This Week in Strategy: What's the difference between USA and USB? One connects to your devices and accesses your data. The other is a hardware standard.
Hi Strat Pack,
You ever have an ominous start to the week? I fired up the old lappy toppy on Monday morning, and honestly every song on my Spotify Discover playlist was a dud. Not ideal by any means. So what have I been doing? Glad you asked. I've been listening to Bon Iver's Holoscene and Air's Playground Love essentially on repeat. I've also been listening to longtime friend of the newsletter Roger's band Pretty & Nice on bandcamp. Ther album Infinitely Forever is, well, it's pretty, and nice, ok! Next time Spotify utterly and completely lets you down, give them a listen. Or don't wait. Take that Spotify royalties!
So I found this website the other day and I think it's quite interesting: DialADocent.com. From their description: Do you miss going to museums? Do you miss the excitement of seeing a new exhibition or the comfort of seeing a much-loved painting or sculpture? Docents share these feelings. We miss giving tours and discussing art. We are a group of museum docents and we love to talk about art. We are offering free one-on-one conversations about modern and contemporary art. We also offer small group conversations. Each conversation is unique, depending on your particular interests.
I do miss going to museums. I love this. I signed up for a chat next week. If you do too, let me know how it goes!
Last but not least, friend of the newsletter Pat is writing a book on the importance of empathy in marketing. Something I think we could all use a little more of, and also in marketing. From Pat - In this book, you'll learn about the history of empathy and how it relates to each phase of the buyer journey. You'll read stories from incredible marketing/sales leaders such as Daniel Pink and his advice on empathy and influence, how Velveeta implements empathy into their social presence, and how Google’s social lab listens to the world’s emotions and acts with empathy [ED Note: and probably other things too after they removed "Don't be evil" from their corporate mission...]. Pat is a smart guy, I like his writing, and I'm looking forward to his book. Check out his indiegogo for details or to pre order a book. And hey It's already funded which is good news. Congrats Pat!
Alright, so it was a much better week than my Spotify playlist led me to believe. Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Don't be Brave. Be Right., Giles Edwards & Ryan Wallman [YouTube]
I was watching this....I honestly don't know what to call it - video podcast? the other day: and I wanted to share two interesting tidbits that I found particularly interesting. The first is maybe the smartest brief I've ever seen:
What a tight brief. "Design a bottle so distinct that you would recognize if by feel in the dark or lying broken on the ground." It's sharp, pointed, single-minded, and I know exactly what I need to do without a laundry list of mandatories. I feel like so much of what we get now is honestly marketing schlock. Would be nice to get back to this level of simplicity.
The second is the The Von Restorff effect, also known as the "isolation effect", that predicts that when multiple homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus that differs from the rest is more likely to be remembered. For example - apples, oranges, grapes, pandas, cherries - guess which one you're likely to remember.
Advertising is all about being distinct. And creating System 1 memory structures. Feels like someone should tell the brand strategists at these fashion houses. And at about half the DTC companies that have started over the last few years.
2) It’s Time to Toss SWOT Analysis into the Ashbin of Strategy History [Roger Martin]
SWOT is a Dreadful Way to Start a Strategy Process
The SWOT issue is only one manifestation of a broader problem of the misuse of science in data analytics. With ever-greater computing power, analysts can crunch huge datasets, spreadsheets with endless rows and columns, to look for patterns and correlations. Because it involves numbers and analysis, it feels scientific. But it isn’t. It is just data mining — and if you torture data enough, it will give you something! It will give you correlations without underlying cause, trends without meaning, etc.
Analysis is only scientific if it starts with an explicit hypothesis. That doesn’t include implicit ones — “I think x, but I am going to keep that to myself until I see what the data say.” The hypothesis will guide the analysis with scientific precision: what data should be crunched, in what manner, and with what standard of proof.
Unfortunately, SWOT is classic data mining. It collects vast tracts of data with no hypothesis (other than these four vaguely named categories) and hopes something useful pops out, which my audience question reveals doesn’t happen. Or worse yet, the people performing the SWOT do have hypotheses, but they are kept secret. So, they impose their theories on the data collection and analysis but will tell you it is an objective analysis while they guide it to the desired conclusion.
SWOT was created in the early days of strategy when early practitioners were desperate for tools. But it has become a monstrous time-sink with little or no compensating value. It needs to be relegated to the ashbin of strategy history.
Practitioner Insights
This one is pretty simple: never do a SWOT analysis. And never pay attention to a SWOT analysis you happen to receive. At best, it is a waste of time. At worst, it will distract you from creating and rigorously testing your strategic logic.
More generally, never do an analysis without first generating an hypothesis. Otherwise, you will engage in aimless data mining. Some people are fearful that holding an hypothesis before testing it will result in bias — for example by anchoring on the answer suggested by your hypothesis. It is a challenge. Anchoring is real. However, it is worse to have no hypothesis at all because you can’t advance your thinking rigorously without forming and testing hypotheses. My advice on this front is a slight modification of the admonition to have a strong opinion that is loosely held. I think that a strong opinion can cause others to take offense. I believe that you should always have a clear opinion that is loosely held. It means that you take the time to form an explicit hypothesis to guide your actions. That will enable you to continuously improve your understanding of the world around you, and that will make you a better strategy practitioner!
3) Small brands don't have loyal fanbases [Applied Brand Science]
Ok, I said it. Let's explore.
There's a belief that you can have a small brand that has a rabidly-loyal customer base. But the data don't really agree.
In every market studied, small brands have lower penetration AND lower "loyalty" (repeat purchase, share of wallet, 100% loyalists, etc.). Market share, penetration, and loyalty always move in lock step together.
This has been found in baby wipes and B2B services. In liquid detergent & luxury watches. In credit cards and cultural events (theatre, live music, etc.). All around the world.
It's even true for the market for commercial airplanes. Boeing has the highest market share, highest penetration, AND highest purchases per buyer. And Embraer has low loyalty & penetration that are predictable just from their low market share.
It's called Double Jeopardy. It's a law (an empirical pattern, a known trend — whatever makes you comfortable).
This is not to say there aren't ever deviations from this pattern. There is "wiggle," and it adds up to real money.
But the tiny brand with the rabidly-loyal fanbase compared to big brands in your category?
It's just not a thing you see in the real world much.
4) For US consumers, price and quality outweigh environmental concerns [McKinsey]
McKinsey's most recent survey suggests that US buyers don’t care much about sustainability; price, brand, and quality are their main considerations. Other responses to the survey offer more nuance: consumers worry about a wide range of environmental issues, and are willing to pay more for green products if they were more available and better labeled.
5) Department of Great Work
H&M Is Letting Customers Rent Suits for Free for Job Interviews -- Here's What to Expect [Entrepreneur] Clothing retailer H&M is allowing its customers to rent its suits for free for 24 hours. The company first launched its suit-rental service in the UK yesterday but plans to offer the same service in the U.S. starting on May 13. suit-rental service also allows anyone with an upcoming job interview "to make a powerful first impression." Customers have a full day to use the rental and will have to return it in a prepaid return bag to one of H&M's drying cleaning partners. Love this. Such a brilliant idea.
Dove turns attention to heavily edited selfies in latest campaign [Campaign] Dove's new campaign is focusing on fighting the pressure of social media that is harming girls’ self-esteem. Alessandro Manfredi, executive vice-president at Dove, said: “Now that social media has grown to be part of our everyday lives, digital distortion is happening more than ever and tools once only available to the professionals can now be accessed by young girls at the touch of a button without regulation. This latest work acts as a sequel to Dove's 2006 campaign "Evolution", which depicted the evolution of a woman, edited to fit the unrealistic standards of the advertising industry. From Ogilvy
Talkhouse Weekend Playlist: Tom Misch’s #PlaylistsForEarth [Talkhouse] Happy Earth Day. ClientEarth, an environmental charity, has launched Playlists For Earth, bringing together artists, labels, and festivals to highlight the dangers of climate change. Artists such as Brian Eno, Coldplay, alt-J, Glass Animals, and many more have created their own #PlaylistsForEarth. The idea is to read the song names as a sentence, spelling out a message about our climate crisis ahead of the UN Climate Change conference. You can check every playlist on ClientEarth’s Spotify profile. From Fred & Farid in NYC
Barilla launches A Sign Of Love with Publicis Italy [Shots Magazine] This spot tugs at the heart strings, and the truth is it works pretty well. In the new Barilla film, preparing a dish of pasta becomes a way to communicate what we usually cannot say with words. Hard-to-pronounce statements like "I love you", "I missed you" or "Sorry, it's my fault" can be demonstrated with a dish of pasta. From Publicis Italy
Suncorp, Leo Burnett and The Glue Society Launch ‘One House To Save Many’ [Marketing Mag Australia] This is a very interesting idea. Suncorp, an insurance company, along with Leo Burnett and The Glue Society have launched a project ‘One House to Save Many’. The aim of this project is to create better housing that is designed to withstand and survive catastrophic weather conditions. The intent is to help reduce the displacement and disruption of life for Australians living in areas where these events are more intense and frequent, and to actually help change the way houses are built in the future. From Leo Burnett
Naked Heart Foundation - "Teach your children what they've taught you" [AdForum] Russian society is far from being inclusive. The Naked Heart Foundation conducted an experiment to demonstrate to parents that kids are inclusive from the moment they are born and how they will act in future depends on the parents. A social experiment video adults' influence on children's attitude towards their peers with special needs. The Foundation made this video for World Down Syndrome Day in 2020, but it was Covid and I missed it and it's really powerful and you should watch it. From Marvelous Russia.
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