The treadmill phenomenon - How to stay ahead of the game with the ever-changing customer base

We can always find co-workers at our workplace who seem very busy, speaking fast, walking fast, no time to chit-chat or even take time to eat lunch. Does “busy” mean productivity? Often times the answer is no. This made me think about the “treadmill phenomenon”:

• You work very hard. But no matter how fast you walk/run, you do not go anywhere.
• If you stop, you will find that you are actually in the exact same spot where you started from.

To be fair, with budget constraints the way they are in many companies, employees carry relatively more responsibilities compared to their workload in the past. However, to some extent, busy means laziness. Busy can be a good excuse not to think about why we do what we do. Just do it to get it done.

I have noticed that Simon Sinek’s “start with why” philosophy - The golden circle has been mentioned in various meetings and conferences recently. The golden circle has three layers:

1. “Why”- why we need to do it? Why can’t we do it?

2. “How” - How we can achieve the goal. It’s the route towards the direction.

3. “What” - What is the expected result?

The golden circle concept is a philosophy of thinking from the inside out. The core belief is Why. If you have a business or you are on the way to transform your business in line with the emerging technologies and ever-changing customer base, to find out “why” - the real value of your business is mission critical. As Sinek puts it, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”

Successful companies are those who can clearly answer the “why” question. For example, Mark Zuckenburg founded Facebook because he identified “why he wanted to do it” that to connect people in the world is very important. Everybody wants to connect with his/her friends and family members. Life becomes more meaningful if we can connect with people and share what happens in our life with them.

As a marketer, to find out why customers need/what to buy from us out of all other competitors and to communicate the value to the customers is significant. When Steve Jobs unveiled the MacBook, instead of describing what they do - sell computers.  He said that we sell dreams. We help customers unleash their inner genius, and we will win over their hearts and minds. The “why” has generated hundreds of millions of Apple fans.

To start from why, often times, needs to challenge the status quo, challenge ourselves and overcome all our own negative feelings and make changes albeit obstacles and criticisms at different levels. However, this may be the only way we can avoid the treadmill phenomenon and keep abreast of changes and stay ahead of the game.

Increasing sales by 4,600% - 3 creative business cases

Business case #1

In a commodities market, increasing sales by 4,600% seems like an unrealistic probability or even a miracle. However,  Intermarché, one of the largest supermarket chains in France made it happen through creative branding.

Every day 500 million litres of orange juice is sold globally, half of that in Europe. The competition is that every brand claims its juice to be the best. It is common sense that the fresher the juice, the better it is. Intermarché created a brand, utilizing the exact hour & minute that a bottle of juice is produced as the brand name for that bottle. For example, 8:30 means the bottle of juice was made at 8:30 am. The brand changes according to the actual production time. The price of each bottle of juice is very affordable i.e., about 1.5 Euro, equivalent to $2.2. After 3-weeks in the market, the traffic in the stores increased by 25% and the sales of the juice increased by 4,600%. Moreover, this creative brand generated a hot hashtag #LeJusLePlusFrais (the freshest juice) that further strengthened the brand message and rocketed the sales. Watch the video about this campaign on YouTube.

Business case #2

Coca-Cola ran a brand campaign in China called “song lyric bottle”. The company found out that the Millennials in China feel more comfortable chatting online, and consequently face some challenges when communicating in person. Coca-Cola created a way to bridge the gap through music. The company collected the famous lyrics of hundreds of the current pop songs and printed one lyric on each bottle. For the first time, you can express your feelings through lyrics. Moreover, Coca Cola utilized the advanced Augmented Reality (AR) technology that allows consumers to scan a bar code and enjoy the flash animation created according to this lyric or listen to the original song that includes the lyric. You can also download an app called “music icons” on your smartphone and share the lyric and animations with your friends. For example, you can purchase a bottle with the lyric “there is a rainbow always after the rain” to encourage your friend who is facing a life challenge. Coca-Cola also engaged the original singers of those lyrics to promote their respective lyrics to their millions of fans online. Watch the video about this campaign on YouTube.

Business case #3

In Japan, fewer and fewer young people read newspapers. On the other hand, mineral water is one of the most popular items in a convenience store. A mineral water producer creatively brought together the newspaper and a mineral water bottle and named it “news bottle”. Each day, the latest headlines will be printed on the bottle. The manufacturer utilized AR technology so that people can read the full story of a headline by scanning the barcode on the bottle. The company reduced the price of the bottle by half to make it more affordable to young people. Now, news can be accessed almost everywhere while you rehydrate. As a result, the company has sold 3,000 bottles of mineral water per store per month. This campaign was reported in various media and was able to generate extensive public awareness.  Watch the video about the campaign on YouTube.

The advantages of disadvantages

There was a famous battle in ancient Palestine three thousand years ago. In the Israelite camp, a shepherd boy named David stepped forward and volunteered to fight with a Philistine giant Goliath, six feet nine at least, wearing a bronze helmet and over a hundred pounds of full body armour. With nothing more than a stone and a sling, David won the battle. How could David turn the mission impossible to possible?

This battle story gives us new perspectives on advantages. Goliath is not exactly what we think. Yes, he is tall and armed with heavy weapons - a javelin, a spear and a sword. But he only has advantages when his opponents come close to him for hand-to-hand combat. David, on the other hand, refused the King’s sword and armour and put one of his stones into the leather pouch of a sling, and he fired at Goliath’s exposed forehead in the distance. What happened next is a matter of legend.

Here, people thought Goliath had the advantage in terms of physical might, which he did, except that physical might would not be the deciding factor. Goliath’s advantages became disadvantages when David came running toward him, powered by courage and speed: he was too big and too slow for this kind of opponent.

The story illustrates that there are no absolute advantages or disadvantages. Advantages at a certain point will turn into disadvantages. As an old Chinese saying states, going beyond the limit is as bad as falling short.

One reason we are often confused about advantages and disadvantages is that we forget we are in a U-shaped world. The psychologists Barry Schwartz and Adam Grant said that there is no such thing as an unmitigated good. All positive traits, states, and experiences have costs that at high levels may begin to outweigh their benefits.

An inverted - U curve has three parts, and each part follows a different logic. There is the left side, where doing more or having more makes things better. There’s the flat middle, where doing more doesn’t make much of a difference. And there’s the right side, where doing more or having more makes things worse. For example, butter is gold in the morning, silver at noon, lead at night. In fact, nearly everything of consequence follows the inverted U. It makes more sense to identify where we are on the curve and then make strategies accordingly.

In this ever changing world, more and more disruptors have shaken the giants’ territories. Advantages may come in other forms and the old rules will be replaced with new rules. Be open!

Source: David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell

Photography credit: Reference for Business

How to take advantage of Big Data - A historical approach

Big Data is not a new term. It was first introduced in the U.S. in the 1980s. Big not only means that the volume is huge, but also means the amount of data that we can analyze and utilize grows exponentially.

According to Moore’s Law, the computer hardware processing speed and storage capability will double every one or two years.

This exploding volume growth of data is represented in three dimensions:

1. The same type of data increases rapidly.
2. The speed at which data is obtained.

3. The variety of data continues to grow, including the data source and the data type.

How to collect, store, maintain, manage, analyze and share the Big Data remains a challenge to the world.

Ramayya Krishnan mentioned that Big Data has the potential to fundamentally transform society. However, unlocking this potential will require careful attention to data governance and insightful application of data analytics combined with an environment that spurs managerial innovation.

From a historical perspective, to accept a new trend and to take advantage of it takes courage, persistence and improvement/integration of legislation, technology and talent.

Legislation

Let’s look at how the U.S. government prepared itself to adapt to the trend. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) took effect after the 12-year arduous effort of the Father of FOIA John Moss and the ice breaker Donald Rumsfeld.

Technology

When the concept of internet started to become a popular term in 1988, Mark Weiser a scientist from Xerox first defined Ubiquitous Computing. It basically means that for everything that exists in the world, it can be connected to everything else. Every connected thing can be calculated. This can be achieved by connecting small computing devices. This way the data can be collected anywhere, anytime. Eventually computers will integrate with the environment as a whole.

Another important concept is Business Intelligence which is defined as “ to collect, store, analyze and share data.” In 1992, Bill Inmon, the father of the Data Warehouse defined it as a subject oriented, integrated, non volatile and time variant data storage to support decision making. In 1993, Edgar Codd made contributions to Online Analytical Processing. In my opinion, one of the most important concepts is visual explanations - the visual display of quantitative information. Since the data has become more and more complex, people can hardly understand what it means. Visual explanation will help ordinary people to understand the trend behind the data. Design is pivotal for data visualization. Edward Tufte said that there is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.

Talent

Let’s find out why the U.S. has been able to advance in the software industry for many years. In 1959, the U.S. National Defense department and IBM jointly developed a project - Semi-Automatic Ground Environment. This project was dedicated to collect, process signals from radars to monitor activities by various aircrafts. It lasted 30 years and cost approximately $10 billion (U.S.). Together with other similar sized large projects, they trained many data analysts, developers and architects.  They were called the West Point training projects. Those talent people then joined the private sectors and have developed all kinds of software which made U.S. remain at the top in the global software industry.

The impact of Big Data to Individuals, Organizations and Government

Individual Data Privacy

The U.S. Privacy Study Commission (1977), mentioned that the real danger to individuals is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.

In 1948, George Orwell, in his book titled Nineteen Eighty Four, described a situation where you had no place to hide whenever you were sleeping or awake, working or eating, indoor or outdoor, in the bed or in the bathtub. Except what’s inside your brain, nothing belonged to you. There was a Big Brother who took control of things. Today, the Big Brother could be the central data bank. The impact of data integration from different source is immense, similar to 1+1>2.

Organization - Data Driven Decision Making

In 1989, Howard Dresner first defined Business Intelligence that is a fact based business decision making method.

Wal Mart was the first organization that applied data mining techniques. The famous case study was the successful campaign of diaper and beer promotional package sale. According to the data analysis, Wal Mart found out that 30% to 40% new fathers tend to buy beers as a bonus for themselves when they purchase diapers. The cross sales campaign was a huge success and data driven decision making has been widely utilized thereafter in the business world.

Government - Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness

The U.S. government has also benefited from Big Data analysis. Jack Maple, created CompStat (Computer Statistics) methodology to analyze the reasons and trends of crimes in New York City which has proven effective and efficient to stop crimes and better utilize police force.

The collection, storage, management, analysis and sharing of Big Data will continue to evolve as technologies and techniques using Big Data develop and as the economic benefits of the use of data continue to grow.

Source: "Big Data", Tu Zipei

Identify the blue ocean and stay in it -- what made Cirque du Soleil so successful

All who saw it must have been thrilled by the amazing performance by Cirque du Soleil (the Cirque) at the Pan Am 2015 opening ceremony in Toronto. The Quebec based group was founded by Guy Laliberté and other partners. Some-time accordion player, stilt-walker and fire-eater, Guy spent the past 20 years making the Cirque -- earlier this year sold to TPG at 1.5 billion US dollars -- a huge success.

What are the critical success factors that helped the Cirque create and maintain uncontested market space (often called a blue-ocean strategy)?

Among many factors, I summarize the following three factors that are of most importance:

Innovation

Every organization talks about innovation, but what made Cirque du Soleil so special in terms of innovation?  If you have watched any of its performances, you will notice that it’s a circus without any animals. It is actually a combination of acrobatics, musical numbers and performing arts. So it created a new definition of circus - familiar yet strangely new.

The Cirque embraces ideas from a wide variety of resources, not only including those from the creative team, but also from performers and behind the scenes staff across the globe. There is an annual workshop that allows over 5,000 global employees to express their ideas freely. What’s more, the Cirque also collects feedback from temporary workers like artists and new technology innovators.

The Cirque is a lean organization. They cut the high cost of training and caring for animals (by eliminating the animals) and focus not on big name, expensive stars but on a stellar lower-cost ensemble. The creative team is independent. Each team member can fully utilize his/her imagination without any interruption or random changes.  For example, its art director Sean Mckeown mentioned that the Cirque added the theater elements and creatively used the painting style to show the plots.

Data driven approach

When planning a new performance, the marketing team will conduct market research and identify which topic/theme interests an audience the most. Then the creative team will create a storyline based on the results and decide what kind of sceneries and performers are required.

The Cirque has a comprehensive database that records every performer's strengths and weaknesses. It works a bit differently than other circuses. For other circuses, if a crew performed a show well, they would produce a new one using the same crew. The Cirque, on the other hand, will hand pick each performer based on the theme, plot and requirements from the creative director through the global database. This ensures the best suitable performers are selected for a specific show.  The Cirque knows that the most important element in a performance is people. What can really touch audience is the emotional attachment that performers created through their movements, facial expressions and integration with music, settings and lightings.

Leadership

Guy Laliberté, the former owner and current CEO, empowers the team and sets minimum restrictions to maximize every employee’s potential, expertise and ideas. However, when it comes to decision making, he himself becomes a standard. To some extent, Guy is a demanding boss who requires high quality and pays close attention to details. The whole team works under pressure that is not from bureaucratic hierarchy, but from the mutual agreement of exceeding the requirements and pursuing excellence.

On the other hand, as a former performer, Guy understands how to attract audience attention and he tries to be objective as he does not involve himself with the creative team on a daily basis and therefore can view the show with fresh ideas. If the rehearsal does not meet his requirement, Guy is not afraid to make big changes at the last minute.

All these above mentioned factors have contributed to the success of Cirque du Soleil. Chan Kim, the co-author of Blue Ocean Strategy believes that you can pursue both differentiation and low cost at the same time when you apply the blue ocean strategy. The Cirque’s success seems to support that view -- always new and exciting, it spends its resources wisely focused on maintaining and building in its unique market space with a brilliant, collaborative ensemble performing a unique variety of acts using all available arts creatively and economically.

What I learned from Light Reading's Big Telecom Event (BTE) 2015

I recently attended Light Reading’s Big Telecom Event (BTE) 2015 in Chicago.

Organizations, large or small, all agreed that we should stop running alone and start innovating together in this uncertain and ever changing Telecom world. IBM, for example, is building a cloud-based open platform designed to allow clients and ecosystem partners build Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and will invest $3 billion over the next four years to establish a new IoT unit.

What impressed me the most was the Women in Tech breakfast champions. In an industry inundated with men, we often joke that technology trade shows like BTE are the few places where you won’t see women line up at the washroom. Light Reading’s invited influential women leaders in the technology field to share their personal experiences and success stories.

One of the common attributes that those successful women all share is the positive attitude. Jennifer Perron-Micek, Senior Director, Products & Innovation, US Cellular pointed out that women have natural-born skills that men often don’t possess, such as being talented at building relationships, and that we can harness theses attributes to be successful and get ahead. Karen Freitag, President, Sprint Enterprise Solutions thought that women have greater opportunities than ever before, and that women need to change their perspective and not let the extra responsibilities that we take on hold us back.

Chicago CIO Brenna Berman shared her favourite quotes. She’s a strong believer in taking unexpected opportunities and working hard - a winning combo.

"Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity."

- Seneca the Younger

"Luck to me is... Hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't."

- Lucille Ball

Everybody will always face different challenges in our personal and work life. Be true to ourselves is very important. Don’t try to be something we aren’t. What we bring to the table is so valuable. Don’t lose that.

How to beat the new competitors

I attended a marketing conference organized by the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA)  recently. One of the topics that attracted me specifically was how to beat the new competitors.

Here is a case study used at the conference:

Silver Circle, a family run restaurant has been around for over 80 years. When Mr. Miller took it over from his father, the restaurant was facing fierce competition. In recent years, many new competitors, including bars, clubs and restaurants had been built in the neighbourhood adorned with luxurious decor and fancy names. In comparison, the Silver Circle seemed old fashioned and couldn’t attract new customers, although the food was known to be delicious, the customer service great and the price very reasonable. What suggestions would you make to Mr. Miller in order to change the situation?

Mr. Miller hired a marketing agency that suggested that he change the restaurant name from Silver Circle to Five Circles. A special part of the marketing strategy was the logo design. The agency emphasized that the logo should be six large circles instead of five circles.  After Mr. Miller changed the name and the logo of the restaurant, magic happened. The passers-by started to notice there was a mistake in the logo and stood in long lines to get into the restaurant. Mr. Miller felt really embarrassed when a lot of customers pointed out the mistake to the waiters/waitresses.

It’s interesting that after pointing out the mistake, people felt satisfied that their observation skills were rewarded. They started to pay attention to the amiable environment, polite service and tasty food. Many new customers told Mr. Miller that they hadn’t previously noticed his great restaurant.  Since then, the Five Circles restaurant has become very famous and attracted people from other towns. When Mr. Miller asked the agency why the marketing strategy had worked, they told him that looking for mistakes is one of people’s favourite activities. People who found the mistake, pointed it out and enjoyed a meal had a triple dose of satisfaction.

The agency taught Mr. Miller the value of understanding human behaviour, which is critical to being able to compete. Finding ways of competing that go beyond providing a good product or service are already separating winners from losers. Future commercial competition will be driven by this kind of differentiator.