Marketing Consulting Blog

1. Do just enough to get by. Half-ass it!
2. Be average and blend in. Make sure no one notices especially those you view as important.
3. Shun responsibility. Don’t be useful to others unless you absolutely must.
4. Stay in the middle of the pack. Avoid the front and back at all costs.
5. Don’t be fast or slow. Be “just right.”
6. Please the majority and ignore the eccentrics.
7. Don’t be the first at anything. Be fourth or fifth or even tenth.
8. Stay in your comfort zone at all times.
9. Look and act like those around you. Always follow someone else’s lead.
10. Maintain status quo. Dismiss those which threaten it.

Since I'm preparing to head out of town shortly and haven't posted in a couple of days, I figured I'd share the interesting things I've been reading today.

Companies making the news today:
1) Wal-Mart: Would you like some glass mixed in with your trail mix? Yet another reason NOT to shop at Wal-Mart. As if the long checkout lines weren't enough?!

2) Google: Let's take China & Baidu on! Baidu has been called the "Chinese Google" for quite awhile, but it seems as though the real Google has had enough of that.

3) GM: Fighting #1 position against Toyota
I'm not anti-American by any means, but I think our car manufacturers need to pay greater attention to our foreign rivals on how to make better cars that people enjoy driving. Mass producing inexpensive junk isn't the path to success, but that's all GM & Ford have been doing for years. It's finally catching up with them, and I hope it inspires them to finally create better products for a change. It may be a little too late though. Can we please put Buick to bed? The 80+ demographic will find another car to drive, likely a Camry though, but that wouldn't be a bad thing in my opinion. Then again, they might just hold onto their 1989 Buick LaSabre for another ten years.

4) Apple: New product musings

Here are some tips to make your new year happier.

Who is Rachel Ray anyway? Interesting post on the BS Observer. I don't watch Rachel, but I'm already sick of her because she's everywhere. I'm all about promoting one's self as a brand, but there is definitely a fine line between building the brand and over-saturation. It sounds as if Rachel is going to be promoted even more across more product lines. Enough already!

The language of persuasion. Another Conversation Agent blog posting that's always thought provoking.


Have any thoughts on any of these stories? If so, please comment away!

I'm happy to report I'm more or less finished with the Christmas shopping chores for 2006, but I'm rather disappointed in myself again. This was to be THE year I got all of that stuff done in September or October instead of waiting until December to knock it all out. This is probably the 10th year in a row I've told myself that, but it hasn't happened yet. Thank goodness for Amazon.com and E-bay as they saved me a lot of headache by enabling me to avoid the messes that are the shopping malls and popular outlets.

I am not a fan of crowds unless it's a sporting event or concert. Crowds attract masses of idiots who can't make the simplest of decisions, and they seem to draw in that mom with three or four kids she can't control yet she yells at the kids while attempting to shop as if the other people in the store can't hear her or will have sympathy for her. I'm sorry, but I have zero tolerance for that nonsense! If you can't control your kids, you don't need to take them out in public to embarrass you because that's what they're going to do. They know when they have mom in a pickle, and they'll exploit that with little to no hesitation. It's punishment for being an overzealous and overprotective parent. Full Disclosure: I'm in no position to give parenting advice since I don't have kids for which I'm responsible, but I seem to see a lot of kids these days that have parents who have forgotten what it's like to be a kid so they try to control their kids in an attempt to "protect" them. It's not going to work--kids will be kids. Anyway, I digress.

The point of this was to be how time got away and how the lesson to be learned is not to procrastinate, but I'm obviously in no position to give Christmas preparation advice to anyone since I always tell myself that "this is the year." Next year will now have to be that year. Oh yeah, another pointed takeaway is don't take your kids with you to shop thinking it'll be cute when they misbehave and force you to make a scene. You know exactly who you are so don't play coy like your kids are somehow different.

I'm done rambling about pretty much nothing. Another season is almost in the books so the focus can return to helping clients achieve greatness. Are you ready to propel your firm to greatness in 2007?

I hope you have a great holiday, and please share your perspectives with us.

I began thinking about our free one-month offer of services last night and wondered internally "how is our free offer different from everyone else's?"

For starters, our free month is 95% free (you have to invest human time resources and share relevant contact information to make it successful). If a potential client calls us up to begin working on a project and gives us an opportunity to demonstrate our abilities, they do so without signing any papers, and they are free to walk away at the end of the month without owing us a dime. Obviously, we're not in this to give away our expertise, and we believe that once we've proven ourselves a client will want to continue the relationship on a compensatory basis. That's the theory behind it. Most people stumble across us and have no idea who we are or how we operate so it's in both of our best interests to test one another before making it a commitment. We may decide at the end of the month that the client may be better served working with another firm. We're not for everyone and vice versa so it's truly a two way street.

Contrast that with today's marketing version of "free." 95% of the time you are asked to purchase something in order to get the free item or service. Gas stations require you to pay for filling your tank before giving you the "free" car wash. There are offers all over the Internet where you buy one product and get a "bonus" or a "free gift" for doing so by a certain date and time. In concept, it's a reward for doing business. Simple enough. We love receiving rewards don't we? It's not really a free offer though. You're requiring the customer to pay first which means you’re simply diluting the price by adding another item. If the item's cost requires/permits diluting, what does that say about your pricing of that item? Oh, you're "adding value," you say? Whatever.

Free just doesn't mean what it is used to imply a good majority of the time. It’s an old trick to fool people into spending money. Fooling people is never a good way to start things off, but it must work because people fall for it all the time.

If you stumble across a truly free offer, share it with us. We'll help spread the word.

If you've visited this blog before, you probably saw my post on the seminar Seth Godin gave here last week in Louisville. If you haven't, please check it out as it will make this post more sensible to you. In short, Seth made a statement that we're mostly a society receiving "average goods for average people" and most things are "already good enough."

After watching UofL's basketball team play three games in three days this weekend, I realized I'm (thankfully) not part of the majority. Average doesn't sit well with me in the least. I demand excellence from myself and the products I use or support. That may make me radically different, which I'm happy with, but why does the majority accept mediocrity? Where does fitting in with the average Jane or Joe really get you? Since I rarely half-ass anything, the mentality to accept mediocre status in anything irritates me. Either do something or don't--there is no in between!

The basketball product I witnessed this weekend is very mediocre at best, and this will be the second year in a row that the product on the floor is not up to par for my tastes. Does that mean I'm no longer a fan? No, but it means that I probably won't vote with my wallet next year and renew my season tickets. That's the price of mediocre--you lose interest from people like me if you try to fool me more than once. I feel as if Rick Pitino is trying to fool me with this team by telling the media that this team will be very good by year's end. Unless he has some sort of magic trick he's going to implement in the next few days, it ain't happening with this bunch.

UofL has now lost to Dayton (a mid-pack Atlantic 10 School), only beat Ohio by 3 (a mid-pack MAC school), and struggled with Division II Bellarmine yesterday. Yes, I said DIVISION II!!! I'm sorry, but the Big East Conference is anything but "mid-pack" or average so something has to give based on the results thus far. Yes, things can change with a few weeks of hard practices, but I fear that isn't going to help because this team just doesn't seem to get it. They allow lesser talented teams to hang around. They take highly contested and un-make-able shots and miss easy wide open shots very badly. Guys who shouldn't be shooting from the perimeter (T-Will!) shoot far too many jumpers, and guys who should dominate inside (Juan Palacios--a.k.a. Pele-acios) are completely soft and get their stuff pitched by smaller opponents.

In the years Pitino has been coach here, his teams rarely stop dribble penetration on fast breaks especially in the middle of the lane, and they frequently run away from shooters. That's a sure fire way to keep a lesser team in a game, and it's no way to discourage easy shots. When he was at UK, he had a boat load of talent to mask his shortcomings as a coach, but he doesn't have that talent here (yet) so his weaknesses as a coach are readily exposed. He's simply not a good bench coach--all anyone would have to do is watch his teams following a timeout to see what kind of play they run. It's, more often than not, a guy going one-on-one and taking a highly contested shot. That's coaching 101--your team should get a great look following a timeout, and UofL rarely does. It was the same at UK, but the talent level was much higher so the players had greater ability to overcome the lack of a set play on their own. On the flip side, he is a great motivator so his teams will stick around in games they have no business sticking around in so it gives off the impression to the "average fan" that his coaching abilities are responsible for that.

I'm here to tell you, Denny Crum would run circles around Pitino when it comes to play calling. Denny just couldn't recruit the modern day athlete toward the end of his tenure, but he could call plays like nobody's business. Same goes for UofL's football coach--Bobby Petrino--he's a master play caller (and great recruiter to boot), and that's why his teams have great success. As frustrated as I am with the basketball program, I'm elated with the football program and Coach Petrino. He does things "my way" which means the football program is on par with my goals and objectives in life, but the basketball team has some work to do to win me and my money back. I'll still attend the games this year and watch in hopes that I'm proven wrong, but I'm not holding my breath with this year's, average to date, basketball team. If things don't change, my wallet will vote for an alternative product next year. I'll always be a UofL fan, but season tickets are becoming far too expensive to cast any wallet share on a sub-par product any more.

Bottom line: don't settle for average--do something great for a change. The world needs more "great." Or as Seth says, "be remarkable." I couldn't agree more.

Most people who know the least bit about me know I'm a huge University of Louisville athletics fan, and I'm also an avid cyclist. I've been a season ticket holder for UofL football and basketball for over ten years, and I've been involved in organized cycling for seven plus years. It is through these two interests in conjunction with a childhood of playing competitive baseball I have developed a strong appreciation for the value of solid competition. It has also taught me that in order to achieve improvement, you need to compete against those stronger/better than you.

This Thursday's West Virginia versus UofL football game is a case study in the value of strong competition. Last year, Louisville (and others) joined the Big East Conference, and many said it was a conference undeserving of a BCS bowl bid and was a severely watered down football product. Nobody questioned the level of competition in basketball, but the losses of Miami, Boston College, and Virginia Tech in football was supposed to be too great a hurdle to climb in terms of bonafide respectability. Nobody was counting on Louisville and West Virginia raising the football bar to Top 5 levels so quickly. West Virginia comes in ranked #3; Louisville #5. The high level of play by both programs already has forced programs like Rutgers and Pittsburgh to improve, making the overall conference a pretty formidable league all of a sudden. Syracuse and Cincinnati have shown improvement but are likely a couple of years away from being real threats. UConn and South Florida aren't pushovers necessarily, but they haven't quite kept up with the others in the league. The league itself has moved ahead of traditional powerhouse leagues in the computer rankings because it is much stronger top to bottom than many envisioned. My belief is the top tier programs have forced the bottom tier to step it up or risk embarrassment and humiliation (a very strong motivator).

In cycling, there are five divisions in road racing (Categories 1-5 with 1 being strongest). I'm admittedly not in that strongest group (I raced Category 4 this past season), but I frequently train with some of the category 1-3 guys when improvement is my focus. Time constraints often prevent many of the members on our team from training the 20+ hours/week it requires to race at that top level. If I consistently train with my peer group, however, I'll merely maintain my existing fitness levels, and I'm less likely to move up to a higher category. Our team (Team Louisville) has been debating various improvement training programs on our team message board the past few days so that's why I'm including this in today's post. Some have called for our team to strictly train together with no other teams involved over the winter, and others have suggested that we mix it up with stronger teams in order to improve our overall team. The problem with training just with our team is our team is composed of cyclists of very similar abilities and styles. To me, it's not an endeavor that is going to improve our team or teach it anything new. That will come with training consistently with stronger riders and teams which brings me back to the value of stiff competition.

If you are looking to improve your business or any aspect of your life, look at businesses or individuals that are currently better than you at whatever it is you're looking to improve upon. If you merely continue challenging yourself in a manner you are accustomed, you will succeed at developing a plateau not improvement. Sports provide several good examples of this concept in action, and the lessons should not be lost in the business world.