YOU ASKED FOR IT “Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.” —Michael Scott January 23, 2014 DIFFERENTIATING GREATNESS BRAND OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY From my random collection of info sources, here are some highlights related to the brands of our times... • Great article about what makes a company distinctive on Harvard Business Review’s website. Stephen Shapiro uses financial services firm USAA—and its industry-leading 98% customer retention rate—as the example of how brands really need to to differentiate themselves. To achieve differentiating greatness the way USAA has, he says to consider the following: - Your differentiator must be difficult to replicate. - Your customers determine your differentiator. - You can’t catch your competition. - Cascade your differentiator to the lowest levels of your organization. • The Economic Times says it. I’ve said it before. And I’ll say it again. Don’t miss the mobile advertising train, because it’s about to leave the station. Analyst firm Gartner released forecasts yesterday showing that mobile advertising was expected to reach $18B in 2014...and grow to $41.9B by 2017. And which brands have been leading the charge in mobile advertising? Not sure who’s number one, but Dove, Vaseline, Hellmann’s and Slim-Fast (all Unilever brands) are expecting to spend TRIPLE the amount they spent last year., according to a Wall Street Journal article. • If you’re thinking about trying to “trick” the Google system and use links that go against search guidelines (like paying bloggers to name your site in their posts) think again. Expedia tried it recently, and Expedia quickly lost 25% of their search visibility. Ouch. SEO professionals beware! (Source: searchengineland.com) JIM HUEBNER [email protected]CELLULAR TELEPHONE 970-420-3382 Hmmm. Brought to you by popular demand of a client, my mom, and some folks I met at a church potluck From the remaining gray matter of Jim Huebner Information that will make you smile, groan or think... ...and I hear it’s great with imaginary cookies
Transcript
YOU ASKED FOR IT
“Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both.I want people to be afraid of how much
they love me.”
—Michael Scott
January 23, 2014DIFFERENTIATING GREATNESS
BRAND OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAYFrom my random collection of info sources, here are some highlights related to the brands of our times...
• Great article about what makes a company distinctive on Harvard Business Review’s website. Stephen Shapiro uses financial services firm USAA—and its industry-leading 98% customer retention rate—as the example of how brands really need to to differentiate themselves. To achieve differentiating greatness the way USAA has, he says to consider the following:
- Your differentiator must be difficult to replicate. - Your customers determine your differentiator. - You can’t catch your competition. - Cascade your differentiator to the lowest levels of your organization.
• The Economic Times says it. I’ve said it before. And I’ll say it again. Don’t miss the mobile advertising train, because it’s about to leave the station. Analyst firm Gartner released forecasts yesterday showing that mobile advertising was expected to reach $18B in 2014...and grow to $41.9B by 2017. And which brands have been leading the charge in mobile advertising? Not sure who’s number one, but Dove, Vaseline, Hellmann’s and Slim-Fast (all Unilever brands) are expecting to spend TRIPLE the amount they spent last year., according to a Wall Street Journal article.
• If you’re thinking about trying to “trick” the Google system and use links that go against search guidelines (like paying bloggers to name your site in their posts) think again. Expedia tried it recently, and Expedia quickly lost 25% of their search visibility. Ouch. SEO professionals beware! (Source: searchengineland.com)
JIM HUEBNERj i m h @ h u e b n e r p e t e r s e n . c o m
C E L L U L A RT E L E P H O N E970-420-3382
Hmmm.
Brought to you by popular demand of a client, my mom, and some folks I met at a church potluck
From the remaining gray matter of Jim Huebner
Information that will make you smile, groan or think...
...and on its way to the HuebnerPetersen blog...! PAGE2
I try to start most of my mornings on the elliptical machine watching CNBC. It’s my way of killing two birds with one stone—breaking a sweat and catching up on the brand and market news of the day.
A couple of weeks ago, the founder of Costco, James Sinegal, was a guest on Squawkbox. While the entire interview was quite interesting (you have to love his down-home, Warren Buffett-ish demeanor), one thing he said really made me think.
When asked how Costco is able to maintain their streak of success, he replied simply,
“We have to be nimble. In fact, it’s not just
retailers that have to be nimble—EVERY
business has tobe nimble.”
nim•ble \‘nim-bəl\able to move quickly, easily and lightly
What a great, three-word challenge for businesses of all types to consider every year...every week...even every day. I know for our company, services like SEM, SEO, geo-targeted PPC ads, mobile advertising, responsive design, social media and email marketing hardly existed (at least in their current forms) ten years ago. As they came onto the scene, we HAD to move quickly, easily and lightly...or we would not have survived.
So how about your company? Are you “nimble”? Here are some questions that might help you find the answer...
Are we able to move quickly?
• Is the information we need to make good decisions current, or is it stale and out-dated by the time it reaches the decision maker’s desk?
• If customers are desiring or demanding something new, are we able to provide it more quickly than our competitors? Why not? What will it take to change?
Are we able to move easily?
• When change needs to happen, does our staff fight it, or are they willing to make it happen painlessly?
• Do we have the resources available to make costly-but-necessary changes happen easily?
Are we able to move lightly?
• What can we do to make necessary changes without rocking the boat, causing as little disruption as possible to our daily operations?
• How can we improve our ability to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” when the inevitable change needs to occur?
The bottom line is this: Being nimble means a company culture centered around change and not the status quo. Does this describe YOUR company?
Jim Huebner is President of HuebnerPetersen Integrated Marketing.The firm was established in 1989 and specializes in making companies heroes to their distribution channels through strategic brand positioning, integrated marketing, and front lines marketing services. You can reach Jim at [email protected] or on LinkedIn. For “Hmmm” archives, CLICK HERE
