Category Archives: business

A Concept Restaurant

Palermo district in Buenos Aires.

When recessions or economic downturns hit, restaurant owners can turn to creative solutions to survive in such a tough-at-the-best-of-times industry. (You might remember some of this appearing in North America, too.)

I thought this pitch on the sandwich board that otherwise might tell me what the specials of the day are was well done:

“We give you food, drink and good service … You pay what you want, without pressure and prejudice… enjoy yourself.”

The restaurant looked like a very fine choice for a great dinner out. It also looked like this was no longer a gimmick to keep people coming but an actual business model a la 2011.

Understanding something about finance

Have you read your organization’s financial statements lately? Chances are they tell you more about the business your organization is in, ie what its success depends on, than its mission and vision statements. Ask yourself: what’s the biggest asset my organization has? And what are its biggest costs? Where does its profit come from?

You might just be amazed.

Leadership, influence and brand

I recently took a 5-day management course at Schulich School of Business. It was a very good course. I learned some things, validated expertise and I particularly enjoyed seeing profs who work in my field, marketing and strategy, teach.

The program consists of five parts: leadership, marketing, strategy, finance, HR. It is left to the participants to put this all together into a holistic thought pattern for themselves.\

In my view, this is essential.

For instance, marketing is not merely something other people do in your organization. ‘Marketing’ is what everyone who wishes to influence decisions – at any level – needs to do. The processes of getting consumers to buy product A vs product B are remarkably similar to what it means to leverage one’s hard won influence.

Indeed, in my view, influence is best defined as your personal brand equity expressed in the willingness of others to follow you. Frankly leadership is not about leading – it is about giving others reasons to follow.

Case in point: As an external consultant I never have the authority to change anything, I also have no way to reward my clients’ staff with more money. Yet, I lead and we make good things happen. My success is tied to how well I infuse projects with meaning, communicate appreciation, and generate desired outcomes. Naturally, with each successful project my brand equity grows and my capacity to do more good work increases. That’s why leadership (inspire) is such a powerful concept, as compared to management (perspire).

Website code and Competitive intelligence

I recently came across a piece of code on a web site I was checking out in preparation for my SEO seminar.

Programmers used green comment text as a way to distinguish notes to the programmer or reminders, from code that makes the site work. These notes do not show up as content in the graphic interface of the web site. If you want to see what sort of “conversations” and notes programmers leave behind when building a site, simply look at the source code and scroll for the green bits.

Now, imagine a company in a highly competitive field having this sort of programmer’s annotation about a future product in the code. This could well be a major issue if a competitor receives advance notice of future actions, just because a programmer wanted to identify a placeholder for a future product on the web page.

While I find this interesting from a competitive intelligence perspective, it raises another question: when you approve your web site, do you ever actually look at the code? Have you considered the liabilities that inadvertent disclosure can bring to your company? Do you have any sort of quality assurance and brand protection process in place re: coding? And, in earlier posts I talked about the importance of meta tags and title tags – so: what is your quality assurance process to make sure these search engine optimization aids are in place and make sense from a brand and messaging architecture point of view?

Economics of fear and sustainable buying practices

Here’s a hypothesis for consideration:

With news media reporting – in particular headlines – bleakly declaring the end to life as we know it for many months now, it is inevitable that people feel that the global financial crisis is having a major impact on their lives. This feeling is spawned by what we are told day in and day out at least as much as it stems from real losses in employment or investment portfolios.

Sustainable buying practices might well be on the rise. Those are practices not based on personal debt financing and overleveraging to “get things now”. They are built on concepts of need, affordability, prioritization and saving for specific purchases. As this shift occurs it demands equally sustainable pricing practices, elastic enough to be responsive to the market and to ensure the survival of the business beyond this crisis. It means the “traditional” growth model has to be rethought in terms of “sustainable exchanges”.

Any business model but especially those based on debt financing will have to be rethought in the context of needs, wants and sustainable personal – and business – finance.

I imagine it also means customer value propositions will increasingly include price related incentives, meant as short-term fixes to stimulate consumption. But in business only a few can survive on low price positions, the rest need greater differentiation to sustain their business. I imagine the competitive landscape will increasingly be thought to include alternatives across sectors of the economy, not just direct competitors within a specific sector.

If the above is so, what does that mean for how I think about performing arts marketing and sustainably developing audiences?

Thoughts on Making Buying Decisions

Some purchases we make require very little critical thinking – and some that would benefit from weighing options more carefully are made using overrides. (“I want it”, “my neighbour has it already”). Some purchases receive a great amount of attention – often those that cost a lot of money, but not always.

One way to think about performing arts marketing is that we endeavour to recruit buyers who are willing to use convenient overrides so that they subscribe year after year, regardless of the specifics of the programming or other aspects of the overall customer experience.

This is important because arguably purchasing several live performing arts events in a single transaction (subscription) has significant implications for the buyer: time commitments, long terms planning and their financial capacity to pay in advance.

What are the circumstances required for someone to make a complex purchase in a mostly automatic fashion? And is it realistic with emerging audiences or is that a model of a time that is coming to an end?

Conference presentation accepted

Excellent news: My conference paper has been accepted by the MRIA’s National Conference Program Committee. I’ll be presenting on my Audience Development work with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Winnipeg, May 25-28, 2008. Of course, now I’ll have to craft a worthy presentation.

I’m planning to demonstrate the application of insights derived from various types of research methodologies in solving a major business issue at the nation’s leading live performing arts venue. (That’s a mouthful!) Because I not only conducted the research but facilitated the strategy process, the outstanding business results (see previous postings) achieved already make a great example for “return on research invesment.”

I’m also planning on making an argument for the idea of “integrated research.” After all, today integrated marketing and integrated decision-making are everywhere – at least in words if not in deed – and I see opportunities for marketing researchers to advance a conversation about customer insight and its application.

Strategic Moves – Thinking : Business