Monthly Archives: September 2012

Present or Pitch

Posted on September 28, 2012 by strategyaudit

Working with a client recently, I realised my language had changed. The word “Pitch” had been substituted for the more usual “Present” as I encouraged them to get out and engage with their markets  in a very focused way to … Continue reading →

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Leveraging mobile marketing

Posted on September 25, 2012 by strategyaudit

Big Brother is watching where you are, if you have a smartphone. The GPS capabilities of the newer smartphones opens up an extraordinary Pandora’s box of opportunities to market  to those in immediate reach, alternatively to deluge them with SPAM, … Continue reading →

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Advertising miss-step?

Posted on September 24, 2012 by strategyaudit

 So, the Gruen team is down a member as Russell Howcroft moves on to take over running the ailing Channel 10. There must be a sense of irony here, he moves from career as a “Madman” moonlighting in a successful … Continue reading →

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Big data or meaningful data

Posted on September 20, 2012 by strategyaudit

“Big data” appears to be the coming cliché amongst my propeller-headed friends,  as it gets cheaper to gather, store, and mine data, they are like excited 21st century versions of Oliver Twist, “more petabytes please sir”! Surely at some point … Continue reading →

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Wisdom has a context

Posted on September 19, 2012 by strategyaudit

Strategy is about choice, which market, customer, technology, and so on. Never has this black and white choice been so stark a challenge as in publishing, as the established operators struggle to find profitability in the electronic age. Fairfax in … Continue reading →

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Disrupted sales process

Posted on September 17, 2012 by strategyaudit

The web has disrupted the sales process, as well as just about everything else in our world. Just think about differences between how the process works now, and how it used to work. It now starts with a web search … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Marketing, Sales | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Apple mortgage?

Posted on September 14, 2012 by strategyaudit

The shape of Apple after Steve Jobs has been a source of much scribbling, and the launch on Friday of the newest version of its golden goose, the  iPhone 5 has given us a peek. The razzamatazz has been huge, … Continue reading →

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Website chook-house

Posted on September 13, 2012 by strategyaudit

In a chook-house, there are both chickens and eggs, all mixed up, and hard to tell which chicken laid which eggs. It is a bit like the web, full of sites that could belong to any number of businesses. As … Continue reading →

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The Challenge of Analytics

Posted on September 12, 2012 by strategyaudit

We have access to huge amounts of data, “Big Data” in current parlance, but wading through it all, and finding the few insights that will make a difference is a task our fathers really did not have, it is the … Continue reading →

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The “2 F’s” of life

Posted on September 11, 2012 by strategyaudit

The two “F’s” of life scare us all, Failure, and caused by the fear of failure; Finishing. Because we do not want to fail, most of us avoid finishing. We procrastinate, take on “busy-work” or “easy-work”   to avoid the necessity … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Small business | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Manage by customer, by leveraging data

Posted on September 10, 2012 by strategyaudit

Would you rather do business with someone who knows a lot about you, and demonstrates they have your best interests at heart, or some stranger, enriching themselves? Pretty obvious answer, so why do so few retailers seem to be able to respond?. … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, Marketing, retail, Sales, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Risk portfolio management

Posted on September 7, 2012 by strategyaudit

Most enterprises are pretty familiar with project portfolio management, which always include a risk rating attached to each project. What happens if we turn the notion around, and consider the portfolio from the perspective of the risk profile of the … Continue reading →

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The Serve & Volley of selling

Posted on September 5, 2012 by strategyaudit

In tennis, the simplest point, and if you do it well  the most effective, is the serve and volley. Put in a good serve, and follow up with a volley that puts the point away. Same in selling. The serve: … Continue reading →

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results wall

Posted on September 4, 2012 by strategyaudit

A modest sized marketing services agency I do occasional work for has an awards wall, where industry peer bestowed awards appear, a feature of most service agencies I have seen. However, theirs has two wrinkles Beneath each award is a … Continue reading →

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Rocking horse syndrome

Posted on September 3, 2012 by strategyaudit

I observe lots of activity in all sorts of enterprises, public and private, see KPI’s set and met, initiatives announced with fanfare (and in the case of the NSW Government re-announced)but little of any value seems to be happening. Familiar? … Continue reading →

Posted in Leadership, Personal Rant, Small business | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments