Conformar-se tem os seus custos

"When your brand has fingerprints, don’t do things that require you to wear gloves."

"Fingerprints" simbolizam a singularidade e a individualidade. Tal como as impressões digitais são únicas para cada pessoa, o estilo ou identidade única de uma marca é o que a diferencia das outras. 

“Wear gloves” representa esconder ou encobrir esta singularidade.

Se uma marca tem um estilo distinto e identificável, não deve escondê-lo, obedecendo às normas ou tentando misturar-se com a multidão.

"If your brand has a unique style, don't hide it by trying to be like everyone else."

A importância de abraçar e mostrar as qualidades únicas de uma marca, em vez de as suprimir na tentativa de se encaixar nas outras.

Se é como todos os outros...

Se uma marca se tornar indistinguível das outras (ou seja, se “usa luvas” para esconder as suas “impressões digitais”), perde aquilo que a torna especial e memorável. Perder a sua identidade distinta, deixar de se destacar ou ser esquecida num mercado sobrelotado.

Porquê?

• As marcas podem temer que o seu estilo ou abordagem única possa afastar determinados segmentos de clientes. Para atrair um público mais vasto, podem suavizar as suas características distintivas para corresponder às expectativas mais convencionais.
• Se uma tendência ou estilo específico se torna dominante na indústria, uma marca pode sentir-se pressionada a conformar-se para se manter relevante. Isto pode levá-la a minimizar as suas qualidades únicas em favor do que é popular actualmente.
• Uma marca pode acreditar que imitar os concorrentes de sucesso levará a um crescimento mais rápido ou à entrada no mercado. Podem deixar temporariamente de lado a sua identidade única na esperança de ganhar uma maior quota de mercado ou competir mais directamente.
• Se uma marca estiver com dificuldades financeiras, poderá recorrer à adopção de uma abordagem mais “segura” e convencional, acreditando ser menos arriscada. Isto pode envolver minimizar os elementos que a tornaram única em primeiro lugar.

Trecho inicial retirado de "Fingerprints"

"Deixar de ser uma Arca de Noé"

E volto à leitura de "The World of Work to 2030" para encontrar uma série de textos que parecem tirados deste blogue. Textos acerca de como competir em Mongo:

"You just won't see it coming 

Buyers, whether businesses or consumers, will become even more swamped by choice than they are today. This means you will have to fight harder to rise above the noise of the competition. [Moi ici: Uma paisagem cada vez mais enrugada, cada vez mais picos]

...

Focus and Size

The forces playing out mean that companies everywhere will face continual, relentless, competitive threats. This poses an obvious question: How to respond?

To succeed in the future, companies will be forced to think consciously about what they are and how they do it. With competition becoming incessant and global, companies will need to decide what they do, what market they will focus on and where they will specialize. Most importantly, at the same time, they will consciously decide what they are not, which markets they are not focusing on and where they will not specialize.

This merely echoes what Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter said when defining strategy: 'the essence of strategy, is choosing what not to do.'

...

Just say 'no' 

The challenge in business (and to a similar extent in our personal lives) is that we seek to do too much ourselves. When a customer calls us asking for help, or wanting a different product or a different service, we dislike saying no. The same thing happens in our personal lives where we seek to do everything - all the tasks that life presents us with, from gardening to decorating - and to be expert in them all. No business can be expert in everything. It is exceptionally easy to say 'yes' to a customer. But as we progress further away from what we are good at, from what we are known for and from where our expertise lies, the thinner the ice on which we are skating and the greater the risk in something going wrong.

...

To be successful, companies will not be able to be all things to all customers. They can't spread themselves too thin being, in effect, wide and shallow. If they do, competition will swarm around them, nibbling away and they will suffer the death of a thousand cuts. Rather, to succeed and protect themselves, businesses will define their purpose more narrowly, more specifically, and will then seek to achieve depth, seeking dominance of that narrow space. Going forward, successful businesses will no longer be generalists: average will no longer be enough, depth and specialism will be critical.

...

Being a generalist is not sustainable. Focus and depth of specialism, combined with scale in that specialism, is needed in order to be successful."

Como não recuar a 2006 e a "Deixar de ser uma Arca de Noé". 

Como não reflectir nesta incoerência recente e sinto que algo não bate certo. 

Como não ligar ao ainda fresco Os últimos moicanos.

Diferenciação para fugir à comoditização

No Sábado passado li no NYT, "Switzerland, of All Places, Now Has to Import Cheese":

"The Swiss are proud of their cheese, and most of the cheese they eat are local varieties like Gruyère, Emmental and other hard cheeses from milk from happy cows that are famous all over the world.

...

In fact, the Swiss cheese trade balance has been shrinking for decades, and especially since the market was liberalized in 2007, which allowed the country to trade with the European Union without tariffs or quotas in either direction. Switzerland now exports about 40 percent of the cheese it produces, per industry estimates.

But in each of the first five months of this year, Switzerland imported more cheese by weight than it sold abroad, according to customs data. 

...

[Moi ici: Os números que se seguem são muito interessantes, ilustram como as marcas, como a diferenciação, permite fugir da guerra do preço. Em Maio passado estive em várias cidades suíças e é impressionante encontrar no dia-a-dia o festival de marcas suíças que trazem um valor acrescentado tremendo à simples soma dos custos] The number of dairy farmers in Switzerland has fallen in recent decades, with a drop of more than half over the past 25 years, Mr. Koller said. On top of that, farming operations in Switzerland are small: The average size of a herd is about 27 cows, Mr. Koller said, and dairy farms with more than 100 cows are rare. [Moi ici: Isto quer dizer que se o negócio fosse preço puro e duro os suíços não tinham hipótese. Até as explorações portuguesas já devem ser maiores. Recordo que sem marca, "Milk is the ultimate low-involvement category"]

...

[Moi ici: Segue-se agora um trecho difícil de encontrar em Portugal, basta recordar a malta das conservas ou do leite, "economists say there is no need to panic"] Although an influx of foreign cheese may challenge notions of Swiss national identity, economists say there is no need to panic. Swiss producers have become more specialized in recent years, and the cheeses they export tend to be the higher-value varieties, like Gruyère. Imports are cheaper and softer and largely come from France. (What's called "Swiss cheese" in the United States is an American reproduction of Swiss hard cheeses, known of course for its signature holes.)

Not all the cheese that is imported into Switzerland is consumed there, either. A large chunk of the cheese and curd brought into the country gets refined in Switzerland and then exported.

"The trade diference in cheese itself is not a major thing to worry about," said Martin Mosler, an economist at IWP, an economic policy institute at the University of Lucerne. "We are better than most of the world at the high quality stuff," he said. Switzerland continues to run a healthy trade surplus in cheese by financial value: On average, Swiss cheese exports fetch roughly 10 Swiss Francs per kilo (about $11.60), compared with about six Swiss Francs per kilo paid for imports."

Scale is the force that commodifies

"The belief in scale and speed and efficiency has a commodifying effect. In the absence of a special consciousness and care, they extract our humanity. And so our workplaces are soon well structured, roles are defined, behavior is prescribed, and what was a startup now becomes a place we call work. Even when, as in a startup, freedom faces the resistance of so-called marketplace reality, we still are quite ready to surrender it. The code for this is "taking it to scale. Scale is the force that commodifies our way of being together."

Já não estamos no século XX, já não vivemos da produção em massa, já não temos demografia para a suportar, temos de apostar na arte, temos de apostar na diferenciação. A estratégia não pode passar pelo tamanho.

Trecho retirado de "Confronting Our Freedom: Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging" de Peter Block. 

Fugir da previsibilidade (parte II)

Há oito dias em Fugir da previsibilidade escrevi:

"Predictability é sinónimo de concorrência perfeita, ou seja lucros raquíticos e empobrecimento.

...

Fugir da previsibilidade é uma forma de criar heterogeneidade e fugir da comoditização, é uma forma de criar valor potencial que pode vir a ser capturado como margem superior."

Ontem, encontrei em "The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams" de Seth Godin:

"There's a huge difference between the backwardlooking work of quality improvement and the forward-looking dance of making decisions about what happens next.

If you're not willing to produce change, then you really have no options. Cost-reduction through industrial management is your only path forward. We've built world-class systems of gradual systems improvement. The measured quality of cars, computer chips, and even overnight package delivery is stunning."

As PMEs no campeonato do custo mais baixo não têm hipótese. 

"In the case of the industry leader, our research showed an entirely different impact of market overlap. Market overlap seems to counteract the benefits of strategic similarity to the industry leader. This is consistent with our reasoning that dependence on the same type of resources as the industry leader and obtaining them from the same resource pools counteract the legitimacy advantages that small firms obtain through similarity to this prominent firm. In addition to this effect on the supply side, it is reasonable to understand that market overlap with the industry leader could trigger negative effects on small-firm performance due to the need to compete with this rival for the same customers (i.e., demand-side effect). Since the industry leader has a stronger position in common markets, it could attract customers more easily than small firms, having a negative impact on their results. Thus, both demand- and supply-side considerations lead to the same negative effect of market overlap on the relationship between similarity to the industry leader and small-firm performance."

Trecho retirado de "To be different or to be the same when you are a small firm? Competitive interdependence as a boundary condition of the strategic balance perspective" 

Diferenciação, lucro e PMEs

"This article explores the nature of differentiation in microenterprises... Using a combined sample of nearly 10,000 microenterprises across eight developing countries, I estimate that a standard deviation increase in differentiation is associated with approximately an 11 percent increase in revenues and an eight percent increase in profit, [Moi ici: Acerca da importância da estratégia ... gente preocpada com os outputs, em vez de dar primazia aos inputs ou outcomes] relative to the sample mean. ... Finally, I estimate the impact of common policy interventions on microenterprise differentiation. The results suggest that standard business skills training interventions have little effect on differentiation [Moi ici: Sintomático... faz-me lembrar a conversa do excel. BTW, ainda esta semana visitei a Viarco] and that access to individualliability microfinance may actually decrease it. 

...

Due to the difficult conditions under which many microenterprises operate, it is broadly assumed differentiation will be difficult to achieve, as proprietors cope with constraints on financial and cognitive resources.

...

The goal of the empirical exercise is to shed light on which constraints are most crucial in limiting microenterprises' ability to differentiate, and whether or not these constraints can be released. The results provide clarity on the shape of the relationship between differentiation and performance in microenterprise, which types of microentrepreneurs are most likely to differentiate, and what impacts existing policy interventions have on differentiation outcomes.

...

I find that propensity to differentiate decreases with age in a strikingly linear relationship. Differentiation also increases with years of education, with a particular boost after secondary school. 

...

From a practitioner standpoint, this work aims to demonstrate the relevance of strategic positioning in microenterprises. [Moi ici: Algo que procuramos fazer neste blogue desde o primeiro momento. Infelizmente todas as semanas encontro exemplos de PMEs que querem ser tudo para todos] While strategy and management researchers have posited that differentiation could be an effective source of competitive advantage in this population of businesses, these constructs are not salient in most policy-adjacent work. Indeed, the words "differentiation", "strategy", or "positioning" cannot be found in any of several excellent research summaries of policy programs directed at microenterprises. [Moi ici: Tão interessante!] While this analysis does not demonstrate a causal relationship, the robust association between differentiation and performance described in the results warrants an examination of a) whether an cost-effective interventions can successfully help microentrepreneurs achieve a more differentiated offering, and b) if such differentiation then translates causally to improved performance. The results of this analvsis provide suggestive evidence as to what tvpes of interventions mav prove impactful and which population of microentrepreneurs might be most effective to target."

Trechos retirados de "Differentiation in Microenterprises"

Being Dick Dastardly is a dangerous move

Há muito que uso aqui a metáfora do Dick Dastardly para retratar as empresas que se focam mais nos concorrentes do que nos clientes. Por exemplo:

• Qual era o grande defeito de Dick Dastardly?
• Acerca do fenómeno das empresas tipo-Dick Dastardly

Neste artigo, "You can’t beat TikTok by becoming its clone", pode ler-se:

"Competitor orientation

What is so wrong with all of this, you might wonder? Why not focus on competitors and what they do, and augment it by evolving your own offering? I’m often asked this question by marketers I train and who are shocked at the lack of competitor assessments that I recommend as part of brand diagnosis.

I like looking at competitors through customer’s eyes, but I’m less interested in the insights that can be derived from directly studying competitors. In fact, it turns out there are very good reasons not to focus too heavily on competitors, what they do and how they do it.

There is a long and rewarding literature on the power of market orientation and keeping the customer in your cross hairs at all times. And there is an equally persuasive literature on the perils of competitor orientation – of switching our gaze from our customers to our competitors and how they do things. And that danger multiplies significantly if these insights turn to action and we start to replicate our competitors’ moves in our own approach.

...

As strategy guru Roger Martin observes, we are set for “a financial bloodbath”. That’s the scenario he predicts when multiple companies go to the same market, with the same strategy, at the same time. And he is right.

We’ve beaten up differentiation for too long in marketing. Sure, there is no unique offering out there. And no one will ever own any attribute or association. But playing the game your way, to your strengths, on your terms remains one of the hallmarks of successful business strategy."

Falta de alinhamento ao vivo e a cores

Neste blogue, ao longo dos anos, tenho registado vários casos que são um absurdo em termos de estratégia. Por exemplo:

• Gráfica Mirandela
• Raporal
• Órbita
• Karma do leite

Ontem encontrei mais um exemplo do que me parece um absurdo em termos de estratégia. Aprendi primeiro com Porter no seu clássico "What is strategy?" (A evolução da ideia de mosaico estratégico (parte III)), e depois com Terry Hill (As mudanças em curso na China - parte II), a importância do alinhamento estratégico. Ou seja, se se quer ter marca de luxo não se pode vender o artigo ao desbarato na feira do preço baixo. Se se quer ser competitivo no custo/preço não se pode ao mesmo tempo investir na diferenciação da marca.

O exemplo em causa estava no DN sob o título, "Carnes da Montana quer chegar às cantinas públicas":

"Marca que representa sete raças autóctones bovinas existentes em Portugal está a inovar oferta e explora novos mercados. [Moi ici: Marca e raças autóctones aponta para diferenciação, qualidade, e baixas quantidades]

Os produtores de sete raças autóctones de bovinos identificadas em Portugal encontraram um novo canal para fazer chegar as suas produções diretamente ao consumidor, através da loja online Carnes da Montanha. Vão lutar para que o produto chegue às cantinas públicas e assim estimule a preservação de um efetivo que é "muito mais do que carne", como descreve Idalino Leão, administrador da empresa. [Moi ici: Produtores de raças autóctones querem escoar a carne através de um canal que não valoriza a qualidade, mas a conformidade. Querem escoar a carne como se fosse uma commodity. Não percebem que o negócio das cantinas públicas é o negócio do preço/custo mais baixo?]

...

"Orgulhoso por poder exibir as nove medalhas de ouro atribuídas a produtos da Carnes da Montanha no último Concurso Nacional de Carnes Tradicionais Portuguesas, que se realizou em junho, em Santarém,"  [Moi ici: Qual o valor destas medalhas? Ou as medalhas não prestam, ou as Carnes da Montanha não sabem como as utilizar. As medalhas se valerem algo devem ser usadas para reforçar a proposta de valor para mercados que valorizam a diferenciação]

...

 "o objetivo é convencer os municípios a usarem estes produtos sempre que nas ementas das cantinas públicas (hospitais, escolas, universidades) esteja previsto o consumo de carne de vaca" [Moi ici: Acham que estas entidades nadam em dinheiro? Compram ao preço mais baixo e, por isso, têm de ser fornecidas por produtores com raças muito eficientes]

...

Segundo o administrador, em Portugal, 60% dos clientes estão em Cascais, Oeiras e Ericeira, 20% no Algarve os restantes no resto do país." [Moi ici: Como não recordar a artesã de Bragança e os outros, têm de mudar de mercado, mas não é para baixo, é para cima. Pena que o administrador seja "também o presidente da Agros e da Confagri", formatado no negócio do preço baixo, não tem nem experiência nem tempo para apostar numa estratégia de preço alto]

"Companies are people too?"

"there is growing evidence to suggest that people do not conceive of companies as lists of objective stakeholder responsibilities, mission statements or lists of values. It appears that they tend to make sense of them as if they were like other people. Hence, while they are increasingly concerned with a corporation’s efforts to be ethical in a deontic sense, people are at once happy to accept that different companies will, and should, have a ‘face’ that is unique. They do not expect a corporation, any more than an individual, to be able to be all things to all people, and do not seem to trust them when they attempt to.

For example, market research carried out into terrestrial television channels in the United Kingdom has revealed that people attributed particular characters and, correspondingly, different standards to each channel. Perhaps, this highlights a postmodern paradox, that in a poly-dimensional world it is better to have a particularly clear sense of one’s different ‘personality’ so that people can make well-informed choices as to who they want to connect or relate to, rather than attempting to represent all things or try to dutifully be all things to all people?"

Trechos retirados de "Images of Strategy" de Stephen Cummings e David Wilson. 

the decline of 'best practice'

"Let us explore the decline of 'best practice' a bit further by critiquing its application to strategy from two angles: first, from a simple economics perspective and, second, from a social or psychological perspective.

If firms seek to copy others then their products and services and values become increasingly similar. And when that happens, the main means of customer differentiation between competitors is price. Competition is therefore reduced to a price war, and, because everyone's costs are similar (because they have sought to replicate best practice production methods), everyone's margins decline (one study has shown that this sort of 'strategic herding' led to a 50 per cent decline in margins in the five years to 1999 among German wireless telecommunications providers). [Moi ici: Recordar Youngme Moon] In other words, the cream is only a treat worth stretching for when the rest of the bottle is milk, and everything being creamed is a recipe for stagnation. As managers become more focused on developing the 'technologies' necessary for copying, the less concerned and able they are to promote substantive innovation or to get anything different 'out of the bottle'.

From a social or psychological point of view, we can analyse the decline of best practice in the twenty-first century by taking the classic motivation theories of Maslow and Herzberg and combining and playing around with them in a postmodern manner ...

While Maslow suggested that all humans move from satisfying food and shelter needs at base; up to safety needs; then on to belongingness or family or love needs; then once this is satisfied status; and finally self-actualization at the tip of the triangle, nowadays we do not believe that people are so uniformly linear. While our lower order or physiological needs may be common, as people satisfy their basic needs, such as food, shelter, safety, and efficiency, they generally look for ways to differentiate themselves. People want different things and once their basic needs are satisfied they increasingly seek to differentiate from others by associating with products that express or augment their identity.

...

If we add in Herzberg’s idea that there are some things that really motivate us to go that little bit extra, and others that are simply ‘hygiene factors’ – things that we expect and so therefore take for granted (e.g., cleanliness in a restaurant, air bags in cars), so that their presence does not act as a motivator but their lack is a positive demotivator  [Moi ici: Recordar o exemplo dos factores que se estiverem presentes não geram satisfação, mas se estiverem ausentes geram insatisfação]  – we can say that increasingly, in the West at least, the physiological functions of a product or service are hygiene factors. 

...

Thus, the basic attributes of products or services – function, efficiency, safety, cost, etc. – increasingly become ‘hygiene factors’; things that dissatisfy customers if they are not present but do not motivate them to purchase if they are. Motivators to purchase are thus increasingly the things about a product or service that go beyond these hygiene factors to indicate a particular identity or lifestyle choice. And, because people are different, it is increasingly difficult for one company to be all things to all people ... Hence, there may no longer be a general ‘one best way’. It depends upon which particular identity or cluster of identities you are trying to target or relate to."

Trechos retirados de "Images of Strategy" de Stephen Cummings e David Wilson.

Estratégia em todo lado - não é winner-take-all (parte IV)

Parte III. 

"Network effects benefit larger companies and their customers. Whoever gets to scale first will have a substantial advantage. Building a network-effects business is a mad rush. But what about the companies that are left behind? What about small firms? 

...

Are there effective strategies for companies that have a limited number of customers? Yes! There are many examples of smaller companies that compete successfully with (and sometimes even displace) larger organizations that benefit from network effects. Some of the smaller firms succeed by creating customer delight that does not reflect scale. Others find success by giving preference to one of the groups on the platform. Serving a small set of customers can also lead to stellar performance.

...

As powerful as network effects can be, it is important to remember that WTP and customer delight are the currency that ultimately counts.

...

Platforms serve multiple groups of customers, and while many create value for all groups, some choices betray the organization’s primary orientation. A travel site that sorts hotels by profit margin primarily serves the lodging industry. A site that sorts by customer reviews has the opposite orientation.

...

If yours is a small company staring at a large platform, it is always worth asking whether you might be able to create meaningful differentiation by focusing on the WTP of the group that is less favored by your competitor. Etsy found success battling the superpower that is Amazon by doing exactly that—maintaining a sharp focus on the success of its sellers.

...

Serving a Small Set of Customers

In all likelihood, this is the most counterintuitive move that platforms make when they compete against larger rivals that benefit from network effects. How can you succeed against big by being small?

...

The key insight here is that every large platform serves many different types of customers. The attraction between the types varies, however, and building a smaller platform for individuals who greatly value one another is a promising strategy.

Failing to pay attention to differences in the mutual attraction of platform participants can have grave consequences. 

...

Underdogs lift WTP in ways that do not depend on scale. Network effects are one way to raise WTP, but there are many others. As long as these alternatives require no substantial investments, the smaller organization is not at a disadvantage in exploiting them.

Underdogs cater to neglected parties. Most platforms favor specific groups—customers or vendors. Serving the unloved group allows for meaningful differentiation.

Underdogs focus on a small group of customers who place a high value on connections with one another."

Isto ainda não é mainstream. A maioria ainda acredita no winner-take-all.

Trechos retirados de "Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance" 

Onde está o seu locus de controlo?

Gosto dos decisores com o locus de controlo no interior, quando o mundo muda não culpam o mundo, mudam eles no que fazem ou no que pensam.

Os estúdios de cinema estão a virar-se para os ecrãs pequenos, a maioria dos donos das cadeias de cinema protestam e querem ser protegidos de um futuro que não os inclua (sim, ainda deviamos estar todos a pagar o salário dos fabricantes de velas de iluminação do século XIX)

Alguns recuam, olham para a nova paisagem e posicionam-se de um outra forma:

"Streaming services are devaluing movies as appointment viewing, but there’s already evidence that theaters can succeed by making the experience more, well, special. Late in 2019, Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse offered extremely popular “rowdy” showings of the panned Cats, encouraging audiences to shout and laugh at the terrifying, gyrating computer-generated felines on screen. It also delivers restaurant-quality food and dozens of craft beers straight to patrons’ seats.

Alamo Drafthouse has also discovered that customers want to privately rent entire theaters during the pandemic, a service that makes up 50% of its top-line revenue today. (Cinemark says it has sold more than 100,000 private watch parties, generating at least $10 million in revenue.) That service may also be easier to book in the future. “I’ve never considered at-home streaming our competitor,” says Tim League, founder of Alamo Drafthouse. “We are an out-of-home experience. We’re competing against restaurants, bars, and clubs.”"

Chega-se ao fim e apetece fazer o exercício de "Oceano Azul" ou o de Horwath - Em que é que vocês são bons?

Em tempos de experimentação de novos posicionamentos ou ofertas, porque nem sempre a nova oportunidade é clara, é importante ter em conta os velhos estóicos:

"pivoting market shapers should keep one foot on the ground"

Melhor ainda, o mito do filho de Gaia, Anteu.

Trecho retirado de "Streaming Isn’t Killing Movie Theaters. It's Making Them Better"

"The alternative is to be idiosyncratic, specific and worth the effort and expense"

Um grande postal de Seth Godin!!! Mesmo na mouche!!! Há tempos tive um diálogo parecido com o tema do postal. Uma organização encomendou-me um texto para o seu site, deu-me o tema, deu-me uma lista de palavras-chave a usar para optimizar a pesquisa SEO e deu-me um número de palavras a atingir.

Indiferente, escrevi o meu texto. Depois, começaram-me a chatear com as palavras-chave que tinham de ser repetidas e que não tinha atingido o target de  número de palavras. a partir daí senti-me que entrava no reino do plástico artificial.

"It’s tempting to race to the bottom. The problem is that you might win, and then you’ll have to stay there. Worse, you might try and come in second, accomplishing not much of anything.

Linkbait is a trap, because it brings you attention you actually don’t want.

The alternative is to be idiosyncratic, specific and worth the effort and expense. What would happen if you made something important, breathtaking or wonderful? The race to the top is not only more satisfying, it’s also more likely to work.

And then you get to live there. Doing work you’re proud of, without excuses."

Trecho retirado de "More popular (and cheap, too)" 

Servir quem?

Um excelente conselho de Seth Godin. Como é que a sua empresa o pode  pôr em prática?

"Choose Your Clients, Choose Your Future

The masses aren’t the point. They might be a welcome side effect of your work, but to please the masses, you must pander to average.

Because mass means average.

When we decide that the change we seek to make is dependent on mass popularity, when we chase a hit, we end up sacrificing our point of view. 

On average, every population is dull. The slide toward average sands off all the interesting edges, destroying energy, interest, and possibility.

What’s the difference between Chip Kidd, the extraordinarily successful book cover designer, and someone with the same tools and skills that Chip has?

Chip has better clients.

Better clients demand better work. Better clients want you to push the envelope, win awards, and challenge their expectations. Better clients pay on time. Better clients talk about you and your work.

But finding better clients isn’t easy, partly because we don’t trust ourselves enough to imagine that we deserve them. [Moi ici: E isto requer foco, requer concentração. Pior, requer rejeitar outros potenciais clientes]

Every gig-economy hustler who’s listed on Fiverr or Upwork or 99designs is looking for easy clients. Easy in and easy out, but they’re not better clients than they have now.

Years ago, I produced a record for a very skilled duo. They were incredibly hardworking and committed to their art. In order to survive, they performed three hundred days a year, and they lived in a van, driving each day to a new town, playing at a local coffeehouse, sleeping in the van, then repeating it all the next day.

In most towns, there are a few places like this—if you’ve issued a few CDs and are willing to work for cheap, you can get booked without too much trouble.

These cafés are not good clients. Easy in, easy out, next!

What I helped these musicians understand is that going from town to town and working with easy gigs was wasting their effort and hiding their art. What they needed to do was stay in one town, earn fans, play again, earn fans, move to a better venue, and do it again. And again.

Working their way up by claiming what they’d earned: fans."

Como fugir da mediania? Como fugir da comoditização? Servir quem?  

Trecho retirado de "The practice: shipping creative work" de Seth Godin.

"Niching down"

Ainda esta semana chamávamos a atenção para a importância da nichização, um tema recorrente neste blogue:

• Nichos, co-criação e intimidade à escala
• Anichar!
• Mudar e anichar!

Para quem promove o advento de Mongo este artigo, "Why Niching Down Is an Entrepreneur's Best Chance of Standing Out" é relevante:

"Entrepreneurs are always trying to stand out, and understandably so -- after all, there is a lot of competition out there. The need to stand out becomes even more vital in light of the recent Covid-19 pandemic. [Moi ici: Recordar que a pandemia apenas veio acelerar o que já estava em curso]
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So what's the best way to stand out, especially if your business operates in a particularly crowded niche? The solution isn't to try to go bigger. Instead, it's the opposite.
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Identifying with more passionate audiences.
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While it is true that many sub-niches have a smaller potential audience than the broader niche, these smaller segments tend to be more tightly connected. If your product or service is a hit, it is more likely to take off on a community-wide level.
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Underserved sub-niches tend to have less competition, because many brands deem the smaller market as not being worth targeting.[Moi ici: Recordar a VW e as carrinhas eléctricas]
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Targeting a smaller niche also gives you the opportunity to reevaluate and strengthen your brand.
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Mourreau explained that generalist photographers rarely become the best in their niche. Those who focus on a particular subcategory of photography are eventually seen as the go-to resource when those types of photos are needed. Because they have put in the time and effort to develop that particular skill, there is far greater demand for their services than if they had remained a generalist.
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Niching down gives you the ability to identify your brand's strengths and weaknesses.
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By shifting your focus to your area of strength, you can continue to develop that ability and be better able to deliver high-quality results for your clients. Satisfied clients will naturally lead to referrals, growth from repeat customers and the ability to charge a higher premium for your services.
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Finding the right sub-niche for your brand.
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Not all sub-niches are created equal. Finding the right sub-niche requires evaluating your own brand's strengths and weaknesses, identifying gaps in the market and ensuring that there is a sizable enough audience for you to reach.
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Shrinking your potential target audience may feel counterintuitive at first. But it ultimately gives you the chance to become a big fish in a much smaller pond. By strategically pursuing the sub-niches that will work best for your brand, you can increase your profitability and better define what makes your company unique."

Exploitation versus exploration

"People don’t hire you, buy from you or recommend you because you’re indifferently average and well rounded.
They do it because you’re exceptional at something.
What if you invested the energy to be even more exceptional at it?"

A pressão para a diferenciação agrava-se à medida que a fase de exploitation progride. Na fase de exploitation está-se mais virado para dentro, para o interior, para os processos e para a sua optimização.

A diferenciação surge da exploration, da tentativa de coisas novas, da experimentação... que normalmente só surge quando se instala o pânico e se torna clara a desgraça que aí vem. Só a desgraça, ou a sua eminência, é que liberta as mentes para que se tente o que nunca foi tentado, o que vai contra as regras estabelecidas, o que vai contra o senso comum.

Trecho de Seth Godin publicado em "Amplify your strengths"

"there is no single way to be rational"

"For an individual, choosing the strategy most likely to succeed maximises expected winnings. But a group made up of such optimising individuals is eventually wiped out by infrequent calamities. As a result, the groups whose genes come to dominate are those who apply ‘mixed strategies’, varying their habitat. The American political scientist James Scott describes the reality of this in the history of ‘scientific’ forestry. Planting the ‘best’ trees led to monocultures which were in due course wiped out by previously unknown parasites. The Irish potato blight was able to devastate that country’s agriculture – leading to at least a million deaths from disease and starvation and to substantial and prolonged emigration from the island – because the potato had been identified as the optimal crop for that country’s conditions and so the country’s food production was poorly diversified. Humans are all better off because we are all different, and because there is no single way to be rational; we give thanks for our current state to St Francis and Oscar Wilde and Steve Jobs and to millions of people who became skilled at their own specialist but routine tasks.”

Recordar Valikangas e "Shit Happens!"

 

Trechos retirados de “Radical Uncertainty” de John Kay e Mervyn King 

Fugir da comparação pelo preço

Elementos relevantes para apoiar uma reflexão por parte de quem trabalham com OEMs, mesmo que não do sector automóvel. Fugir da comparação pelo preço:

"many automotive suppliers are under the impression that OEMs only choose to buy from them if they offer the best price. Our experience tells us this is only half true, at best. While price is a key criterion for OEMs when selecting suppliers, they also take into account many other criteria, such as plant location and delivery track record. Neglecting these is a surefire way to harm your chances of establishing a business relationship with automotive manufacturers. Suppliers need to understand the entire selection process in order to be truly successful with a targeted OEM. Answering these three key questions will ensure you take the right approach:

• How are OEMs making purchasing decisions?

• Who makes the decisions?

• Which criteria do OEMs consider?

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Provide your direct contacts with convincing argumentation about your product’s superior quality so they speak up for you in internal meetings. Remember: If the buying team doesn’t have proof that your products are a) more reliable, b) more effective, or c) more efficient than your competitors’, they have no option but to choose solely based on your price."

Trechos retirados de "Avoiding Price Pressure: 3 Tips to Negotiate Successfully With OEM Buying Centers"

Fugir da race-to-the-bottom

O amigo @walternatez chamou-me a atenção para este artigo muito interessante:

How millions of French shoppers are rejecting cut-price capitalism https://t.co/wl767AfCZQ cc @ccz1

— walter, lider impopular (@walternatez) January 28, 2020

Há uma frase acerca do leite que já citei aqui muitas vezes:

"Milk is the ultimate low-involvement category, and it shows. Only 10% of the international sample (in Denmark, Germany and Spain the number is less than 5%) would expect the private label version to be of a lesser quality."

Cito-a, embora não a pratique. Há muitos anos que prefiro leite dos Açores.

Outra citação deste blogue é:

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

Como fugir à comoditização? Apostando na diferenciação. Recordo este exemplo francês do leite integral que descrevi no ano passado em "Cambão versus estratégias baseadas nos clientes-alvo".

O artigo conta uma estória sobre como fugir da race-to-the-bottom:

"“Someone said, would I please have a look at milk,” Chabanne said. “So I did. It was an
absolute disaster. Dairy farmers were desperate, losing money on every litre; prices werebeing driven down mercilessly by the big retail groups.”
Chabanne did the arithmetic: a mere eight cents (6.8p) a litre was the difference between
a milk producer going bust (or worse: the suicide rate among French dairy farmers is30% higher than in the general population) and making a decent living. [Moi ici: A distribuição grande consegue este poder negocial porque há produtores muito grandes que conseguem ganhar dinheiro mesmo com preços muito baixos. Recordo o tamanho médio das produções leiteiras em Portugal e na Europa. No texto sobre Portugal escrevi "Explorações com menos de 10 cabeças podem ser rentáveis, não podem é seguir o mesmo modelo de negócio das que praticam a produção à escala industrial."]
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“The average French consumer buys 50 litres of milk a year,” he said. “That meant that if consumers spent just €4 more on their milk per year, the producer might actually survive. I was convinced people would be prepared to do that.”
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His hunch has proved right. French consumers have bought 123m litres of milk labelled C’est qui le patron?! (Who’s the boss?) since its launch in November 2016, making it the fourth-biggest milk brand in France, outsold only by the most cut-price supermarket-own brands. [Moi ici: Como não recordar o tema da polarização dos mercados]
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As with all of the cooperative’s products, neither was advertised on TV, promoted instore or pushed by a sales team. [Moi ici: Notável]
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The basic assumption by supermarkets is that all consumers want competitively priced produce. The cheaper, the better. CQLP might have just rewritten that rule. [Moi ici: Como não recordar a ideia de que quem trabalha prefere trabalhar para uma empresa que dê sentido ao seu esforço. Como não recordar que na língua inglesa "patron", patrono, é também sinónimo de cliente regular. Aquele que patroniza]
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In just three years, CQLP has won over nearly 11.5 million French consumers – about one in five adults. It has also boosted the incomes of more than 3,000 farmers and manufacturers, all of whom benefit from the pledge emblazoned in big, bold capitals on the brand’s packaging: “This product pays its producer a fair price.”
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C’est qui le patron?! is “basically about consumers both taking control of what’s on our plates, and supporting producers”, he said. “There will always be people, for all kinds of reasons, for whom price matters most. But there are also more and more who feel maybe slightly guilty when they shop for food – and would like to do better.”"

Lembrei-me da estória dos pêssegos:

"A informação que o gerente me deu não devia estar escondida. A caixa de pêssegos devia ter uma foto do agricultor, um mapa da região onde foram produzidos e uma mensagem pessoal dele para os consumidores.
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Voltando ao segundo tweet, citado lá em cima, o século XX enterrou-nos no Normalistão, encarcerou-nos num modelo mental em que só o preço conta, e só nos ensinou uma forma de fazer preços: custo mais uma margem.
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No Estranhistão, os actores económicos vão aprender que o preço não tem nada a ver com o custo e tudo a ver com o valor percepcionado pelos clientes-alvo."

Puzzles e mistérios

“Over the years, as I’ve exhorted companies and their leaders to embrace a richly defined values proposition rather than a dollars-and-cents value proposition, I’ve heard all kinds of warnings about the downside to thinking bigger and aiming higher. One common worry is the inevitable competitive backlash: If a braver, more clever, more forward-looking company succeeds at doing something new, the reasoning goes, then surely larger, richer, more established companies will decode that success, “mimic its logic, and upend the innovator who moved first. What’s the point of launching a whole new way to be in a business if you are inevitably going to be shot down by rivals with all the strategic firepower they need?...
No good deed goes unpunished.” In competitive strategy, the worry goes, “No good idea goes uncopied.
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I’m constantly amazed at how unwilling or unable most big, incumbent, long-established organizations are to learn from (let alone copy) the market makers in their field. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s among the rarest forms of competitive response. And it’s certainly no excuse for limiting, in advance, the scope of your strategic ambitions. What your competitors won’t do, despite how much they know about what you’re doing, may surprise you.
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the questions intelligence agencies faced were puzzles:
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Today, the most important questions are mysteries:
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What’s the difference between a puzzle and a mystery? Puzzles, Treverton explains, can be solved with better information and sharper calculations. Mysteries, however, can only be framed, not solved. “A mystery is an attempt to define ambiguities,” he writes. “Puzzles may be more satisfying, but the world increasingly offers us mysteries.” And treating mysteries like puzzles, he warns, can be dangerous and delusional—creating a false sense of confidence that crunching more information will clarify situations that can be understood only with more imagination.
Well, what’s true for intelligence gathering is also true for thinking intelligently about strategy and competition. As puzzles, the companies we’ve met don’t have many missing pieces.
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So the reason these companies are so distinctive is not because other companies lack the information to mount a challenge. It’s because they lack the imagination to match and respond to these “lighthouse” competitors, to summon their passion and patience for doing business their way."

Acham que o problema do SNS, por exemplo, é um puzzle? Acham que mais dinheiro é a solução?
Acham que ter sucesso no mercado é à custa da racionalidade e da ciência?


Trechos retirados de “Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways” de William C. Taylor.