I finished my Marketing Channel lectures this week; lots of big changes & challenges in the ‘Place’ part of Marketing’s 5 P’s. A good time to sum up; first -the Classics. I urge clients & students alike to take into account 3 Classic Considerations: Structure! What is the ideal structure of the channel(s) for my [...]

Just a few recent noteworthy headlines: Apple Sued Over Siri’s Shortcomings Apple report puts spotlight on overseas factory conditions Apple patches record number of Safari 5 bugs with monster update Android to overtake iPad in tablet market by 2015: IDC Ambitious Apple Inc. leads to antitrust ‘wake-up call’ Yikes- that’s alot of ugly press all at [...]

Lego. A perpetually young brand that should have died long ago, by rights. Toys don’t last, do they? But this one has. Did Lego find Ponce de Leon’s the fountain of youth? This week, my class covered brands that stay young by stretching the ‘Maturity’ phase of a marketing lifecycle- of delaying a slide into [...]

Next week, the college course I teach in Entrepreneurship, which has been focused from the start on BUILDING a business, will shed light on BUYING a business, or buying a FRANCHISE. Those 3 choices are all very distinct; they force one to really reassess what one wants & who one is: Building a business is [...]

Opened my newspaper today- out fell some Danier ’50% Off’ fliers. Many of you know Danier specializes in genuine leather attire (the regular kind, not the kinky kind). Of course, they have seasonal clearance sales every year, but what’s notable this time is: Danier usually has a 25% Off or 33% Off sale first, then [...]

3 big Japanese electronics firms- Sharp, Sony & Panasonic- all just posted dreadful losses. All had undergone big strategic changes that failed to yield positive results (yet). Funny thing was – each of the 3 took a different path to change. But they DID make changes. Sharp embraced Vertical Integration & Scale; they built their [...]

Despite RIM’s enthusiastic announcement last week to boost their investment in Communications, I have reservations. I may be misquoting the great David Ogilvy, but I believe he implied that great advertising won’t make a success of a bad product, but it will kill it faster (by generating enough public interest to achieve Trial!) . As [...]

No sooner had I recently posted about the ‘new classic’ optional channels to market … http://www.spitfireglobal.com/2012/01/classic-channels-2012-there/ when I realized that by listing those, I do a disservice to other distribution considerations that are just as relevant. So I’ve included a visual tool I keep in my mind for Expansion Strategy decisions. (No, I didn’t get [...]

Rest assured that Thorsten Heins’ comments to stay the course to fix RIM- hire a new Head of Communications, execute a one-off Playbook relaunch- won’t fix RIM. This company went from darling to doldrums for good reason- it needs a strategic reboot- an issue as I’ve hammered home for over a year. Think like Sun [...]

Those of us Boomers who lived as adolescents through the Mighty Muscle Car era remember the ‘Dodge‘ name with respect if not outright worship. The throaty growl of a Dodge Challenger or Dodge Charger was enough to turn a 12 year old boy’s head any time. The rare school teacher who arrived in one was [...]