Insights Blog

This article discusses Why Apple Is a Great Marketer and provides 10 reasons for Apple’s success.

After a rocky 2010 dominated by the Great Recession, we're gearing up for big things in 2011. EMM Group has identified seven developments that we believe will have a significant impact on how companies, clients, and customers interact over the new year.

The Wall Street Journal reports July retail sales grew, but those gains were made primarily by the automative sector and gas. Inflation remained very low; in fact prices rose primarily because of higher energy prices. Pure retailers and merchants continue to struggle.

In our quest for organic growth, we can often be our own worst enemy. In the development of a win share strategy one of the most obvious, critical but often neglected question is – what market are we trying to get an additional share of? When marketers or executives are asked this question their response is usually formed on the basis of their product or service category i.e. we are in the credit card market, the market for inventory finance or the market for car audio systems. Sometimes this is even taken to the next level by adding entry-level, mid-range, premium and super-premium labels before the product/service category.

It’s amazing to me how the same thoughts and concepts seem to circle through the management world over and over again. Take innovation. There is so much buzz and hype about how innovation is the panacea of any company’s growth problems. If only every company could start behaving like Apple.

Coimbatore Krishnarao Prahalad, a leader in marketing management principles, died on April 16, 2010 of a previously undiagnosed lung illness at age 68. In his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Prahalad cast the world's roughly two billion impoverished citizens not as lacking any purchasing power, but as a customer segment with unique needs for value and price. Segmentation is a foundational step in the Organic Growth Framework, and many companies followed Prahalad's guidance successfully to enter emerging markets. In one case he consulted with a global brand to produce small, individual packets of shampoo.

"The most creative individuals, teams and organizations are extremely disciplined. But it is a special kind of discipline—one that unlashes creativity in the service of developing important innovations." - Curt Carlson, founder of the Carlson Companies.

Most companies have some sales or marketing capability improvement project running every year. Many of these projects however fail to achieve their desired objectives. Processes are created but not used. Dashboards are published but not leveraged. Training is imparted but does not substantially change organizational behavior. Our experience and analysis of such projects reveals that there are primarily two reasons for these projects falling short of their desired goals. (a) Many of these projects do not approach the capability development from a holistic perspective and (b) the capability development model applied is generic and not sensitive to the differences between demand generation activities and other parts of the organization.

Gaining market share is often top-of-mind for many executives. It is a simple metric to understand and visualize, it is usually tracked on an industry-basis and it usually communicates a sense of achievement when the share numbers are looking good. However exclusive focus on market share can also mask numbers that really count – profitability or long-term brand health. In today’s economic environment, many companies are lured into cutting prices to gain market share. The article in the WSJon H-P’s latest moves is an illustrative example.

Here are five principles for developing great advertising. While they are not meant to be a comprehensive list of everything you need to do to produce great advertising, doing these elements correctly can help you to a large extent in producing tremendously successful advertising.