Strong brands have haters.  All brands should strive to have some.

When I meet somebody new at a party or a social gathering, I usually introduce myself by saying “Hi, my name is Cheese, what’s yours?”

Saying this almost always evokes a physical response.  Often it’s a smile, or a laugh.  Occasionally it’s a cock of the head.  Every so often it’s a roll of the eyes, a head shake, a turn of the back, and a rapid retreat from a crazy person. 

I share my nickname because I just hope they think I’m fun loving and interesting enough to talk to.  Of course, I am (really, really, I am!), but they don’t know that yet.  

Upon hearing my nickname, some people like me and are engaged with me immediately, which is what I hope will happen.  Some people, however, are skeptical of me, some mock me or make jokes at my expense (“do you like to CUT the cheese?”).  I imagine that those people hate me. 

And that’s just the way it should be with a brand.  Some of the strongest brands in the world have haters. 

The opposite of love is not hate.  It’s indifference. 

If somebody hates your brand, or attacks your brand, or lambasts your brand, it means that what you stand for or what you advocate is meaningful.  For some reason, you've tapped into somebody's emotions.  This is a good thing.

A strong brand makes an emotional connection.  People are indifferent to a brand that doesn’t make any sort of emotional connection.  If they are indifferent, they don’t care.  Nobody spends money for something they don’t care about. 

Brand managers, or entrepreneurs or solopreneurs (especially those just starting out and just creating a brand for the first time) shouldn’t have a goal of being liked by everybody.  Trying to please everybody only ends in doing a lot of different things half assed.  That’s a step in the direction towards mediocrity and of becoming something or someone others are indifferent to. 

I used to get embarrassed when somebody would react negatively to my name.  I remember walking the halls of Stanford Business School before my first year. I was looking for housing and was reading flyers on the wall from other soon-to-be-classmates who were seeking roommates.  One of those soon-to-be-classmates asked my name, I answered “My name is Cheese” and he answered without hesitation “Are you serious?” and he laughed and turned and walked away.

I was already somewhat intimidated to be attending Stanford.  And here it was that one of the first people I met didn’t like my whimsical nickname.  He mocked me for being lighthearted.  Rather than embracing the nickname I had already worn for 15 years, I was shamed into being more serious. 

I didn’t share my nickname with more than a half-dozen classmates over the next 2 years, despite having a lot of fun with many of those people. 

That was a mistake. 

I wasn’t thinking about managing my brand identity back then.  But what I should have been focused on is being the most authentic Cheese I could be, even if (especially if) that meant being different than those around me.

It’s been almost 20 years since I left Stanford, and you know what?  I’m still Cheese. In fact, I’m more Cheese, and more myself than I’ve ever been before. 

For those of you who are meeting me for the first time, I hope some of you hate me.

Businesses sell but humans buy.  HUMANS BUY!  All things being equal, humans would prefer to buy from other humans and not from human-type thinggies, people who are going through the motions in a robotic way, or who are just “following the rules,” or who are too rushed or too busy to be bothered with YOUR problem. 

  by  peyri 

Heaven forbid you ask the human-type thinggies for help.  After all, they have their own problems to deal with, and at the moment, their problems are more important than yours are.

But fundamentally, all humans want to connect with the soul from another, they want to feel understood, they want to believe that they are not alone, and more importantly, want to accept that there is another person out there who CARES ENOUGH to help them.  It’s called having emotions, and that my friend, is what makes the world go ‘round.

The last thing they want is to acknowledge or remember is the fear they carry around with them every day, which is that they will be taken advantage of.  As sad as it may sound, most humans don’t trust strangers, and they certainly don’t trust businesses that are strange and unfamiliar to them. 

So then, how do you get your business to sell more like a human and less like a soulless, self-absorbed, untrustworthy company?  MBAs in large corporate marketing departments call it developing consumer insights.  Humans call it having empathy.

How do you acquire empathy?  First, you have to give a fuck.  The bigger the fuck you give, the deeper you’ll acquire understanding.  And in order to give a fuck, you need to stop being a self-centered, selfish, know-it-all who is worried about your own fears, and spend some time in the shoes of your customer.  One tool MBAs in large corporate marketing departments use is called an ethnography.  Humans call it spending time with your customers and prospects.

If you spend time with your customers and prospects during the moments they are most likely to use your products, or when they are likely to need your help, – not just when they are ready to buy something but in the moments that get them to realize they would buy something to solve a problem – you will learn what inspires them, what frustrates them, what excites them, and what scares them.  You will gain understanding around their challenges and you will learn how you can help them overcome those challenges.

When you can help them overcome their challenges, they will pay you money, and that my friend, is called a business.

If you can’t stop being selfish in order to become more empathetic, or if you’re just too damned busy to do it, for god’s sake, go hire somebody who can do it for you.  Your marketing will improve, your sales will increase, your customers will start referring you to their friends and family, and your business will prosper. 

Just make sure you don’t hire a robot.

  by  star5112 

Hodo Soy is clearly positioned as a premium brand with retail pricing of a 12 oz. tofu package coming in around $4.29, as compared to $2.19 for a 10oz. package of tofu from the Wildwood brand (which is made by a subsidiary of a Korean holding company).  Hodo Soy is currently sold in approximately 75 retail stores including Whole Foods, Mollie Stones, Costco and a variety of independent natural food stores.   In addition to tofu, it also sells soymilk, yuba (tofu skins), flavored nuggets and a V-EGG-AN Salad.

Aside from the general challenges associated with building a new company and new brand, Hodo Soy sells a product with extremely limited consumer demand in the United States.   For many Americans who grew up eating ground beef and eggs, tofu can be unfamiliar and intimidating to eat and to cook with.  Mr. Tsai admits that "Tofu is such a mystery… In the West, people don't think of tofu beyond that bland, firm, white chunk."  Unless you are of Asian descent, a vegan, or a die-hard vegetarian, you probably only rarely eat tofu.  Consequently, the Soyfoods Association of America estimates that retail sales of tofu in 2011 was only $255 million and that these sales were basically unchanged since 2008.    Compare this to an estimated $15.5 billion of sales of beef at retail in 2008, and you can see tofu is a relatively tiny retail category.

So how does a premium brand in a tiny, no-growth category with limited consumer demand find ways to increase its sales?  Increased grocery and natural food store distribution in new geographic regions is certainly a possibility.  Investing marketing dollars to steal market share from lower priced competitors, or in bringing in new consumers to grow the category, however, seem to be unlikely.  Nothing short of a game-changing category shift would appear to help Hodo Soy reach a larger group of consumers.  Fortunately, Hodo Soy may just be on the leading edge of such a transformative change.

On February 12, 2013, Chipotle Mexican Grill began testing a new vegetarian option for its burritos, tacos, burrito bowls and salads with what it is calling sofritas – shredded tofu made by Hodo Soy and braised with chipotle chiles, roasted poblanos and a blend of spices.  My taste test of the sofritas is that they were a delicious option in my burrito.  The test began in seven San Francisco Bay Area stores, and if the test meets Chipotle's measures of success, it could be expanded to all of its 1,400+ U.S. locations.  

What intrigues me most about this test is that it's a rare example of where a premium brand has been willing to enter into a foodservice relationship that is not necessarily about brand building.  For example, Taco Bell has had tremendous success with its Doritos Locos Tacos.  Much of that success is undoubtedly attributable to the fact that customers know the shells are made by Doritos, and Taco Bell has featured the Doritos brand in its advertising, in-store merchandising and even product wrappers.  

But when you visit one of the Chipotle Sofritas test stores, you won't see any mention of the Hodo Soy brand.  The option is simply listed as Sofritas.  If one of the major goals of building a premium brand is to command premium prices at retail, why would Hodo Soy be willing to sell tofu to Chipotle as basically a private-label supplier?  Profit margins are typically lower selling to foodservice accounts than they are selling to grocery and mass merchandiser accounts.  Most customers ordering Sofritas from Chipotle will never know that the tofu is made by Hodo Soy.

"The win here is people will be exposed to tofu like they've never been."
~Minh Tsai
  Mercury News

I believe the strategic benefits that Hodo Soy can realize from the Chipotle test are potentially huge and could help build the premium brand in the long term.  Should the Sofritas test prove successful and launched nationally, the potential benefits would include:  

• Increased incremental sales and profits;  
  
• Increased awareness and trial of tofu by mainstream customers of Chipotle;
• Growth in retail sales at grocery as consumers learn to enjoy tofu;
• Being positioned as a national tofu brand to grocery category buyers and being able to use that positioning to gain retail distribution in new geographies at grocery, mass and club store accounts.
  

A large, national chain such as Chipotle is capable of instantaneously exposing deliciously prepared tofu to millions of Americans who currently view it as mysterious and bland.  By becoming a partner with a national restaurant chain such as Chipotle, Hodo Soy stands to benefit from the growth and acceptance of tofu across mainstream America and from sales and profit growth that can be invested into future brand distribution and development as a premium category leader.

I for one, hope the test proves successful!

Q&A with Minh Tsai (via email)
Q:    Did Chipotle seek out Hodo Soy or did Hodo Soy approach Chipotle?
A:    Chipotle found Hodo more than 2 years ago and have been working with Hodo on tofu recipes that resulted in the Sofritas.
Q:    Are there / were there any concerns participating in the test knowing that most Chipotle customers would never know the tofu was made by Hodo Soy?
A:    Chipotle does not publish vendor in the store, but does on their website and other copy.  As a "Food with Integrity" company, Chipotle intends to share the source of tofu with its customers.
Q:    When the Chipotle test moves beyond the Bay Area, will Hodo Soy seek grocery distribution in those new markets or is market expansion not tied to the Chipotle test?
A:    We have grown organically to keep our tofu products tasty and of the highest quality.  We will continue with this ethos as we grow to broader markets.
Q:    What's the biggest benefit to Hodo Soy of a successful test at Chipotle?
A:    The best result would be that customers find the Sofritas tasty and know that Hodo's tofu and our collaboration with Chipotle lead to its deliciousness.  From our founding, Hodo has strived to re-educate folks about the high quality tofu and how great it is.  Chipotle allows us the opportunity to reach a greater audience.
Q:    Should the test fail, what do you think you will have learned that will allow the company to take advantage of?
A:    We are learning all the time to make better tofu dishes.  The success or failure of our test with Chipotle does not change how we learn and grow as a company.
    
***************************************************************

This is a case study that exemplifies one of my ideas of how to increase sales as found in my free ebook, 54 Ways to Increase Sales Like a Rock Star.  It’s based on idea #36 – acquire new customers via new distribution channels.

  by  Anirudh Koul 

In my career fantasy, I'm a rock star:  a musician in a popular band that tours the world, plays concerts in front of thousands of adoring, screaming (and paying) fans, and the subject of countless press requests, magazine cover photos, and articles and interviews where I get to share my beliefs on everything from fashion, to trends to politics.

Instead, I'm a marketing professional.

But what if I want to be a marketing rock star?  What could I learn from musical rock stars that could help me become a more accomplished and successful marketer?  After all, no musician is crowned a rock star from day one.  Instead, most musicians who become rock stars followed a path that included specific behaviors that led them to achieve stardom.

The following are the five behaviors I'd recommend most adopt:

1.  Learn to sing or to play an instrument – Let's not overlook the obvious.  In order to become accomplished in any skill, you need to learn the fundamentals of your craft, you need to study, and you need to practice.  A musician takes lessons and learns how to count a variety of time signatures, learns how to play a range of chords on musical scales, and usually how to read music.  And who does one take lessons from?  You take lessons from somebody who is more experienced, more practiced and more advanced than you are.  Study and practice under the tutelage of a "teacher" is usually a requirement of learning a new skill.

It's the same with marketing.  In order to study marketing, you can take classes, either at a university, junior college or even at SBA offices across the country.  You can read case studies and eBooks on marketing web sites, and you can read the latest marketing books written by noted authors. 

To start practicing, you can find an adviser, coach or consultant with whom you can hold weekly conversations about marketing.  Discuss your latest readings and how you could apply what you've learned to your own business' marketing mix.

Lastly, get into the habit of testing new ideas to learn how they change your sales.  The way to improve your skills is to learn the fundamentals, explore new styles and techniques and put them into practice.

2.  Play some local shows -   All musical rock stars have paid their dues by performing at small, local clubs and venues.  It's at these formative performances where bands get to test a variety of songs and musical arrangements, learn how to create crowd participation and excitement, and ultimately find out what it takes to create a loyal following of fans who will pay to see them at the next live performance, who will start buying CDs and merchandise, and who will sign up for the band's email newsletters and start engaging via social media.  Even major bands that already have established stardom will occasionally try out new songs at small clubs before embarking on a major tour.  It's a form of testing and refinement that helps create a better product once it's released to the masses.

It's the same with marketing.  Try out new ideas and test them on a small scale.  If they don't increase sales or don't result in the desired consumer behavior you are seeking, such as signing up for an email newsletter, then rework them until they do.  If they do work, then you've found a winning formula to launch more broadly and to share with all of your customers and prospects.  Trying out new programs, and testing the results will help you identify new "hits" that can propel you to marketing stardom.

3.  Be unique – Whether it's the voice, the wardrobe, the hairstyle, the makeup, the dance moves, the live concert fireworks or theatrics, or simply the message of the song lyrics, all rock stars stand out from their peers.  Love them or hate them, the Sex Pistols became the talk of the music industry in the 1970's by being audacious.   Rock stars are different.  They're memorable.  They zig when others zag.  They identify what's working in other musical genres and adapt them and make them their own.  For instance, the Beatles are said to have introduced skiffle  to mass British audiences, and of course and Elvis Presley made rhythm and blues mainstream.

It's the same with marketing -  Your products and services need to be different AND desirable in order for you to rack up sales growth and for you to gain marketing rock star status.  You can do this through your communicated benefits, your packaging, your customer service, your follow up, your ability to teach, train and inspire your category in order to set you apart from your competition and appeal to your fans.  However you do it, you should always be asking the question, "Why should somebody buy from me instead of from a competitor, or instead of not buying at all."

4.  Love it! -  Jimi Hendrix is quoted as having said "Music is my religion."  U2's front man Bono has said "As a rock star, I have two instincts:  I want to have fun, and I want to change the world.  I have a chance to do both."  Passion, an ability to connect to thousands of people through the emotions and messages of music, and the exhilaration of  performing to audiences drive rock stars to share their craft and talents.

It's the same with marketing – Market and sell products you love.  When you're proud of your products or services, you will understand the benefits they give you and the benefits they offer to customers.  When you have this insight about benefits that connect emotionally, you will be able to communicate them more effectively, passionately and persuasively.  It will come naturally to you to want to share your products, offer them, sell them, heck, even sing about them.

5.  Always be creating, promoting and performing -  The rock stars who have endured the longest have also created an extensive library of music.   Often, they embark on multi-month and concert tours to connect with their fans and to reach as many people as possible.  When they are between tours, they are writing and recording new music, and often find ways to stay connected to fans through news, interviews, special appearances and promotions.

It's the same with marketing – Once your business has gained traction and a loyal group of customers, you should seek to maintain your stardom.  Do this by continuing to connect with your customers with new products that meet their needs with incredible "performances," with customer service they remember and want to share with their friends, and with new promotions and marketing programs that solidify your relationship with them.

Strive to become a marketing rock star.  Not only is it a great way to ensure the success of your brand or company through sales growth, but it's also a lot of fun being creative, learning how to be different and getting to smile from ear to ear when customers praise your efforts.    

***************************************************************************

If you liked this blog post, you will like my free ebook, 54 Ways to Increase Sales Like a Rock Star.  You can sign up for it from the form below, or if you want to learn more about what it contains, read about it here.  

Happy New Year!  I don't know if I was just cranky because I was wrestling with the idea of whether or not I should have created New Year's resolutions, but I read something yesterday from Hubspot that made me literally roll my eyes and mutter "you've got to be freaking kidding me."

Hubspot recently published an eBook called "20 Marketing Trends & Predictions for 2013 and Beyond,"  Prediction #4 is Marketing Becomes More Accountable for Revenue Generation and the primary point was that "Marketing will play a more critical role in contributing to revenue generation."  Really?!!?  Is that your future?

Where I come from, marketing is first and foremost about growing sales.  Always has been.  Always will be.

Maybe that's because I learned my marketing chops at a consumer products company like Clorox where the Brand teams were considered to be the "brand champions" and "hub of the wheel" in determining how to grow sales, grow volume, grow profits and grow market share.  We on the marketing teams were the strategic leaders of the businesses that we worked on.

Even after I left Clorox, my performance has almost always been measured by sales growth (comp store sales growth at Peet's Coffee for instance).  Even at a small company such as CocoaBella Chocolates, my bonus was tied to sales growth numbers.  In the one case, at Cartridge World,  where my performance was not measured by sales growth, I strongly recommended to my boss that he start evaluating me based on comp sales store growth.

Has marketing changed since I worked at Clorox?  Absolutely.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that activities such as branding, graphic design, social media marketing, heck, even sales, promotions, content development, inbound marketing and public relations are not important.  I'm saying that those are merely ends to a means, tactics you might consider along the way towards growing sales.  There are LOTS of ways to grow revenue.

If you're a business owner looking to grow sales, hire a consultant or marketing manager who has that focus and experience.  Unless you're building a large team of marketing experts who are focused on executing tactics, don't hire somebody who is a tactical expert. 

If you're looking for a marketing consultant or marketing project manager who will be decisively focused on creating programs that grow your sales and profits, send me an email and let's discuss whether I'm a good fit to help you.  Let's work together to make 2013 a memorably successful year.

This is a transcript of my interview with Clark Kellogg on the subject of Design Thinking:

Gary:    OK, I’m here today with Clark Kellogg, and Clark is a partner at Collective Invention which is a social innovation consulting firm that helps organizations imagine the future and identify tools and programs to achieve it.  He’s also an instructor at UC Berkeley Department of Architecture and School of Business where he teaches design thinking classes and where he and I met working on a project together.   So thanks for joining me today Clark.

Clark:      Happy to be here Gary.

Gary:    So, what is design thinking and how is it different than analytical thinking?

Clark:    In essence, it’s a process of problem solving that takes into account all kinds of different feeds and insights.  Analytic problem solving is based on known data and information.  Design thinking tends to be a little more holistic in the way it approaches problems and it brings in more simultaneous thinking processes and celebrates the wide, weird ideas as potential solutions, not so much that they are the solutions but as hints and insights that may to contribute to a better solution than simply linear analytic solving.

Gary:    Is it less rigorous than analytical thinking?

Clark:    In the minds of many it is.  In the minds of those of us who are practitioners of it, it is extremely rigorous, very process oriented, and we have a very specific kind of roadmap to follow as we go through these processes, so I would no, it’s no less rigorous.  If anything perhaps, it’s equally rigorous.

Gary:    Wow.  So what are some of the advantages of design thinking over more traditional creative problem solving techniques that a small business might use such as brainstorming, focus groups, or the proverbial employee suggestion box?

Clark:    Yeah, well the suggestion box remains a really great source of information and insight.  I would say to answer your question, all of those aspects that you spoke about – brainstorming, creative problem solving  – are elements of design thinking and we use them in design thinking all the time.  The idea that design thinking is something distinct and foreign and odd is really not true.    It’s a very specific way of looking at a problem, of framing a problem, then going about solving a problem, and in that process, we brainstorm, we use suggestion boxes, and we use a lot of different other inputs to craft a better kind of solutions.

Gary:    One of the lessons that I learned going through this process in the Haas at Work project was this idea of diverging and converging.  Can you share maybe an example of how that works within the design thinking process?

Clark:    Well, absolutely.  Diverging and converging are two process descriptions and the key insight around those two is that you can’t do them both at the same time.  Let me give you an example.  Most often when you’re in a conversation or in a brainstorming mode, you’ll see rules of the road around the room in which people say “defer judgment”, or “build on ideas don’t be critical of them.”  The process of diverging ideas is really that way of generating as many solutions as possible, not so much looking for quality as we are quantity and later on we have processes called converging which is an analytical frame in which to put those.  Most often what happens is people diverge and then start to converge too quickly, so we’re judging ideas before they actually have developed very much.

Gary:    OK.  In one of your workshops you said humans are good at solving problems, but not so good at figuring out which problems to solve.  What do you mean by that?

Clark:    Well, we are by nature real good tinkerers, particularly I think, Americans.  And we look for problems to solve, and humans are great at finding a need and filling it, as Henry Kaiser used to say.  What we’re no so good at is understanding the nature of the problem going in so we are solving a problem that A) needs to be solved and B) fits into a longer term view, not just a short term expediency of getting the urgent taken care of, but looking at it in a longer frame, so that what you’re doing in the short term actually contributes to the longer term health and viability of, in this case, your business.

Gary:    So, I was reading an article last night and somebody gave the example of rather than giving the assignment to design a chair, give the assignment to design a suspension device from the floor.  Is that an example of how you frame a problem that you go about solving, and if so, how do you know when you’ve framed the right problem that you’re solving for?

Clark:    The example is instructive in that it demonstrates a different way of seeing a problem, i.e., a chair, which when you and I think of chair, or probably anybody watching this, we think of a four legged device with a horizontal surface that you put your body into.  The idea of creating a seating device – a place for humans to rest in a certain kind of position – is a reframing of the notion of a chair.  The idea of chair brings up a very particular set of visual imagery that I know of, that you know of, and probably people listening to this know of.  The idea of framing that as a solution that will support the human body opens up a whole lot of different ideas.  Now you may come back and end up with what looks like a chair.  But the journey of discovery around that may, and often does lead to, deeper insights about the nature of our preconceptions. 

Gary:    But one of the key concepts in defining that problem as I understand it is that it really focuses on the consumer, who’s going to be using the device, whether it’s defined as a chair or as a suspension device.  So how do you go about getting that type of consumer input into the process early on so that you know you’re solving for a real need that a consumer has that ultimately will benefit from it, and in some cases pay for a new product associated around it?

Clark:    Well, there’s lots of techniques for understanding the marketplace.  Focus groups are one of those, that we probably aren’t as fond of as some others.  The real way of looking and understanding needs is to go talk to people.  We call it ethnography.  It is through observation, and through interview, mostly on a one-to-one basis, and it asks a different kind of a question which is “what are your needs?” not “what is your solution?”

Gary:    So one last question before we wrap up.  Is design thinking a tool for people who have real serious problems, or is it something they can use kind of proactively to envision the future, or is there kind of a use in between or for both of those cases?

Clark:    At the end of the day, when I talk to my mom about what I do for a living, she said to me once “Well, it kind of sounds like what you sell is common sense.”  And I have to agree that we put it big into a lot of big names, but at the end of the day, the idea of solving problems in a way that makes sense in the moment, that is in the urgent, but also makes sense in the important.  That is, we frame things in the short term and they have a known impact on the long term.  Design thinking is common sense in that once you come up with a really good solution to a problem, and it’s obvious that it’s a good solution, it does feel like common sense.  You often say to yourself “Ahh, why didn’t I think of that sooner?”  Well, it’s complicated to think of good solutions quickly, but when you find those things, they do feel like they’re obvious.  And to me, the best solutions are the ones that at the end of the day, you say to yourself “That is so obvious I should have thought about it sooner.”

Gary:    Do they become obvious because they were right in front of you, or because you’ve learned something from another industry or other companies that you may not be monitoring on a regular basis, or this whole notion of crashing ideas comes into play here, so does the obviousness and the ultimate solution you pursue usually come from the outside, or is it more something that is right in front of you?

Clark:    Well insight is elusive and it does come from lots of sources.  Oftentimes, the answers are a combination, as you say, crashing ideas together from another industry or another business sector.  Sometimes they come about by your observation of need and users, and understanding. And sometimes they happen in the shower.  So the idea that they are, that there’s one particular source, I think is not so much the important piece as that they come together through a variety of sources, and the thing is you know it when you’ve found it.  And this is an elusive kind of data point, but you do, you just kind of know it.  You can then measure that against all kinds of metrics that you develop, particularly in a business setting, and they click off on that measurement.  But you also, and any entrepreneur will know this, you just kind of know it when it comes along.  Then you can measure it and prove it.  We often talk about we buy with emotion and justify with fact.   That’s very much, I think, a description of the design problem solving process.

Gary:    That’s a great description.  So if somebody wants to learn more about design thinking, do you have some suggested resources they can look at or…

Clark:    Well, there’s two that I am very fond of and that I recommend a lot.  One is a book by Daniel Pink called A Whole New Mind which talks about the functions of our brains and contributes to how we understand design thinking.  The second one is a book called Design Thinking by Tim Brown of IDEO.  And Tim’s book goes a long way to describing a lot of things that we’re talking about here.  And of course, IDEO is quite well known for doing this kind of work. 

Gary:    Right.  And if somebody wants to speak with you or get ahold of you, is there contact information you can provide?

Clark:    Well, I’d be happy to talk to anybody about my favorite topic.  My email address is clark at collectiveinvention dot com.  And you can even call me at 510 388-2967.  And if you’re in the neighborhood, come over to Wurster Hall at the UC Berkeley campus.  I’m frequently on the 5th floor in the Cal Design Lab. 

Gary:    I know that area well.  So Clark, thank you for taking the time to speak with us about design thinking and hopefully some entrepreneurs out there will get inspired to create the future that may not be as evident for them at today’s time.

Clark:    I bet that will happen, and you’re right, it is elusive. 
 

 “Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!”
~P.T. Barnum

When P.T. Barnum spoke about promotion, he was most likely using the word as a verb.  When I speak of promotions, I mean it as a noun.  It’s a planned and coordinated event meant to sell a specific product or service for a limited time and that meets a seasonally relevant consumer need.

Promotions, when done well, are an effective way for you to market your business or products and services.  I’m not talking about promotions where you drop the prices on your existing products significantly, or when you have a blowout sale to move stale inventory.  Instead I mean a well-planned, seasonally relevant focus on themes or solutions wrapped around your products that your customers will take note of and value, and that prospects will be enticed to try for the first time.

With that in mind, here are nine benefits of running a well-planned sales promotion:

1. Creates differentiation – When you launch a new product or ask customers to engage with your business in a new way, this sets you apart from your competition.  Promotion planning compels you to identify something new or different that offers value to your customers;
2. Creates new content and communication opportunities  – One of the easiest way to create new content for your customers is to create news.  Promotions are news.  News is content;
3. Creates upsell and cross sell opportunities  – When you package or bundle products around a theme or solution, you can often generate sales of multiple items rather than a single item.  When you focus on creating added value to your regular assortment, you can charge premium prices;
4. Drives customer decision making – Limited availability offers can create a sense of scarcity in your customers that get them to act.  When combined with new content that helps customers clearly see the benefits of what you are promoting, you can create compelling reasons to buy now.  If you can add sampling of your promotional item to the mix, you'll create a lot of reasons for customers to buy;
5. Creates word-of-mouth opportunities – If you operate a retail store, your regular customers are almost always in a routine to buy from you.  Promotions can often get your regular customers a new reason to be surprised and delighted by your business which gets them to talk about you  to their friends;
6. Creates training opportunities for your staff – Like regular customers, your retail sales staff (or any employees who have direct contact with customers), can fall into a routine and lose the enthusiasm in their voice.  Promotions gives you a chance to to train, prepare and reengage them in what’s new in your business;
7. Creates company focus on marketing – Developing a promotion calendar forces you to plan for new marketing programs focused at specific times of year.  If you don’t have a dedicated marketing team doing this for you already, creating a promotions mentality will get you marketing with more frequency and give you more experience to build on;
8. Creates testing opportunities  – Maybe you have ideas that you think customers will like but are unsure of the outcome.  Promotions give you a limited time window to test new ideas and new products and to measure them.  This will help you figure out whether they warrant additional investment of time and money to make them permanent products or services;
9. Grows revenue – As I like to say, Ka-Ching!  This is the lifeblood of your business.  Sales promotions are a great way to build year-over-year and month-over-month revenue growth.
    

What are other benefits you think of around sales promotions?
 

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!”
~Jane Austen
 

Let’s say you’ve put up a new menu board to help you introduce new lunch items but you don’t have time to make up new brochures that explain the products in detail, or room on the menu to describe them in more depth?  Or what if you put up a new display of art products and you want to give customers ideas of how they can use them to create new projects, but you don’t have the space to include finished project samples or a How-To guide?  QR codes are a possible solution for you.

QR codes are a form of barcode that stores far more information than the traditional bar codes you are used to seeing on grocery store products, for instance.  QR is short for Quick Response, and the codes were developed to make it easier for people to obtain more information than is immediately available than other means such as having to write down a website URL.   QR codes were invented by a subsidiary of Toyota in 1994 and have been used extensively in Japan and South Korea, but are just now starting to emerge as a more common marketing tool in the U.S. [NOTE:  The QR code above is to a youtube video showing various applications in Japan].

QR code generators are free to use.  Just visit a site such as Kaywa.com or goqr.me, drop in a destination URL and the image will be created for you.  You can then place it anywhere your customer can see it and scan it.   

Here’s an example of how Office Max is using QR codes to deliver its customers more content than it’s able to share at the point-of-purchase.  My critique and recommendations follow the pictures.

I was buying a poster board and found it in this display of paper, pens, stencils and other related items under the Project Idea Center. 

The display had a call to action of “Get Inspired with the Poster Idea Gallery App.”  It instructed me how to get inspired as follows:

Here’s How:
1.    Use a QR reader on your smart phone
2.    Take a snapshot of this code
3.    Get instant project ideas

For additional project supplies and ideas, visit our art supplies section or artskills.com/officemax

The code took me to an Office Max sponsored subdomain of the website artskills.com, which is positioned as “Easier. Faster. Better Posters.” and which is targeted to students and teachers who want to make posters.

Critique
Consumer insights – I walked into Office Max with the purpose of buying poster board.  I am not very artistic, so I was interested in getting new ideas of how to design a poster (without messing it up and ultimately throwing the poster board away and having to start over), and in learning more information that would have given me some confidence that I could execute my project successfully.   In this respect, the QR code was effectively used to lead me to seek additional content.

Call to Action – “Get Inspired” is an effective emotional trigger.  In retrospect, what I would have liked to have seen was clarity around who this call to action is appropriate for.  Leading a marketing professional to a website tailored to school teachers and students was ultimately a waste of my time.

Landing Page – In my humble opinion (IMHO), the promise of quick response falls down here in this example.  I don’t know how difficult it would be to quickly get me to an inspirational example of a poster idea that I could create (perhaps images of different finished projects that made me go “Wow, I can do that?!”), but having to navigate through four different screens before I see any samples just felt excruciatingly difficult, and ultimately, I did not end at a solution that was anywhere near where I wanted to be.  Even if I were a teacher or student, I would have given up trying to find inspiration and just made do with what I had.

One other critique, which may or may not be a commonly encountered one is that the landing pages were only optimized for mobile.  While it is critical for the customer who opens the website in the store (and with her mobile phone), there will be some who email or text the link to themselves (or others) with the intent of opening it and doing research when they get home.  The images I shared above were taken from my laptop at home and looked paltry and again, uninspiring.

Summary
While consumers in the U.S. have not fully embraced the idea and practice of scanning barcodes in stores, I do believe that it will become more common in the not too distant future.  After all, it provides benefits to both the consumer, who is seeking more information about products and solutions, and for marketers, who are able to be a resource that provides it.  QR codes allow for you to easily share more content to your customers.

I believe there are a lot of ways to test using QR codes for little or no cost aside from the planning, content development and preparation.

As with all content, however, its value is only derived in its usefulness to your customer in solving her problems or in making her more successful.  In this Office Max Poster Idea Gallery example, I’d say it mostly wasn’t.

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.”
~Harold Wilson
 

In 1972, a 42 year old man by the name of Maurice was attending a dinner party in Manhattan when he struck up a conversation with another man whose family owned movie theaters.  Maurice, always the curious type, asked the man how the family business was doing.  The man answered rather bluntly: “TV is ruining us.  People just don’t go to the movies the way they used to.”  He said the theater was lucky to have 120 people attending a movie that held 1,200 seats. 

Perhaps this man was merely resigned to the inevitable: that industries come, and industries go, and that larger forces such as new technologies, more competition, lower cost alternatives and changing demographic forces conspire to reduce demand for a the products and services of many industries, and ultimately decimate established businesses over time.

Maurice, on the other hand, was surprised to hear this man’s claims.  It was Manhattan, after all, a dense borough of 1.5 million people.  And so he set out to undertake his own form of guerilla-style market research.  After all, he was always the curious type.

• He visited several movies and counted the house.  It was generally small;
• He observed who was attending movies.  It was mainly younger people in their 20’s and 30’s;
• He began creating storytelling scenarios about these moviegoers to try to understand what motivated them.  He concluded that there would always be a small group of avid moviegoers;
• He then asked if there was a small group of avid moviegoers, what was keeping them away from any given movie?  This was his “a-ha” moment.  He reasoned that thousands of people were attending movies on any given night, but they don’t attend a specific theater because they prefer to see a different movie being shown that night.

If movies are the product a movie theater sells, then another way to frame this problem is that the product assortment is too narrow to attract a broader set of customers.

In his book, Secrets From an Inventor’s Notebook, Maurice Kanbar writes:

Instead of concentrating on increasing the number of customers for one film, why not increase the number of offerings?  Without requiring any more ticket takers, concession-stand workers or projectionists, you could easily multiply your profit.  And instead of complaining about your shrinking audience, you’d be giving that audience more viewing choices and a novel atmosphere.

After some testing of the idea, one of the first multiplex movie theaters was born as Quad Cinema.  Quad Cinema was profitable since opening in October, 1972 and is still operating today.

By framing the problem not in terms of external changes, but rather  in terms of what opportunities the movie theater operator was missing to serve more customers, he found a solution to broaden its appeal, attract more customers and build a growth business in what at the time was a dying industry.

With little or more than an opening question based on an underlying disbelief that the status quo made sense, a deep level of curiosity and the skills of observation and storytelling, Kanbar was able to apply an outside perspective to a single movie theater and reinvent an existing industry.

Have you ever asked for an outside perspective to help transform your business?
 

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
~George S. Patton

Sometimes all it takes to create a powerful marketing program is to think up new ways to deliver benefits to your customers.   In the event that you don’t have enough time to think this week, I’m offering you 5 new marketing ideas you can implement with just a bit of time, some basic communication efforts and no out-of-pocket spending.  Sure, you may need to offer a discount here and there, but if you learn something from doing any of these 5 ideas, it will be worth it.

My objectives with these ideas are that they help increase foot traffic, increase loyalty, increase word-of-mouth, or some combination of any of the above.  With each idea, I’ll tell you why it will be beneficial to your retail store, give you an example (or two) of how others have done something similar, and a mention few things you need to think about to implement without significant problems springing up.

Create a card asking customers for online reviews

Why?  It will help your search engine performance.  Increasing your online reviews is being increasingly recognized by Google and other search engines as important content that searchers value.  If some information has value to the searcher, then you can bet your bottom dollar that Google will find a way to capture that relevance in its search results.
Example:  I helped one of my clients get established on Google Places, yelp, tripadvisor and other relevant directories.  Now it plans to hand out a variation of this card to customers after completing their transactions.  Easy peasy!

Create a combo product that provides a customer discount over buying items separately

Why?  Increasing your average transaction amount is a great way to increase your overall revenue.  Yes, you will reduce your margin a bit, but if you combine the products into a solution that makes sense for your customer, you will start to train them to spend more in your store each visit.  Then your register will sound sweeter when it goes Ka-Ching!
Example:  The classic example is of a Happy Meal, or any other fast food combo.  When I worked for Clorox, we’d sometimes bundle two different scents of Pine-Sol into a combo pack.  If you have a café, you could create a breakfast special that includes a large coffee and a pastry.  Or if you have a deli, sandwich + chips + a beverage.  If you have a women’s boutique, maybe it’s a handbag and hat ensemble.  Get creative!

Create a customer photo contest

Why?  It allows your proudest customers to showcase their talents, and if you pick your theme right, your products.  It will also most likely result in you having lots of pictures of happy customers to share and reuse on your website, in marketing materials, or just displayed in your store.  After all, a picture tells a thousand words.
Example:  Pizza Orgasmica, a chain in San Francisco, hangs framed photos of customers and has a gallery on its website of customers who share pictures of them wearing branded t-shirts from around the world.  George’s Music in Berwyn Pennsylvania is running a photo contest though its Facebook page and asking fans and customers to “Post a pic of you and your instrument to our Wall.”

Bypass Groupon and announce your own group offer on your Facebook page

Why?   Your Facebook fans will see the offer, but they will probably have to round up non-Facebook fans to bring in a group to your store.  New customers introduced by current customers is a win-win for everybody.
Example:    Tropisueno, a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, has a standing group offer of free drinks for the person who brings in 5 additional friends.  If you own or manage a restaurant, my recommendation is to announce a specific day and specific time frame when this offer can be redeemed (such as Happy Hour) so you can fill seats that normally are unoccupied.

Tweet a secret word that customers have to share in order to get a discount or t-shirt (with purchase of course)

Why?  It keeps your customers engaged in your twitter feed, gets them more deeply involved in what you have to say through gaming mechanisms, and if you announce a secret word on random days, does not become a predictable way to get regular freebies (after all, people who only buy for free don’t help you make money).
Example:  Cold Fusion Gelato Store in Newport, RI

What downsides or challenges do you see about implementing any of these ideas?