Oh brave new world: Re-imagining EVERYTHING

"After 244 years, Encyclopedia Brittanica announced the end of print editions in 2012," notes Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker in what businessinsider.com terms an "incredibly insightful presentation."

While you may already know this, and that Kindle is replacing books, Pinterest is replacing scrapbooks, NetFlix and YouTube are replacing Blockbuster and, one of my personal favorites, Yelp is replacing the Yellow Pages, did you know about:

Why market research fails - don't start with the customer!

How many times have you seen quality research shot down because a decision-maker said it didn't match what they knew? And despite the reams of data and the quality of the analysis, the nay-sayer simply wouldn't budge.

Marketing and strategy professionals do their best to gather data through a variety of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Despite these efforts, many are frustrated when decisions are made seemingly in spite of the data. And then they double down and do more research, or try a new technique, with the same result.

A quick way to destroy your brand: cut prices, buyback shares, don't innovate

The mattress business is clearly not very restful: Tempur-Pedic's share price has dropped from $87 in April to $22 on Friday, a 66% decline. A colleague suggested I take a look at buying the stock. So I did a bit of research:

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

My wife and I just walked out of a Chinese restaurant. Not something we ever do.

Not because the food was bad, or because of the price.

The experience was perhaps the worst we've ever had.

Convincing strangers to become customers

Back in the Madison Avenue glory days, all you had seemingly had to do was create a catchy message, pick the right media, pump up your advertising investment and, presto, your sales increased, reaping profits far in excess of the cost. In extreme cases, the actual physical product was irrelevant (remember Pet Rocks?).

Of course, it really wasn't all that easy then.

Innovation hype

'Companies throw the term "innovation" around but that doesn't mean they are actually changing anything monumental,' writes Leslie Kwoh in "You Call that Innovation?"  Now that this has made the Wall Street Journal, "innovation" has probably reached peak of what the Gartner group calls the "hype cycle," and is likely headed for the "trough of disillusionment." But for those who follow trends, this should be no surprise.

Marketing definitions from the Masters

Herewith are some of my favorites (from a blog I posted several years ago):

Phil Kotler:  "Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others."

George Day: "Understanding, attracting, and keeping valuable customers."

Sergio Zyman: "Selling more stuff to more people more often for more money more efficiently." 

Peter Drucker: "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him [or her! - DH] and sells itself."

Theodore Levitt: "Marketing is a stepchild in most corporations because of an overemphasis on creating and selling products. But selling is not marketing. [Selling] is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariably does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse, and satisfy customer needs."

What are your favorites? Leave a comment.

Brand premium: the difference between a $15 haircut and a $160 haircut

Ahh, brand premium. The holy grail of branders. We all seek it, yet few find it.

I've always been mildly intrigued by the difference in pricing between a woman's stylist and a men's barber. But today as I was getting my $15 haircut at the local barbershop, I decided to do some research. What I found, though, was that prices for men's haircuts - in Manhattan anyway - can approach those for women.

What's the difference between a $15 haircut and a $160 haircut? Turns, out, a lot. Stylist Antonio Gonzales writes that for $160,