Contingency plans...

So important you can’t afford not to have it?
In a modern economy supported by a super information highway where news is travelling on par with the speed of light, a contingency plan is the single most important part of your strategy.
In this landscape we are constantly seeing brands failing when the unexpected, unforeseeable and ultimately inevitable happens. Brands spend a lot of time on creative marketing, management and resources on building the brand that when the proverbial hits the fan they have no options, plan or further resources to implement, so they watch and hope it doesn’t fall too hard.
A contingency is a provision for a certain event in the future. This may or may not come to fruition, but if you’re spending precious resources building a brand for a future financial position there is equal as much probability that the unexpected will happen. So develop a contingency that kicks in as soon as the outlook shifts.
A contingency plan should:
Always be ‘on’ gathering information, data and analytics in the background & foreground.
Be relevant to your market and your consumers
Reach your opinion leaders and brand loyal consumers first (they can take some hard work off your hands)
Be revisited as often as sales forecasts (future sales haven’t yet occurred, nor too has the unexpected brand damaging news- they could both occur or not occur)
A contingency plan- Think of it as your brands seatbelt.

Chase the cheese, or write your name and leave a legacy?

ColaBook

Mid last month, Coca Cola and Facebook teamed up to bring to life this very cool and very social project for this years Coca Cola Village. Have a look for yourself...

Franck Muller

This gentleman was born in Switzerland in 1958. From a very early age, he developed and nurtured a growing interest for all things mechanical. From an early age he was disassembling all the machines in his house to study how they worked. As a teenager he collected antique astrological instruments. He then joined the Geneva School of Watchmaking, graduated with flying colours and then chose a very difficult path to follow but he had enough devotion, passion and interest to create his own watchmaking company and a very successful one at that- Franck Muller. (It’s fair to say that Franck Muller has gone on to sensational influence the global watchmaking industry.)

So now, consider my before mentioned question: “What have you done over the last 12 months that aligns your interests and passions with your future employment?” Franck Muller could name a few, so many that he could launch his own company. If some of the applicants out there had half the ingredients someone like Franck had then sky is the limit.

You will create your own job through your devotion, passion, and interest FOR the industry. An occupation should be your devotion, interest and passion remunerated.

Failing to make sense...

Every now and again there are some things which fail to make sense to me.

Why are school uniforms still so unfashionable, uncomfortable and impractical? If our youth are spending 75% of their adolescent lives in clothing with has no practicality, style and or comfort there seems to be little thought injected into why it is the way it is.

I understand tradition, but every Olympics the nations deliver traditional, alternate and practical uniform offerings for their athletes. Now, how is it relevant in today’s society that young adolescents are wearing short skirts, hard shoes with limited support, over sized blazers all with out of date styling and colouring.

Can they not create some art? Create a uniform that would be better suited to the nature of the youth and the fashions of at least the last 10 years?

What if just one school revisited the uniform with a modern thought process and an understanding of their students needs?

The very busy generation

If you are busy, you can just read the words that are underlined.

Most of us are busy...getting more busy.

We are all busy, we are all busy doing what everyone else is doing and doing things that if we had a real choice we really wouldn’t do it at all. It’s part of life, the ups and the downs and the plodding along the ground- well at least that is what we tell ourselves.

Busy you see, really isn’t a response to how you have been travelling, it’s an excuse. It’s something we say when we actually cannot remember the exact thing we did 3 hours ago let alone 3 days ago. It’s an excuse as to why we have been engaged in work we wouldn’t do if we had the choice or if we could find another way to spend our day. It’s an excuse for the reason we are in the position we are in.

We are getting very good at being busy and that is the very reason why we think we have no choice at all.

Highly efficient people are not busy, they are actioning and shipping. In fact most highly efficient people will almost always seem like they have all the time in the world, that it’s their time and the rest of us ‘busy people’ are skipping to their beat.

We ‘busy people’ often say ‘If I was a millionaire I would do this, if I was a rock star I would have this, I can’t wait to retire etc.’ Whatever the descriptor they use; millionaire, rock star, retiree is irrelevant it is basically us busy people saying that if we had achieved a certain level of efficiency we would be doing things differently to what we are doing right now. We believe the highly efficient people leading their lives are not doing what we are doing, they are not busy.

This is true, they are actioning and shipping and consistently.

Achieving an outcome you are passionate about (actioning and shipping) is the first cure for ‘busy.’

The Middle, The Market and The Media

Two kids gather in the woods and begin to pick berries; they pick enough to fill their jumpers full and stop to make a plan. They plan to walk into town and sell the berries. So up and off they go into town, they find a spot just under the clock in city centre and start calling out ‘Berries for sale!” They sell a few, but not all.

One of the kids goes for a walk around the town and continues to shout “Berries for sale” He sells a few more berries but not all. He stumbles across an old box of matches, stops to pick it up and begins putting his berries in the old box. He runs back to his friend and continues to help him out by yelling “Berries for sale” with the old box in his hand.

A lady comes over and asks, what is in the box? Berries, the kid responds...’are they the same berries she asks?, yes they are! And do you get them in box? Yes you do, he says, are they the same price she says? No they are 5c more he says. ‘Sold!’ she says.

The next week, the kids go through the town and gather all the old match boxes and run up to the woods to start picking berries. They fill all the boxes with berries and sit down to make a plan. They decide to each go their separate ways to the nearest town to start selling the berries.

“Berries in Boxes for sale!” they scream

Two months later:

“Special Berries in boxes for sale”

1 year later:

“Bring your box, pick your Special Berries”

The two kids turned out to be berry berry successful.