With each passing day, it seems as if the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and while our economy expands, the divide between rich and poor gets wider and wider. Sound like an exaggeration? Perhaps not. Read Neil Irwin’s article in this past weekend’s NY Times, “The Benefits of Economic Expansions Are Increasingly Going to the Richest Americans”. Irwin cites data compiled by Pavlina R. Tcherneva, an economist at Bard College to prove this disturbing trend, although none of this should be a surprise.

Two charts in the article tell the story well. The first (below) shows the share of income growth received by the top 10 percent and bottom 90 percent of earners during periods of economic expansion.

I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, began my work career in the 1970’s and reached a modicum of business success in the 1980’s and 1990’s. My father was a doctor. We went on family vacations when I was little. I went to good schools and ultimately raised a family and owned my own business. I wanted for nothing. Life was and still is good. As a child and teen growing up in inner city Detroit, it always seemed like the auto factories were humming, the shops were full and growth in prosperity, while not perfect, was being shared.

According to I.R.S. data, I’ve been among the 10% who’ve benefited from expansions for many years. Yet, it doesn’t take much other than a look at the daily papers or a walk around any American city to see that something doesn’t seem quite right. Shoppers seem well-heeled, coiffed and comfortable among my top tier peers. But why, I wonder, when I walk into Home Depot, Walmart or the local supermarket, I rarely see exuberant shoppers from lower and middle classes? You may think it’s the stores I shop in only cater to my types but I travel and like to walk around and check in on the retail scene to get a flavor of the local zeitgeist.

The second chart from the article (below) shows the share of income gains during expansionary periods that went to the top 1 percent versus bottom 99 percent. The trend in wealth gains becomes even more striking.

 Before I saw these charts. I always thought things seemed to change for the worse in the 1980’s. That was when the idea of “trickle down economics” came into vogue and was put into practice. The idea was that if we cut taxes for the well-off, the additional amount they gain will “trickle down” to the middle and lower classes. But I always wondered how that could be. After all, I could only buy one car every few years, one boat, one house, etc., nothing like what hundreds, thousands or millions of people making less than me could do if they had the money. So how could the benefits that I and my fellow 10 percenters (alas, I’ve never made it into the top 1%) really make a difference in the prosperity of all. The answer as we can see from the data is that they couldn’t and haven’t.

Political forces on the right are quick to criticize programs that provide targeted job training, assistance to inner city residents and businesses, raising the minimum wage or any program that puts more money toward raising the lower class and taking away from the wealthy. Their answer is always to just lower taxes as the benefits will trick down for all. It’s been nearly 35 years since we’ve been practicing “trickle down” and we haven’t seen it trickle anywhere yet except to the top. In case you’ve forgotten Einstein’s oft quoted definition of insanity, it seems to fit here: “Insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.”

 Our Congress can’t seem to do anything constructive to pass sensible solutions and our President can’t persuade them to because one party thinks it’s its job is to undermine his term. And we go to the polls and re-elect the same clowns who can’t interpret the data, read the charts or come up with any compromise that might try something different to help. In 1811, a smart guy named Joseph de Maistre, wrote “Every country has the government it deserves.” We often think that quote was intended for our “exceptional” America. It was actually directed toward Russia, a country, then and now, of rich oligarchs separated from the lower classes by their profligate wealth. Sound familiar?

Tags: Americans, Assumptions, Bard College, Change, Congress, Corporate Myopia, Democrats, Demographics, divide between rich and poor, Governments, Income gains, Insanity, Joseph de Maistre, Leadership, Neil Irwin, New York Times, Outcomes, Pavlina R. Tcherneva, President Obama, Republicans, Situation Analysis, taxes, top 1 percent, top 10 percent, trickle down economics

There’s always a rush these days to get plans into action.  Action is what we value, just as we’re always looking for someone who “can hit the ground running”.  But what if they’re running in the wrong direction?  And how do you know in which direction to run?

The answer to that mistakenly comes in businesses doing what they’ve always been doing and whenever possible just running faster.  In the accelerated competitive environment of New York City, we’ve become accustomed to stores, restaurants, professional services and even hospitals suddenly disappearing.  These businesses failed even though they worked harder and ran faster than anyone around them.  Why did they fail?

Most likely, they never asked their customers whether the direction they were going, the products and services they were offering or the benefits they perceived internally met customer needs.  It’s the rare manager or entrepreneur who can intuit what the market is looking for.  Otherwise, there would be a lot more people like Steve Jobs around.  Businesses have to get feedback from their customers and understand how to match their offerings with what customers are seeking.

Not surprisingly, customers often see product plusses and minuses in completely different terms than the companies selling them.  The best advertising campaign in the world won’t convince customers that they should be seeking something different.  We’re just not in that linear world of the 1950s and 60s when we could be told what detergents make our clothing cleaner and then march in lockstep to the store to buy them.

Of course, businesses don’t always listen to their customers because internal beliefs are so strong as to refuse to change their strategy to meet customer needs.  Here are three examples to consider:

1. Several years ago, we were asked by the Chilean Pisco industry to provide a strategy that would open up the U.S. market for them.  If you don’t know Pisco, it’s an eau de vie, somewhat like a refined grappa, that’s made in Chile and Peru.  Our research found that bartenders believed it made most vodka-based cocktails more interesting and one of our key strategic recommendations (futureshiftpisco.com) was to unleash the creativity of bartenders with a series of tactical programs that would challenge them to develop great Pisco-based cocktails that their customers would love. But Chile is a country where perfection in planning is highly valued and established.  That works when building bridges, tunnels and skyscrapers, of which you’ll see many in Santiago these days but not when variable decisions are involved as with bartenders and their customers.  The Chilean Pisco industry decided to design several “perfect cocktails” that they could then promote in the U.S.  The result?  Peruvian producers who gained a better understanding of the U.S. bartender now dominate the market.  There’s still time for Chile to adapt as Pisco still is not well known in the U.S.   They simply have to acknowledge that their customers have more power than they do.  Easy, right? 
2. While we’re on Chile, let’s move to technology.  This time the Chilean technology industry told us they wanted to sell their growing tech industry to U.S. companies.  Chile had already achieved tremendous success in establishing itself as a successful place to locate an offshore tech center.  Now, they wanted to have a presence inside the U.S. to provide SaaS and enterprise integration products. Again, we spoke to prospective customers for these talented Chilean companies and were told that if they could establish partnerships with Chilean companies in Latin America, a piece of their U.S. business would likely follow.  (FutureshiftChileIT.com)In other words, help us in your territory and then we’ll reward you in ours.  U.S. companies wanted to understand the Chilean miracle and how it had become an export powerhouse. But just as with Pisco, the forces that worked internally in Chile were too strong to persuade them to adopt a market-oriented strategy in the U.S.  Six Chilean IT companies came to the U.S. trying to sell their services based on low prices.  But why go to a company thousands of miles just for low prices when that can be found down the road?  Today, there is only a small amount of programming work going to Chilean companies, as talented as they are. 
3. Most recently, we conducted a research and strategy project for the Maine lobster industry.  Following 200+ interviews, there were a number of findings in that report that showed how Maine lobster possesses attributes to restaurant and hotel chefs that were not being considered within the industry.  There is ample opportunity for the Maine industry to differentiate its brand from all competitors.  However, lobstering is a traditional industry and change does not come easily.  Like the two Chilean examples, internal beliefs in Maine are strong.  Most lobstermen are focused on their first transaction with a dealer when they bring their catch to the dock.  The needs of restaurant and hotel chefs can be perceived as a distant concept and there is little patience for the time it takes to raise the foodservice market’s demand.  The local dealer and summer tourist who loves to sit at the water’s edge, even though they both pay rock bottom price, is more concrete.  It’s been that way for more than a hundred years so change, despite market feedback, isn’t easy.  There’s cause to remain optimistic but it remains to be seen whether Maine’s lobster industry adapts.

In each of the above cases, the right strategy began with listening to customers.  That helped set a direction for the industry to go.  But at that point, industry members often put up obstacles to change.  After all, it’s far more difficult to do something new than the things you’ve been doing for dozens of years, even though they may not be working.

FutureShift develops brands and rebranding programs by understanding how customer decisions can increase engagement and loyalty.

Tags: Action, Advertising, bartenders, Change, chefs, Chile, cocktails, Corporate Myopia, Creativity, Customers, Direction, futureshift, Information Technology, IT, Latin America, Leadership, lobstermen, Maine, Maine Lobster, Marketing, Mistakes, New York, Outcomes, Peru, Pisco, Positioning, SaaS, Situation Analysis, Steve Jobs, Strategy, Tactics, technology, Trade Associations, U.S. Marketplace, Winning

Business managers and their consultants often talk about strategy, yet they frequently misunderstand what strategy is, why it’s important, and how objectives, strategy, tactics and goals are related. The confusion seems to exist because our business culture values action.  “I’m looking for someone who hits the ground running,” is a common refrain from CEOs who believe action is what creates results.  But the real question is “what direction are they running?”  Action without direction is meaningless or even harmful to the potential success of a business.

It’s simple enough to say that “objectives are measurable, strategy is direction, and tactics are actions.”  Yet, the question still asked is: “How many strategies should we have?”  Of course, if strategy is direction, how many directions can you go at the same time?  No wonder we’ve become accustomed to business plans underperforming. Marketing departments and their agencies often don’t know what direction they’re going or they create separate strategies for each tactical execution. Consequently, tactical programs may have no clear direction or consistent messaging and the result is that they get lost in the competitive clutter.

Building a business is like crossing the ocean

A clear example of an objective, strategic options, and tactics may help clarify the confusion. Suppose, for example, we decide to sail a boat across the Atlantic Ocean. This isn’t something most of us will ever do but objectives, strategy, tactics, and goals as well as research, even management teams, become crystal clear when setting out to cross the ocean and they’re no different than they are in business.

For fantasy purposes, we can become part of the idle rich and plan to sail our boat from the Chesapeake Bay area to the mouth of the Mediterranean in late June.  Why not?  The Mediterranean is a nice place to spend the summer.  Since we’re in a hurry to get there in time for party season, we’ll set an objective of reaching the Mediterranean in 20 days.  So now, we’ve set an objective and it’s measurable.  We can break it down further to measure our progress along the way.  It’s about 3,800 miles in a straight line across, which means we’ll have to average about 190 miles every 24 hours.  That will require an average speed of 7 nautical knots per hour (a little more than 8 miles per hour).  That may sound slow but we’re dependent on the vagaries of the wind and weather conditions as we sail across.  More importantly, we now have a set of metrics by which we can measure our progress, a key component of objectives.

To take our fantasy voyage further, we’ll need a boat and considering our objective, we might want one that’s about 60 feet long, something like the one in the photo.  This boat is called a Swan 60 and is made by Nautor in Finland.  Nautor makes safe, fast and beautiful boats and we’ll pay a pretty penny for the privilege of owning one.  Fully equipped, we’re looking at around $3.5 million but hey, it’s only money!  The good news is that the Swan 60 has what’s called a hull speed of about 10 knots (approx. 11.5 mph).  Without going into a technical definition, hull speed is the approximate maximum speed a boat can go.  The exception to hull speed is when a boat surfs in high winds on top of the waves.  If we can get our Swan 60 surfing, we can probably sail at speeds well over 15 knots.  So averaging 7 knots across a 3,800 mile span of ocean does not seem out of the question.

Now we have our boat and you can think of it the same way as we might a business.  It has an owner (a wealthy one) who may or may not be “skipper” (no jokes please) or managing director.  We’ll need a navigator, who can be compared to a combination of a Chief Technical Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, and a Tactician, our Chief Operating Officer to keep us going at maximum speed.  Then we’ll need some specialists, people who excel in working in different areas of the boat and handling a 60-foot yacht’s large sails.  Also, we’ll need an experienced sailboat cook who knows how to keep a crew happy while being tossed around in large waves.  We’ll want experience all around as ocean sailing is not for novices.  In all, our team may total 14 people.  Our boat only sleeps seven but we’re sailing non-stop 24/7 so we’ll need enough people to manage the boat while others sleep.

Selecting a strategy

You can see by now that we’re building a small company that has an ambitious objective.  Now, it’s time to select a strategy, a direction we’ll take to reach the Mediterranean on time.  We have some difficult choices to make.  It’s time to do some research.

We’ll study historical weather patterns, learn the prevailing winds, ocean currents, note the islands or hazards we might see along the way and course taken by other boats making the same crossing.  We learn that there are three optional courses across, each with its strengths and weaknesses.  We can devise a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for each of them.  The map below shows our choices.

• Course 1:  High-risk; High-reward

This is a strategy that has some clear risks but also enticing opportunities.  It takes us northeast along the U.S. and Canadian coastlines.  As the prevailing summer winds are out of the southwest, we’ll be sailing downwind, which should give us more speed.  We’ll also be assisted by the Gulfstream currents, which run along a path from the Bahamas northeast into the Atlantic at an average rate of 3 knots.  Then, if weather patterns hold, we should have good winds reaching down the European coast to get to our destination.  The risk is that we’ve added about 1,000 miles to our course, which means we need to average 9 knots, which is pretty aggressive.  Another risk, more precisely, a threat, is the possibility of sailing among drifting icebergs, once we’re off the Labrador coast.  Our research has told us that iceberg fields breaking off from the Greenland glaciers are common during the summer months.  That’s not a problem for us during good weather but it’s difficult to see an iceberg at night (memories of the Titanic).  So in the end, we have a potentially fast crossing to meet or exceed our objective but with some significant risks.

• Course 2:  Shortest Distance

This is a strategy that takes the shortest possible course using the curvature of the earth to shorten our path. It still has the potential risk of icebergs but it is more manageable if this becomes a problem.  We’ll gain less of a push from the Gulfstream and may find ourselves stuck with low or no wind for days in a mid-Atlantic high-pressure system, but it seems to strike a middle ground that still makes our objective within reach.

• Course 3:  Nice & Easy

This strategy is the most conservative.  It enables us to stop along the way in both Bermuda and the Azores, enabling us to replenish our supplies 700 miles east of the U.S. and about 1,000 miles west of the Mediterranean, with a gap of about 2,000 miles in between.  This course reduces the risk of being exposed to extreme weather along the way and allows us to spend a night or two in safe harbors along the way.  The risk is that high-pressure centers regularly sit in the middle of the ocean in late June and we could have to drift windless or move at low speeds for days.  This may make it difficult to reach our objective on time.  (BTW, this course appears shorter when viewed as flat surface but is longer when going around the diameter of a sphere.)

Our three strategies are not too different from what we may see in business, one that is high-risk, high-reward, one that is safe but potentially slow and one that is a middle ground or compromise between the two.  Which should we choose and what happens if we recognize that we’ve made a mistake?

Suppose we’re aggressive and have tremendous confidence in our abilities to manage the boat and navigate the seas. Past success might even blind us to some of our weaknesses.  When hubris takes over decision-making can be reckless (memories again of the Titanic…or hundreds of failed businesses).  Let’s assume we select the high-risk course that takes us far north but in doing so, we either find the hazards of icebergs to be too many, the seas to be too rough or even the winds to be less than we anticipated.  As a result, we decide to change strategies and move mid-course to another direction.  One look at the “course change” on the map shows the cost of making this correction, which is likely to make our objective much more difficult to reach.  The lesson, of course, is that selecting the wrong strategy and making a change has costs, which can be significant.

Tactics and goals

What about tactics and goals?  How do they factor in and how should we think of them.  During any period of time, we’re going to take specific actions to increase the speed of our boat.  We might put up different sails, larger or smaller, to better take advantage of changing winds. Or, we might want to be on a slightly more advantageous course to gain speed.  These are tactics but are not strategy, as they don’t alter our overall direction in reaching our objective.

Imagine a boat (or a business or someone who hits the ground running) that is all tactics but has no strategy.  It would always take every possible action to increase its speed regardless of the direction it is heading.  It might even go in circles and get nowhere very fast.  Tactics will not reach a productive objective without strategy to provide guidance.

Finally, where do goals fit in?  Goals are long-term milestones that you want to achieve.  (e.g. “I want to be a better sailor/manager/person.”).  Objectives are fixed and have specific requirements, which can be measured.  Objectives have structure; goals do not.  Goals can never be accomplished without objectives but objectives without goals won’t create the long-term change you desire.

Hopefully, that clarifies things.  Following college, I crewed on a large sailboat crossing the Atlantic.  Our owner chose “Course 3: Nice & Easy” and we paid a price for it.  It was slow, slow, slow – 27 days across.  But one of my strongest memories of that trip was listening to our marine radio and hearing reports of sailboats dodging icebergs in high winds only a thousand miles to our north.  It was an example of how the wrong strategy can have its costs, either going too slow or too fast, but it cemented the concepts in my mind forever.

At FutureShift, we provide research-based strategic services, but are often asked to run workshops that help clarify the confusion around objectives, strategy, tactics and goals.

Tags: Agencies, CEO, Change, Choosing the best strategy, Goals, High-reward, High-risk, Hubris, Leadership, Marketing, Metrics, Mistakes, Nautor, Objectives, Outcomes, Research, Situation Analysis, Strategy, Swan 60, SWOT, Tactics, Winning

FutureShift is a data-driven strategic and brand planning company, which uses its proprietary software to develop databases and customer feedback that enables direct communication to any user defined segment.  

If you’re like most people in business today, you’re probably talking about “Big Data” and what it can do for you.  One can hardly scan the business section of any newspaper or magazine without reading about it.

On April 15^th NY Times, columnist David Brooks wrote an excellent article about the limits of Big Data.  It’s titled, “What You’ll Do Next”. It was of interest to me because we offer large-scale, qualitative customer intelligence to our clients with the ability to instantaneously email people who share a distinct set of differences.

Let me explain because it’s really quite simple.

The purpose of research or recording data (quantitative or qualitative) is not to tell you what people have in common but what drives them apart.  If in your marketing, you find the common denominator between all your customers and then deliver them a message that addresses that commonality, you’re actually speaking to no one.  You haven’t addressed any particular interest that anybody has that might indicate that you understand their specific needs.

This is why we use (or build) your database to tell you how your customers are different from each other and how they want that difference to be addressed.  As Brooks points out, “People are discontinuous…the passing of time can produce gigantic and unpredictable changes in taste and behavior, changes that are poorly anticipated by looking at patterns of data on what just happened.” Nothing could be truer in marketing today.

One of the problems with Big Data is that it is essentially a rear-view mirror. It looks for past patterns of preferences based on purchases or contacts and assumes their patterns will tell you how they will act in the future.  Brooks quotes the Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier book, “Big Data,” noting “this movement asks us to move from causation to correlation.” But he writes, “Correlations are actually not all that clear.  A zillion things can correlate with each other depending on how you structure the data and what you compare.”

We’ve all probably experienced this when buying products ranging from books to vacuum cleaners from Amazon.  You’ve surely seen, their notations that people who bought these books, also bought these.  What they’re doing is simply taking your history of book buying, comparing it to others with similar lists and laying what those people bought next onto your page.  In other words, past history from people like you equals future purchase probability and with enough purchase data, there may be some accuracy in that prediction.  However, Amazon can’t know that last week I had no interest in buying books about terrorism and this week, sadly due to the events in Boston, I do.  Until I make my purchase, but then all kinds of things can intercede with my buying decision.  There are just too many potential disruptions to patterns of purchases to be good predictor of future behavior.

We’ve created a forward-looking mirror called DirectLink™ We ask your customers “what if” and “why” questions.  We capture their words and then quantify their ideas, perceptions and motivations.  Then, we give you the ability to instantly segment them and download the email addresses of any segment you select.

With DirectLink™, you can immediately see what differentiates your customers, the words they use to describe their differences and their emails so you can you respond specifically to their unmet needs.  Most purchases are motivated by either frustrations or the need to fulfill unmet needs.  Big Data doesn’t engage customers to determine their frustrations or needs.  DirectLink™ does. In doing so, you are directly engaging your customers to increase loyalty and ultimately, sales.

Learn how Futureshift would approach your marketing challenge or arrange for an online demo of DirectLink™  by calling 212-444-7192/7193 or email strategy@futureshiftnow.com

Tags: Amazon, Big Data, Change, Communities, Customer Intelligence, Database, David Brooks, DirectLink™, Governments, Kenneth Cukier, Marketing, Outcomes, Predictive Analytics, Strategy, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

No, Michael Porter is not dead.  Only the consulting firm that he co-founded in 1983 is gone.  Today, the global accounting giant, Deloitte, announced that it had completed its acquisition of Monitor, which had filed for bankruptcy this past November.  As reported in The Economist last November 14th, the once proud firm, “was able to compete with the likes of much bigger McKinsey, the Boston Consulting Group and Bain.”

No mention was made in the announcement of what role Porter might play in the newly formed division of Deloitte but he remains a highly regarded professor at the Harvard Business School.

Businesses come and go all the time and acquisitions are a daily occurrence.  What is of note here is that Monitor was founded by a man acclaimed as one of the great business strategists of the past century, and more importantly by his principles, best known as “Porter’s Five Forces”.  Under the guidance of the Five Forces framework and Porter’s fame, Monitor’s legions of consultants found millions of dollars of billable work among foreign governments, multi-national corporations and commodity boards.  That work began to dwindle in 2008 when Monitor had to seek a series of loans from its partners and venture capital firms in order to stay afloat.

In the November issue of Forbes, contributor and business author, Steve Denning, uses his rapier-like writing skills to tear apart both Monitor and the philosophical approach behind it.  In other words, he does some dancing on Porter’s grave.  While the article is now two months old, it makes for compelling reading if you were a believer or doubter of Porter’s framework.  Put me in the latter camp.

I first read Porter’s seminal article in the Harvard Business Review, “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy” in 1979. I was one year out of business school and a loan officer in a commercial bank.  My mantra was a phrase coined by another business guru, Peter Drucker, and known as “Managing by walking around.”  The idea is that by engaging with people both inside and outside an organization, managers can best understand how their companies, products and management styles are perceived, how they perform and what to do about them.  That’s a simple concept that one could explain in an elevator between the first and second floors.

It served me well then and has since as I’ve made the practice of engaging with both internal and external audiences to find the intersection between internal capabilities and external needs as the place to find the sweet spot for successful strategy.

Porter’s Five Forces, on the other hand, require a much longer elevator ride. The idea is that by managing a framework of five market forces, a company or industry could find sustainable competitive advantage.  “The state of competition in an industry depends on five basic forces…The collective strength of these forces determines the ultimate profit potential of an industry.”

I can’t say I fully understood it in 1979 and I can pretty much say the same today.  I looked at the model then as I do now and ask, “Why is the competition at the center?  Why not the customer?” Drucker taught that the only valid purpose of a business is to create a customer.  Yet, here was Porter, saying that it’s all about dominating the competition.

I had a memorable meeting at Monitor’s Cambridge headquarters in the early nineties.  At the time, I was doing some consulting for the government of Chile on export promotion, inbound investment and tourism development.  Monitor had built up a practice in consulting in these areas and proposed a partnership.  I felt this might add some prestige to the project.  At our meeting, one of their senior consultants explained how they would apply the discipline of the Five Forces to the project.  He drew lots of squares and circles on the board labeling them various types of competitive clusters and argued that it was winning against competing countries, not customer perceptions that would win the day for Chile.

I left there confused and unconvinced that the focus should be on “competitive clusters” rather than matching what Chile offered with customer needs.  If you spend your time focusing on rivalries, you’re losing time creating more innovation to meet growing market demands and before you know it, your competition will be your problem.  As the famous baseball pitcher, Satchel Paige, said,  “Don’t look back.  Something might be gaining on you.”

As Steve Denning notes about Monitor, “Its consultants were not people with deep experience in understanding what customers might want or what is involved in actually making things or delivering services in particular industries or how to innovate and create new value.”

Today, factors such as globalization, the Internet, and the growth of social media have heightened the importance of building strategy around customers.  Now that the world is flat, customers decide who wins in every industry and political arena.  As Denning ends his article, “Monitor was crushed by the single dominant force in today’s marketplace:  the customer.”

It’s hard to argue against the man who is one of the most cited scholars in economics and business and whose ideas are widely used by business and government leaders around the world.  But we are in a different time where the key is satisfying customer needs for innovation, whether they be in features, quality, service, or value.  Companies like Apple, Amazon, Fresh Direct, and Kayak are just a few of the examples of how our flattened world has given power to customers.

Our consulting approach is to put customers at the center and to understand their frustrations.  After all, a frustration is simply an unmet need.  Find the innovation to serve that need, erase the frustration and you’ll find a successful business — that’s a short speech in any elevator.

Tags: Amazon, Apple, Assumptions, Change, Chile, competitive clusters, Corporate Myopia, Customers, Deloitte, elevator speech, Five Forces, Forbes, Fresh Direct, futureshift, Governments, Harvard Business School, Kayak, Managing by walking around, Michael Porter, Monitor, Monitor Group, Outcomes, Peter Drucker, Porter's Five Forces, Positioning, Satchel Paige, Situation Analysis, Steve Denning, Strategy, Trade Associations, U.S. Marketplace, Winning

I recently ran my “Should we politicize tragedy post?” on a University of Michigan alumni discussion group on Linkedin.  There were a lot of interesting and reasonable comments but overall, I was stunned by the vitriol that came my way from people who believe we are one step away from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – and yes, the two were mentioned in the same angry post without any sense of irony.  There also were stern lectures from many who absolutely, positively knew what the framers of the constitution had in mind, even though that was 223 years ago.

A lot of these people would like to think that the authors of the second amendment were wise, prescient men looking far into the future and recognizing that there could be a need for armed insurrection against tyrannical (perhaps even Socialist or Fascist – take your pick) governments, that would require assault weapons for every man, woman and child in America. You may need to read that again to fully absorb that.  Those people are out there, sure of themselves and if you’re one of them reading my blog, you may wonder where you took the wrong turn.

What seems to make sense to me is that times then were not a lot different than they are now in one respect. People often did things for their own interests and to serve the needs of the present day or in the case of the second amendment to organize the U.S. military and defeat Indian tribes who were preventing us from acting like most colonial powers (defeating the natives, occupying lands and annexing territory, i.e. our history). I know that’s anathema to all the faux Constitutional scholars and volunteer armed guards out there who lectured me but to others, you might take a look at this essay written by my friend, Eric George, after doing some historical research.  As with the title of this post, it’s called, “Chief Little Turtle and the Second Amendment”.

“During the American Revolution there emerged a great Native American military leader.  His name was Michikinikwa in the Miami-Illinois language; the closest English translation was Little Turtle.  Born into the Miami Tribe in what is now Illinois, he came of age fighting French troops allied with the Continentals in the Northwest Territories (present day Ohio and Indiana).  In 1780, General Augustin La Balme, after a successful raid against the British, made the grievous mistake of burning down a Miami village.   Little Turtle tracked down La Balme and killed him, along with many of his men.  He was by now a War Chief; he proved invincible in battle and his stature rose dramatically over the ensuing decade.

After the British ceded the homelands of their Native American allies to the United States at the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Little Turtle responded by forming a new Confederation of his own.  He allied the Miami with the Shawnee under Blue Jacket and the Delaware under the command of Buckongahela.  Their resultant victories against U.S. militias (the Continental Army having been largely disbanded after the Revolution) helped to expand their Federation to include the Ottawa, Wyandotto and even some of the fearsome Iroquois.

After the Confederation defeated the 1400-man force of General Josiah Harmar in October of 1790, a thoroughly irate President George Washington had had enough He ordered General Arthur St. Clair to march against Little Turtle with a combined force of former army, conscripts, and militia numbering over 2,000 men, to begin by the summer of 1791.  The ill-equipped force did not leave Fort Washington (think Cincinnati) until October.  By early November, fewer than 1000 troops remained due to desertion and disease when they camped deep in Miami territory. The result was as predictable as it was disastrous.  Confederation warriors surrounded St. Clair’s loosely guarded encampment under the cover of darkness and slaughtered over 600 men (and probably another 200 camp followers) at first light. Nearly all survivors were wounded.   By comparison, the Colonies had lost 88 men at the Siege of Yorktown, the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.  St. Clair’s defeat stands as the worst loss of life by U.S. forces in all the Indian wars.  The casualty rate, in percentage terms, remains unsurpassed by any other conflict in any war to this day.  In a matter of hours, the Western Confederacy had annihilated one quarter of what remained of the U.S. Army. The staggering loss of life generated both public fear and outrage; George Washington fired St. Clair and the first-ever Congressional investigation into the Executive Branch was initiated.

It was no small wonder that scarcely a month later, on December 15, Congress adopted the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The Amendment read:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”

At the time, the right to bear arms was a given, as was the existence of now extinct militias.  Probably the most important words in the above Amendment, at least in 1791, were “well regulated” for Little Turtle had conclusively proved the new Nation utterly lacking in that department.

By word and deed, the Second Amendment was effective.  Five months later, in May 1792, Congress passed the Militia Act, setting minimum standards of readiness.  Among these were “a good musket, a sufficient bayonet, two spare flints, a knapsack, and a pouch containing at least 24 cartridges.”  In other words, just showing up was no longer acceptable.

In the summer of 1794, the Legion of the United States, well equipped and better trained, defeated the Western Confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near present day Toledo, Ohio.  Casualties were modest on both sides.  Little Turtle eventually became a peacemaker; he finally met with Washington, and later on with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  He died in 1812, and was honored with a full military funeral.

The young nation that finally defeated him would clearly be unrecognizable to him today.  It has grown to have dozens of cities with more inhabitants than most of the original States in their entirety.  Its economy has become the world’s largest, an innovation engine for the entire planet.  The venerable militias have long since been replaced by State and local police forces, and a professional military that rules the land, sea and air.  The United States has become the most powerful Nation on earth. Its citizens now have little to fear, except each other.  For the Second Amendment that was written in large part to defeat Little Turtle and his Confederacy has now enshrined the use of a different sort of musket by our populace.

Weapons with a destructive force that our Founders could not have envisioned are now ubiquitous in America. With roughly nine guns for every ten civilians, the U.S. dwarfs all other nations in per capita gun ownership, with the possible exception of Yemen.  To the astonishment of the developed world, we trade assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns freely in unregulated markets. Our firearm related death rate last year was forty times that of our Founders’ old adversary, Great Britain.  Mass killings have become commonplace.   In the world’s most wealthy and powerful country, parents are now afraid to send their children to school.  Chief Little Turtle won a far greater victory over the White Man than he ever imagined.”

It’s a nice story that our Constitutional authors sat around pondering the future and how we might need to overthrow our government but the reality is that we had just finished overthrowing Great Britain, were bogged down fighting Indian Wars and dealing with the spectre of other adventurous European military forces.  Rather than think about how these men saw the future, we might ask what motivated them in the days in which they lived.  So, thank you Eric for this essay.  I enjoyed it and hope it gets some comments but please, save the vitriol for other venues.

Tags: Americans, Assault Weapons, Assumptions, Change, Chief Little Turtle, Constitution, Corporate Myopia, Crazy people, Fascism, General Arthur St. Clair, General Augustin La Balme, General Josiah Harmar, George Washington, Governments, Individualists, John Adams, Leadership, Linkedin, Michikinikwa, Militia, Mistakes, Nazi Germany, Outcomes, Politicians, second amendment, Siege of Yorktown, Situation Analysis, Socialism, Soviet Union, Thomas Jefferson, Treaty of Paris, University of Michigan

After Friday’s mass killing of 20 young children, ages 6 and 7, which follows so many other mass killings in recent years, it’s time we all read and thought about the 2^nd amendment to the Contstitution upon which this nation is founded.  The amendment calls for:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Keep in mind that this amendment was written and adopted in 1791.  George Washington was still in his first term as president then.  It had only been eight years since the end of the American Revolution, although we were in the midst of the Northwest Indian War, taking place in what today, we know as the Industrial Midwest – Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.  Vermont had recently become the 14^th state.

To say the United States was a very different place than it is today is an enormous understatement.  The country’s population then was a little more than 4 million, nearly 1/80^th of what it is today.  The inventions of the American Industrial Revolution were still 40 years away.  The Colt 45 Revolver wasn’t invented and didn’t see use for another 80 years.  The firearm of choice in 1791 was a single-shot muzzle loaded rifle.

While we can certainly say that the framers of the Constitution were wise and prescient men, it would be fantasy to think that they envisioned a world where anyone on the street could buy an automatic or semi-automatic gun with incredible firepower and large self-loading magazines…and that’s where we are today.

We have an amendment to our Constitution that has been sanctified as a bedrock right for any responsible or irresponsible person regardless of their intent to carry a gun of virtually any type on the street, into schools or even places of worship.

Now in 1791, it’s likely that you could carry your rifle with you almost anywhere you went.  Of course, then you might need it to scare off an attacking bear, bring home dinner or keep your scalp if in the midst of a territorial Indian war.  There was also the need to assure the populace that a militia could be formed at any time to ward of an attacking nation or people.  Today, we have what is known as armed forces and police to handle that responsibility.

Hunting, of course, is an American tradition and virtually all hunters, the possible exception being former Vice President Cheney, are well-trained and responsible gun owners.

So why the need for weapons that can so easily kill dozens of people in only a few seconds?  Why is this right so sacrosanct in the United States today?  The chief lord and high protector of gun-of-any-type ownership rights is the National Rifle Association, popularly known as the NRA.  Their website is nra.org.  You should visit it so you’re familiar with the people that are protecting our Constitution and intimidating our politicians.

One section of the NRA website is called “NRA Opponents”.  Here’s who is listed there:

• Animal rights activists
• Anti-gun politicos
• Brady campaign (instituting background checks for gun ownership)
• Clinton gun ban (and more specifically, anyone with the name “Clinton”)
• International Action Network on Small Arms (a global movement against gun violence)
• Mayors Against Illegal Guns (with a photo of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to symbolize the arch-villain)
• Obama Administration (you can guess which Marxist-Leninist, Kenyan-born traitor is pictured there)

The NRA has 4.3 million members and revenues of $205 million.  Yet, with this relatively small membership and revenue base, it has intimidated politicians of both political parties into subservience and fear of even having a discussion about gun ownership rights and laws to regulate them.  It has become an efficient political machine and advocate of gun ownership.  Today, there are more guns in the U.S. than there are people.  One-third of them are hand-guns and it’s estimated that another 20% are semi-automatic firearms.

It’s often said that we get the government and country we deserve.  If we tune out of politics and get politicians that create laws we don’t like, then we shouldn’t elect them.  I can accept that.  But I can’t accept that anybody deserves to be shot or have their loved ones shot and killed and nor should any civilized society allow this.

The NRA and its defenders who want to forestall any discussion about guns have already been saying we shouldn’t politicize this tragedy.  That’s exactly what we should do.  Even today, the 31 senators who are strong supporters of no restrictions on gun ownership refused to go on any of the Sunday morning talk shows.  Not a single one of them had the courage to stand up for their heinous beliefs.  This tragedy and others like it should cause us to take a stand like so many tragedies of the past.  Which side of the fence are you are on?  Are you for semi-automatic gun ownership or against it?  Are you for background checks and waiting periods or against them?  Are you for mass murders or against them?  These are not difficult questions to answer.

As perverse as it may sound, I’ve come to believe that these acts of murder are what the NRA wants, that they are anarchists at heart and their depravity guides them to thinking more murders equals more guns equals more support for their other political goals.  Does that sound extreme?  Maybe, but it’s less extreme than holding up rights for any clown to own weapons that can used to kill young children who only want to enjoy their school day.

Of course, we can do the usual and express our views to our friends and families and we can grieve with the victims who have lost their loved ones.  However, nothing happens in this country unless the majority speaks up and pressures their elected officials, the cowards that most of them are, to act and to do so now, to stop equivocating, to end their “cautious calls for action” and to do something real to end these horrid acts now.  So write, call and email your Congressional representatives and your town officials today.  Don’t straddle the fence or advise caution.  Get angry, politicize and demand action today.

Tags: 1791, American Industrial Revolution, American Revolution, Americans, animal rights activists, anti-gun politicos, automatic weapons, Change, Clinton gun-ban, Communities, Corporate Myopia, Crazy people, Democrats, George Washinton, Governments, hunting, Individualists, International Action Network on Small Arms, Leadership, mass killing, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Media, Michael Bloomberg, Militia, Mistakes, National Rifle Association, Northwest Indian War, NRA, nra.org, Outcomes, Politicians, President Obama, second amendment, semi-automatic guns, U.S. Constitution

In the mad dash to build Facebook and LinkedIn communities, something has been missing.  Companies have been campaigning for as many Facebook “likes” as possible but now, they’re asking, “How do we know if our message is getting through?” and “Is there any way to tell whether (1) awareness is being raised; (2) brand loyalty is increasing; and, (3) social media is having an effect on sales?”

They’re good questions to ask and now there is a way to answer them.  With a simple link on your social media page, you can gather comments and get key strategic questions answered by your social media network.  With our DirectLink™ software, you can ask them questions about their understanding of your brand, unmet needs and the information they’d really like to have from you.  They can be open-ended questions that allow people to write as much as they want and then you can apply these three new tools:

1. See what they’re writing in real time – as they write it!

Now, you can actually monitor what your community is saying about you and how they’re answering your questions.  Take a look at the example below for one of our clients that is a wine producer.  The question asked is “Please describe the qualities that you find in our wines that differentiate them from other wines at any given price level.” With one click on the button on the upper right that says “Get Verbatims”, everything written in answer to that question immediately appears.

And if you want to see all of the text responses quantified, you simply close the verbatims screen and bar charts appear showing how all of the answers have been categorized.

In other words, we’re quantifying qualitative information – conversational text – and enabling you to see the actual words behind the data.  It’s like listening in to hundreds of conversations about all the questions you want answered about your brand.

2. See the key words they use while they’re using them.

When considering the key needs among your customers to address, it helps to know their top-of-mind thoughts.  Word clouds can provide a quick look at what any customer group is saying about your brand.  With one click on the “Word Cloud” button, you’ll see your word cloud develop before your eyes.

DirectLink™ automatically throws out the meaningless words such as articles, pronouns and other common words that might improperly skew the response.  Still, there will be words you’ll see in the word cloud that get through the screening process but don’t provide insights.  DirectLink™ enables you to quickly toss out those words.  For answers to the same question as above, “Please describe the qualities that you find in our wines that differentiate them from other wines at any given price level.”, we tossed out seven additional words to get the picture above.  It’s as easy as clicking on the words you don’t want and the word cloud quickly reforms.

With this feature, you see the top-of-mind thoughts your customers have and the descriptive words they use.  Every product or service creates its own lexicon of words that both the trade and consumers use.  Now, you can see what those are and use them to talk to your customers.

3. Segment your customers instantly and respond immediately.

A common reaction to seeing what people say about you is to think “if only I could talk directly to these people about their beliefs.  Then, I could convince them.” Now, you can!

To the same question above, we wondered if the media that follows the wine and spirits industry might have different topics on their minds.  So, we quickly selected only the media respondents, clicked on the Word Cloud button and this picture appeared: 

Whereas the top-of-mind words used by the larger audience were “food, fruit, price, friendly, oak, aging”, the media has prominently added “complex” and “smooth”.  If we were to speak about these wines to a journalist then, we might stress both the complexity and smoothness of the wines as being key factors that make them so good with food.  It’s this type of parsing that can enable you to tailor your response to any particular trade or consumer group based on factors that you define.

Now, let’s go a step further because DirectLink™ makes a seamless connection between survey responses and direct marketing.

Among the DirectLink™ features on the control panel, you’ll see that there is another button on the upper right that says “Get Emails”.  Clicking this button immediately downloads an email list of only those people who responded to the question or multiple-questions you selected.  You can send them an email using the words they’ve used in response to your question that is specific to their ideas, perceptions and beliefs.

Who can use these 3 features that come with DirectLink™?

• Brand marketers trying to understand what people think about their products.
• Sales managers who want to improve and tailor their sales pitches.
• CEO’s who want to test a new strategy with their customers.
• HR managers who want to assess employee morale or improve internal services.
• Trade association managers who are seeking ways to raise awareness and open doors for their members.
• Foreign trade development officers who want to better understand what makes their country attractive.
• Tourism departments that want to know what will motivate consumers to visit.
• PR and ad agency account executives who want to know what’s on their client’s customers’ minds so they can address them in marketing communications.
• University and college administrators that want to understand and respond to student or alumni views.
• Non-profit development directors seeking the keys to increased fund raising.
• Political campaign managers who need to understand what voters want.

The list goes on and on.  All of the above have used DirectLink™ in the past and now these new features make it even more effective and faster.  We can make your social media programs more effective and improve the ROI of research or direct marketing programs.  If you’d like to know how DirectLink™ can help you and see an online demo, let us know.

Tags: Assumptions, CALCAT©, Change, Consumers, Corporate Myopia, CRM, Customers, Database, Demographics, DirectLink™, Forward-Looking CRM, Future Performance, futureshift, Marketing, Multi-variable, Multi-variate, Outcomes, Past Performance, Relationships, Social Media, Strategy, Winning

It has been several days now that we watched the Vice Presidential debate and have been subjected to a discussion that’s more about whose demeanor and facial expressions have been better than about their policies.

Depending on from which side you see things, President Obama has either brought the economy back to a place where it can now recover or he’s brought us to a Leninist-Marxist precipice.  Governor Romney is either the biggest liar that has ever run for president or he is just the man we need to help America get back to its revolutionary roots.  It’s that extreme and it’s that myopic.  We’re losing sight of the big picture.

Yesterday, I attended the annual shareholders’ conference for The Baron Funds, a group of mutual funds led by Ron Baron who believes that it’s the quality of people who make great companies and that investing in them is a long-term bet on America.  The event is held each year at New York’s magnificent Lincoln Center. 4,000 shareholders attended.

During the morning, you get to listen to presentations from CEO’s of companies the funds have invested in.  Then at lunch, various entertainers perform in one of the many auditoriums at the Center.  Yesterday, the choices were British rock singer Joss Stone, Broadway star Kristin Chenowith, or jazz stylist Harry Connick Jr.  After returning from lunch, the senior analysts from each of the Baron Funds engages in a panel discussion about the past year’s performance and how they pick stocks.  When this ends, there’s a musical performance from a big name headliner.  In the past, it has been people like Rod Stewart, Bon Jovi, Elton John and others who you’d pay a lot of money to see elsewhere.  Yesterday, the headliner was Celine Dion – more on Celine later.

I don’t know if Ron Baron chose the CEO’s who made their morning presentations to make a point about the country’s economic stewardship.  I want to believe he did.  Here’s a brief encapsulation:

• David Rubenstein, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of The Carlyle Group showed a different set of values for private equity firms than we’ve seen during the past year from Governor Romney’s turn at Bain.  From its start in 1987, Carlyle now manages $160 billion in investments with the goal of supporting good companies that create jobs and prosper for their shareholders AND employees.  For all his success, Rubenstein exhibited an amazing self-deprecating sense of humor and stressed the importance of giving back to America.  He has put his money where his mouth is by joining Warren Buffet in giving his fortune away.  What came across more than anything is that good values build great companies.  By the way, he said he has no problem with the regulations imposed by Dodd-Frank, which some politicians want to remove.

• Steven Spinner, CEO of United Natural Foods was a little more meat and potatoes in his presentation…well actually, more tofu and bulghur… but he expressed a need to be more conscious about our environment and both the chemicals we put into our environment and our bodies.  The company is now the largest distributor in the U.S. and Canada of natural and organic foods and has become a $4.5 billion company with 65,000 sku’s and 23,000 customers.  Healthy foods raise our awareness of our environment and build successful businesses – quite a contrast to the right wing preaching that the government (and in particular, Michelle Obama) is trying to force feed us healthy foods we don’t like.

• Robert Katz, CEO of Vail Resorts showed how a sizable business ($1 billion +) dependent on nature can prosper when it focuses both on good environmental stewardship and helping people enjoy all the recreational possibilities that enables.  What’s interesting is that they don’t own the land their resorts sit on.  They lease it from the National Forest Service, and have to work with the Service to show they are deserving of both permits and leases – a great example of how government helps improve our lives, supports business and is worth the investment we all make in it.

• Frank Coyne, CEO of Verisk Analytics is all about Big Data.  This company dominates the insurance risk assessment business.  I have no idea of his political leanings (or most of the others for that matter) but he’s a former Marine who grew up in a lower middle class family from Scranton, PA.  There was not a trace of ego in his presentation.  He is clearly an American success story who rose from the middle – no trickle down there.

• Kevin Plank, Founder and CEO of Under Armour, a $2 billion company that began in his basement in 1996, told an amazing story of how his experience as a college football player took him on a search to find better performance athletic clothing.  He displayed optimism, competitiveness and personal charm in telling his success story.  There was not a hint of dismay in his approach to the future.

• Rich Barton, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Zillow, Inc. was the moderator of the analysts’ presentation so he wasn’t really focused on his or his company’s story.  However, he founded both online travel giant, Expedia, and Zillow, an online real estate search site.  He’s another American success story who displayed extraordinary optimism.

The last presentation of the day came from Ron Baron, CEO of Baron Capital Group.  Baron founded the funds in 1982.  Today his enormous success has made him a billionaire.  I’ve never met the man but in every conference I’ve attended, he always stresses his middle-class roots in New Jersey, his optimism about American business and his belief in America.  He doesn’t hesitate to mix patriotism into business.  As in past years, Broadway star Kelly O’Hara came out to sing America The Beautiful as everyone sang along.  This year, there was an additional treat of Kristin Chenowith singing the national anthem.  She raised the roof and 4,000 hearts with it.  (That girl has pipes!)

Baron gave his outlook on the economy, the stock market and reminded us why a long-term investment philosophy in good people who build great companies pays off .  He praised Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Ben Bernanke for his stewardship of the economy to a smattering of applause.  He showed how the stock market has climbed 60% since the days of doom and gloom four years ago to wild cheers.

Then, came the part that left me stunned.  He noted that we’re soon to have an election between President Barack Obama — maybe 20% of the audience applauded — and Mitt Romney to loud, enthusiastic applause that drowned out anything that had preceded it.  It left me wondering whether anybody had been paying attention all day.  The contrast to private equity investing with the Romney approach from David Rubenstein ‘s Carlyle Group couldn’t have been clearer.  Protection of our food sources and environment have helped businesses succeed, not fail due to over-bearing government regulation.  The economy never fell off the cliff.  Businesses and the stock market prospered and now they’re cheering for an uncertain change that promises to strip away a lot of the government support and regulation that has contributed to both success and fairness?  I don’t get it.

I grew up in a family that was firmly Democratic, although I believe I am more fiscally conservative than my parents.  While I live in New York, I continue to vote in Maine where I still own property.  There, like many Mainers, I’ve settled into a mode of independence, voting for moderate Republicans like Bill Cohen and Olympia Snowe, independents like Angus King and Democrats like George Mitchell.  The contrasts to me this year couldn’t be clearer.  While I’ve lost some of my love for President Obama, I think he provides a healthier direction for America.  We have serious problems to fix but I don’t believe those will come from cutting everything except defense and frankly, I have a problem with disingenuousness.  Neither party can claim sainthood in this regard but I saw Romney claim himself as “severely conservative”, heard his campaign manager say they could just take out the “etch a sketch” and remodel him once the Republican nomination was secure and now he’s transformed himself into a moderate.  It reminds me of that famous Lincoln quote:  “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

In the end, just like Ron Baron says and practices, it’s about people and their values.  Not only do good people build great companies but they also build great countries.  I left the conference a little dismayed at the shareholders’ reaction to the election but still optimistic about the long-term.  To that, I can thank Ron Baron for this annual event.

This brings me to Celine Dion.  I’m not a fan and never have been.  She’s too kitschy for me.  Yes, she’s talented and a professional song stylist who’s benefited from great writers but in one song, Kristin Chenowith blew her away.   After all the great rock stars I’ve seen at this event, I was surprised at her appearance.  “Las Vegas East”, Ron Baron called it.  It certainly was.  Her big band, violins, lots of costume changes and a self-aggrandizing video were all on display.  Like so many other successes — only in America.

I thought of staying for a few songs and then leaving but then I thought of my daughter.  She’s a fledgling comedy writer in LA and she loves Celine.  She’s dreamed of going to Las Vegas to see her and has even asked me to foot the bill for the $250 ticket.  You can imagine how far that went.  But as Celine came on, I texted her knowing that she would be excited.  It was only the texting banter between us that kept me there for the duration.

Here it is:

So the afternoon entertainment is Celine.

SHUT UP!

Here she is:

You are breaking my heart.

HOW IS IT THAT YOU GET TO SEE CELINE DION PERFORM AND I NEVER HAVE?

Tell me everything!  WHAT IS SHE WEARING?  How many costome changes?  How many times is she fake crying?  AHHHHH

Is she amazing????  OF COURSE SHE IS!!!!

I guess because I own $30K of Baron Funds.  I wish you were here.  She’s too sappy for me.  I don’t know how long I can last.

OMG omggggggg!!!  Just revel in it.

Oh, here come all the big hits!  “I’m your lady” oooh la la

OMGgggg!!!!

Imagine her an alien from a special planet where the wind is always billowing her hair and dresses!

A lot of eyebrow action and the motions.  WAIT!  We have violins!  It’s a costume change!

AHHHHHHHH.  WHAT IS THE NEW COSTUME?

This is so unfair.

We’re waiting with bated breath.  Maybe she went out to pee.

Slinky, black and silver.

It’s cabaret time.

She’s magnificent!

I’ll record Titanic if she goes there.

OH SHE WILL AND YOU  BETTER.

She tucks her 3 little ones into bed and there’s video to prove it.

Stop it.

I think I’m going to throw up.

Me too.

It’s “Beauty & The Beast” time.

Oh, I love that one.  This is so unfair, it hurts.

I feel your pain.

It’s another costume change.

What will it be?  There’s James Bond music.

Ughhhhhhhhh

No, she just went to pee.  She’s singing “Goldfinger.”

A medley of 007 songs.  She’s got her fist in the air.  The audience is in a state of rapture.

Now, she’s patting her hip and swaying.  This Québécois lady knows how to have a good time.

She sure does.

This all sounds glorious!

A little piece of heaven.

I’ve run out of responses.

I’m just really jealous.

It’s “All by myself” now.  I know how she feels.  Carla left to go to a meeting.  So sad.

Double fist pounding on her chest.  Serious stuff.

Now, she’s singing “Spinning Wheel”.  Am I back in college?

Costume change!

This is amazing.  Never forget how amazing she is.

Elvis is in the building!

Here we go:  I’m sinking.  There’s an iceberg and the ship is going down.  I’m recording this.

It’s over.  I’m exhausted.

Holy crap!  Me too.

The Baron Funds Annual Conference is one of my favorite days of the year.  I am reminded of why I am in business and what I tell my clients through my consulting business.  I’m entertained in this incredible city and my belief in America is always restored.  This year, it also provided some fun with my daughter.  Is there anything better?

Tags: 007, America the beautiful, American success stories, Americans, Assumptions, Baron Funds, Beauty & The Beast, Ben Bernanke, Big Data, Bill Cohen, Bon Jovi, Broadway, Celine, Celine Dion, CEO, Change, Chile, Corporate Myopia, Crazy people, Customers, David Rubenstein, Democrats, Democrats and business, Dodd-Frank, Dreams, Elton John, Elvis, Etch a Sketch, Events, Expedia, Federal Reserve, Frank Coyne, futureshift, George Mitchell, Goldfinger, Governments, Harry Connick Jr., James Bond, Joss Stone, Kelly O'Hara, Kevin Plank, Kitsch, Kristin Chenowith, Las Vegas, Las Vegas East, Leadership, Lincoln, Lincoln Center, Maine, Mainers, Marine, Marketing, Michelle Obama, Mistakes, Mitt Romney, National anthem, National Forest Service, Olympia Snowe, Organic foods, Outcomes, PA, Paul Ryan, President Obama, Quebecois, Regulation, Republicans, Republicans and business, Rich Barton, Robert Katz, Rod Stewart, Ron Baron, Scranton, Shareholders, Situation Analysis, Spinning Wheel, Steven Spinner, Stock Market, The Carlyle Group, Titanic, U.S. Marketplace, Under Armour, United Natural Foods, Vail, Vail Resorts, Verisk Analytics, Vice Presidential Debate, Winning, Zillow

It has become a standard part of every organization’s marketing plan to have a database of customer emails.  Millions of companies and institutions are sending out email newsletters, promotions and solicitations everyday, both for consumers and the trade.  You’re probably receiving many of them yourself and if you’re anything like me, you probably delete all but a few as soon as you see them land in your email box.  More often than not, these are emails from companies you know or may even have requested information from.  The others end up in your junk folder.

About 20% of these emails get opened but a much lower number are actually read — click through rates are about 5%.  Another way of saying that is 80% of these emails are never opened and 95% are never read.  When you think of it that way, you have to ask how you can improve?

At Futureshift, we have a different approach on how to make databases work harder and we put them to work for our clients.  Here are 10 tips for improving your database performance:

1.  Have a database strategy.

Think of it this way:  Would you advertise without an objective, creative strategy and message?  Database marketing is no different.  What do you want your database to do for you?  Who do you want to reach?  What do you know about them that tells you what they want to hear from you?  Do they all want to hear the same thing or should you segment them by interest or need and address them accordingly?  Think these things through and write a strategy that keeps your database use focused, disciplined and integrates it with your other marketing programs.  Otherwise, say hello to junk folders.

2.  Think of your database as a community.

If you think about databases as numbers of files and demographic fields, you’re working with an outdated framework.  Imagine that you’re the mayor of a town and each member of your database is a resident.  They live in separate areas that may have demographic and psychographic markers but more importantly, they have different needs.  Some areas may want better schools, some more security or different zoning.  Databases are no different.  They can be grouped by needs and then you can address your database members with just the information that they’re looking for.

3.  Don’t buy.  Build!

You can build your database more quickly by buying names from list brokers.  You also can alienate a lot of potential customers and get labeled as spam.  It’s better to build one by one, if necessary, even if you’re starting at zero.  There are a number of techniques that can raise awareness of your company and you’ll add prospective customers who actually are interested in learning more.  For one of our clients, we began at zero several years ago and now have 8,000 members of their trade and nearly 100,000 loyal consumers signed up.  Click-through and open rates are higher than industry averages and unsubscribes are lower.  The reason is that people want to be there.

4.  One size does not fit all

Perhaps the biggest mistake companies make with the information they send to their database members is that they send the same information to everyone.  That’s a fast way to increasing the number of unsubscribes.  People want information that pertains to their needs.  Email is similar to advertising in that you have only a few seconds to attract the reader’s attention.  It’s a quick trip to the delete key.  A singular approach, whether in e-newsletters, promotions or other announcements will speak to only one group.  Over the years, the amount of competition and market clutter has fragmented both trade and consumer markets.  You can think of it like cable TV.  We now have access to more than 1,000 channels with most focused on a specific area of programming to meet specific viewer needs (history, cooking, discovery, shopping, etc.) When programming doesn’t address needs, people change the channel…or they hit the delete key.

5. If you can only know one thing about your customers, know their frustrations.

A frustration is simply an unmet need.  If you can fulfill unmet needs, you’ll have a customer.  How do you learn what frustrates people about your product?  Ask.  Your first email to a prospective database member should be to ask questions about their frustrations and needs.  There are some easy ways to use either closed- or open-ended questions to do this.  Once you understand unmet needs, you’ll see that people can be moved into needs-based segments.  You’ll also learn that many of the demographic and psychographic markers you used to use are really not an accurate guide to predicting what customers and non-customers want to know.

6. Your job is to listen, not tell.

Most databases are used to broadcast information about companies and products, and the goal of most database acquisition programs is to build quantity rather than quality. The conventional wisdom goes that since conversion percentages run so low, you’ll need larger and larger databases so that very small number of customers will continue to grow.  But at the same time, you’re making yourself vulnerable to a competitor who is better at building database size than you and has more resources to offer incentives.  The old adage that it’s better to talk to people not at them is true with database marketing too.  Ask questions, find out what people need, and what they really want to hear from you.  We often ask “What is it about this product that companies tell you that is of no use to you?” and “What would you like to know that nobody has asked you in the past?”

7. Tell them what you heard.

Whether trade or consumer, the first question people ask is “What do other people like me think?”  B2B customers want to know how their peers are dealing with the same issues they have.  Consumers want to know how others, just like them, solved the same problems or used certain products.  This is why early chat rooms were immediately successful and led to the growth of social media.  After you ask your customers about their needs, report back to them on what you learned.  This says that you listened to them and that you have an understanding of who they are, how they are distinct and what they share with others like them.  It pays off.

8. Involvement = Loyalty

This is the payoff.  Build by asking, then listen, acknowledge and then ask again.  Stop giving a monologue to your customers and build a dialogue with them.  Do this enough and you’ll be able to get them to help you add qualified people to your database through friends and family or associates programs, join advisory boards or participate in regular feedback panels.  Over time, you can turn them into your brand ambassadors and expand your marketing reach.  Isn’t this the real goal of marketing?

Two other commonly misunderstood caveats need to be kept in mind:

9. Facebook likes are not a customer database.

Social media has its uses.  It’s a like a TV channel that goes out to the masses.  It can be great for raising awareness but it does not acquire an audience that you can always reach nor does it help you segment customer needs.  Social media is like shooting a shotgun and hoping you’ll hit your target.  They’re out there but you don’t know where they are nor when they’re paying attention to you.  Database marketing is a completely different marketing tactic and one is not a substitution for the other.

10. Using successive emails to qualify people.

Many companies capture emails from people who visit their websites.  Then they begin a series of successive emails and key future marketing based on which email garners a response.  However, it doesn’t work that way because customers don’t give you that many chances.  Keep in mind the environment in which your email is one of dozens or even hundreds your customers or prospects receive each day.  Your first email has to give them a reason to respond.  Draw them into a dialogue and then you can qualify them along the way.

Follow these ten tips and you’ll improve the performance of your database.  More importantly, you’ll get closer to your customers and create relationships that generate sales and referrals.  While I’m advocating asking a lot of questions of your database members, note that I didn’t mention market research once.   Market research will tell you what people think at a point in time and that information can be a good evaluative mechanism.  But this is about having a conversation and using some digital tools to allow you to engage your customers in very large numbers.  While we have our own proprietary tools for increasing customer involvement and loyalty, we can also help you do it on your own.  The important point is to stop looking at database marketing as a linear process and see it as a relational part of your marketing program.

Tags: Assumptions, Change, Click Through, Communities, Creativity, Customer needs, Customers, Database, Database Marketing, Demographics, Dialogue, Digital tools, Frustrations, futureshift, Involvement, Junk Mail, Marketing, Mistakes, Open rates, Outcomes, Psychographics, Social Media, Spam, Strategy, Unsubscribes