Week 5 – MBA6101 – Guerrilla Marketing

In Chapter 5 of Guerrilla Marketing, Levinson covers the topic of developing truly creative marketing. He provides a great exercise for one to do. First, practice writing what you think might be the creative strategy for current advertising you've seen, composing three-sentences that apply to them. Do the same for their competitors and the comparison between them would establish the brand's positioning. Very insightful approach! He goes on to outline the seven-steps to assuring successful marketing.

1. Find the inherent drama within your offering
2. Translate that inherent drama into a meaningful benefit
3. State your benefits in as believable a way as possible
4. Get people's attention
5. Motivate your audience to get involved
6. Be sure you are communicating clearly
7. Measure your finished advertisement, commercial, letter, website, and/or brochure against your creative strategy

These steps are brilliant in their simplicity and require having a clear idea of what you want to say about your own product or service. To picture the mind of your customer at the moment that customer makes a decision to purchase and talk about the feelings that the prospect will experience after owning what you are selling. Levinson does caution to be wary of basing your creative strategy on rapid societal changes that are more anecdotal than factual.

One last point: Guerrillas are attuned to world happenings including at the national and local level, breaking news, and up-to-the-minute trends--if you're not keeping up, you're falling behind.    

Week 5 – MBA6101 – Surfing the Tsunami

Kelsey posits that there are three ways one could respond to AI: Adapt, Adopt, or Adept with Chapter 5 of Surfing the Tsunami focusing on what Adopt is all about.

He writes that adopting is a "better" response to AI, where one is adopting AI-related tools & platforms, becoming more actively involved in managing AI. Whatever company uses AS will have a competitive advantage.

I came across an article this week that touches on a point made in the book, where new tech comes along, displaces workers or creates a new job opportunity. At Chili's Grill & Bar restaurants, robots are being used to make their server's jobs a little easier, which "allows their staff to be more engaging with the guests while benefiting the restaurant altogether." The Chili's example is one that highlights how routine work became the mother of automation AND stressed the importance of the employee's focus to be on making the customer experience better as more of his/her time was spent engaging with the customer, not hustling to get dishes back to the kitchen.

In a nutshell, "sooner or later, because of economic competition and past precedents, AI will be increasingly adopted" (Kelsey, 2018). So, if someone is in denial, that won't stop the marketplace from adopting AI-related tools & platforms. What I do like is the approach Kelsey notes, calling it "sustainable transition" with AI where adoption is facilitated by organizations willing to redevelop their workforce to maintain relevance, gain a competitive edge, and sustain growth with a skilled labor force.

Week 5 – MBA6101 – Ascend Your Start-up

In Chapter 5 of Ascend Your Start-Up, Yu states that her life was one part luck, one part determination. While I can see how she concludes this, I am more aligned to Oprah Winfrey's supposition: “I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn't been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn't have been lucky.” So, life is a journey and there are thousands of decisions made in a lifetime. Each one forms the trajectory or arc of your story. Don't know something? Find someone or something (a book, an article, a podcast, a Google-search) to get to know what you don't know.

Yu repeats that sometimes you have to go backward to go forward. I think that she means we should pause, give due consideration, pivot--if need be--to stay on task, focused, driven. Repeatedly asking yourself "why?" will work to gut-check each decision. Does this act ladder up to the vision, the mission, the purpose of your business? What are your customer's telling you? Are you listening? How do you make an advocate of your customer? Yu posits that customers go through six stages in their [purchase] journey, the last of which is advocate. Here they are:

1. Evaluate: customer is doing research on the product(s) or service(s) that will address their need(s)
2. Invest: biz has the oppty to show how their solution solves their problem/need and outlines how you do it better thank or differently than your competitor does it so talk about how you've successfully delivered it to someone else
3. Deploy: how you onboard your customer ensures your customer understands the value they provide to your biz
4. Adopt: this is where your customer uses your product(s) or service(s)
5. Expand: how satisfied a customer is with your product or service can be inferred by how much they expand their footprint with you--find out what that trigger is and apply some predictive modeling for other customers to ensure they get the same positive experience as other customers
6. Advocate: get customer feedback, keep a loop that goes back to product or service group in your organization, get positive reviews on your website, to build on word-of-mouth

Yu stresses the importance of the customer experience, as a make or break endeavor for businesses. This is where data comes in. Analyze what you know about customer behaviors. Glean insights and take action, making adjustments as necessary to stay relevant, engaged, and constantly innovating.

The responsibility to manage the customer experience starts at the top and includes the Board, C-Suite, Executive Leadership, all the way down the rungs of an organization's ladder to the frontlines. It is imperative to ensure the frontline knows the value the organization places on them being the face of the brand.

Week 4 – MBA6101 – Guerrilla Marketing

Developing a Guerrilla Marketing Plan is the topic of Chapter 4 of Levinson's Guerrilla Marketing book. He emphasized that one must "start with a plan and commit to that plan" in order to succeed in business. That is true with just about anything in life: weight loss is a goal but the plan to bring that to fruition requires eating healthier foods, working out more, getting enough rest, etc.

In business, Levinson is absolutely correct that "Positioning is the key to marketing." And he has four questions that must be answered in order to measure your (product or service)'s position in the market. These are:

1. Does [your product or service] offer a benefit that my target audience really wants?
2. Is it an honest-to-goodness benefit?
3. Does it truly separate me from my competition?
4. Is it unique and/or difficult to copy?

The benefit is best identified as the problem the consumer has which your product or service is the solution for. If it does not benefit the consumer, it is not an honest-to-goodness benefit. Your product or service exists, so what? It's the best in the nation/world. Why? It's 10x more effective than brand Y. Why should I believe that? No one else can say "x,y,z" like we can because [ fill in the blank ]...now you might capture their attention. You are giving the consumer the RTB, reason-to-believe. Tell them about the problem they didn't know they had, crystalize it in such a way that they are compelled to take action. There's a reason those made-for-TV infomercials are so effective, and I bring it up to make a point: these hit all the points. Watch one, at 3 AM when you cannot sleep. You'll go down a rabbit hole. And if it's less than $20, you'll buy it because that's the threshold for spending money and not feeling gipped or fleeced.

So bottom line is: knowing what your brand is/represents is key to differentiation and authenticity--two things that are crucial to an enterprise with a value proposition. Know how you are, where you are going, and how you will get there. It's that simple (in theory) and requires effort (in practice).

Week 4 – MBA6101 – Surfing the Tsunami

Kelsey posits that there are three ways one could respond to AI: Adapt, Adopt, or Adept with Chapter 4 of Surfing the Tsunami focusing on what Adapt is all about.

Kelsey writes that adapting is a "good" response to AI, where one should learn more and pay attention to what's going on and the trends or patterns being seen.

Reading the provocative question posed, "who is in control? You, or your Smartphone?" reminded me of being on a subway train in Tokyo back in 2002, laughing to myself at seeing so many Japanese people glued to their phones! I could not fathom what would be so enthralling--I only had my trusty Blackberry. Japan was one of the first nations with 3G so their phones offered a whole experience! The younger population even had devices with unique bling (charms, stickers, cases). I had no idea that it was only just the beginning. It wasn't until years later, when the behavior was evident in American culture that I realized it was inevitable...I just wasn't paying close attention.

Back to the topic though. I don't believe people think of reminders, as Kelsey points out, as being AI. My daughter uses Alexa to set reminders or timers, do calculations, play music (including playlists on Spotify). I see it. I am paying attention.

I also agree with reading articles--Kelsey has a great list to start off, to which I'd also add Harvard Business Review for folks who want to "dig deep"--reading books (I, too like the physical act of turning pages, and Kindle must've realized that too when they introduced page turning or page scrolling as a settings option...note: you can highlight things on a Kindle, make notes, and do searches based on all these things (game-changer!). By the way, Amazon got big because they harnessed the power of data. People should not hate Amazon for using the power for greater profits. Kelsey is absolutely on point when he says that "the environment will become more competitive." And "more competitive" is an action, an act. Not passive. Hungry like a wolf. On the subject of AI, I'm not hungry for knowledge enough to buy a book; I will stick to articles for now. If/when I do decide to venture out, I'll have a list to start with.

Week 4 – MBA6101 – Ascend Your Start-up

In chapter 4 of Ascend Your Start-Up, Yu says four things that really jump out at me,

1. "After coming all this way, I feel inadequate."
2. "You know you have achieved a certain level of success, yet you do not embrace the milestone."
3. "We don't know what we don't know in life. We just keep going."
4. "Have the courage and grit to stay the course."

I'll take them one at a time.

"After coming all this way, I feel inadequate." There are many days, when I look around the table and see some fierce leaders and think to myself, "Am I a player at this level?" I admire how some of them ask questions before providing their opinion, or provide their opinion last in order to let others, often more junior, have a voice. What is my voice? Why does anyone care to hear what I have to say? And if called upon, do I have a POV I want or should share? I am reminded that, yes, if I am at the table, I am a player. Gone away is the "fake it til you make it" approach and in its place is, "everything you've done has allowed you a seat at the table."

This leads me to the second quote: "You know you have achieved a certain level of success, yet you do not embrace the milestone." Awareness of having a seat at the table is the first thing to note. I have. The next thing is to have the confidence to relax and celebrate within, the achievement of having reached this milestone. I am getting there. I guess I had thought there'd be some kind of clear sign, "you are here!"

Yu is spot-on when she states, "We don't know what we don't know in life. We just keep going." I have been in survival mode for most of my life. It's made me lean and mean, efficient with the steps because it feels like time is speeding up, not slowing down, and I want to slow it down. I have taken a long road, unbeknownst to me, 'cause, "We don't know what we don't know in life. We just keep going." Like the Energizer bunny.

Lastly, I've always had "the courage and grit to stay the course." I was raised by parents who said, "Figure it out." They didn't hand me the solution and back then I wondered, like a naive child, if that was because they didn't know. No, that wasn't the reason. It was because they wanted me to learn things for myself. That gave me a sense of ownership. I didn't immediately know my way and my 20s were a blur, bouncing from one thing to another, until I got my shit together and said, "Finish that bachelor's degree. It's an entree into the job you want." I didn't do things the linear way, i.e., graduate from HS, then go to college and get a bachelor's degree in four years, get in the workforce and start climbing the corporate ladder. It was quite circuitous, expensive, inefficient, but eventually I created my own roadmap, tweaking it along the way, to have the seat at a table that I have earned the right to sit at. 

Week 3 – MBA6101 – Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla Marketing, chapter 3...I absolutely, positively agree with this a 1000%. All 16 of these principles are established, tried and true, Leo Burnett principles and I believe them to be in priority order, the top 3 being:

1. You must have commitment to your marketing program.
2. Think of that program as an investment.
3. See to it that your program is consistent.

Leo Burnett has a legacy of transforming and building brands. Since the book already mentioned Philip Morris USA's Marlboro product, here are some brands that embody the commitment, investment and consistency in their marketing plans:

1. When Leo Burnett, the man, founded his agency in 1935, in the middle of the

Depression, his first and only client was Minnesota Valley Canning Company. They are

still around today. You may not know them because Leo rebranded it Green Giant and

created the Jolly Green Giant for instant brand recognition because it is still (consistently) the face of the brand with a few touch-ups/enhancements over the years:

2. Kellogg’s has a slew of breakfast cereals and the mascots that are the face of the

brand(s), Frosted Flakes’ Tony the Tiger, Rice Krispies Snap!, Crackle, Pop, Froot Loops

Toucan Sam , Corn Flakes’ Cornelius “Corny” Rooster. All which breed familiarity and amazement because Kellogg's committed to using them on their advertising and packaging, consistently.

3. Altoids, founded in 1780, went from a product touted as a way to relieve intestinal

discomfort to being repositioned in 1995 as the “Curiously Strong Mint” and that’s why

they come in a metal tin.

Commit. Invest. Apply consistently (though a refreshed logo nods to the original).

Today, take note of Dunkin’ Donuts’ rebranding that likely spanned yeeeeeears and they had the

vision to evolve it just like their retail products that now went beyond donuts to full breakfast fare

that were healthier and margins that were nothing to sneeze at. 

Initially, the company had just their name, then a donut in their logo and fast-forward to 2019, it’s just Dunkin'. They even have a tagline, America runs on Dunkin’ and introduced some iconography that allows for a short-hand to their marketing that almost appears to be hieroglyphs. Instantly recognizable if the words were removed from the construct.

Some others: Burger King, Starbucks, Aunt Jemima, Apple, Netflix