods, building a permission asset, testing your way into progressively deeper personalization and increasingly differentiated and relevant value propositions takes time, involves risk and requires a financial investment.

Relying on mass, undifferentiated marketing is taking the easy way out. And for many, it will be the shortest way out of relevance and, ultimately, out of business.

Pick a lane

Funny how often it seems like keeping your options open seems like the least risky strategy.

The job seeker crafts an “I can do anything” resume designed to make her appealing to the widest range of potential employers.

A brand launches a low price guarantee, while still claiming to embrace a strategy focused on service and differentiation.

A retail CEO attempting a bold turn-around talks about making his brand more distinctive and relevant while also striving to become “everybody’s favorite store.”

Sometime you can have your cake and eat it too. Spiritually, the middle way can be the path to enlightenment. Black and white thinking can often get you into trouble.

But in a world of overwhelming data, endless choices and a sea of sameness, you had better choose. And choose wisely.

It’s far more risky to engage in the race to the bottom if you aren’t committed to being THE low-cost provider.

It’s far more risky to try to be a little of everything to everybody than something powerfully compelling and remarkably relevant to a tightly defined set of consumers.

We are all familiar with the driver who straddles the line, failing to commit to a lane.

But that’s just annoying.

For businesses, it’s death in the middle.

Pick a lane.

And then step on the gas.

 

 

 

Learning what you already know

Tonight I expect we will witness a pretty robust Presidential debate. Some prospective voters are likely to get a lot out of it.

But most won’t.

For the die-hard Republicans, just about everything that gets said will confirm that our President is a typical tax and spend liberal. He’s obviously an inept leader who, by the way, was probably born in Kenya. For them, Romney is clearly the sort of leader who will get tough on spending and restore America to its rightful place as THE leader of the free world.

For the dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, Romney will once again show that all he cares about is rich people. He’s the sort of guy who will say anything to get elected, and besides, his numbers simply don’t add up when it comes to his deficit reduction plan. President Obama, on the other hand, has gotten us back on the right track and he is the candidate who truly cares about ALL Americans.

My particular example is about politics, but my point is broader.

We watch Fox News or MSNBC because it supports the world view we already hold.

We read books to reinforce our preconceived notions.

We spend our time at work polishing a skill we already have.

We learn what we already know.

Don’t get me wrong; there is often benefit in practicing our craft and in deepening our knowledge. But if you are anything like me, you often invest your time at the margin in a fruitless quest for perfection or engaged in activity that is mostly about assuaging the ego or staying safely in your comfort zone.

I wonder what you would get if you spend a bit less time learning what you already know and just a bit more time challenging your conventional wisdom.

I wonder what the world might get.