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[s-u-mit-blog]

Check-Mate

When you see checks on a board you think Chess! And when you see them on a piece of cloth you think Burberry!

Learning from Burberry:

Develop and maintain brand image and heritage

Position the brand. And position it well. (This works in Chess too)

Don’t overdo on SKUs

Settle before you expand

Market it right

Right positioning, higher revenue! Check-mate!

[s-u-mit-blog]

Crossing the Chasm - an innovator’s dilemma

Almost all of us are aware of various adopters of a product - the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and late laggards. Interestingly innovators and early adopters comprise only about 1.5% and 13.5% of total adopters, respectively. One of the biggest mistake innovators do is to try to target all adopters at a time. This, as it turns out, is not the best strategy. In an effort to target all - we reach none. 

The consensus then is to target one at a time and move forward. However, in this strategy the biggest problem is the jump between early adopters and early majority. This is called ‘the chasm’. 

How can we cross the chasm then? Answer lies in careful product placement and right product strategy. For me, the two most important aspects are: identifying the beachhead market, and using a whole product strategy. Figure out the market you want to enter through and conquer that beachhead market. Next, use a whole product strategy to dominate the early majority adopters. Think about not only offering the product but a whole service around the product - to give a holistic user experience to the customers.

Try playing this fun game to try and cross the chasm! http://academic.hbsp.harvard.edu/crossingthechasm

[s-u-mit-blog]

Has MIT Sloan been nudging students into applying to Sloan?

It was July 2017 and I was rigorously going through different MBA schools in the US and looking at their application process. MIT, Harvard, and Stanford were at the top of my mind. But I was constrained on money and time. I could not apply to all three schools - I had to take a decision to select one and go all in.

Guess what? I selected MIT. Why? Three main reasons: 1. Short, crisp application. 2. Small cover letter. Of course, it was followed with a video and another essay later on. But then this is the clever part, isn’t it? 3. MIT is renowned for engineering and I love engineering.

So what am I getting at? What is the nudge here? The nudge lies in the fact that upfront MIT asked students to write only a 300 word cover letter and a minute long video. What this did was ease the process of application upfront and hence probably more people were willing to apply to Sloan. While there was another essay due at the time of interview but then that’s the quality of a nudge. People do not pay attention to this essay which is due later but pay a lot of attention to what is due upfront.

[s-u-mit-blog]

Corona v/s Heineken :: Fun v/s Quality

Corona is the trending word nowadays. Of course, it is a virus and assuming that rationale people would confuse it with the virus would be a silly assumption. Or is it? This excerpt shows how people have been searching for ‘Corona Beer Virus’ and then you see memes like the one shown in the pic above. 

Nevertheless, it is important to see how Corona might not be fun anymore for the beer drinkers. Corona invested a good time in the creation of its brand image of fun. Something that people can just drink! You want to add a lime to it - why not! Corona did a great job at understanding its customer base and building on their cult following. With a simple observation that people are using lime with Corona, they created a marketing campaign advertising that. Again, this ties in with the idea of fun. You do not need to pour your beer in a glass to add lime to it. Just do it!

Heineken, on the other hand, has always tried to associate itself with quality! With some of the simplest advertisements it has been able to hone in on the aspect of quality. Phrases like “Come to think of it, I’ll have a Heineken” help drive this idea that Heineken is the first brand that comes to mind when you think of having a beer. It is catchy and simple!

It seems like the above meme, in a way, is saying “Corona is no fun”!

[s-u-mit-blog]

Is sub-branding or rebranding always the way out?

I have been reading the ‘22 immutable laws of marketing’ and the book talks about how creating a new and separate brand for a new line of product(s) is a better strategy than pasting the main brand name on each product line. Take Coca Cola, for example. They have multiple products in the market but each with its own brand - Dasani,  Fairlife, Simply, Maaza, Minute Maid etc. And compare this with GE which has its brand name pasted on each product line. Al and Jack argue, in the book, that Coca Cola’s strategy is better than GE’s. 

With this context in mind, I read about Black and Decker, their product portfolio, and market performance in the 1980s and I am forced to think if only a new branding strategy would have solved the problem for B&D? 

B&D was losing market share in the Professional-Tradesmen segment of power tools to Makita. But I feel that more than branding there actually was an issue with product quality. B&D’s own research showed that their saws and sanders were underdeveloped as compared to other brands, and they were merely competitive in drills. And these three segments accounted for 80% of the total market segment.

I think the answer to B&D’s problems would have been a combination of rebranding and improved tool quality.