Our story in today’s paper that Mars has launched Fling, a chocolate bar targeted at women (”Naughty, but not that naughty”) is part of that contant trend among consumer goods companies to change what they produce and how they market it. Consumers are changing and the company’s selling them products are trying to keep pace with how things are evolving.

One reason, of course, is the global downturn. And to get a sense of how significant an impact it is having, you should take a look at Procter & Gamble, maker of Pampers nappies and Gillette razors. The company has decided to start making cheaper products.

Jenny Wiggins, our consumer industries correspondent, explains: Continue reading "Niche marketing takes it to another level"

This video is part of a very innovative advertising campaign for True Blood, a hit series about vampires on the network HBO. The mechanics and thinking behind this viral marketing effort are explored in detail in a piece in today’s paper.

Campfire, the agency behind the campaign, has generated a lot of buzz in the industry both for its creative approach but also for managing to include so many partners in the project - no fewer than 12 different agencies, media buyers and in-house creative teams.

Could the multi-partner approach be the model for the future?

You can see all of the videos in the marketing campaign here. And you can check out Bloodcopy, their blog on Gawker here.

Italy’s Alessi is a master at using imaginative design to transform everyday objects such as kettles and toilet brushes into beautiful luxury goods.

Alberto Alessi, the design house’s CEO, applies a mathematical model to figure out whether a prototype will succeed in the marketplace.

In an interview with McKinsey (registration required), he says the first component of the formula is the degree to which a person would say “oh, what a beautiful object”.

The second is the extent to which customers could make use of the object to communicate their definition of themselves to others (i.e., show off).

The third and fourth components of the formula — and he rather glosses over these, it must be said — are function and price.

The formula doesn’t work for everything. But when we have a long history with a product, it works perfectly. If I have to evaluate a pot or a coffee maker or a kettle, for example, the score indicates exactly the number of pieces that we can sell.

The system certainly seems to produce new products that have a long shelf life: Mr Alessi says half are still on sale a decade after their introduction.

Further reading: Mr Alessi discusses how to compete with China in an FT interview.

Fortune magazine is reporting that Starbucks is about to launch a new instant coffee product.

A question: will we be able to taste the difference between that and its existing range of drinks?

P.S.  In fairness I think Reuters had this story first.

Regional bosses in global organisations are like squabbling siblings, desperate to get the attention of bigger bosses working hundreds or thousands of miles away at HQ.

They might benefit from reading IMD prof Cyril Bouquet’s tips on how to become a multinational’s pet foreign subsidiary.

His advice includes a strategy attributed to the CEO of the Australian arm of Yum! Restaurants:

Unlike other subsidiaries that like to import talent, his objective is to export three of his top people every year to other parts of the group. These people are good, they get recognized and the perception is that the Australian subsidiary must be doing something right. So when they need access to more funds, they have managed to build important pillars of influence that help.

Sounds like a clever idea: perhaps Australia’s remoteness from the rest of the world makes such ingenuity imperative.

Elsewhere:

• How to measure leadership success;
• A preview of how international strategy is taught on MBA courses (I had no idea the failure rate for foreign alliances was on a par with that of foreign acquisitions);
• Could the Madoff scandal have happened in the UK? Two Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer lawyers say yes;
• Boston Consulting Group on sales and marketing in a downturn.

Is anyone doing well out of the recession? It was a question that emerged from this morning’s business session at the Portmeirion symposium.

One company might be: PZ Cussons, new owners of the Sanctuary spa range of products.

This is an “affordable luxury”, an attractive proposition at a time like this. Our attention was drawn to this development by Alice Sherwood , who introduced delegates to the concept of “masstige“: prestige for the masses.

A bit more sobering was a thoughtful talk from David Smith, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, who told us about his ambition to maintain high quality car manufacturing in the UK. As many as 75,000 jobs may depend on his business’s continued survival. (And he is at the prestige, not the masstige end of the market.) It was a welcome reality check in this rather surreal place.

Lynda Gratton of London Business School reckons that recession is calling into question the command and control style of corporate leadership:

Many people are now questioning the wisdom of placing so much power in the hands of so few. At the same time, insights from research in decision sciences and technological advances have shown that often the best decisions are made by an “intelligent crowd”, rather than one all-powerful individual.

This is a fissure in the norms of organisational life that could well lead to the acceleration of a more democratic and distributed decision-making process and the idea that leadership can be held by a wider group of people.

Her advice? “Bring diversity back on to the agenda.” I can’t agree more — but can’t see an imminent end to the autocratic reign of the “middle-aged men with similar backgrounds” (her label for the decision-making elite).

That said, her prediction that hard times will lead to more “virtual teams” — as opposed to face-to-face collaboration — is bang on.

Elsewhere:

• SoBe, what were you thinking of? Super Bowl adverts rated by Kellogg marketing prof Tim Calkins;
• Henry Mintzberg blames management;
• 3M tops a list of 20 best companies for nurturing leaders;
• Highly-paid non-execs give CEOs bigger pay packages.

• “Executive coaching isn’t therapy,” says executive coach Ed Batista, before declaring that Gestalt therapy actually provides rather a good framework for resolving workplace issues;
• Don’t greet the guy sitting by the door first — 10 pages of advice from Harvard Business School on how to negotiate in China;
• How the brain makes us fall into line with others — and how marketers can cash in on that hard-wiring;
• Tips for keeping staff in emerging markets with high inflation (pay rises need to be more frequent that once a year, for a start);
• The rules of movie marketing.