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AUGUST 2008
"Marketing is not a function, it is the whole business seen from the customer’s point of view"
Peter Drucker
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| TIPS FROM THE TOP |
Philip Kotler has been Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management for over 20 years. He has been a consultant to companies such as GE, General Motors, IBM and AT&T, and has written some of the most important works in the area of marketing. Here are his five steps to marketing success:
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Come in under the radar. The key to brand-building is to have something good that you roll out in a very intelligent way -- maybe even invisibly for a while because you want to be under the radar screen of competitors. |
| 2 |
Know your customer. You've got to understand and choose the customers you want to serve. Don't just go after everyone. Define the target market carefully through segmentation and then position yourself as different and as superior to that target market. |
| 3 |
Own your branding. We are not in a state of competition anymore; we're in a state of hyper-competition. So people are desperately looking for handles, such as functional features and emotional appeals, that will draw people to their product. We should think of owning a word or a phrase that helps to build customer retention and loyalty. |
| 4 |
Stay ahead of the competition. The worst thing is that if something works, your competitors are going to clone it and before you know it anything that you had as a differentiator is imitated by the others. So you're in the business of constant innovation. Constantly ask yourself, “three years from now, what will our differentiator be?” |
| 5 |
Make it an experience. Once in a while we find someone having a whole new approach to a mature market. There's a big movement to say, “we're not just adding services to our business and our product, we're actually trying to design an experience.” We're in the experience design business. |
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| MILLION DOLLAR TALES |
ABSOLUT
At a Glance |
| Sold in 126 markets worldwide |
| 11 million 9lt. cases sold in 2007 |
| $1.7 billion net sales 2007 (17% increase in the last 5 years) |
| $247 million profit 2007 |
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ABSOLUT SUCCESS
In 1850 Lars Olssen Smith, a fourteen year old Swedish orphan, already controlled a third of the vodka sold in his country. In 1879 he introduced his masterpiece - the product that would go on to become one of the world’s most celebrated brands – ABSOLUT VODKA.
The evolution of Absolut has been based on the principles of consistency and innovation. The bottle itself has been transformed into a brand icon. Born in its present form in 1978, it has been gradually modified while always retaining its essence. The values of the Absolut brand are clarity, simplicity and perfection – all of which are represented in the product design.
Today the simplicity of the brand is sustained as a symbol of its quality. The brand name itself – a common, everyday word – has become personified as fresh, irreverent, modern and up-to-date through a series of publicity campaigns irrevocably associating it with the bottle itself. Its reputation has also been enhanced through its association with artists such as Andy Warhol, as well as musicians and well-known designers.
Absolut has managed to combine different forms of marketing that have helped take it to the preeminent position that it enjoys today. Among these are interactive customer experiences such as the Ice Bar, Absolut Machines and graphic and audiovisual advertising that is simple, powerful and effective. There are Absolut aficionados across the world, including those who collect special edition bottles and publicity reprints.
Gradual evolution of the brand and product design together with radical but consistent innovation in other areas, such as publicity or the introduction of new flavors, have kept the brand constantly fresh and updated throughout its long history.
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| DELVING DEEPER |
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In this interview from  , Kevin Roberts, CEO of the iconic advertising agency Saatchi&Saatchi, talks about his concept of “Lovemarks” and the future of branding and advertising agencies. |
 Click here to download the PDF |
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| SIXTY SECOND INSIGHT |
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| Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of WIRED and author of the bestseller, The Long Tail, talks about innovation and explains the advantages of the internet as a testing ground for it. |
 Click here to watch |
| PODCAST |
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| David Reibstein is Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Named by Fortune magazine as the most prestigious professor of business in the United States, he is an expert in marketing strategy. Here he explains a dichotomy many marketers face, between the potential advantages of being first to market or being a follower and letting someone else take the initial risk. |
 Click here to listen |
| RECOMMENDED READING |
BUYING IN:
THE SECRET DIALOGUE BETWEEN WHAT WE BUY AND WHO WE ARE
Author: Rob Walker
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“Rob Walker is a gift. He shows that in our shattered, scattered world, powerful brands are existential, insinuating themselves into the human questions ‘What am I about?’ and ‘How do I connect?’ His insight that brand influence is becoming both more pervasive and more hidden–that we are not so self-defined as we like to think–should make us disturbed, and vigilant.”
- Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
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| ADVERTISING |
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| UPCOMING EVENTS |
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| WORLDWIDE |
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