Four pieces of advice for a tight economy

Quick post here:

1. Narrow your focus. Classic branding strategy and business strategy is to ensure you are narrowly focused on doing "one thing" and doing it right. Hey - big car companies - take note! Don't blow your brains out (and budget) by trying to be everything to everyone. Figure out one thing and do it right. E.g. GMC = Trucks (focus only on trucks ... get out of SUVs), Chevy = Cheap family cars (focus on Cavalier, Malibu, and Impala ... get out of Corvette and Camaro), Pontiac = Sporty cars (focus on Grand Am ... ah heck ... kill the brand entirely), Cadillac = Luxury (focus on real luxury ... get rid of the low end models).
   
2. Focus on your brand. Be sure you know what you are all about in the eyes of your customers, and how you deliver that to your customers.
   
3. Become low cost. Look to Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines, and others. Figure out how they deliver great service and great customer experiences at low cost. How do they keep their customers happy, their employees happy, and earn a profit at the same time (even in this ugly economy). Adapt those lessons to your business model.
   
4. Innovate by providing an alternative at a lower price. If you are looking at your business and thinking "How do I innovate?" Look simply at your product or your competitor's products and figure out a cheaper alternative that will fundamentally change the market. Then figure out how to create that product and go after the market. Eventually work your way up the food chain through the higher end models. A good example of that is virtually all of the competition to the North American Auto Industry. Volkswagon introduced the bug in the 50s at the low end of the market, and scared the North American Auto industry out of that space, then came back and ate their lunch at the mid-end (even at a premium price). Honda did it back in the 70s starting with the Civic. Then ate the high end with the Acura line. Hyundai did it in the 80s starting with the Pony. This year they won top quality honors for a luxury car. Watch out ... here comes Kia.

There are four things you can start doing tomorrow!

Hot Marketing Strategies

In my daily random Google search, I typed in "Hot Marketing Strategies". The first several listings were all businesses touting their capabilities. About the 6th or 7th listing was for MoreBusiness.com. On it, they had a list of "Cool Tips for Hot Marketing Success"

The list (paraphrased) is:

• Create an Energetic Team - with a mix of energetic people from various departments Guide and Coordinate
• You should not only lead your marketing team but also ensure that each member is aware of their responsibilities. They need to be able to act in unison to ensure the success of the marketing campaign.
• Guide and Coordinate - guide them according to their strengths and weaknesses and coordinate various teams to avoid misunderstandings. Also, coordinate with your back-end operations
• Keep It Simple - It makes it easier on your own company and on your customers.
  
• Consistency with Flexibility - Your marketing campaign should be consistent & brand oriented.
• Plan In Advance - take the time to plan, rather than just responding to competition.
• The most expensive marketing is marketing that doesn’t work - Plan

Your predicted top 3 trends for next year?

What are the top 3 things that you predict will happen in the Advertising / Marketing world or trends next year?

Post your comments here. It will be interesting to see your vision of the future.

What's new,interesting or useful in digital marketing

I've been fortunate to have experienced both the old school marketing practices and new digital channels. Increasingly my time is spent in the latter area - finding new communication technologies, understanding their marketing applications and finding ways to integrate them.


Because of my eclectic interests, I tend to take a more broader perspective on the use and value of digital media beyond simply building a web presence. Digital technologies offer even more capabilities to enhance the customer experience, simplify communication or improve the performance of marketing efforts.


As I encounter new applications, better ways of using communication technologies, case studies or research, I will be post this on the Calgary Ad Club site. If there are specific questions or topics, I will attempt to comment or provide more information. And if you have examples of actual application, successful case studies or wish to share your failures, I think we can all learn from these.


If you want to know more about my background, check out my LinkedIn profile.

Advertising Jokes?

Okay - I'm looking for a few good, clean, non-offensive, fun and self depricating Advertising and Marketing Jokes. I'm thinking along the lines of "How many Advertising Executives does it take to screw in a light bulb?" (Anyone have a punch line for that?)

Holiday season is fast approaching ... and I need some good material!

Please post your jokes as a comment to this blog.

Looking for an, er, interesting career change?

A few weeks back when I was setting up my company's website, I wrote a blog about how I stumbled upon a job posting trend for GoGo dancers (with the link being that my company is Market GoGo). I compared that to VP of Marketing positions, and found that GoGo dancers may have better prospects. Well - just kidding a bit.

In any event, I went back to Simply Hired and ran a few more searches. An interesting one is to run a comparison of hiring for VP of Marketing, VP of Operations, and VP of Finance. From that you will see that the VP of Marketing jobs are hot from about February to October. In contrast, the VP of Operations jobs & VP of Finance jobs are relatively hot all year long.

Anyhow - here's the "live graph". It might be interesting to watch this over time.

Vice President Marketing, Vice President Finance, Vice President Operations trends

Vice President Marketing jobs | Vice President Finance jobs | Vice President Operations jobs

(Hey ... what's going on. That graph has shown VP of Marketing jobs as being hot from Feb to October for a couple of weeks now. I just looked at the graph after publishing it, and now it is a nice steady line. Bizarre. Anyway, ... that's data from a third party.)

=================
David Jones
www.MarketGoGo.com

What is your favourite marketing newsletter?

Well - I KNOW that at some point in the near future, SOMEONE is going to post a response to this blog. You wait, it WILL happen. Maybe it will even be YOU who makes it so!

So - the question of the day is ... what is your favourite marketing e-mail newsletter?

Read any good books lately?

On the right hand side of this blog is a list of marketing and advertising books. Do you have any that you've read and loved? What sits on your bookshelf at work with dog-eared pages? If you had to recommend one book to a person new in the advertising field, what would it be?

Please add a comment to this blog with the name of the book that you'd recommend, and watch the list grow!

Introducing ... the Calgary Ad Club

Welcome to the Calgary Ad Club's new blog.
What is the Calgary Ad Club? Quite simply it is a place where people involved in all sorts of advertising media (newspaper, tv, radio, out of home, online, etc., etc., etc.) and all sorts of companies (agencies, advertisers, publishers, etc., etc., etc.) can get together and get to know one another.

In Calgary's highly oil and gas driven economy those of us involved in advertising make up a small but vibrant community.

We look forward to meeting you all through this forum.