You Are the Chips You Eat

Building the business you want comes down to finding your perfect customers and to find the perfect customers, you have to target your marketing correctly.

It’s kind of like potato chips.

No matter where you are or what you call them, people like potato chips, as they are called in America, or crisps as they are called in other parts of the world.

While people from virtually every culture love the crisp, salty treats, that’s where the similarities end. If you travel the world, you’ll notice how the popularity of flavors vary, depending on the nation.

For instance, squid flavored chips that are popular in Japan would be a very hard sell in the United States, while the ever-popular sour cream and onion variety favored in The States probably wouldn’t have the same affect on Spaniards who prefer ham-flavored chips.

The fact that everyone likes chips, but each culture, and even in some cases, each region of the same countries prefer and buy different flavors, is a pretty interesting scenario when you look at it through the scope of marketing.

One of the basic principles of good business is sell what people want to buy.

After all, I know very few Americans that are looking for those Mint Laccha chips that are so popular in India.

Targeting the correct audience with an offer they are interested in means you’re well on your way to developing a customer base that is a powerful resource for your business.

When you look at marketing critically, you see that many businesses produce marketing that is akin to selling Spicy Rice Cake chips in Texas or Marmite-flavored chips in Thailand.

In other words, their offer isn’t matching their target.

If the market isn’t selling what you’re buying, it could be you don’t understand the flavor your local market craves and you have to take the time to learn.

Start by writing down who your ideal customer is, what they do, where they live, why they will buy from you and any other factor that makes them your theoretical ideal. From there, develop offers in your marketing that match their tastes.

Lessons from the boom “Down Under” …

An interesting link from Bloomberg on the recent fortunes of the Australian dollar …

The Aussie Dollar …

As a native Australian, I watch the news from Down Under with a good mix of interest and perspective.

Certainly, for a country of 20 million people or so, in a land mass the size of the U.S. … with all the population centers spread around the outskirts of the land mass much like New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Seattle, Oz has done very well in exporting a brand of entrepreneurism that is starting to gain international notice.

Some of that has come from the likes of Rupert Murdoch (and to a lesser extent, Kerry Packer … at least in Las Vegas!).

It has also attracted investment from some pretty big nations (read:  China), countries that are turning to Australia for a potent mixture of a strong “will-do” attitude and a vast wealth of natural resources.

To that end, Bloomberg/Businessweek has also detailed some of the pro’s and con’s of that arrangement in its latest issue, which cites some incredible statistics on the trade between the two countries:

• Average annual salary in Australia’s mining industry:    $104,000
• Current year-to-year growth of Australia’s exports to China: 31%
• Gain year-to-year to each Australian household via trade:  $3,400
• Median Australian household income:    $67,000

So … while U.S. white collar workers are standing in unemployment lines looking for professional jobs that no longer exist, Australian blue collar workers are pulling down six figures helping develop un-developed and under-developed countries and economies.

While Australian labor and expertise continues to prosper in China’s backyard, India and the entire Pacific region offers incredible opportunities as well.

One of India’s more compelling national statistics is that 300 million people in that country are under the age of 15.

That’s right … a population equivalent to the entire U.S. population is about to step into early adulthood, with a taste for western clothes, media, electronics and a desire to sweep aside conventional ideas of caste, class and status-quo.

A fair amount of Aussie ex-pats have grounded themselves in India over the past several decades, and are only now beginning to profit from their investments of time, dollars and resources … but the profits are massive – and opportunities will only continue to improve.

So it’s eye-opening for me to see U.S. policy makers struggle to figure out how to up a couple percentage points on a $14 trillion economy, when the Australians, Chinese and Indians are literally going back to basics to create incentives, expand their natural resource base and find more innovative ways to apply new technologies to old businesses and old business models.

The Australian dollar is as close to parity with the U.S. dollar as it has been in many years.

That’s not an accident.

Growth is good for everyone … and yes, there are disadvantages to the Chinese reliance on Aussie resources, and an Oz reliance on Chinese interests.

But don’t tell that to the construction workers and truck drivers who are creating lasting financial legacies for themselves and their families.

These vibrant and thriving “new economies” have a lot to teach us about our own growth and innovation here in the States.

If only we paid a bit more attention, we might actually re-learn some of those lessons we’ve taught and exported to everyone else over the years.

Because we’re going to need them – sooner rather than later.

 
Jodie Shaw

Finding positives in the BP negatives …

What’s the value of humility and admitting fault in increasing the power of your own personal leadership?

Incalculable, from my perspective.

If anything can be learned from the steps and missteps in BP’s PR efforts (or lack thereof) … it is that accountability, humility and acceptance of responsibility are important factors in getting people and audiences on your side in a leadership role.

Another good take on this can be found here …

Forbes article …

… and also reinforces the power of taking personal ownership of not only successes … but failures as well.

Understanding the psychology behind one of the great lines from the Forbes article, “where have today’s golden parachutes and the ‘I’m not to blame,’ ‘I didn’t do it’ or ‘I didn’t know’ excuses, gotten us?’ … is that if we have the power to accept personal ownership and personal responsibility for events and outcomes, we have the power to exert more credible and more persuasive influence in a leadership role.

Few people accept the premise of an all-knowing, all powerful, omnipresent leadership style that only is all-knowing, all powerful and omnipresent when things are going well, only to claim “I’m not to blame,” “I didn’t do it” or “I didn’t know” when the chips are down or when things go wrong.

In fact, a well-rounded leader understands that in order to build a bigger vision and rapport, he or she needs to operate from a set of core values that includes integrity, consistency and congruency.

The best leaders lead by not only letting people know “what could be,” they also let them know “what is.”

And if the “what is” is bad or negative, denying that “fact” is evidence the leader is, at a fairly deep level, in denial of “reality.”

So … better to own up, even if it is painful (it is … and always will be).

But the short-term pain in admitting a wrong or a failure isn’t as bad as the long-term consequence and pain of going around the truth or operating from denial of the facts at hand.

As embattled and possibly soon-to-be ex-BP CEO Tony Hayward has so painfully learned (hopefully learned, that is …) over the past two months.

Jodie Shaw