ATTENTION : Relocation of blog

My blog will be relocated to :
http://ideasirkus.blogspot.com
because I feel it reflects my personality better
Please check it out by clicking on the above link

Sirk.

Metabolism

According to Tom Peters "metabolism" is the word that expresses the
extraordinary pace of change and responsiveness required by enterprise.

In the present day economy the CEO needs to be master of metabolic
management.

Progressive Insurance Company is one of the best firms in the world. In any
industry states Tom Peters. In any industry. "We don't sell insurance"
Mr.Lewis the CEO says, "we sell speed"

In the past, "best practice" meant that a company had a strategy meeting
every couple of times a year, but we think, says eBay's Meg Whitman, we
need one ..."twice a week."

metabolism! That's the word that expresses the extraordinary pace of change
required, the extraordinary "responsiveness" on the part of the enterprise.
"The organisations we created have become tyrants." wrote Frank Lekanne
Deprez and Rene Tissen in Zero Space. " They have control holding us
fettered, creating barriers that hinder rather than help our business. The
lines that we drew on our neat organizational charts have turned into
walls, that no one can scale or penetrate, or even peer over." And those
barriers ... MUST NOT STAND... in the new world order!

Hence it is my contention that one of the CEO's top jobs is the... DIRECT
MANAGEMENT OF THE CORPORATE METABOLIC RATE. It's two things: Using
leadership by personal example. And the very best and boldest in new
technology to speed things up. And it's ... Destroying (All the) Old
Stuff... and... INVENTING ENTIRELY NEW FORMS OF ORGANIZATION!

Quoted from Tom Peters

THE BRAND (The Story!)

(The Dream!) (The Love!)

It All Adds Up to … THE BRAND. (The Story!)

In the end, it is all about CHARACTER!

Futurist Rolph Jensen, head of the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, puts it more oceanically: “We are in the twilight of a society based on data. As information and intelligence become the domain of computers, society will place more value on the one human ability that cannot be automated : emotion. Imagination, myth, ritual—the language of emotion—will affect everything from our purchasing decisions to how we work with others. Companies will thrive on the basis of their stories and myths. Companies will need to understand that their products are less important than their stories.”

Mr. Jensen, has a point

“WHAT’S THE DREAM?” When Kevin Roberts took over as Big Boss at Saatchi & Saatchi, he had a dream: Nothing is impossible. To be revered as a hothouse for world-changing creative Ideas that transform our clients’ brands, Businesses, and Reputations.

Quoted from : Tom Peters

The Harley Davidson Experience

Harley-Davidson, you can call it a “machinery manufacturer” (“guys who make motorcycles”). I call it …

Well …

A Harley-Davidson executive (not the editor of Motorcycle Management) says,

“What we sell is the ability for a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him.”

“It took me years and years,” Harley CEO Rich Teerlink explains over dinner, “to convince Wall Street that we’re not a ‘machinery manufacturer’ but a ‘lifestyle company.’” When Mr. T made that “sale” in lower Manhattan his market capitalization increased by … $10B or so.

Harley sells … EXPERIENCES! How else can you explain their third quarter of 2004 results: HD’s revenues were a scant 2 percent of General Motors’; their profitability was … 50 percent of GM’s!

Harley-Davidson sells … EXPERIENCES!

And the bigger point: SCINTILLATING EXPERIENCES … are the … ulTimaTe “professional service.”

Mr. Pine and Mr. Gilmore provide us as referent the … “experience ladder.” “Raw materials” are the bottom rung. Then “goods.” Then “services.” And then at the apex …EXPERIENCES.

I like that. And I also wish to alter it.

I’ll keep raw materials, goods, services. Then I want to add “SOLUTIONS” as the next step up the ladder. (The IBM, UPS, GE bit.) And then, indeed, we can move to Messrs. Pine and Gilmore’s … EXPERIENCES.

Quoted from Tompeters!

The fear and discomfort of creative thinking

The other day, passing through the mall I noticed a product promotion being prepared. They took over most of the center of the mall, covering it with carpet and peppered it with a handful of glass shelves. The razor being promoted belonged to one of the major brands and the model under promotion was inspired by Formula 1, including the bright colors and graphics, just missing the roar.

Observing the goings-on of the preparation realizing the resources of the manufacturer and the potential of the product, I expected a roar.

Creative promotions or business cause discomfort amongst all parties. The more creative the strategy the more unease is caused. It is exactly this unease and the courage to go through with the strategy by all parties involved which can cause the company to stand out and reap the success of its efforts.

Getting back to the mall, I could not believe the final shape of the promotion. No roar, no bang, no lights not even a sizzle. With this image in mind, I could not help but dream up a show for the razor. In contrast to the half dozen dressed up youngsters I saw, I imagined something more shocking and memorable, not something for the preppy crowd who mostly would be in the possession of a Philishave anyway, not feeling the need for a multi-blade hand razor with the closest, smoothest shave ever. Imagine youngsters, sporting a crew cut, the Bruce Willis look, lining up to have graffiti art shaven on their heads. Imagine....?

Creative experiential ideas invoke a certain amount of fear. If this feeling causes a sense of connection with the target audience it may result in the virus-like spread of the offering. From the other side, prior to acceptance it may cause a significant amount of resistance from the project head, afraid of the risk of failure. Although failure as such is not necessarily a bad thing. It gives us an indication of direction. Based on the observation of minor failure big successes can be shaped.

"Behind a perfect performance is a thousand mistakes", Adidas

Some Like it Raw

There are two ways to prepare the carrot for consumption: it can be left untouched (raw) or it can be cooked. Invitations to become a customer are either raw or cooked.

We’re most familiar with cooked invitations. Cooked invitations are about production values, deliberate creative messaging, market research, and technique.

That’s the traditional invitation most of us grew up with. We felt manipulated by the broadcast model of radio and TV commercials, gimmicky print ads that urged us to “come on in”, and sales techniques which had us signing on the dotted line before we knew what hit us. While there are good and honest examples of cooked invitations, many of us have grown weary (and leery) of the overcooked world of marketing.

That’s why raw is “moving up the charts”. Raw brand invitations don’t worry about super-high production value. They avoid slick. They’re very direct and straightforward. Transparency is more important than technique. And it’s served up using social networking and conversational media. YouTube, blogs, wikis, and word of mouth are some of the great ways to disseminate the raw, unfiltered story of your brand. Your potential customers, tired of the overcooked messages of the broadcast world, are eating it up.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a highly-produced Super Bowl ad as much as the next guy. But there is a line that gets crossed and that’s when I feel the hype – some marketer is trying to yank me around. That’s when I go looking for a raw, direct, and honest invitation to become someone’s customer.

People are now faster and smarter than the advertising and sales guys – they have been for some time. Ad agencies schooled in the traditional cooked version of creative are now open to something a bit more raw and believable. Raw is catching on.

Your brand is marked by the way you invite people to buy into what you are selling. Have you thought through how much cooking is too much? Consider dicing up your brand’s message and serving it raw – at least once.

Some like it raw.

Link to "OwnYourBrand"...

How little things can go a long way to solidify customer satisfaction and loyalty

There are some companies where employees do not really care whether you have a bad buying experience - either acting completely unapologetic or worse, making you feel like it's all your fault.

Not so with Lenovo and Starbucks.

After my recent buying experience with Sony I bought a Lenovo laptop. And just like Sony they ran out of parts for my laptop just before their promised ship date. Unlike Sony, they are the ones that alerted me of the manufacturing delay. The email was very apologetic, gave me an option to cancel my order if I could not wait, and offered me a free gift for the inconvenience if I decided to stick with them. Guess what - I took the free battery and was not in the least annoyed with the delay. In fact it made me feel good about the way the company was dealing with customer problems. Because at the end of the day, you know that something will always go wrong - and it's not the fact that something goes wrong that makes you lose customers - it is the way you choose to deal with those exceptions that affects customer loyalty.

The same happened at Starbucks this morning. I was in a bit of rush and found out that they just started brewing the dark roast and that it would take 4 minutes to get my coffee. Watching coffee brew for 4 minutes is an eternity. I was a bit miffed - thinking that maybe Starbucks' employees had gotten infected with the same bug that is plaguing their neighbor . Sensing my unhappiness, all three employees at the store this morning found a way to apologize, and one gave me a coupon for a free drink the next time I visit a Starbucks. Even the coupon apologizes - telling me that they hope that my next Starbucks experience will be a good one!

Guess who I have talking about all morning?

OK - enough about customer service now, let's get back to marketing...
...but wait...isn't this marketing? :)

Quoted from : http://www.emergencemarketing.com/

Service delivery Strategies

Traveling yesterday, I realized that there are two popular strategies for service delivery. One is a coping strategy and one is a marketing strategy.

You can deliver the lowest permitted amount, or you can work to create the most remarkable experience you can imagine.

Stop for a second before jumping to the conclusion that the latter is always what you do.

When I pay a bill, I don't put more money in the envelope then I'm billed for. And I don't put more stamps on the envelope than the USPS requires, even if I'm in a particularly generous mood. Living life like Spinal Tap (always at 11) is inefficient if not impossible. Very often, we find ourselves doing the least amount of work permitted because, after all, we have more important things to spend our time on.

Smart marketers understand two things. The first is that you must pick your battles, deciding in which areas 'most' matters and living with 'least' the rest of the time. The second contradicts that and makes this a lot more complex: Least spreads.

You've seen this in countless organizations. A few people get in the habit of least, then a whole department does, and the next thing you know, it's an entire airline. Least is contagious.

Really smart marketers understand this: the best way to fight the contagion is to pay what it costs to eliminate least everywhere you look. It's ridiculous to expect most in all things (your postage bill will get out of hand), but I think it''s possible to work to stamp out least.

Link to Seth Godin's post..

Reward Creativity

It is usually important to reward staff in some way for creating and innovating quality solutions to problems. This need not necessarily be financial but should follow rapidly before the effort has faded from memory. In what ways would you like to be rewarded? Some organizations have instituted 'suggestion schemes' - with or without financial rewards - whereas others see creativity and innovation as a natural part of what they expect from all their employees. Sony has offered cash rewards for the 'best mistake of the month'!! This is not to encourage mistakes, because the mistake has to be written up so that others can avoid making the same error. This approach counters the typical survival response (found in 'punishmment' cultures) of trying to hide one's own mistakes.

The Japanese see problems as 'golden eggs' and welcome them and see them very much as a source of improvements and brand new solutions. Being more community-minded than the Europeans or Americans, they will also post a description of a problem in a public space (e.g. the corridor) with the expectation that colleagues will respond by helping to resolve the issue.

Quoted from 'Creative Problem Solving' by David O'Dell

The best brand doesn't remove the need for a good product.

If you manage to create a great brand, says D'Alessandro , CEO and president of John Hancock Financial Services Inc., the last thing to do is relax. The pressure to sell a product that protects and enhances brand reputation has only begun. The worst thing is to become arrogant and removed from your customers.

"You can have the best advertising in the world, but once you turn off a customer, he won't want to come back to you. The best thing that you can do for your brand is to execute well. Customer service is our biggest struggle -- that and making good products and answering the phone on time."

(www.fastcompany.com)

An All Too Frequently Ignored Pearl of Wisdom : Think Positive

The way you think affects the outcome of your actions.

When I was working in the beer industry, I was intrigued by our top 10
successful bar-and-hotel owning customers. The majority of them, to put it
tactfully, did not seem to be particularly sophisticated business people.
In other words, they did not seem to have any kind of business training or
acquired any qualifications.

I asked my boss how these people had become so successful. He said : "They
don't know they can't do it. You and I see the pitfalls, we know about
business and we see all the ways we can fail. These people only see how
they'll succeed."

This was a powerful message - these successful owners were talking to themselves in a much more positive way than less successful people.

Top sportsmen know that they have to talk to themselves in a positive way
to be successful. Research has proven that the success of the world's top
golfers is determined by 20 percent physical ability and 80 percent mental
ability. In you day-to-day tasks, you should be no different from sportsmen.

Try it!

Alan Fairweather, d'Oz Consultants (UK)

Corporate Brand, Architecture & Interior Design

In "Apples, Insights and Mad Inventors" Jeremy Bullmore states that the
contribution of architecture to corporate brands is widely debated but
infrequently practised. At a time when all are agreed that corporate brands
need to be as clearly differentiated one from another as repeat-purchase
consumer goods, tens of millions can be committed to buildings and interior
design without a single reference being made to the likely effect on the
ultimate customer. It is as if senior management believes that creating a
competitive reputation can safely be left to the hired hands in the
marketing department and is nothing whatsoever to do with them.

These are wasted opportunities : contacts between brand and brand user
which have to happen; but because their primary function is other than
brand communication, are thought to have no brand effect. The majority of
marketing companies do not think of them as media; do not monitor them as
media ; and therefore make no attempt to integrate them with the more
conventional media. Their customers, however - their buying public - make
no such distinction. And so substantial sums of money, which could have
reinforced brand values from unexpected directions, are at best
under-utilised and at worst counter-productive. There are many more brand
encounters of this kind - all essentially anarchaic in nature. By failing
to confirm the brand's true spirit, they challenge it; and so brand
authority is needlessly diminished.

Do You Know what Your Customers are Buying?

Always a good question to put to marketing : We all know what you make -
but are you as certain what your customers are buying?

Simple as it sounds, it's a constructively difficult question to answer.

As Theodore Levitt pointed out many years ago : people don't buy a
quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter inch hole. And for every product or
service, there's an equivalent distinction to be made - though seldom so
easily or elegantly.

Adapted from "Apples, Insights and Mad Inventors", Jeremy Bullmore

Manifesto for Marketing : Create Value

Marketing must realign itself to the priorities of business, and to create
exceptional value for both customers and shareholders. Marketers must adopt
a new role in the organization, exhibiting new behaviours and acquiring new
capabilities.

New roles :
- Customer champions
- Business innovators
- Growth drivers

Marketing has a unique opportunity to drive business, to move to the heart
of strategy formulation, to understand and engage customers more deeply, to
privide the fuel and focus for colleagues, and reposition itself as the
engine for value creation.

This would reaquire marketers to :
- Be accountable
- Act collaboratively
- Develop new capabilities

Quoted from "Marketing Genius"

Illustration : www.emergencemarketing.com

Marketing performance & Accountability

One of the most perverse attributes of boardrooms is that directors
typically spend less than 10% of their time focusing on where 90% of their
success comes from. Little time is spent on discussing where the revenues
come from, and how they could be improved, before the conversation quickly
progresses to operational performanceand cost management.

Marketing performance should be included and ideally lead the agendas of :
- Board meetings
- Quarterly business reviews, for managers and staff
- Investor relations briefings for analysts ad media.
- Annual reports available to all shareholders.

Imagine the CEO standing up at the next board meeting and marketing being
the focus of commentary, their current performance, and the investments
that are currently being made to secure and enhance future results.

This might seem as an obvious place to start in reviewing a business, yet
the vast majority will start with costs, processes and supply chains.

Why are business leaders so reluctant to focus on marketing, or at least
the customers it focusses on, and the revenue it drives? While supply
chains can be measured in all sorts of units, and the costs of them are
real and influenceable, understanding the dynamics of brands and
innovation, communication or distribution is much harder without numbers.

Marketing performance, short and long term, should be a key part of all
business reporting and, while conventional accounting may not do it
justice, there are increasingly more opportunities for directors to
articulate non-financial, forward-looking information for stakeholders to
help them make more informed judgement about the future prospects of the
business.

Marketing should ensure that the internal and external value contribution
of the following is fully articulated :
- Return on marketing investment, both short- and long-term.
- Key differentiating initiatives, e.g. Time-to-market, store interior.
- Strategic initiatives, e.g. New market entry, new innovations.
- Intangible assets such as brands and customer relations.

Marketing reporting should therefore be both quantified data and
qualitative statements. Ideally a balanced scorecard of metrics could be
used to drive marketing decision-making and performance measurement. In
this way activities that have most impact on business performance can be
focused on and reported.

As the source of future cashflow - marketing - struggles to articulate
itself to non-marketing audiences caused by the language it wraps itself
into, thereby creating resistance from financial and operational people.
Marketing needs to articulate its performance in a simpler language and go
back to where we started : boardroom directors spend less than 10% of their
time talking about customers and the revenue that comes from them.

Quoted from : "Marketing Genius" by Peter Fisk

Juicing the Orange

When developing a campaign
- Always start from scratch
- Demand a ruthless definition of the business problem.
- Discover a proprietory emotion
- Focus on the size ofthe idea not the size of the budget.
- Seek strategic risk.
- collaborate or perish.
- Listen hard to your customers (Listen again)

(juicingtheorange.com)

Basic sources of innovation

The seven basic sources of innovatian according to Peter Drucker :

- The surprise of the unexpected success or failure
- Inconsistencies : Things don't add up according to conventional wisdom
- Desperation : Where there is a crying need for a better way
- Outdated industries : Processes overdue for change
- Lifestyle or demographic changes, such as the rise of affluent retirees
- Attitudinal changes such as customer perception and expectations
- Discovery : Where new knowledge or capability promotes new opportunities

Harnessing one or more of these helps a company challenge traditional
thinking and explore new approaches

Connection between Employee morale and Customer satisfaction

A strong brand doesn't just drive improved profits from customers; it also
drives employee and shareholder behaviour too.

Sears, the Canadian retailer, according to an article in the "Harvard
Business Review", is able to demonstrate that a 5% improvement in employee
attitude drives a 1.3% increase in customer satisfaction, which drives a
0.5% increase in revenue growth. Sears reflects this
employee-customer-profit chain in their business objectives, to create 'a
compelling place to work, a compelling place to shop, an a compelling place
to invest'.

Quoted from 'Marketing Genius' by Peter Fisk

Motivation

Most of us would not disagree that the main asset of almost any company is people. But the important question is: "How do you make this asset beneficial for the people themselves and the organiza­tion to which they belong?" This is a great challenge that has caused many a CEO to lose his or her footing.

Carlos Ghosn feels that the first important step is to get the people motivated. They should dream of adventure, the vision thing, the destination and all that they want to realize with their lives. When speaking, Ghosn likes to quote the words of Antoine de Saint­-Exupery, the French pilot and poet who once wrote: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." It is, after all, the workers who must build the ship and the employees who must carry out the necessary changes within an organization to make it profitable. And how do you do it? You do it through motivation. The people must be moti­vated. They must perceive clearly their visions of what they want to realize for their family, town, company or country. They need to know what they should do today and tomorrow to make their dreams a reality. But motivation, like trust, is not something you can com­mand. It is a very personal response that people offer ... or don't. If people are motivated, everything else will follow: wealth, sales, profits and loyalty. If they are not motivated, then you lose everything. An organization can have the most brilliant strategy but if its employees are unable or unwilling to understand the strategy, then can we say the strategy is good?

In practice, how does one motivate a large workforce? People need to have a sense of participation. Like the stonecutters, if they

feel that they are doing enough to get by, then you have not moti­vated them. During the Nissan Revival Plan, motivating the entire workforce involved sharing the vision, building credibility, listening and showing trust. Most importantly, management could not falter or compromise. Ghosn knows that you must lead by example, no matter how difficult the decisions you must make. He knows that words are cheap, and though people may listen politely to what you say, what counts is what you do. Perhaps more than any other corporate leader today, Ghosn has seen that one can accomplish many things that are difficult or that people say cannot be done, as long as one holds the minds and hearts of people to inspire them to go the extra mile.

But motivation works both ways. Ghosn has always given credit for past successes to the employees of the companies where he has worked. He may have been the leader but he never would have been as successful as he has been without having been supported, helped and motivated by his employees.

Ghosn believes that management's first priority is to establish a clear vision and a common long-term plan for the organization. A clear vision will determine strategies, guide action plans, direct performance and boost the motivation of all the people involved. Focused performance will produce measurable, positive results, which, in turn, encourage motivation, confirm unity of purpose, and prompt better performance.

Here are three ideas that Ghosn likes to remind himself and the people who work with him.

• When people are motivated to perform, they can achieve remark­able things.

• Great people are just ordinary people with an extraordinary amount of determination.

• When ordinary people are determined to overcome their difficulties and prove what they can do, the results can indeed be great.

"There is no secret formula for corporate revival, but
there is one common denominator, the motivation of
the people."

Creativity and marketing

By Sirk Verelst

Life is a sequence of events. Some positive, some negative. The good are to be enjoyed, the "bad" form the essence of the lessons of life. Each and everyone of them contains a pearl of wisdom on how to make things better. These unfortunate incidents are either caused by our actions, decisions, or they are due to circumstances beyond our control. Through these experiences, we learn to deal with and anticipate possibilies. Using available resources, personal experience and the wisdom of others combined with creative thinking , a strategy can be formulated.

Creative problem solving is to be everyone's responsibility. As opposed to leaving the creative up to an outside agency, all parties at every level need to be involved. By making them part of the process, an innovative approach can be achieved. Starting from product development, through production to after-sales service, bringing the product closer to the needs and expectations of the end-user.

Traditionally, creativity is only involved at both ends of the product cycle, conception and promotion. The designer starts by translating the brief into a product. After completion, promotion and marketing take the final product, place it into a context and present it to the prospective buyer. To make the creative an integral part of the business cycle, it needs to be involved at every stage. The product ecosystem needs to integrate an inquisitive frame of mind at every stage. The perceived insignificant components and participants need to be subject to introspection. The existence of the product as well as every member of the team need to have his/her contribution questioned. In this way the final result as well as the process can be optimized yielding a maximum level of satisfaction to all, not only an increase of the absolute, but more importantly the perceived value of the product. The latter being far more important.

Click here for Related ideas (Businessweek)..