Businesses need to know that they matter. And why. They need to believe that what they do today matters enough to contribute their fortunes and their sustainability tomorrow. This is the both the promise and the responsibility of strategy. I believe our consultancy matters because: I have the ability to get to grips with the heart of [...]
(A shorter version of this article appeared in the Financial Mail Redzone on 28 October 2016: http://www.financialmail.co.za/redzone/2016/10/27/crossing-the-chasm1) Crossing the chasm Both intrinsic and extrinsic solutions must inform a business strategy linking a company with its customers. Mark Varder On one side of the chasm is your business. On the other, the people you would like [...]
Change and growth are difficult. As in personal and political life, so too in business life. "It might be said that living means, above all, dealing with problems. Unsolved problems tend to cause a kind of mental anguish. Whether this has always been so may well be questioned, but it is certainly so in the modern [...]
This article first appeared in the Financial Mail on 8 July 2016. The chicken and the egg of business and brand. Professor Cynthia Montgomery, past head of the Strategy Unit at Harvard, regards purpose as the first step in developing a business strategy. But is that right? There is the chicken and the egg. [...]
This article appeared in the Financial Mail's Redzone on 1 June 2016. The value of brands that push back. The cliché is that products should be silver bullets and that brands should make life as rosy as a possible. But when brands ask people to do their fair share of the work, they make a [...]
When your product works and your brand matters. Every product or service must work. People must find it useful. And beneficial. Otherwise it will enter that brutal phase in the business cycle: creative destruction. But the contribution a product or service makes to society is not limited to its features and intrinsics. Its brand - the stuff "outside of the [...]
This company provides financial services to a sector of South African society largely overlooked by the industry: blue-collar workers. It is these people who stretch themselves to provide for their families and to improve their lot in life. Like many of us, they need a helping hand.
Don't expect a USP. Expect a Repetitive Pleasure. We don't place the USP - the consumer promise - at the heart of everything. We've moved on from that thinking. A USP is the manufacturer talking at the consumer. It's one-way communication. It's rational, intrinsic and insistent on being 'beneficial.' A value proposition makes the consumer a recipient of [...]
The USP has reached its sell-by date. But how do you replace it? Traditionally, when brands are developed, there's a Unique Selling Proposition at the heart of everything. "What is the one thing we can promise consumers?" Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates agency introduced the Unique Selling Proposition in the 1940s. His claim-based advertising made Ted Bates hugely [...]
