From Surviving to Thriving:Sharpening your Instincts in a Digital Age
Inspiring people. Lifting capabilities. Growing organisations.
From Surviving to Thriving:Sharpening your Instincts in a Digital Age
Presented at the Marketing Academy Lecture
21st August 2014
What do we do at Brand Learning?
Lifting the capabilities of people and organisations to drive growth by creating better value for their customers
Instincts – key to our survival
Instincts de-risk situations
Fused with feelings they power intuition
They have influenced our marketing decisions for decades
Instinct Feeling Intuition
Marketers tap into audience’s instincts for maximum impact
Such as Hope Soap driving a greater chance of survival itself
Watch the video on the next slide...
But even informed intuition isn’t enough
Instincts draw on our experiences
Historic data helps shape them over time
But the world has changed dramatically…And so must we
Instinct Historic Data Informed Intuition
Our instincts and
intuition help us
de-risk life but in
doing so we risk
missing the bigger
picture
Don’t miss the bigger picture
In times of such rapid and considerable change,
our new digital reality requires a different
approach.
We need to sharpen our instincts for the
Digital Age
The past is less able to prepare us for the future
1. Re-awaken our inner ‘Hunter
Gatherer’
Organisations are facing a stark new reality
Conversations with our clients across the globe, reveal two types of reaction to digital disruption
Those who are actively concerned by disruption and are dramatically altering the way they do business (before someone else does it to them)
Those who look for signs that things are still the same and underplay the situation potentially missing the digital opportunity
In both camps instincts play a role, an instinct for pure survival vs. instinct for new rewards which could power you to success
We consider this ‘Marketing in a Digital Age’, rather than ‘digital marketing’It creates the opportunity to look at our tools of old and review them through a digital lens…
What does“Sustainable competitive advantage”
mean today?
Threat of new entrantsBarriers to entry• Economics of scale• Product differentiation• Capital requirements• Switching cost to buyers• Access to distribution channels• Other cost advantages• Government policiesIncumbents; defence of market share Industry growth rate
Rivalry among existing firms
Number of competitors (concentration)Relative size of competitors (balance)Industry growth rateFixed costs vs. variable costsProduct differentiationCapacity augmented in large incrementsBuyers’ switching costsDiversity of competitorsExit barriersStrategic stakes
Determinants of buyer power
Number of buyers relative to sellersProduct differentiationSwitching costs to use other productBuyer’s profit marginsBuyers’ use of multiple sourcesBuyers’ threat of backward integrationImportance of product to the buyerBuyer’s volumeThreat of substitute products
Relative price of substituteRelative quality of substituteSwitching costs to buyers
Determinant of supplier power
Supplier concentrationAvailability of substitute inputsImportance of suppliers’ input to buyerSuppliers’ of industry to suppliersBuyers’ switching cost to other inputSuppliers’ threat of forward integrationBuyers’ threat of backward integration
In a world where a competitive advantage often evaporates in less than a year, companies can’t afford to spend months at a time crafting a single long-term strategy.
To stay ahead, they need to constantly start new strategic initiatives, building and exploiting many transient competitive advantages at once.
Should we be looking for“Transient Competitive Advantage”
instead?
Launch
Returns
Ramp up Exploit Recon-figure
Disengage
Nike move from a sports apparel business to a sports and software one, entering and exiting segments when the timing is right
So, who is seeking out transient competitive advantage?
Even new-to-the-world brands such as Uber are already evolving their seemingly winning formula
“We’re 1% done”
What does a transient competitive advantage company sound like?
2. Rewrite the laws of attraction…
We’re genetically programmed to be attracted to those who feel familiar or similar to ourselves. Similar is safe.
We live in a world of
AlgorithmsNetworks
Predictive Models
Effectively placing us in virtual ‘swim lanes’ of experiences
Yet behind many of these tech companies lies an interesting intersection of different skill sets
Different skillsets bring breakthroughs
Different partners bring different perspectives
The same inputs generate the same outputs
Find new business partners for new outputs
Become attracted to different people
Instinct Different Partners New laws of Attraction
3. From Retrospective
Intuition to Forecasted Judgement
“In God we trust; all others must bring data”W Edward Deming
Use ‘now’ data to predict the future vs. interpret the past
The signposts to
tomorrow are all around
us
We just need to know
where to look for them
And keep an open mind
so we can find them
Use the data you already have within your business and wider partner networks – the clues are there
Use what you already have
Use data to forecast where the ‘puck’ will be for your business
"A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” Wayne Gretzky
4. From Fight or
Flight to Constructive
Curiosity
How do you respond to the ‘new’?
“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies”
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
Douglas Adams, Author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
We need to become accustomed to dealing with change
Disruption often leads to a drop in performance.
We need to become better equipped at
managing the change.
Move to the new status quo faster and leverage
the new transient competitive advantage.
Be constructively curious.Overcome any concern of the new to reveal the opportunity
Haptic feedback used to
train surgeons & deliver
surgeries ‘remotely’ in
future
Smart cloth used to tell
airlines how their
passengers are feeling
Interested in hearing more about the 4 sharpened instincts?
We offer interactive workshops on
‘Sharpening your Instincts for the Digital Age’
which can be customised to individual brands
and businesses.
Please email [email protected] or
follow us on Twitter @brandlearning if you
would like to hear more.
Thank you.
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