I’m back

Hello everyone,

I have taken a 4 month hiatus from blogging.  So, what have I been up to?

I’ve been on a quest to learn as much as I can about branding and account planning.   As per the project that I embarked in December, I’m still in the midst of doing it.  I have increased my reading list immensely.   The main themes I have been able to extract from this extended reading list would be: Role of Account Planning, Market Research Methodology, Organizational Strategic Management, Branding, Role of Advertising, Sustaining Innovation and Human Behavioral Traits. My objective for this extensive reading list was to produce a toolkit for Account Planners and Brand Strategists.  Far too often, as I had alluded to an earlier post, with so many choices available, it sometimes hampers our ability to make sound decisions.  This toolkit will contain ideas that I have gathered through this extensive reading list to incorporate into any branding strategy.

While embarking on this project, I wanted to learn the theory but also practice it.  Back in January, I took on two clients: one designs kitchen goods, and the other offers fitness services in the home and at the gym.  The idea for both clients is to break apart from traditional branding methods and to create new opportunities.  Both clients I’m working with have now are being connected closer to the customer via blogging, twitter, facebook and other social media.  For both businesses, I have suggested that they engage the consumer through open source collaboration, where the customer is able to design their own kitchen tools.  For the fitness services, incorporating cooking classes and social meet-ups would bring their community closer.

From all this reading that I have done, the biggest lesson that I have learned is that too many businesses equate brand building as selling.  Brand building takes considerable amount of time.  Advertising should be a communication vehicle for building the brand unless it is a business reply card or a direct sales piece.  In addition, the role of advertising is used to ensure constant awareness of brand consideration for the customer.  Advertising is not very effective in convincing people to switch brands.  That is accomplished by having the customers try the product and service and having this experience exceed their expectations.

In case you are all wondering what books I have read they include the following:

For Account Planning:

King, Stephen. “A Master Class in Brand Planning.”

Steel, Jon. “Truth, Lies & Advertising.”

For Market Research Methodology:

Fortini-Campbell, Lisa. “Hitting the Sweet Spot.”

Laurel, Brenda. “Design Research: Methods and Perspectives.”

Mariampolski, Hy. “Ethnography for Marketers.”

McCracken, Grant.  “The Long Interview.”

Morgan, David L. “Focus Groups qualitative research.”

O’Reilly, Karen. “Ethnographic Methods.”

Sunderland, Patricia L. And Denny, Rita M. “Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research.”

For Organizational Strategic Management:

Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail.”

Kim, W. Chan  and Mauborgne, Renee. “Blue Ocean Strategy.”

Pine, B. Joseph and Gilmore, James. “The Experience Economy.”

For Branding:

Gerzema, John and Lebar, Ed.  “The Brand Bubble.”

Grant, John. “After Image – Mind Altering Marketing.”

Grant, John. “The Brand Innovation Manifesto.”

Koster, Raph. “A Theory of Fun for Game Design.”

Mark, Margaret and Pearson, Carol S. “The Hero and The Outlaw: Building extraordinary brands through the power of archetypes.”

Morgan, Adam. “Eating The Big Fish – How Challenger brands can compete against brand leaders.”

Neumeier, Marty. “The Brand Gap.”

Neumeier, Marty. “Zag.”

Olins, Wally. “Wally Olins on Brand.”

Vogler, Christopher. “The Writer’s Journey.”

Zaltman, Gerald and Lindsay. “Marketing Metaphoria.”

For Role of Advertising:

Fallon, Pat and Senn, Fred. “Juicing the Orange.”

Ogilvy, David. “Ogilvy on Advertising.”

Pricken, Mario. “Create advertising ideas and techniques from world’s best campaigns.”

Sullivan, Luke. “Hey Whipple, Squeeze this: Third Edition.”

Taylor, Jim. “Space Race: An inside view of the future of communications planning.”

For Sustaining Innovation and for Design:

Hara, Kenya. “Designing Design.”

Kelley, Tom. “The Art of Innovation.”

For Human Behavioral Traits:

Earls, Mark. “Herd: How to change mass behaviour.”

Surowiecki, James. “Wisdom of Crowds.”

Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. “Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything.”

Wegner, Etienne. “Communities of Practice.”

Other inspirational books:

Csikszenthmihalyi, Mihaly. “Flow: Psychology of Optimal Experience.”

DeBono, Edward. “Lateral Thinking – Creativity step by step.”

DeBono, Edward. “Six Thinking Hats.”

Duarte, Nancy. “Slideology.”

Ekman, Paul. “Emotions Revealed.”

Heath, Chip and Heath, Dan. “Ideas Made Sticky.”

Pease, Allan and Barbara. “The Definitive Book of Body Language.”

Pink, Daniel. “Whole New Thinking.”

Reynolds, Garr. “Presentation Zen.”

Steel, Jon “Perfect Pitch.”

Young, James Webb. “A technique for ideas producing ideas”

I will be in Japan in the next two weeks

Hello loyal readers!  For the next two weeks I won’t be posting anything because of a trip to Japan.  Stay tuned for future updates.  I will be visiting Kyushu, which is located in the southern area of Japan.  I will be visiting Nagasaki (site of a dropped atomic bomb in 1945), Fukuoka (the largest city in Kyushu), Kagoshima and a few other small towns.

Cheers,

 

Simon Li

Purpose of this blog

I’ve been writing on this blog since August of this year, and the raison d’etre for this blog was for me to learn and understand the current and upcoming trends in advertising as well as to explore some of my other interests in psychology, anthropology, sociology, management and operational issues in business.  

I’m in the midst of changing my career from from product management/forecasting/pricing to advertising. I’m trying to learn as much as possible about the profession of Account Planning.

In addition to contributing to this blog regularly, I’m reading several books about advertising. Here are ones I have already read:

Steel, Jon – “Truth Lies in Advertising”

Morgan, Adam – “Eating the Big Fish”

 

Here are books that I’m in the process of reading:

Fallon, Pat – “Juicing the Orange”

Sullivan, Luke – “Hey, Whipple Squeeze This!”

Fortini-Campbell, Lisa – “Hitting the Sweet Spot”

King, Stephen – “Master Class in Brand Planning”

Mark, Margaret – “The Hero and the Outlaw”

Zaltman, Gerald – “Marketing Metaphoria”

 

Books that I plan on reading include:

Laurel, Brenda – “Design Research”

Steel, Jon – “Perfect Pitch”

Kelley, Tom – “Art of Innovation”

Pollitt, Stanley – “Pollitt on Planning”

Kim, W. Chan – “Blue Ocean Strategy”

Sunderland, Patricia-  “Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research”

McCracken, Grant – “The Long Interview”

 

Does anyone have any other recommended readings?  Do you all think this is the best way to learn more about Account Planning?  For those who have been following my blog, which stories or articles resonate with you?

How to pitch an idea

How do you pitch an idea?  The author, Scott Berkun suggests some interesting suggestions and tips. Ideas are used to pitch when there is a there is a need for change.  Is the audience ready for the message?  If so, Mr. Berkun suggests the following:

1) What is the scope of the idea?  In past pitches, how have people pitched this idea or ideas that were similar?  

2) Who has the power to approve of the idea?  Seek the influential people who can implement the idea, and if not, seek people that know these influentials.  Working backwards to present to those people maybe the best method to reach the influentials.

3) Start with their perspectives.  Tailor your message to align with their interests.  Here is a great quote: “The most powerful person in the organization might share none of your philosophy, but the 3rd or 4th most powerful person might. The latter is going to be a better place to start.”

4) The structure of the pitch:  First develop a pitch that is 5 seconds in length.  This needs to draw maximum attention with minimal time.  Keep refining your idea until it is short, concise and to the point.  If this is successful, a 30 second pitch will be needed. This second pitch contains two or three ideas that support the first pitch.   Finally a 5 minute pitch, similar to the 30 second pitch, contains ideas from the 5 second pitch.  Often during presentations, the 5 second, 30 second and 5 minute pitches are presented in sequential order.   Being able to have more than one person involved in a pitch is advantageous because of the potential synergies realized resulting from the different ideas, perspectives and styles. 

5) Test the pitch.  It is important to test this pitch with different people (friends, coworkers, etc.), who could bring their different ideas and perspectives to refine the pitch.

6) Delivering the pitch. Engage in active listening with the intended audience.  Anticipate their concerns, be proactive and prepare accordingly.

7)  What to do when the pitch fails.  What were the actual and perceived mistakes?  What can be done next time to prevent this?  Ask for feedback with people that were present during the pitch.  With these lessons learned, there is a possibility to re-pitch the idea to other areas of the organization.  Perhaps breaking the idea into smaller parts is needed to re-pitch.

8) Do it yourself.  If others do not believe in your idea(s), it is possible after much revision to implement the idea(s) yourself.  That is how many entrepreneurs started their businesses.

Is it called soda or pop?

 

What do you call soft drinks?  According to this website, it depends on where you are from.  In the United States, around the Midwest, Great Plains and Northwest the term “Pop” is used.  In the Northeast, Southwest and the St Louis and Miami area is the term “Soda” is used.  “Coke” is generally used in the South.

What are your global neighbors buying?

 

 

Ever wonder what people from different countries spend their discretionary income on? This article from the New York Times has interesting maps that illustrates the preferences of many countries on certain goods and services.

Bored?

What happens when you are bored?  This article defines boredom as: “that the brain has concluded there is nothing new or useful it can learn from an environment, a person, an event, a paragraph.” In this state,  observed through brain imaging technology, that the brain is only functioning at about 5% less energy when bored or disengaged versus being involved in its regular state. Boredom enables day dreaming which individuals can come up with creative and innovative methods to fight a mundane task.