Growth Insights for CEOs

“Bagels by the Batch”

What’s with all the hype about “Artisan Bagels” by Dunkin' Donuts?  Does anyone even know what the word “Artisan” means?  In the back of my mind, the word conjures up the idea of goods hand-crafted in small batches.   

Do the makers of Dunkin' Donuts want us to think its new line of bagels are better tasting because they are made with more passion and care? You bet they do!

So why did Dunkin' Donuts venture here and what can small to mid-sized brands and businesses learn from this?

It’s all about Marketing and figuring out how to differentiate your brand from the competition.

A few years ago, I used a similar approach while managing the Marcal line of paper products.  Marcal was known as the “Value brand” in the category.  At first glance you might think this is a good position to occupy, but it’s not. Grocery Chains typically promote their own Private Label line as the “Value” offering in the store.  So if your brand is considered “Value” you better change quick because you are competing against your customer and it's a matter of time before your brand will be ousted from the shelf. What Dunkin Donuts did very cleverly was to leverage the idea (Artisan) to help distinguish their brand of bagels from the rest of the crowd.  Because branding is about “differentness” not “sameness".

Fortunately in this case, Marcal had a long heritage of being made from recycled paper, so the brand was repositioned as Marcal Small Steps, the first line of 100% recycled paper products that was not only a good value, but was also good for the environment.

What does this mean in business or marketing terms?

To stay competitive, every product needs to own a point of difference in the consumer's mind (versus its competition).  If your brand or company is considered a me-too, then the only way to compete is on price, which is a very slippery slope to be on.

So what should you do:

First, conduct a Competitive Assessment – Determine what word(s) your competition owns.  One of the easiest ways to do this is to ask consumers who buy your category, what they think the brands stand for.  What you will find is the bigger brands typically own the most important benefits that consumer’s value in the category.  In paper, Charmin stands for “Softness”, Bounty for “Absorbency” and Scott “long lasting”.

Next determine what word your brand owns and how does this stack up to the competition.  Owning the same word is difficult, if not impossible, unless you own a slightly different version of it and that version has a meaningful benefit to the consumer.  In paper, Quilted Northern and Charmin both look to own softness but Quilted Northern promotes their paper as “quilted softness” to differentiate themselves from Charmin.  For Marcal Small Steps we chose to own “good for the environment”, because the paper was made by not cutting down new trees.

Once identifying the word look to own that word in all aspects of the marketing mix – your product name, your packaging graphics, any advertising that supports the brand in both traditional and digital mediums, and your promotions.  Marcal Small Steps' focused approach on its new positioning enabled the brand to regain its footing in many of the Grocery Retailers that had discontinued the “Value” version the year earlier.

No matter what industry or business you are in, you need to think about the strength of your brand’s positioning.  Dunkin' Donuts wanted to own a larger share of the bagel business.  We will see if its “Artisan Bagels” do the trick. For me, I’m a purist.  Dunkin' Donuts means really great tasting donuts. Please pass me a Glazed.

What are your reactions?  Do you think “Artisan Bagels” will catch on?

by MJ Jolda, CMO        201.452.0613       MJJolda@chiefoutsiders.com

Consumer Package Goods marketing executive MJ Jolda has more than 20 years of experience working for global Fortune 500 firms (Reckitt Benckiser, Altria, and Nestle), with the last 10 years focused primarily on private equity turnarounds of small to mid-sized companies. She currently lives in Essex Falls, NJ. Throughout her career, Jolda has consistently grown share, revenue and profitability by focusing on consumer insights and marketing basics.  She has managed a broad range of familiar household brands, including French’s, Vlasic, Woolite, Gerber and Marcal. MJ is just one of the strategic marketing consultants who work together on winning strategies for Chief Outsiders' clients.

Rising Above Organic Growth

A successful small to medium sized business often runs the risk of feeling “too comfortable”. Even though revenue is coming in, your customers like you, and your sales force is calling on customers regularly, you aren’t seeing the growth you are looking for. This lack of desired growth may be a result of new competitors, new products or services in the market, or that the market itself is growing stagnant. 

Outside Comfort Zone

If any or all of these things are happening it should cause you to take a hard look at your business and consider going out of your comfort zone to continue to grow. It may be time to consider looking for new markets for your product. If you've grown comfortable selling to one or a few vertical markets, going beyond them may cause fundamental changes in your company. You may have to learn new industries, call on different kinds of buyers, and maybe have to recruit new sales people with knowledge of this new category.

Market Expansion

Most of all, you will have to take a hard look at your business and decide what kinds of problems you can be solving for new and different companies. Really getting into the guts of your business and looking beyond the obvious answers can sometimes be a painful exercise.  You may be required to change the culture of your company in order to accommodate this new market opportunity that you have uncovered. But, the growth that comes with it is definitely worth the effort.

Wiping Up Opportunities

A perfect example of a company that went through this process and came out the back end with a success is Sani Professional, www.wipeyourworldclean.com.  They are the #1 worldwide brand for pre-moistened wipes.  Their business was originally focused on manufacturing private label wipes for retailers such as Target, Wal-Mart, and Costco.  They also private labeled for companies like Johnson &Johnson and Pfizer who wanted to add sanitary wipes to their existing portfolio of products.

But, in order to accomplish real revenue growth, they knew that they needed to expand into new uses, and new markets, for their mature business. They focused their expansion on two new market segments, retail supermarket chains, plus restaurants and other food servers. 

They were successful in selling into supermarket chains by positioning their wipes as a means to clean off the shopping carts upon their customers entering the stores. With consumers more aware of the spread of germs than ever before, this effort by the stores showed a genuine concern for customer well being.

In addition, Sani Professional saw an opportunity in the food service business. Tables and counters are traditionally cleaned using a cloth towel that isn’t necessarily washed between each usage. With their sanitary wipes, restaurants can now use a wipe to clean off tables and counters that is clean every time and saves them the expense of laundering their towels. 

Pricing Power

These expansions into proprietary industries provided Sani Professional with more pricing flexibility. Their core business was regarded as more of a commodity which was sensitive to pricing.  Of course, there needed to be an investment for the expansion, as the company was now entering new markets that fell under EPA and FDA regulations. New packaging and an increase in the size of the sales force were also required. The management determined that the market opportunity was well worth the investment.  “Adding the Grocery and Food Service industries to our product offerings greatly changed our mix, and reduced our dependency on one category of business. The result has been a 10% increase in revenue for the company,” said Matt Schiering, General Manager.

Alternative Strategy

Of course the other market expansion strategy for growth is to sell more products to your existing customers. For example, cable companies have been selling high speed internet connections to small to medium sized businesses for years. But their addition of telephone service accomplishes two objectives: It increases revenue, and it puts in place one more exit barrier.

Often it takes a fresh pair of eyes from outside the company to look at what you are doing, and make recommendations on new markets, or new products, that represent increased revenue opportunities for your business. 

By Steve Yanovsky, CMO           914.533.6722          SYanovsky@ChiefOutsiders.com  

Steve Yanovsky is one of the strategic marketing consultants on the Chief Outsiders team. He and his wife live in South Salem, New York. Yanovsky’s classic marketing and strategy training comes from his tenure at Nestle, as well as his ad agency experience managing such grocery products clients such as Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, and Dr Pepper.  His ad agency background also includes managing accounts such as IBM, Business Week magazine, Communications Satellite Corporation and Ingersoll Rand (IR).   

The Solution to Mediocre Marketing? A CMO Leading Multiple Niche Agencies

It sounds like a great idea to turn your business's entire multichannel marketing campaign over to a single large marketing agency, doesn't it? You simply tell the agency, "Here's our target market, this is our brand, here's how we would like to position ourselves. Now go create the content, buy the media and help us grow." And the agency promotes itself as a "full-service" provider capable of handling every detail of your marketing from soup to nuts. So why are the results so frequently lackluster?

The fact of the matter is that every company has strengths and weaknesses — no one firm can do everything equally well, whatever it may claim. Most "full-service" agencies have a particular niche that they cover really well, but they pretend they're good at everything. So in a turnkey campaign, an agency will knock its specialties right out of the ballpark and then attempt to fill the gaps through legacy systems and approaches that just don't work all that well. The result is hit-and-miss marketing. A junior marketing team relying on a big agency to solve all its problems is a formula for mediocrity.

Experience and Specialization

Instead of going with one big "jack of all trades" agency, how about employing various smaller "boutique" agencies, each specializing in a different medium or approach? This approach ensures the most effective results across the entire spectrum of your marketing campaign. But, to get these niche media companies working together smoothly, you need a CMO who knows the entire industry — an experienced top-tier executive who can take the reins over a hand-picked team to take your company where it wants to go. 

That's the kind of expertise we provide here at Chief Outsiders, so if you want to get the most from your marketing dollar, contact us.

by Joe Grace     call me now at 203.247.0796 or JGrace@ChiefOutsiders.com

A strategic problem solver and marketing innovator, Joe Grace has helped develop a “Who’s Who” of consumer health and wellness brands. His portfolio, which spans 20 years, includes the introduction, positioning and growth of such name-brand companies as WebMD, Medscape, Perricone MD Cosmaceuticals, and Suzanne Somers’ ThighMaster. As a key Chief Outsider, Joe brings his expertise to all our strategic marketing consulting engagements.

Drive Success: Push Yourself Down

One of my favorite quotes is “It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit.”  This quote has been attributed to Ronald Reagan and Harry S. Truman — both eminent leaders.  A challenge for any CEO today is how to rebuild or drive more robust growth with existing teams and constrained resources. As a two-time CEO and lifetime marketer, I know this is a recurring challenge.

Maximum Impact

One of the best ways to get the maximum impact from your team is ensure that your leadership focus is on making everyone around you successful.  As you drive the success of your organization or team, you leverage both the success of the business and importantly, the individuals.  This may seem simplistic or even elementary but it is often lost in the executive suite to the pressures of daily reality.  Some call it servant leadership, others humility, Jim Collins defined it as being a Level 5 leader.  But if driving the success of others is so powerful, why is it so difficult and rarely practiced?

Counter Intuitive

Two factors conspire to drive business leaders to rely on the “I’m in charge and will make it happen” mode of leadership.  First, as successful executives, we believe we have risen to our levels of responsibilities due to our drive, skill, expertise and results.  We did it — we made it happen.  When pressured to deliver results in challenging markets and economies, the tendency is to rely upon what we perceive drove success in the past — ourselves.  The second practical issue is the fact that working to make others successful can often feel like abdicating leadership.  To ask others on your team “how can I be of help” or “what do you need to be successful” is a far cry from the traditional command and control mystique of a “leader.”

Driving Success

If you want to maximize the growth of your business, driving the success of your team will accomplish more than any individual heroic effort.  As you help others around you become more successful, you will build a stronger, more competent and capable team.  This will allow you to better retain your existing team and also attract new outstanding performers.  What type of leader would attract you?  One who drives via control or one who drives your success?

So, as a business leader, what are you doing today to drive the success of your team?  When was the last time you genuinely asked “how can I be of help”?  Depending on the state of your organization’s culture, it may take some time for people to accept and trust your help — but the growth dividends will come.  Remember that “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit.” 

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please leave me a comment below or give me a call.

Brian Sholly, CMO     Call or write me at  770.598.5445 or BSholly@ChiefOutsiders.com

A global leader with a strong growth record in software, technology, consumer products and start-up organizations, Brian Sholly is a strategic marketing consultant passionate about building businesses. Sholly has proven his ability to drive growth and profitability at companies such as Procter & Gamble, GTE (Verizon) and his own start-up business. We are thrilled to have Brian as a Chief Outsider, based on his outstanding interpersonal skills, strategic thinking, leadership, collaboration and ethics.

Mobile Marketing Strategy or “How Did They Know I was Hungry?”

You have just parked the car and are on the way to pick up your dry cleaning or buy some cough drops at the neighborhood pharmacy. Suddenly, your cell phone lights up, asking if you would like a discount coupon to buy a pizza at the shop on the corner? You stare at the phone, in dismay, wondering how the pizza shop knew you were there and knew you were hungry?? Doesn’t it realize that you are trying to eat healthily? How does this work?

This is “Mobile Marketing”

You have been downloading apps on your cell phone. For example, apps like “Google Maps” or “Angry Birds” or “Yahoo”. Marketers are buying “location based” impressions from these companies so as you get within 100 feet or 2 blocks or 1 mile of the pizza shop (depending on what “geo fence” was bought) the coupon offer is generated to your phone. 

Amazing, right? Intrusive, maybe? Annoying, sometimes.

Creative? Successful?

All of the above! This is where marketing is today. And this is only one of the ways it works. I attended a workshop conducted recently by a mobile marketing guru, Candice McFarlane, Director of Client Services at Ping Mobile. She shared this example as well as others, including one where you are in Las Vegas: You're searching for a hotel to stay that night. Suddenly, on your phone, you get an offer for a 15% discount at a local hotel. They knew you were searching and reached out to you. 

Is this type of marketing applicable to your business? Maybe, maybe not. But it's important to stay abreast of the latest techniques so that when it's time to devise your marketing strategy, you know potential new tactics, and when they will lead to success and when they won't. 

Let me know what you think. Are emerging mobile marketing ideas interesting to your business? Give me a call or leave a comment below.

By Barbara Fowler, Partner & CMO    908-956-4529  bfowler@chiefoutsiders.com
Barbara Fowler believes that great companies are grown through leaders who develop marketing strategies that make the customer experience rewarding and significant and through employee/customer engagement. To help achieve these conditions, she has worked in start-up, turnaround and profitable companies all around the globe, specializing in the development, implementation and achievement of sales targets. She has held a variety of challenging positions both in the home office and field, effectively leading culturally diverse organizations and implementing development programs for CMOs worldwide. She is an adjunct professor at Rutgers University, as well as an global CMO and thought leader for our strategic marketing consulting firm.

Too Broad a Brush: The Lack-of-Focus Problem

Perhaps the most common issue I see among all kinds of businesses, from startups to large, established firms, is a lack of focus in their marketing. This generally takes the form of what I call taking too broad a brush to the market — throwing broad, scattershot strategies at the market in the hopes that some of it will stick, instead of pinpointing the most lucrative opportunities  and then choosing the right applications — the right brush, if you will — to get the most of out those opportunities.

Insights from Successful Segments

The scattershot approach is often to blame when a company is generating insufficient revenue, or generating revenue only in certain segments, but the company's marketing efforts are spread so thin that it's impossible to really understand why some segments are thriving and others are flatlining. When we see signs of this going on, first we take a detailed look at how the company views its market. Then we focus on exactly where and how the product is being utilized in the more successful segments. Is that segment applying the product toward the same purpose that the company designed it for? Is there an untapped opportunity in marketing the product differently, in accord with how these segments are using it?

Increased Budget Efficiency

This information enables the company to throw its full marketing resources into the most successful segments — an especially critical ability for small companies that have to watch their marketing budgets. It also gives them a better understanding of the dead spots, including  the effects of geography, pricing, customer demographics or other factors that affect how (or whether) you should sell to those weaker segments. Once you start applying your marketing with a fine-point brush, you stand a much better chance of creating a masterpiece.

Let me know how you see things by leaving your comments below. Or contact me directly.

by Ricky Holloman, Partner & CMO   713.213.6431    Ricky@ChiefOutsiders.com

Ricky Holloman is an experienced business executive specializing in the areas of strategy development, marketing, business development, and technology capabilities. By leveraging these skills in the fields of technology, energy and industrial applications, Holloman has pursued a distinguished three-decade career and performed critical leadership positions for companies such as Expro Group, PowerWell Services and Halliburton Energy Services. Each Chief Outsider is a strategic marketing consultant who contributes his/her expertise as we brainstorm potential solutions for our clients' marketing challenges, all the way through implementation of marketing strategies and measuring performance.

CEOs Need 3-D Skills to Stop the Pain

When you are suffering from knee pain you go to an orthopedic surgeon. Why?

You need an expert to diagnose the cause of the knee pain.  The surgeon collects objective data, including a physical exam, observation, and a series of questions about your pain.  The doctor then sends you for X-ray’s and MRIs to validate the insights from the physical exam. Only then does the skilled surgeon make the diagnoses. Your orthopedic expert then develops a strategy to fix the problem.  Medication, physical therapy, surgery, immobilization are all solution in his armamentarium. Your surgeon then makes certain the therapy is delivered and mentors you to be compliant.

When your business is suffering from slow growth in revenue and profitability do you bring in an expert to help diagnose the problem, develop a solution strategy and deliver the fix to improve growth in revenue and profitability? Or do you self diagnose?

Diagnose

Diagnosis requires insightful objectivity.  Experienced professional marketing executives help speed up the diagnosis that will lead to a clear understanding of the issues affecting lack of growth. They become your growth doctor to diagnose the problem, develop a solution strategy and deliver the fix.

Collecting objective insights starts by asking the right questions. 

• Why do customers like your products or services?
• What purpose does your company serve?
• What is your vision and what is preventing you from achieving it?
• Why don’t more customers understand the value you deliver?
• Why do potential customers buy from your competition?
• Why are you successful in some areas of your business and what is preventing your company from being more successful in all areas of your business? 
• What are you doing now that is working and what are you doing now that is not producing the result you anticipated?  How do you measure this?

With these objective insights an accurate diagnose of what is going on with your business is achievable.   With accurate diagnosis the experienced marketing executive will develop the right strategy to drive growth in revenue and profitability. 

Develop

Developing the strategies to grow revenue and profitability requires knowledge of purpose driven marketing.  What is the purpose of your company and the products or services it provides?  Does this purpose resonate throughout the organization? Are there objective insights that demonstrate that your company’s purpose delivers value?  Defining your purpose, your internal strengths and weaknesses, and the external opportunities and threats are essential to creating a purpose driven marketing strategy.

Deliver

Delivering on the strategy requires focused experienced executive level management.  The focus will drive the implementation.  The executive level experience will assure that resources are allocated efficiently with metrics to determine the impact.

CEOs will see an orthopedic surgeon when they have a knee problem.  They don’t self diagnose.  Their expectation is the experienced surgeon will diagnose the cause of the pain, develop a strategy to treat the pain and the deliver the treatment that will make the pain go away.  Many CEOs especially in the SMG space perform self-diagnosis and the strategies that evolve often fall short.

Unfortunately many CEOs are challenged with daily and hourly operations issues or lack the executive marketing experience and are hard pressed to be objective in their diagnosis.  Incorrect diagnosis creates the inability to develop strategies that are aligned with the purpose resulting in under delivering what is needed to achieve the desired growth in revenue and profitability. 

Key Learning

1. Diagnosis requires gathering and validation of objective insights that affect growth 
2. Developing marketing strategies requires clear vision of the company’s purpose, vision and what it will take to overcome the roadblocks to greater revenue growth
3. Delivering the results requires marketing executives with the experience to focus and implement tactics that are aligned with the purpose driven marketing strategy

- by Marshall Perez, Partner, CMO/BDO   570.689.7451 or MPerez@ChiefOutsiders.com

3 Steps to Improving Customer Retention

As someone who once helped the pest-control giant Terminix exterminate a nasty customer retention problem, I've seen what a difference a few strategic adjustments can make. So if you're facing the same issue, let me assure you that there are steps you can take to stamp it out.

1) Measure

Growth Opportunity: The Demand Chain

Efficiency Only Goes So Far

The last ten years of American business has been focused on integrating and perfecting operational efficiencies through the perfection and active management of the Supply Chain.  For the last couple of years of economic turmoil, many companies have almost exclusively focused on supply chain efficiencies as a strategy for survival.  Now the challenge is taking the expertise and company culture focused on linear thinking and introspection of the supply chain and start growing again.

The University of Texas Research Findings

A recent study by the McCombs School of Business  done in conjunction with Chief Outsiders revealed that 2/3^rd of mid-size businesses are Operationally focused, as opposed to Market focused.  These Operationally focused organizations are usually led by a founder or CEO from an operational background and the key management teams of these organizations are primarily operational, or internally focused.

Marketing as a Discipline

One way to get these operationally focused organization growing again is to start addressing strategic growth and marketing with the same discipline and linear thinking that they have applied to Supply Chain planning and optimization.  In other words, address growth and marketing like a Demand Chain.

The Difference

Just like the Supply Chain, the end point of the Demand Chain is the final purchase and use of the product or service by the end user.  The Supply Chain and the Demand Chain meet at the same end point but they start out very differently.  The development of a Supply Chain often has a middle point of the product or manufacturing, and then works backwards towards supplier and forwards towards delivery.  The Demand Chain also has a middle point of the products or services, but it can work backwards to understand and integrate the needs of the target customer/consumer and then forwards to the distribution channel, demand generation and eventual delivery systems. In a sense, the supply chain is the physical chain whereas the demand chain is logical, although quite real. This is where companies find their relevance and differentiation. The most relevant, but differentiated offerings win time and again.

We'll continue this discussion in future articles. If you'd like to see how some large companies addressed their growth challenges by focusing on the demand chain, you might enjoy "How Companies Win" by Cash and Calhoun.

I'd love to hear your comments on this subject. Please enter them below.

by Art Saxby       Call Art now at 281.610.1481 or Art@ChiefOutsiders.com

Intuition Isn't Enough: The Value of Analytics

Go Beyond Instincts

Great sales and marketing performers have a tendency to put a lot of stock in their intuitive powers. They feel that their instincts give them a special insight into what will or won't work, regardless of analytics. But those numbers really do make a difference, intuition or no intuition -- and studying what they have to say and how they are formed can ultimately do tremendous things for your company's revenue.

What Are The Numbers Saying?

When I was working in Argentina I had to recruit a great many people, and I would often hear comments like, "Yes, I know what the numbers are saying, but I have a really good feeling about this person's ability to succeed." But a close look at even the brightest, friendliest candidate's personality test scores and other analytics might reveal a lack of resilience, maturity or sheer drive. Numbers tell us things our feelings may hide from us.

Data Reveals Cultural Differences

Motivating factors can vary with age. Many of today's young sales professionals, for instance, are likely to be team-motivated as opposed to being primarily money-motivated -- the desire to contribute to society outweighs the urge to get rich. If your business has international branches, you must also consider that some motivating factors for U.S. salespeople may well act as de-motivators in other cultures. For example, in many countries, like Spain for example, competition is demotivating. Analytics can help bring these differences to light.

Measure ROI

Analytics also keep us honest about whether our activities are really bringing in revenue. A marcom person may love creating brochures, for instance, but those brochures must produce measurable results. Even the most well-intentioned actions can be misplaced -- offering "white glove" V.I.P. customer service may enhance sales and profits for a Porsche dealership, but. although it might increase sales,  is more likely to be too expensive and decrease profits at a bicycle shop. No matter how "right" our strategies and actions may feel, the numbers don't lie. Listen to them!

By Barbara Fowler            908.956.4529   or   BFowler@ChiefOutsiders.com