Category: Marketing Insight

Faking it

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Some things have a definite aroma. You can really smell them from a far. A home cooked meal. A fresh sea breeze. Freshly ground coffee. When you smell them, they immediately conjure up memories and emotional bias.

 

 

Faking it has an aroma.

If you don’t believe in your start up or your job for that matter, shut up shop now. Move on. You’ll save time. You can’t hide the ‘faking it’ aroma.

When seeking funds or trying to sell in to buyers, if your faking it, they’ll smell it. And when they do smell it all their negative emotional bias will come to the fore.  A me too, second tier product reeks of it also.

Seth Godin recently blogged about the power of enthusiasm. This has an aroma too, and people will want a bite.

Theatre at Transaction

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

In a recent blog entry “4”  I described my version of must haves for any start up opportunity. One of these was was Theatre At Transction. While wondering through Melbourne I came across a perfect example. The store is called KoKo Black. 

They have been written up previously on Springwise. This small firm knows the leverage of the theatre.

At 11am on a Saturday morning there were more than 20 people watching a brand being built, literally. By the time I got my camera out the crowd had dissipated . But you can see the concept. Koko Black have managed to do what Cadbury couldn’t conceptualise.

choclate making  

They only do chocolate. That’s it. But they are the experts. Classic single minded proposition. All five senses in action at retail level. Eat in or takeaway. Breakfast lunch and dinner, chocolate is the only thing on the menu. Their retail concept is very clever. They have a viewing bay where you can watch the gourmet chocolatiers in action. After all old is the new new. The emotional connection is made in a way that can’t be done with TVC’s and interuption marketing.

The net result is a price of beyond $100 a kilo. While old world cadbuary languages at $12 per kg. Who do you think will profit in this category in the future,  the specialists or Mr Glass and a Half? In an obese world, the treat from the specialist will win every time.

If you’re in Melbourne go and check them out in the City, Carlton or Chadstone. A lot of great learnings for any entrepreneur.

Trick Pricing

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

 

You’re a smart person.

You don’t get duped very often.

You know a scam when you see when.

You’re even smart enough to know that $9.95 is really $10.00

See, I told you that you’re smart. Now, given the condescending nature of my tone here, do you think any of your customers wont be smart enough to know this? Now that you have answered this question please ask yourself why you would ever engage in such trick pricing for your customers.

At last, we’re entering the age of ‘authentic capitalism’, and $0.99 cents isn’t fooling anyone. In fact, you’re quite possibly embarrassing yourself on a commercial level and damaging your brand or start up. The threshold price point is the biggest hoax in consumer marketing.

My suggestion, is to have honest pricing.  Charge to the dollar. Make it simple and gain respect simultaneously. Your customers wont mind, really.

Who wants a pocket full of change anyway?

Inside Out

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

You know some things better than anyone. You know them inside out. In fact your knowledge in this area can rival anyone.

Maybe you’re paid to work in the area, maybe you grew up there, maybe it is how you spend your weekends, maybe you’ve studied it and have read every book on the topic.  Anything from motorbikes to goldfish to guitars…

This is your golden path. You have the knowledge, the passion, the contacts and know the channels.

Bug list it, then find the solutions and do something about it.

Quote

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

While watching a review for the movie “Fast Food Nation”, I heard a great quote. Star of the show Greg Kinnear said “If you’ve been made to forget something, do you really know it?”.

He said that often when you tell someone something they’ll say… “yeh, we know all that…” and then continue without consideration.

This is no different to marketing and start up business. Consider what you ‘know’ and the last time you ‘remembered’ it. Do you really ‘remember’ what exceptional marketing looks like? Have you ‘forgotten’ what consumers want?

Maybe remembering what the current industry incumbents have forgotten is your opportunity.

Stymie

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

What will stymie potential competitors from doing what you’re about to?

Why haven’t they done it already?

Do you know this from the ‘inside’ or are you just guessing?

A cool answer is there aren’t any competitors. Being first gives you cred others can’t get, it’s value is diminished when the next 100 gorillas or entrepreneurs turn up.

While it’s great if there aren’t any competitors, but it’s even better when your strategy provides a Lock Out Device.

LOD: Definition   Competitive Strategy within which the idea itself encompasses a method to lock out followers.

Can you make a strategic circle that starts with consumers and closes the market simultaneously? Hard to do, but worth the trouble to invent one.

Here’s some clues (no I don’t know them all, but I know where they’re found), think infrastructure, think channels, think platforms, think bridges, think islands.

Unlearning

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Many entrepreneurs start their careers working for big business. I did. There are many things you can learn from big business. One of which is Critical Thinking – the ability to analyse a set of circumstances and make a commercial decision.

Every start up has gaps. Gaps in strategy, gaps in the launch campaign and gaps in financing the venture. Gaps that would usually be criticized in large conglomerate X during a Critical Thinking session.

If you want to get your business off the ground you must Unlearn some things. Critical Thinking is one of them. What you need is Complimentary Thinking. Pointing out the good and building on the parts that will work.

You need a form of thinking to build on what you have, not the type of thinking that leads to finding a reason not to do something. This is really one of the differences between being a Marketer and an Entrepreneur.