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Customer Manufacturing Update |  |
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Dear Mitchell, Welcome to the July 2005 Customer Manufacturing Update. This month's white paper looks at the "hot" topic of Marketing ROI. It was written by Bob Johnson (bjohnson@customermfg.com) and Ralph Mroz (rmroz@customermfg.com) of our Massachussetts office, and Mitchell Goozé from our Silicon Valley office. If you have friends or colleagues who would appreciate receiving this e-zine, feel free to forward a copy to them using the "Forward e-mail" link at the bottom of the e-zine.
On a recent trip to Canada to speak for a client, my wife came along to visit her long lost brother. Our American Airlines flight included a plane-change in Chicago. Just prior to landing in Chicago, my wife discovered that something in her purse had leaked causing a big mess. She recovered nicely and we made our connection with no problem. During the weekend, while visiting her brother, my wife noticed that she could not find our checkbook in her purse. She thought perhaps it had fallen out on the plane in her ordeal with her purse. I presumed we had just not taken it with us, and she would find it when she returned home. At the end of the weekend she went home and I continued on my trip, speaking for our client in Toronto and then heading to Florida for additional speaking engagements. When she got home she looked for the checkbook, and didn't find it. She called the bank and they informed her that unless she knew precisely which check number she had written last (a tough problem without the checkbook), the only thing they could do was put a stop payment (at $25/check) on as many check numbers as we wanted. Her low-end estimate was ten checks. I decided to monitor our online banking site for unusual activity and deal with it on a per incident basis. Nothing was amiss at that time. For the rest of the week, nothing untoward appeared on our account. At the end of the week, I flew home, through Chicago. When my plane arrived in Chicago, a gate agent met our plane, paged me and told me he had a package for me. Not expecting a package in Chicago, I was confused. I followed him up the jetway to his desk where he gave me our checkbook. Needless to say, I was stunned. I obviously thanked him for unbelievable service. As I walked to my next gate I couldn't help but consider the dichotomy of airlines that lose your luggage, but go out of their way to get you your checkbook. Who knows, maybe they'll get the luggage right one day too.
We had dinner recently at a very good restaurant in Wilmington, DE, Harry's Seafood Grill. The waiter was explaining the specials ... and quite well. He proceeded to describe an Alaskan King salmon dish that he told us was from the FV Rose. What, you might ask, is the FV Rose? Well, he explained (without being asked, actually) that the FV Rose was an elite fishing vessel that fished off of Anchorage, and only provided their catch to 20 restaurants. He was quite proud of the fact that the FV Rose had "selected" them as one of the restaurants to be "allowed" to purchase FV Rose salmon. They had even noted the FV Rose as the source of the salmon on the menu. And you thought fishing and fishing boats were a commodity. Our congratulations to Sherry Tuttle, the owner of the FV Rose, for her forward thinking approach and use of ingredient branding to not only differentiate her salmon, but to also help her partners differentiate the salmon on their menus and thus sell more salmon. While the salmon was quite good, we are reasonably sure (one of us having just visited Alaska) that the salmon the FV Rose catches is quite similar (identical) to the rest of the salmon in the ocean. However, if you look at what you are selling, it is almost always a commodity. Try looking at what the customer is buying, you'll usually find a different story.
We are presenting a workshop in cooperation with the Association of National Advertisers on Lean Marketing in the San Francisco Bay Area on September 21. (As the ANA is sponsoring the workshop, admission is free, but space is limited). If you would like to learn more about this workshop and the application of Lean Thinking to marketing/sales, send us an email (info@customermfg.com) and we'll get you the information on this workshop as soon as it is available.
We appreciate any feedback you can provide to help us make sure these Updates give you value each month. Feel free to respond to this e-mail with any comments or suggestions for future topics or ways we can make these Customer Manufacturing Updates more valuable to you.
Thank you for your interest, and if we can provide
any
additional assistance in sales, marketing, strategy, or
innovation to help you increase your sales,
let us know.
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