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Different or Alike? Which Do You Aspire to Be?
One of my favorite weekly newsletters is written by Roy Williams of Wizard of Ads fame. If you are in sales and marketing and don’t subscribe to the MondayMorningMemo, I highly recommend it. But this week’s edition has life application beyond any advertising campaign you might be developing.
I think Mr. Williams’ message has insight on how we interpret and present ourselves to the world as individuals – not just for businesses. His question of whether to “differentiate” or “conform” can be used to to evaluate how we see and relate to others. In other words – how we get along with those around us. The person who insists on always being different and “special” might take heed that there is a cost of not fitting in. The person who always conforms to his or her surroundings might be reminded that each of us have a uniqueness accompanied by gifts that are meant to season the world around us.
But I’ll let the true Wizard speak from his observations as an advertiser.
Differentiate or Conform?Chronic problems in business are usually the result of binary thinking. “It’s either this way or that way. It can’t be both.”
Strangely, the answer is almost always “both.”
“Should I try to attract the price-driven (transactional) customer, or should I go for the (relational) customer who cares about something other than price?”
Both. Create and schedule ads that speak convincingly to the question of price. Create and schedule other ads that speak of important matters beyond price. Just don’t try to do both in the same ad.
“Should I manage with strict policies, procedures, methods and systems, or should I empower my employees to make decisions on their own?”
Both. Systematize the 90 percent of your company’s activities that are recurrent so that your employees have the freedom to humanize and customize the 10 percent of your activities that are ever-changing and unusual. A company without freedoms is a sweatshop. A company without policies, procedures, methods and systems is a country club for unproductive employees.
“Should I promote an exclusive brand and risk the manufacturer betraying me by allowing my competitor to sell that brand for which I’ve created all the demand, or should I create my own in-house brand so that I can remain in control of it?”
Both. You need the credibility of established brands to lend strength to the new brand you will introduce. Advertise both, but never in the same ad.
“Won’t this make me seem unfocused?”
No. You must get on board with proven procedures. You must also do your own thing and go your own direction. It’s not only possible that you do both, it is essential.
Mechanics across Europe began building cars in 1886 and each time they built a car it was different. More than 2,000 different garages built and sold cars one-at-a-time before Henry Ford’s 1913 introduction of the first moving assembly line employing conveyor belts. Henry popularized the concept of interchangeable parts. It was efficient. It also made him the richest man in the world. By 1923 Henry Ford was personally earning $264,000 a day. He was declared a billionaire by the Associated Press.
More than 17,000,000 Model T’s rolled off Henry’s assembly line and you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black. The inefficiency of building cars one-at-a-time forced the other 2,000 garages to sell their cars at about $2,500 apiece while the price of a reliable, new Model T was only $849.
Soon the other carmakers got on board and America became an automotive Wonderland.
But we always take a good thing too far. Fifty years later, General Motors decided to take this idea to the next level. “Instead of designing 5 different brands each year and retooling our machinery to build Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs, why not just put a different interior package and grille and taillights in the same, basic car and sell that car under 5 different names?”
A Chevy Cavalier is a Pontiac Sunbird is an Oldsmobile Firenza is a Buick Skyhawk is a Cadillac Cimarron.
A Chevy Nova is a Pontiac Ventura is an Oldsmobile Omega is a Buick Apollo is a Cadillac Seville.
A Chevy Caprice is a Pontiac Catalina is an Olds 98 is a Buick Electra is a Cadillac DeVille.
On the surface, this looks like exactly the same idea that made Henry Ford rich. The problem with the “platform engineering” introduced by GM in the late 1970s is that it eroded the distinctiveness of their brands. Two decades later GM was forced to close Oldsmobile and a few years after that, Pontiac fell as well. Analysts speculate whether Buick or Cadillac will be next.
Conformity is essential or you will not be efficient. Differentiation is essential or you will not be special.
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Q: How Is the Publishing Industry Impacted By a Struggling Economy?
Q: How is the publishing industry impacted by a struggling economy?
A: I can only answer on the basis of today, and on November 25, 2008 (*), the answer is that the publishing industry has indeed been impacted negatively and at least in equal measure to the overall economy!
Is book publishing recession proof?
The old axiom was that publishing was recession proof – especially religious publishing. Why? In the overall scheme of the economy (and people’s pocketbooks) books are a relatively inexpensive form of entertainment, best partaken at home, which saves gas and eat-out money. In the case of religious publishing, the prevailing wisdom has been that when the economy is good “people play” but when it’s bad “people pray!”
But in this ongoing subprime-crisis-automaker-melt-down-government-bail-out-required economic downturn in America, sales are not good for retailers or publishers. The list of retail chains reporting same-store declines is as long as the list of … well, uh, retail chains. The only reliable statistics available on the health of independent retailers is the number that are closing on a weekly basis. Iconic flagship book retailer, Barnes & Noble, reports glum 3rd quarter results and 4th quarter projections:
B&N Sales Sink; Sees Gloomy Holiday
by Jim Milliot — Publishers Weekly, 11/20/2008 6:19:00 AM
The news was about as bad as it could be from Barnes & Noble. For the third quarter ended November 1, total sales fell 4.4%, to $1.1 billion, with sales through its bookstores down by the same 4.4%. Same store sales fell 7.4%. Sales at Barnes & Noble.com rose 2%, to $109 million. Moreover, the nation’s largest bookstore chain predicted that–based on the negative sales trend to date–same store sales in the fourth quarter will fall 6% to 9%. Earlier this month, B&N chairman Len Riggio warned employees in a memo that the company was bracing for a terrible holiday season.
Books-A-Million, which is strongest in the Bible Belt fared even worse.
by Jim Milliot — Publishers Weekly, 11/21/2008 2:13:00 PM
The drumbeat of bad news from the nation’s bookstore chains continued Friday with Books-A-Million reporting that total revenue dropped 5.7% in the third quarter ended November 1, to $110.9 million. Comparable store sales tumbled 9.9%, the “weakest comparable store sales in many years,” said CEO Sandy Cochran. With the sales decline, BAM’s loss deepened to $2.2 million in the quarter compared to a loss of $555,000 in last year’s third period.
The sales decline was felt in most segments, Cochran said, with bargain books, gifts, and the teen categories among the few areas where business was up. A decline in customer traffic plus a cost conscious consumer where blamed for the poor results. BAM is focused on “controlling costs, managing inventory and preparing for the holiday season,” Cochran said.
While Cochran said the holiday publishing schedule is a good one, she sees few signs indicating that the difficult marketplace will shift anytime soon. For the first nine months of the year, revenue was down 4.8%, to $349.2 million, and the company had a loss of $635,000 compared to earnings of $4.6 million in the same period last year. Comp sales for the nine months were off 8.0%
Perhaps the most dramatic announcement came from the supply side of the industry with the news that literary giant Houghton Mifflin was putting a hold on acquisitions – akin to a fish saying that they might spend a year away from the water.
HMH Places “Temporary” Halt on Acquisitions
By Rachel Deahl — Publishers Weekly, 11/24/2008 12:54:00 PM
It’s been clear for months that it will be a not-so-merry holiday season for publishers, but at least one house has gone so far as to halt acquisitions. PW has learned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has asked its editors to stop buying books.
Josef Blumenfeld, v-p of communications for HMH, confirmed that the publisher has “temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts” across its trade and reference divisions. The directive was given verbally to a handful of executives and, according to Blumenfeld, is “not a permanent change.” Blumenfeld, who hedged on when the ban might be lifted, said that the right project could still go to the editorial review board. He also maintained that the the decision is less about taking drastic measures than conducting good business.
“In this case, it’s a symbol of doing things smarter; it’s not an indicator of the end of literature,” he said. “We have turned off the spigot, but we have a very robust pipeline.” The action by the highly leveraged HMH may also be as much about the company’s need to cut costs in a tight credit market.as about the current economic slowdown.
What’s it mean for you as author or aspiring author?
If your heart is set on publishing with a traditional publishing house of note, the news isn’t great. My own company, Thomas Nelson, in anticipation of emerging economic woes, cut the number of titles being published almost in half as of March 2008. As a publisher I always find it more fun to do books than to not do books, but unquestionably, we were ahead of the curve.
If you are able to see publishing not just in terms of a paper and ink product with a particular logo or name on the spine – and are open to the array of self- and micro-publishing options available today – then this is just one more confirmation to go for it now rather than wait for your deal to sail in!
