Finding The Courage To Make A Stand

Doing the right thing isn’t always the easy thing to do. In fact, it rarely is.

The majority of American businesses today only show a passing interest in understanding and pursuing ethnic marketing opportunities. In a recent survey conducted by Brand Central Station, 59% of the business executives we interviewed said they would rate their own company’s efforts in this area between “Poor” and “Okay.” Hardly a ringing endorsement.

“We simply do not target ethnic/minority clients,” explained one account manager for an advertising agency in the Midwest. “That is not typically a factor in seeking new business. However, if we would, we would be at a perceived disadvantage since we are a white, male-owned business, with no ethnic/minority employees …”

We doubt this point-of-view is unique. In fact, many white-owned business owners and managers are either confused or intimidated by the array of social, financial and business issues that arise when considering taking on a minority-owned business as a client or vendor, or advising clients on marketing issues related to ethnic markets.

So the answer, too often, is to ignore the issue and concentrate on white-owned businesses and the mass market, where the majority of spending and media is. As we’ve already pointed out elsewhere, though, this “head in the sand” strategy is doomed to failure given the changing demographics of the marketplace.

If part of your charge as a corporate leader is to position your company for growth and prosperity in the long term, you need to take the time and initiative to learn about the opportunities facing your business when it comes to opening your markets to non-white cultures domestically. Here are a few quick business facts that should get your attention:

Black households spend more than three times as much on small appliances and twice as much on perishables as do non-black households.

Almost 60% of black consumers feel that most ads “are designed only for white people.”

Black families with incomes of $30,000 or more spend about as much as white families who earn $50,000.

Hispanics spend an average of $91 per week per household on groceries (compared to $62/week/household for Anglos).

Hispanic consumers view and/or listen to more television and radio than any other segment of the US population.

An overwhelming majority of all ethnic groups in the US consider their local, native language (or bi-lingual) media to be their “primary” source of information that is of interest to them.

So, what do these statistics mean to the savvy corporate leader?

1) High precision message delivery is possible. – With a built-in pre-disposition to native-language media, the list of highly relevant media options in a given market is often cut down to just a handful.

2) Relevant content messages make a significant impact. – Ads designed for the market that speaks directly to them (not through a mass market filter) are seen as genuine and respectful. As a result, they get noticed and, most importantly, understood. Relevance is a major factor in the success or failure of any ethnic market campaign.

3) Lower threshold to dominant “share of mind”. – Simply put, there is less competition in ethnically-targeted media than there is in mass media. As a result, ads not only cost less, they tend to score with the market faster.

4) Higher ROI on media purchases. – Less competing clutter, more relevant messages and lower cost per ad means one thing: higher return on marketing investment. For no other reason than this, corporate owners and managers need to consider the possibilities of targeting select minority communities with relevant sales messages.

5) Brand loyalty opportunities easier to realize. – With less competition and, in theory, lower barriers to trial, brand loyalty should be easier to establish and maintain. Of course, it may require additional accommodation inside your organization to do that – but, again, we point to the ROI point made above (#4).

To take advantage of these opportunities, a corporate leader needs to be willing to take the time to learn, understand and explore the cultures of the people he/she intends to engage. Bringing people on staff with intimate knowledge of these markets is one way to do it, partnering with other firms (usually minority owned and operated) is another way.

This is not a short-term solution to fix lagging sales or to generate new income. It takes time and patience. Not only do marketing messages and products have to change to become more “culturally appropriate” – traditional mass market thinking has to change to allow the incremental benefits of investing in these markets to take hold and grow.

It’s not easy or fast. But then again, forming new relationships so they last a long time usually do.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, B2B Marketing, Ethnic Advertising, Minority Marketing, Client Management, Leadership, Creative Thinking, Culture, Cultural Diversity

(c) 2006, Brand Central Station - all rights reserved. To learn more about Brand Central Station and the opportunities to increase your company's potential, please check out our website.

The Problem With Silver Bullets

Why are solutions to problems called “Silver Bullets”?

I suspect it has something to do with the old, traditional legends that demons, giants and (after 1941’s The Wolf Man) werewolves could be killed by the shot of a single, silver bullet. In the 1930’s and 40’s, The Lone Ranger shot silver bullets at the bad guys and did good deeds for everyone else.

The fact that silver makes for bullets that are too light (and, therefore, inaccurate) is usually overlooked – although for the sake of this blog post, I think that fact may be all the more appropriate. You see, silver bullets rarely work the way they’re intended to.

And managers who try to use them are often looking for a new solution that doesn’t really exist.

Innovative technology, alone, won’t solve a business problem. Neither will a new work process. Or policy. Or client. Or manager.

No matter what the “silver bullet” is, it’s going to require marksmanship to hit its target – and that means leadership from management. Here are a few simple things to keep in mind the next time you get ready to take aim at a problem:

1) Make sure you have a clear assessment of the problem – this might take a little bit of work, but knowing the lay of the land, the nature of the problem and the various obstacles to success is vital to making sure your solution actually works. Be bold and honest in your assessment. Overlooking an embarrassing fact or issue because it makes you feel uncomfortable could unhorse you before your solution has a chance to work.

2) Scenario plan for the possible outcomes – this requires creativity on your part and your managers. Think through all of the possible outcomes and make sure you’ve got an action plan for those results you think would be most likely. Consider the “best case” scenarios as well as the “worst case” ones and identify what factors have to change to move from “worst” to “best.” Doing so helps you identify the key measurements you have to take to determine success. (see step #’s 6 and 7)

3) Get your team behind you – don’t do it alone. There is strength in numbers and we call that strength: “credibility.” Managers who try to undertake new initiatives alone are often seen as operating outside the rules and are too easily dismissed. It’s tough to make change stick when no one thinks anyone else will change.

4) Communicate clearly, effectively and frequently – it may be boring you to you, but you need to repeat your key messages over and over and over and over until everyone knows them by heart. Message burn-out in CEO’s is a leading cause of ineffective leadership. Remember, you are a communications vehicle – a medium, per se – and you need to make sure you reach everyone in your organization enough times to get your message into their head.

5) Keep the heat on – persistence pays off. Remember that it takes someone at least 21 days to change a habit – and in the workplace, because of weekends, holidays and several other competing factors, it often takes longer. Without the focus of corporate leadership on the change, change will not occur.

6) Measure your progress – you won’t succeed instituting change if you don’t have a vision of where you need to be to be successful. This is best done early on (see step #2), but if you didn’t scenario plan, then you better set some goals … like yesterday!

7) Celebrate your successes – make sure everyone knows when you’ve arrived at your destination. Nothing succeeds like success. And co-workers need to know they’ve done the job and benefit from the accomplishment.

Do it right and you’ll not only hit the target, you’ll develop a reputation for doing good deeds for people.

Hi-ho, Silver.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Branding, Brand, Leadership, Client Management, Innovation, Creative Thinking

(c) 2006, Brand Central Station - all rights reserved. To learn more about Brand Central Station and the opportunities to increase your company's potential, please check out our website.

There’s Value In Making SMART Decisions

Market research isn’t all about identifying customers. In fact, the better and more rounded the market research available to managers, the better the decisions that wind up being made in the C-Suite.

Timely market research can effect everything from the way you treat new customers to the way you work on building stronger relationships with existing ones. Martin Oetting, a leading consultant with Mementic Minds in Berlin, Germany explains:

“To me, market research always should be a double-sided coin. First object: learn, learn, learn. Second objective: use it for VIP treatment of specific customers. Include them in the process, make them see how valuable their input is and let them witness their input in action.”

“Again, it’s empowerment. That’s what will make them spread the word. In the end, research can also lead to amazing communications efforts.”

Simply put, brand value – the difference between selling on price alone and on the perception that your product is worth more than the competition – depends on your ability to set the customers’ expectations and then meet those expectations. The only way you can possibly know where you stand is to do the research and ask the questions.

In practical terms, though, owners and managers of companies often have to focus their time in just one or two key areas in order to have enough time to do what they do best (be it selling, production, research and development, whatever). If that’s the situation you’re facing, we suggest you consider taking the time required to create a SMART Report (Strategic MARket Touchpoint Report) and make it a shared responsibility among all of your managers and key employees.

Here’s how you do it:

1) Identify your strategic market touchpoints:

a. Identify your key, strategic priorities and how you’ll be able to tell when something happens that effects them;

b. Identify your key competitors and the products (or services) they provide that are your biggest threats;

c. Work with your financial advisors to establish a consistent method for measuring/monitoring client activity and profitability.

2) Set aside time for a one-time meeting with key staff and delegate the responsibility of providing their SMART Report - a one-page summary covering their part of each of these priority areas. Make the reports due the same time every week (once a week, daily, whatever) and make it clear that compliance is an expectation of their job performance.

3) Make time once a week to review the SMART Reports, write your thoughts and decisions right on the report and then provide this feedback to the person providing the report immediately.

4) Make time once a month to spend some time with customers and test the findings reported in the SMART Reports – then provide feedback to the key staff responsible for generating the report and discuss the findings.

This recommendation puts you, as the owner/manager of a business, in an important position – when reviewing and commenting on SMART Reports, you’re spending critical time working ON your business rather than IN it. The objective afforded to you by looking at these reports on a regular basis will allow you to work with your key staff to make better, more informed decisions based on fact rather than rash decisions based on individual opinion or short-sighted perspective.

Getting SMART can go a long way to help your business.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Branding, Market Research, Customer Relationships, Vendor Relationships, Employee Training, Sales Training, Informed Decision Making

(c) 2006, Brand Central Station - all rights reserved. To learn more about Brand Central Station and the opportunities to increase your company's potential, please check out our website.

Collaborative Management

There are some significant challenges facing management if the desire is to create a more open and collaborative work environment. In short, managers have to learn to listen more, talk less, follow through and step back. Not necessarily in that order.

But first, before actively “managing” co-workers in a way that fosters collaboration, managers have to come to terms with the basic necessity of collaboration in the first place. It’s a significant change in orientation for older managers who still recall the days of “command and control.” The top-down management styles of the 20th century were often patterned after traditional, military control structures – which made sense, actually. So many men of the 1940’s and 50’s had served in the military which was orderly and organized enough to beat facism, the same management premises were bound to work at home, too.

Well, not exactly.

Technology has a way of rendering old-line organizational thinking obsolete. And, by the 1990’s, that’s exactly what we were facing. Advancements like cell phones, e-mail, globalization and a dozen other events (for more on this, read The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman) pushed the conventions of “telling people what to do” and “doing what you were told to do” to the side.

The marketplace was (and still is) changing to quickly and competition is now getting deadly. A mix-up, delay or error can cost dearly. Employees need to be able to react to a dynamic situation. They had to be creative and interdependent – calling on (and relying on) each other when needed; operating on their own (autonomously) when appropriate.

This is scary stuff, but it’s the world in which we now live.

I compare this situation to breaking a horse. I used to do that when I was a teenager. One thing you learned about riding is that sometimes when the horse gets going faster, the less direct control you exert, the more control you have. Trust the horse.

Managers have to trust their employees to “do the right thing” in order for the enterprise to survive and thrive in the future. Rest assured, nervous manager, trust is not blind. We recognize that your trust in your co-workers is based on the principles of collaborative management we touched on in the first paragraph. Management is work, it always has been and always will be. But now we can re-define what a manager has to do to in the new, collaborative workspace.

I’ve tried to break this down into four simple steps for the aspiring manager:

1) Listen more – As a manager, you need to know and understand what motivates all the people who matter to your business. That means you need to spend time with and listening to employees, customers, vendors, shareholders, management colleagues, the industry, media and community. Listening isn’t an easy skill to master. It requires concentration. More importantly, it requires natural curiosity. Hint: Show you’re interested, it will make a difference.

2) Talk Less – Stop blathering on about how things used to be done. It doesn’t matter any more. The way things will be done in the future depends on who’s doing them and what they can bring to the table. It also depends on how well they understand the vision of success that you, as a manager, are responsible for maintaining in their head. Everything you say should tie back to this vision. If it doesn’t, don’t say it.

3) Follow Through – Walk your talk. I love that line. It says exactly what it means. If you’re talking about what needs to be done to be a success, then do it. And make sure all the people who matter to your business not only see you following through but feel the consequences when they don’t perform up to par. This is the ugly part of managing. Nail the dullards and slackers and your top performers will perform even harder not out of fear but out of pride.

4) Step Back – Following through might be ugly, but stepping back is tough. Let the workers work. Concentrate on making course corrections rather than wholesale changes. If someone isn’t doing something right, it’s because they aren’t clear on the vision and what they have to do to make it a reality. Listen to them. Speak with them. Help them succeed. Then step back again.

All of this may seem like pretty straight-forward, management-speak. But in the collaborative environment, it’s all that’s really required. If you’ve done a great job of picking the right people and coaching them, they’ll start to innovate and create. Your job then includes spotting the innovations and making sure they’re shared – celebrating the successes and learning from the failures.

Be careful in selecting the right people, giving them the tools and the vision to work with and then let them do the job. You’ll be surprised just how far you can go.

Other resources you might want to consider reading include:
The Paradigm of Open Collaboration (from the Communication Overtones blog)
Grasping the Collaborative Paradigm (from The Daily Dog)

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Branding, Collaboration, Partnership, Hawthorne Effect, Customer Relationships, Vendor Relations, Leadership, Culture

(c) 2006, Brand Central Station - all rights reserved. To learn more about Brand Central Station and the opportunities to increase your company's potential, please check out our website.

Sharing The Vision; Making Your Own Success

On our other blogs, we’ve been touching on the importance of having a corporate or brand “vision”, the process for developing it and realizing the successes that can come from internalizing it. But the most critical factor in making a “vision” valuable for a company is the way corporate leadership understands, supports and manifests it on a day-to-day basis.

The first thing a corporate leader needs to understand is that charisma alone won’t cut it when it comes to crafting a vision for the company. Your job is to lead, yes, but a vision must be shared to be understood. If your vision is “to be the largest widget maker in the United States” your team needs to understand what that means for them.

That’s not to say there isn’t a place for ego and charisma. There certainly is. And, many times, that’s all small and mid-sized companies (generally the most entrepreneurially-driven companies) have going for them. But the leader in the room must be patient and wait to make sure his lieutenants have a common and clear understanding of his vision.

As the leader, it is your job to make sure the vision is broad enough and grand enough. There is, in a distinctly American sense, something romantic about a grand vision for the future. And, to a degree, you want people caught up in the excitement of the vision.

But being swept away by the romance of the vision won’t be enough when the management team gets back to work and has to explain this grand plan to the rank and file employees, their customers and their vendors. It’s in the heat of this day-to-day battle where “support” has to become “commitment” on the part of the management team. There are two ways to ensure this happens:

1) During the visioning process, it’s extremely helpful to define the corporate vision of success in terms that each manager can understand. Rather than saying something vague like “we will delight our customers” – get each manager to explain what they’re team could do that would be “delightful” from the customer’s perspective. After a while, managers will start thinking tactically about the vision and identifying the first, small steps that can be taken when they get back to
work;

2) Once everyone is back to work, the corporate leader needs to turn up the heat and over-communicate with both his managers and they’re direct reports. Make a point to catch people doing the right thing. Celebrate the little successes. Relate the little things back to the bigger goal and reinforce the goal in the process.

It takes more than just a shared vision and a commitment to that vision to make it work for you in the future. Managers have to become manifestations of that future vision. Only then will their employees believe that the change (whatever is required) is inevitable.

Manifesting the corporate vision means that managers need to consider the corporate vision every time they make a decision related to running their area. Personnel performance appraisals, vendor contracts, customer records, etc, all need to be viewed through the lens offered by the corporate vision.

Only by complete and clear adoption of the corporate vision can the consistency required to create real (measurable) brand value be achieved.

Technorati Tags: Brand, Branding, Corporate Vision, Strategic Planning, Market Research