Discovering business opportunities

 Interview with Dr. Dan Herman, CEO of Competitive Advantages, a strategy consulting and branding services firm, serving worldwide clients ranging from local mid-sized companies to “Fortune Global 500″ corporations. Together with his highly trained team, he creates Unique Success Formulas, Emotionally Significant Brands and Short-Term ‘Hit’ Brands for their clients.

Among the many organizations and brands, he has worked with are multinationals such as Coca-Cola, IBM, Unilever, Motorola, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Holiday Inn, Apple computers, Suzuki, Chrysler, Warner Brothers, H. Stern as well as many others. The list also includes FC Spartak Moscow and many of Israel’s leading companies in the fields of banking and financial services, telecommunications, health services, food and beverages, toiletries and cosmetics, public transportation, hotels, retail chains, the national lottery and several non-profit organizations, government agencies and political parties.

Thank you, Dan, for your time!

You recently published a book in the United States titled “Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing and Branding” (www.outsmart-mba-clones.com)? What have you got against MBA programs and graduates? And – why do we need “an alternative guide”?

I have nothing against MBA programs or graduates. I am an MBA graduate myself. However, we should remember that management is very different from, say, engineering. When you take a strategy move in the market you do not only change the situation in the market – you potentially change the characteristics of the market. For examples, your innovative service strategy can change consumers’ expectations and the market norms. Therefore, management and marketing practices lose their effectiveness when everybody is using them and they should constantly change. Despite the apparent diversity among MBA programs, they produce executives who think and act in a similar and predictable manner. This undermines the competitiveness of their companies and provides a strategic advantage to those who recognize these biases and think differently. I do not, however, tell marketers to ‘think out of the box’ as so many do. I supply them with a new and comprehensive toolbox for success. My book, “Outsmart the MBA Clones” provides a set of new concepts and a toolkit unlike anything taught in MBA schools. The ambitious promise of this book is to help managers create business strategies that will succeed and yet amazingly will not be copied by the competition, resulting in private monopolies.

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Marco Bevolo is Director at Philips Design. He joined Philips Design in 1999, assuming responsibility for the cultural trend research program. He was instrumental in the creation of CultureScan, an ongoing trend forecasting research project investigating cultures and aesthetics at regional and global level.

Mr. Bevolo’s work has been published in ‘The Art of Advertising’ and ‘Nuova Enciclopedia della Comunicazione’, the Design Management Review of Boston. His opinions on cultural futures, trends and branding have also appeared in Axis, Repubblica, ViewPoint, Der Spiegel, AdMap, Contagious and WGSN. He has lectured at the Domus Academy of Milan, Temasek Polytechnic of Singapore, the Pasadena Art Center College of Design, and was module coordinator of the Master of Arts in Design Management at INHOLLAND in Rotterdam.

As part of representing Philips Design he is regularly invited as speaker and chairman by various event and conference organizations worldwide.

In 2006 he was nominated for ‘Best Conference Paper’  of ESOMAR, New York.

He is Advisory board member of:  Authentic Luxury Foundation (London);  Eventica Global Luxury Forum (2008); Caramundo (Amsterdam / Rio de Janeiro); Platform 21, the international center for design, fashion and creation (Amsterdam, The Netherlands); Design Management Institute (USA); Association of Professional Futurists – APF (USA); ESOMAR (The Netherlands).

Dear Marco, thank you very much for sharing your point of view! 

1. The consumers (their habits, buying behavior, aspirations, preferences and attitude) have changed nowadays. Upon you how the luxury consumers’ profile is evolving? What are the major trends for the future?

For the purpose of our editorial research in the context of the Wharton School Publishing book “Premium by Design”, Howard Moskowitz, Alex Gofman and myself created a quali-quantitative framework to capture the future dynamics of this market, from thought leaders vision to actual common people’s statistic response. The outcome of this comprehensive study is multifaceted: after all, luxury is part of culture, and we are facing times of macro-cultural change both at regional and global level. These could be some among the key trends we identified:

- sustainability: as the work of Prof. Jem Bendell for WWF’s “Deeper Luxury” shows, there is a deep need for a sustainable “revolution” in the ways luxury brands operate. This is not purely a corporate strategy agenda item: this is a rising demand from worldwide audiences;

- design leadership: we expect a transfer of multidisciplinary processes and insights from mature design operations, those working at strategic level on brands and in companies, to the craftsmanship-driven galaxy of luxury design masters: the relatively recent appointment of innovation directors at classic luxury brands like Hermes or Moet Hennessy is a clear step in such direction;

- residual value: in the age of discount outlet retail, the ability of a luxury artifact to retain value over time, possibly becoming a vintage item or even a collector’s object, will make the difference between who’s in luxury, and who’s not. This is a dynamic that companies should definitely study and eventually stimulate in their own design and marketing strategies – difficult as alchemy, however feasible and definitely more and more crucial.

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 Reg Nordman is the Managing Partner for Rocket Builders, a sales and marketing consultancy for high growth companies. He works with large and small companies such as: Asentus, Maximizer, Sophos, Microsoft Canada, and Research in Motion. Previously he has worked in direct and channel sales for major firms such as Unisys and Commodore. For his clients, Reg assists them in breaking through various sales and marketing challenges to grow the business. Using RocketBuilders Precision Sales and Marketing process he helps CEOS get more from  Sales and Marketing.  Reg is focused on getting clients “more effective selling time”. Reg has been publishing executive book reviews for his clients since 2002, and a blog since 2004.

Thank you Reg, for sharing your experience!

What are the major tendencies that characterize the new market realities?

No company can prosper and grow without significant and thoughtful investments in marketing. Everything is getting more difficult.
Eg my post Nov 8:  News from the trenches- The sales process starts before you think it does

Describes how the customer is first engaging the sales force about 20% of the way down the sales process. What does this entail? Prospects go online to identify their problem and look for solutions. By the time the customer engages the salesman, they have created a short list of companies to talk to and they believe that this company is one of a few that have the potential solution to their problem. This immediately creates two problems:

1. Most sales people are unable to shift gears to accommodate the needs of these customers. They do not want a demo, a brochure or a proposal. They want you to quickly get up to speed on their business and issues and how your product brings value. How are you different? The results of a poor response is that the opportunity disappears as fast as it appears.

2. Marketing becomes of No.1 importance with the brand promise, materials in the public eye and the ability to drive “qualified leads ” to the sales funnel. The Marcomm dept has to really be on top of things. But you never will never know its not working.
Hidden problem. Are clients looking at your online “story” and dropping you from their shortlist, and thus never engaging you? Guess what? You will never know!

So business is changing yet most sales training is stuck in the 90’s . That is so like , yesterday.   (Read the article)

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Mr. Paul Chaney is Internet Marketing Director for Bizzuka.com, a web design and development firm based in Lafayette, LA.

Mr. Chaney has been an Internet media consultant for the past four years and is widely known and respected in that field. He understands at a granular level how conversational media tools can be used for marketing purposes and has worked with a number of clients assisting them in deploying online marketing strategies.

Mr. Chaney has served as Technical Editor on a number of For Dummies series books related to blogs and Internet marketing, and was contributing writer on the book Buzz Marketing with Blogs For Dummies, published by Wiley.

Specialties: Business blog consultant, online marketing consulting, conversational media marketing, real estate blogging, blogging

Great thanks, Mr. Chaney for sharing your experience!

1. What is the role of blogs nowadays? How they are changing the Internet?

Blogs were the forerunner that ushered in the social media movement and they still play a vital role. However, that role has changed thanks to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and other social tools. By that I mean you see less “day in the life” blogging and a greater emphasis on what some are calling “value” blogging. Let me explain.

In the early days, bloggers had one place to share their thoughts, ideas and opinions, and that was on their blog. Now, the more spur-of-the-moment, anecdotal posts are finding themselves being placed on micro-blogging tools like Twitter, Pownce and Facebook, leaving the more thoughtful, well-researched posts for the blog. That’s not to suggest bloggers don’t still write impromptu posts. They do. It’s just that other tools are now available allowing for greater choice and flexibility in where to publish. (Read the article)

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