Category: Business

I’m not a huge fan of the quality of McDonald’s food. However, the golden arches have a tractor beam that pulls me in with a seemingly irresistible force. Part of why I still like McDonald’s is the nostalgia. I now prefer burgers from Fudruckers or Five Guys, but I noticed my son Tyler started recognizing company brands wherever we went. I’m loyal to Safeway because I work for the company. Therefore, Tyler quickly learned to recognize Safeway and its trucks as we passed them on the highway. I have always loved Starbucks since I was introduced to coffee in college, and Tyler knows that brand because I go there a lot. As I am raising Tyler, what is interesting is what companies are, and are not, doing regarding marketing to children.

I have taken particular interest in McDonald’s marketing strategy because they are masters of marketing to youth. I’m a big fan of ice cream, so on a nice hot day a McDonald’s shake hits the spot.  Not to mention the Shamrock Shakes around St. Patrick’s Day, but I digress.

How is your company’s marketing to younger demographics?  McDonald’s is a master of marketing to children, their happy meals and “Play Places” are brilliant.  Whether you are a retailer, technology company, church, or politician, you can’t forget about youth if you want to compete and stay relevant long term.

A few ways you can market to children:

• A children’s menus
• A seating area for children
• A play area for children
• Carts for children to push around your store, or ride in
• Gumball machines at the “choke points” in every store, such as the entrance and exits
• Free cookies or candy. Mom and dad have to go into the department to get it. This usually leads to the parents looking for other goodies for themselves, which aren’t free.  It is the drug dealer tactic, where, “I’ll give you this one for free, but I know you’ll be back for more.”
• Internships
• Commercials
• DVDs that come with toys
• Candy and toys in the checkstands
• Don’t forget about your employees, either.  Daycare at your facility while mom or dad are working is one of the best ways to retain talent.  Lunch with the kid(s) increases work/life balance, even if it is just for an hour.

What are some other strategies you’ve seen, and what other ideas do you have?

I commented on a LinkedIn discussion board comment/question today and wanted to share it.

Q:

The alpha version of qwiki (search engine that builds interactive videos on the fly) is pretty exciting. What do you think a corporate version could do to juice up employee or investor communications?

A:

Engaging content is definitely the future. You want to know the interesting thing in my mind though? Everyone says content is king and I agree. Corporations can have great tools, but only if they have great content. If you are interested try and remind me to talk with you in about a month. I’ll need to get clearance to show it to you but we are working on a knowledge sharing tool within the company and it has some really interesting social gaming aspects to it.

My hope is in the coming years we can use these types of tools as a basis for merit increases and performance reviews. That type of thinking is counter culture to many organizations but social tools can help break down information silos and encourage collaboration like never before. They “can” also show you who your team players are in the organization meaning those who are helping others and not just themselves. If we reward and recognize via virtual currency and in the future provide monetary incentives, it will be very interesting to see what happens as a result. Whether you have a LinkedIn discussion board, a blog, or a survey people are busy and often hesitant to share.

Want to see a dramatic increase in our discussion board usage? Send out a message to membership telling them if they post at least one comment or post on the discussion board they will get 25% (50%, 75%, 100%…whatever) off their next conference fee. My point is some people will share but many will do so only when rewarded or recognized.

The other interesting thing I like about Qwiki is they are using it as a platform. I was fascinated by what they are looking at as a future alarm clock (see video link below). I’d imagine it won’t be too many more years before our bathroom mirrors are huge rear projection touch sensitive screens which let us see news, weather, or any other gadget/widget we want to subscribe to. Same thing with the business world. I’d imagine it won’t be long before E-ink type screens will allow us to have constantly updated information presented to us to interact with throughout the day. But we can only have these tools if we have the content which means employees will need to write and contribute that content.

Watch the whole video or forward to 4 mins in:

Yes, I’m a data geek and I crunch company operating results for fun.  Check this out…

Wolframalpha is a public data search engine which allows for lots of complex data analysis.  The data below is how much revenue each publicly traded company generates when it is divided by the total number of employees it has (per year).  I work in the retail sector so I first looked at how much revenue each company makes if it were divided by their number of employees.  As you can see below I for instance was able to determine that Kroger is making $36,841.74 more revenue per employee than Safeway.  The numbers are correct and publicly available via calculation but they don’t make sense to me.

I’ve posted similar things in the past and have had some really smart followers of this blog add to the conversation so I hope this post continues that trend.  Why would a Safeway employee create more revenue per year than a Walmart employee?  Why would a Kroger employee make $36,841,74 more revenue per year than a Safeway employee?  The interesting thing about doing the calculation this way is it takes out unions, employee compensation, and other factors.  What are the contributing factors?  Is sales per square foot the real reason the numbers are so unexpected?  Is the number of retail stores a major factor?  Did these numbers surprise you?  Is looking at annual company revenue by employee even important?  Then when you think each retail revenue by employee is high look at Google and Apple!

Annual Company Revenue/Employee
Kroger =    $244,659.51
Safeway = $207,817.77
Walmart = $198,398.10
Target =    $189,692.31

Google =   $1.81 million
Apple =     $1.32 million

Source: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Disclosure: I am in no way representing any company in this post or site.  I’m surfacing public data and merely asking what we can derive (if anything) from it.  Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks for adding to the conversation.

– You should look at profits by employee.  A more telling story.

“The exchange between Ferrari and Lamborghini is often cited as the latter’s inspiration for founding a carmaker in the first place, but it is as much the stuff of legend and myth as it is a factual occurrence. In the 1991 Thoroughbred & Classic Cars interview, Lamborghini said that after the clutch problems endured, “I decided to talk to Enzo Ferrari. I had to wait for him a very long time. ‘Ferrari, your cars are rubbish!’ I complained. Il Commendatore was furious. “Lamborghini, you may be able to drive a tractor but you will never be able to handle a Ferrari Properly.’ This was the point when I finally decided to make a perfect car.” Later re-tellings of the story center around several basic points: Lamborghini visited Ferrari; proceeded to challenge, demand improvements, or deride Ferrari; and finally was dismissed as a mere tractor manufacturer. Whether the industrialist’s spite was enough of a reason to enter the carmaker business, or if the exchange inspired further business interests or merely served as an anecdote, is unknown. Sackey writes that the economic motives for entering the high-profit-margin sports car business far outweighed Lamborghini’s personal sentiments. In the T&CC interview, Lamborghini notes that “Ferrari never spoke to me again. He was a great man, I admit, but it was so very easy to upset him.”

Long live the Lamborghini…

At today’s Dev Learn 10 in San Francisco I attended a seminar where a woman at the back of the room said “social media is great and all but I am overwhelmed with the influx of information all around me”.  I liked what another person said which was that just because there is lots of data in the world it doesn’t mean you have to consume everything available to you.  The 3-4 minute discussion gave me a lot of ideas so hopefully you beat me to solving the problem because either way we’ll all win.

For many years, new employees were given a copy of the famous Nordstrom’s Employee Handbook – a single 5-by-8-inch (130 × 200 mm) gray card containing 75 words:

However, new hire orientations now provide the card above along with a full handbook of other more specific rules and legal regulations, as the way Nordstrom operates has changed. During this time, Nordstrom had the highest sales per square foot performance in the retail industry – by almost double.

>> Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordstrom#Employee_handbook

More on Nordstrom’s Culture:

• Nordstrom’s culture encourages entrepreneurial, motivated men and women to make the extra effort to give customer service that is unequaled in American retailing. “Not service like it used to be, but service that never was.”
• “A place where service is an act of faith.”
• Nordstrom’s executives aren’t snobs; it’s just that they are uncomfortable with blowing their own horns.
• Their system is embarrassingly simple, “we out-service, not outsmart, the competition”.
• The truth is, “We can’t afford to boast. If we did, we might start to believe our own stories”.
• “Our success is simply a matter of service, selection, fair pricing, hard work, and plain luck!”
• ‘It was never that we were so great, it was just that everyone else was so bad.’ We know that at this moment, someone somewhere is getting bad service at Nordstrom
• When you stop worrying about the money and concentrate on serving the customer, the money will follow. (People who succeed in sales understand this paradox.)
• Nordstrom’s standard of performance is “Sales per hour”.
• Nordstrom’s salespeople are empowered to make decisions and Nordstrom management is willing to live with these decisions – it’s like dealing with a one-person shop. Empowered employees are energized. “Giving away responsibility and authority is the ultimate expression of leadership.”
• “The customer is always right” is not a cliché at Nordstrom.
• Decision by consensus is how the Nordstrom brothers run their business. Disagreements are worked out behind closed doors and a united front is always presented to the public.
• When the company expands to other regions, it dispatches an advanced force of veteran “Nordies” who carry the culture with them and imports it to new employees.
• Nordstrom never acquires other chains, because it is too difficult for those employees to break old habits.
• Nordstrom’s employees are instructed to always make a decision that favors the customer before the company. They are never criticized for doing too much for a customer; they are criticized for doing too little.
• “If I take care of the customer, the dollars will follow”
• Nordstrom believes that too many rules, regulations, paperwork, and strict channels of communication erode employee incentive.
• Nordstrom is informally organized as an “inverted pyramid” with the top positions occupied by customers and salespeople. Every tier of the pyramid supports the sales staff.
• The unconditional money-back guarantee is designed for the 98% of customers who are honest.
• Employees have access to sales figures from all departments and stores in the chain, so they can compare their performances.
• Outstanding sales performances are rewarded with prizes and praise, as are good ideas and suggestions.
• Part of good customer service is (Store Design) creating “a memorable experience”:· Store presentation must be understood immediately· Nordstrom states that it only takes 15 seconds to impress their customers. That’s why Nordstrom has more seating, better lighting, larger fitting rooms, wider aisles, and a more residential feeling.
• Nordstrom feels that the best training courses come from parents. Previous retail experience or a college degree has never been a prerequisite for succeeding at Nordstrom.
• Nordstrom “hires the smile and trains the skill.”
• Because Nordstrom doesn’t have many rules, employees don’t have to worry whether they are breaking any.
• Nordstrom would rather hire nice people and teach them to sell, then hire salespeople and teach them to be nice.
• At Nordstrom, the priority is on Selling, and the key to successful selling is providing outstanding customer service.
• If you treat customers like royalty and let them know that you will take care of them, they will usually come back to you.
• When customers enter a department, salespeople always make sure they are acknowledged. They are relaxed and unhurried in order to help the customer feel the same way.
• At its best, Nordstrom never forgets that it doesn’t have all the answers. They know that the customers have all the information that they need and that salespeople are the most valuable people in the company!
• The underlying Nordstrom culture and philosophy is not difficult to pass on to the next generation because it’s simple: “give great customer Service.”

http://sears.com/zombie – This is outside the box marketing if I’ve ever seen it.

CMMA’s fall conference keynote presentation was from John Spence.  At the age of just 26, John was named CEO of an international Rockefeller foundation, overseeing projects in 20 countries and reporting directly to the Chairman of the Board, Winthrop P. Rockefeller III. Two years later John was nominated as one of the top CEOs under the age of 40 in Florida and Inc. Magazine’s “Zinc Online” recognized him as one of America’s up and coming young business leaders.

>> My Presentation Notes

This is a very good video interview with John Nese who is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination. About 500 pops line the shelves, sourced lovingly by John from around the world. John has made it his mission to keep small soda-makers afloat and help them find their consumers. Galcos also acts as a distributor for restaurants and bars along the West Coast, spreading the gospel of soda made with cane sugar (no high-fructose corn syrup if John can avoid it).  The part where he talks about CRV is interesting as well.