Being the one who makes your product, process, or service obsolete is the only way to prevent your competitor from doing so. Peter F. Drucker, THE DAILY DRUCKER Yes, I read THE DAILY DRUCKER: 366 DAYS of INSIGHTS and MOTIVATION for GETTING THE RIGHT THINGS DONE. Yes, I read it daily, highlight passages, and make notes […]
We’ve never been shy about recalling our earliest days as marketers working for Procter & Gamble. Our longtime readers know only too well the many proven principles, quality processes, and best practices that we espouse–and attribute to our P&G training, experiences, and successes. Though we haven’t been under their employ for well over forty years, we continue […]
Steel man — Argue against the best form of your strategy Steel manning your marketing strategy is a practice to help make your best strategic thinking even better. It is an effective way to pressure test your work before you launch it into the market to support your brand and business. It deals with strengthening […]
If you were to put your marketing on trial, would it be convicted of being dumb? While you might feel offended by the question and vigorously protest that your marketing is not dumb but, in fact, smart, we’d venture you are probably self-delusional. You are not objective. If you are so sure of your marketing, […]
Investment: Allocating money for the purpose, and with the expectation, of it generating a substantial future financial return. There’s a difference in opinion about whether marketing is a cost or an investment. Indeed, corporations treat it as a cost for accounting purposes and write it off as such for tax relief. However, to perceive marketing as […]
“Marketing” doesn’t function in the same role in the same way throughout business enterprises. In practice, it doesn’t even have the same meaning. What role does it play in your company? What does marketing mean to you? To me, marketing is about “creating brand loyalty,” the title of the first marketing book I wrote, with […]
“Masks are the best vaccine we have right now.” It was late February, in Bangkok, news of the creeping Corona Virus beginning to buzz around the city. In high-people-traffic places, like the BTS Skytrain stations and platforms, the government was already handing out free masks to passers-by. Along the crowded main street sidewalks, however, perhaps no more […]
Competition is vying to achieve target customer preference over similar products and services from rivals. The prize is to generate more significant sales, market share, and profit growth to sustain the business enterprise and create brand loyalty. It’s incredible that the word “competition” and the phrase “to be competitive” is frowned upon in more circles […]
But it is not true that I am self-made. Like everyone, to get to where I am, I stood on the shoulders of giants. My life was built on a foundation of parents, coaches, and teachers; of kind souls who lent couches or gym back rooms where I could sleep; of mentors who shared wisdom […]
I remember when funding for marketing research, including in-market testing, was classified as “non-working.” It meant that spending on it did not produce a sale. There was no immediate line-of-sight from marketing research directly to sales. Whereas, an ad, sales call, or promotion were expected to work in generating sales in the here and now. […]