The banking world can reclaim their position by implementing value-innovation.

Globalization got a bad name by the credit crunch initiated by international banks. This experience created a counter reaction at consumers. They prefer being close over global. This might actually offer an opportunity to a bank. The challenge for many multinationals now is to get across the table and to prove that they are there for their consumers and to demonstrate that they understand local customers as good as the other businesses do.

Looking across time
Regional banks are becoming more popular with customers: in Switzerland the cantonal banks, in the USA small regional banks and in Spain the civic saving banks. The perception of customers changed to: close to home means that it's save to get my money back. Recently I have been looking for an example if Blue Ocean Strategy can be implemented at banks. The Caja Navarra, a Spanish civic saving bank related to this strategy. Even though this bank is focusing on the same customer they focus on the trend that the mindset or perception of this customer has been changed. In chapter three of the book the authors mention that it's utterly important not just project a trend itself but get business insights how the trend will change value to customers and impact the company's business model. 'By looking across time - from the value a market delivers today to the value it might deliver tomorrow - managers can actively shape their future and lay claim to a new blue ocean' (page 75).

Civic account simulator
At Caja Navarra consumers know where their money is spent and they have a say in it. It's a bank with a high involvement, they truly listen to their customers and they show social responsibility. About 30% of their profits go to charity and social projects. At this bank consumers have the right to choose and decide on which projects, even those in their own village, they want to spend their money. They can consult the investments of their money online. And with the great tool of the civic account simulator they can calculate how much they like to invest.
Customers can also act as a volunteer on a project. On the website there is a complete offer of projects to look at. Caja Navarra provides them a training and contact.

Close to you
Caja Navarra sees it as their duty to become a fairer bank. Clients can do an online assessment to rate the bank on duties as for example: being idealistic, holistic, biological, responsible and intelligent. What I especially like about the bank is that the customer can participate in the civic banking community (digital cancha). The bank gives customers even the opportunity to take part in the blogs of their clients. At the moment this is the largest social network in Spain. The bank is not afraid of feedback, they ask customers to give input for improvements. I was also impressed that a customer has the possibility to connect live with the bank by video conference! Or what about making an appointment with the bank whenever it suits you? Consumers book their time online. Caja Navarra shows in a tangible way that they really truly listen to consumers, that they are active in society and that they are close to you. Caja Navarra is a great example of implemented value-innovation.

Sources:
Kim C. and Mauborgne R. (2005) Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Webinar: Reinvention Retail Financial Services - Putting the Customer First, Roger Peverelli, co-author of The Future of Finance: http://event.deregistratiebalie.nl/bankingfinance/congres/amsterdam/june/webinar-next.php?video=2
YouTube Video on Caja Navarra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN0n9HKmu6E

The Tipping Point Leadership

When people talk about Blue Ocean Strategy they mention the four actions framework, the strategy canvas and the six paths of innovation. Not much is said on how to implement this strategy. The third part of the book of Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne actually emphasizes how to overcome key organisational (cognitive, limited resources, motivation and political) hurdles for execution. Kim and Mauborgne recommend to overcome these hurdles by using the Tipping Point Leadership.

Radical change
The idea behind it comes from Malcolm Gladwell. He wrote 'The Tipping Point' in which he tells the story on the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The NYPD executed a blue ocean strategy in the 1990s in the public sector. Bill Bratton, police commissioner at the time, turned New York in less than two years and without an increase in his budget into the safest large city in the United States. He faces all four hurdles that managers consistently claim limit their ability to execute blue ocean strategy: the cognitive hurdle that blinds employees from seeing that radical change is necessary; the resource hurdle that is endemic in firms; the motivational hurdle that discourages and demoralises staff; and the political hurdle of internal and external resistance to change.

Tipping point leadership hinges on the insight that in any organisation, fundamental changes can happen quickly when the beliefs and energies of a critical mass of people create an epidemic movement toward an idea. Key to unlocking an epidemic movement is the right intervention - at just the right time - this can start a cascade of change. Little things can make a big difference. There are people, acts and activities that exercise a disproportionate influence on performance. If you want to implement change in your company Gladwell mentions to only focus on: connectors (extremely social people with a lot of connections), mavens (information brokers, always sharing and trading what they know) and salesmen (not necessary salespeople but charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills).

Cultural dimensions
According to me there is a lot more to if for implementing change than what is written above. In 2001 Geert Hofstede published a book on cultural dimensions. He indicates that an organisation with a culture that scores high on masculinity, power distance and uncertainty avoidance are in disadvantage in moving the organisation toward innovation and change. This might even create set backs in developing innovative products and services and being responsive in changes toward new customer values which will cause delays in generating competitive advantage.





When looking at the current globalisation trend as a company you better don't have a very rigid organisational structure. You want one that allows you to adapt and be flexible. "The idea of a standard operating procedure, which is decided at the top and then relentlessly executed and carried out by those on the bottom, doesn't make sense in an environment where you need a lot of flexibility and responsiveness"(Hammer, 1997: 96). A management culture is recommended with characteristics as ''an orientation towards innovation, change and personal responsibility, and at the same time group cooperation contains a certain degree of selflessness in order to focus on the customer" (Hammer, 1997: 101). This management culture we mainly see in the UK, in some of the Scandinavian countries and luckily in the Benelux.


Sources:
Kim, C. and Mauborgne R. (2005) Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant.
Gladwell, M. (2000) The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Hammer, M. (1996) Beyond the end of management in Rethinking the Future: rethinking business, principles, competition, control, leadership, markets and the world, edited by Rowan Gibson
Hofstede, G. (2001) Culture's consequences: comparing values, behaviours, institutions and organizations across nations 2nd ed London: Sage

Blue Ocean Strategy, a chance to think more creatively on your business

On 13th November 2009 I will do a workshop on ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ for Kansdenkdag. The Blue Ocean Strategy is the international bestseller written by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. The core idea in the book is to extend your business while making your competition irrelevant since the focus has to move to non-customers. At the moment this strategy is extensively hyped by marketing advisors and consultancies. They bring it as the method to save your business from extinction. But to me, this is certainly not the idea behind the book. Red and Blue Oceans don’t stand apart, they exist next to each other. Red Oceans are the cash flows you need to keep your cash cow (see Boston Consulting Group-matrix) alive in your product/service portfolio and the Blue Ocean is the healthy cash flow you will need to invest in your stars to come.

What is this strategy about anyway?
Most companies are in the Red Ocean, trying to extend their business while focusing on the competition who aim at the same customers. This mostly leads to price wars and lowers the status of your brand. In order to get out of this conventional way of thinking the authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne propose to draw a Strategy Canvas to see the big picture of your market space. This means you draw a X and Y-axis. On the X-axis you name the key success factors from your business and on the Y-axis you rate them. Then you draw a value curve to combine the rating with your success factors. In the same canvas you draw this value curve also for your competitor(s).
To start the creative thinking you need to utilize the Four Actions Framework to emerge the Blue Ocean Strategy from your canvas. This may sound difficult, but it simply means that you need to check which factors you can reduce or eliminate in order to gain insight how to drop your cost structure and which factors in your industry you can raise or create with the goal to lift buyer value and to create new demand. This should result into value innovation and the Blue Ocean of uncontested market space, making the competition irrelevant.

But what is so creative about lowering costs and higher customer value?
Therefore the authors suggested the six paths framework next to the framework mentioned above. This is quite a fun thing to do in a business environment during a brainstorm session. You will look at alternative (1+2+3) industries, across strategic groups within industries and across the chain of buyers you can approach for your business. Next to that you (4) look across complementary product and service offerings, and ask which products/services can I add to higher customer value? What are my customer doing before, during or after they utilize my product/service? Or you can think about strategic alliances, networks, co-creation opportunities which will enrich your business. The last two paths are (5) to look across functional or emotional appeal to buyers and (6) to look across time. With looking across time the authors mean to find insight in trends that are observable today. You need to ask yourself which trends have a high probability of impacting your industry, how will they do that and how can you open up for unprecedented customer utility? And that’s it!!

Red Ocean next to Blue Ocean
Of course in the book the authors explain far more about the above mentioned frameworks, but the essence is what I wrote just now. This will give you a start. The authors do realize there are quite some key organizational hurdles to overcome to execute Blue Ocean Strategy. But I think that you can at least start with a brainstorm and take the six paths framework step by step. To change everything at once is in my view too radical. And not taking the competition into account anymore is also an illusion. The competitive strategy theory of Porter is certainly not dead. I actually think that Blue Ocean is the combination of the differentiation and focus strategy of Porter with a pinch of cost leadership. They just gave another name to it. Smart indeed. The Red Ocean is the stuck in the middle position a business falls in when having no focus on the future cash flows.
Red and Blue Ocean do stand next to each other. The Red Ocean is your current position and the Blue Ocean is what you aim for in the future. For me this strategy is a combination of having passion for your business, to bring in some creative out-of-the-box thinking and to restrict the problems that keep your business from growing.

Sources:
Kim C. and Mauborgne R., Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, HBR Press 2005.
Interview with Chan Kim by Rick Nieman on RTLZ (introduction is in Dutch, interview is in English)

Marketing Metrics can save your day

As mentioned in my former blog post I would write this time on marketing metrics and co-creation. I guess that was a bit too ambitious to put everything here in one go. Let’s focus on marketing metrics for this blog post. Last time I came to the conclusion that marketers don’t follow a left-brain approach to their activities and are therefore not able to do a valuable contribution to the business performance. The background is probably that some issues they deal with (loyalty, brand/awareness, beliefs and likeability) are difficult to measure, at least according to them. I'm afraid that top management, not being aware that there are metrics for these issues, agrees with that.

Let’s put first things first, what is a metric? A metric is a measuring system that quantifies a trend, dynamic, or characteristic. From this definition one can already deduct that something like a brand can be measured. Being able to ‘crunch the numbers’ is vital in marketing. I will start with penetration from which we can also measure Brand Penetration. With penetration I mean: the proportion of people in the target group who bought (at least once in the period) a specific brand or category of goods. We all know that this can be calculated at Market Penetration (%) = Customers who have purchased a product in the category (#) : Total Population (#).
Brand Penetration calculation is then easy. Brand Penetration (%) = Customers who have purchased the brand (#) : Total Population (#). So if over a period of a month, in a market of 10.000 households, 500 households purchased Coca Cola Light we can calculate this as 500:10.000 = 5% Brand Penetration Coca Cola Light.

Share of wallet
But how do I measure the Brand Loyalty? Loyalty means we have to look for heavy users. We might do that by the share of requirements (share of wallet) which is calculated solely among buyers of a specific brand. Within this group, it represents the percentage of purchases within the relevant category, accounted for by the brand in question. Easier maybe to say that it is the average market share enjoyed by a product among the customers who buy it. To make this clear I give the example that in a given month, the unit purchases of Coca Cola Light is 1.000.000 bottles. But among the households of heavy users that bought Coca Cola Light, total purchases of soft drinks came to 2.000.000. This means 1.000.000:2.000.000 = 50% Share of Requirements/Wallet.

Awareness
Even after former examples issues like awareness, beliefs and likeability are still taken for granted and may not (yet) have been put into metrics or performance indicators by marketers. But awareness – the percentage of potential customers or consumers who recognize or name a given brand - can be (un)aided or (un)prompted. To reveal this awareness different kind of questions have to be asked:

To measure awareness: have you heard of Brand X? What brand comes to mind when you think luxury car?

To measure beliefs/likeability: Is Brand X for me? On a scale of 1-5, is Brand X for young people?

To measure loyalty: Did you use Brand X this week? What brand did you last buy?

Next to metrics there are also key performance indicators (KPI’s). Like metrics they indicate what to do to dramatically improve business performance and are connected with the business most important/critical processes. KPI’s therefore indicate the critical success factors. But how to control all these kind of metrics? To get an immediate overview of your business performance the Balanced Scorecard was invented by Kaplan and Norton (1996). A very interesting subject which I may address in one of my next blog posts.

Source: Farris et al (2006), Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master, Wharton School Publishing.

The marketing department is in danger

It occurs to me that during the time the internet bubble bursted (2001/2002), there was also a crash in the marketing value in companies. Both phenomenas focus on increasing market share at the expense of the bottom line: spending money but have no proof if there will be enough income in return on investments done. Recently I read an article mentioning that only 10 percent of executive meeting time is devoted to marketing (Ambler 2003, p.62). Clearly respect for marketing in organizations is declining.

Lately I received a direct mail from Tele2, offering me a far lower price for internet and phone usage. Next to that they offered me the service that they will close my subscription with my former internet provider. All for free of course. So there was customer value involved, they were cheaper and they would save me time. Just to check I called my former internet provider and they told me they were not informed that I would leave them and move to Tele2. Then I called Tele2. The person from customer service admitted that no such service existed for the internet/phone bundle I took. Well, why mentioning it on the direct mail then, I asked? Yep, also in this company marketing is used as a tool to feed customers with propaganda. It has lost its role to take care of customers and is only able to report on my rage afterwards. This is when my complaint appeared on klachtenradar.nl

A left-brain approach
But what to do about it? To me marketing is in itself a strong business driver and should be looked at as an investment. Most organizations though perceive it as cost. This is quite logic. First of all most marketers nowadays are engaged in more tactical decisions as advertising, sales support and public relations. Second, they don’t follow a left-brain approach to their activities. According to prof. dr. Verhoef (customer based marketing) and prof. dr. Leeflang (marketing) the two major drivers to increase marketing influence and respect within the company are accountability and innovativeness. Marketing plans should include a financial section that features the planned financial consequences of their marketing actions. To increase the innovativeness of marketing departments, marketers might capitalize on their market and customer knowledge to develop successful new product and service concepts. They could build on new trends, such as customer codevelopment and customer solutions (Verhoef & Leeflang, 2009).

In my next blog post I will more concretely indicate examples of the usage of marketing metrics and will further elaborate on customer codevelopment and solutions (co-creation).

Source: Verhoef P.C. & Leeflang S.H., Understanding the Marketing Department’s Influence Within the Firm, Journal of Marketing Vol. 73 (March 2009), 14-37.

My first move in the world of blogging

Happy to finally have my website/blog settled. At the moment I am socalled ''in between jobs'' and will have some time to write about the stuff I'm interested in: that's marketing!! Currently I am looking for a marketingjob in a challenging and innovative international working enviroment. And I surely am interested in interim projects too.

Actually I started already a blog in november 2006. This blog was on Passionate Thinking. I did this since I was dissapointed by the way my team members at the time negatively reacted on innovative ideas and expanding the business by experimenting and pioneering. It came across to me as if my team members were not looking for new ideas since new ideas meant more work. For them the workplace was just a spot you go to in the morning to do your (hands-on)work and await what the manager tells you to do.

I find it more important to explore and to find out myself how I can improve the business. Of course there must be enough space for innovation in that organization in which an employer can move. If this space is not there many creative thinkers will start their own business, become very disappointed or even will look for another job.

Nowadays the importance of the creative ethos in the society is growing. People do not like to have their creativity switched on and off at predetermined times. A good mixture of work and play is a growing demand. A job like developing new software requires long periods of intense concentration, puntuated by the need to relax, incubate ideas and recharge. So too does designing a new marketing campaign or investment strategy.

Organizations must give space to these creative and passionate thinkers. Those employers obviously derive from the me-oriented generation. I believe I am on the edge of that generation, being 45-year old and young at heart.

In the next blogs I will discuss this issue a little bit further. I was triggered by it by reading the book ''The rise of the Creative Class'' by Richard Florida. A book I can recommend to anyone with a broad mind.