Brand Biology - Evolution by Customer Selection

90% of startups fail, 80% of product launches are not successful and 60% of the fortune 500 companies in the 1970’s do not exist today.

Your species (brands) are dying in an alarming rates.

In face of such grim truth brands and brand managers should seek survival tools. In this article I will cover two survival tactics and strategies of those who were able to survive the wild of the markets, those who were heard among the white noise and stand out from the crowd.

“If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough.”

― Mario Andretti

1- Survival of the fastest:

One of the reasons of extinction for brands is refusing to adapt or not adapting fast enough to new technology, even tho their markets and their customers has adapted to it.

The simple and most obvious example of that is websites adapting to mobile technology even tho:

• Google is now penalising websites that are non-mobile friendly.  

• Two-thirds of smartphone users say a mobile-friendly site makes them more likely to buy a company's product or service.
• 61% says that if they don't find what they're looking for (probably within about five seconds), they'll click away to another site.

We are still faced with the fact that 91% of small business’ websites are not optimized for mobile use.

Adapting fast to technological shifts is a key tool to a brand’s survival.

Borders didn't think they need to adapt to amazon fast. Blockbuster video didn't think that Netflix was a threat and that digital was a threat that needs to be  eliminated fast.

Borders closed all of its retail locations and sold off its customer loyalty list, comprising millions of names, to competitor Barnes & Noble for $13.9 million. Borders' locations have been purchased and re-purposed by other large retailers.

Saddled itself with over $1 billion in debt and was unable to make the transition to digital. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and has been replaced by Netflix and other digital services.

Fast adaption is a survival tool as customers don't select slow brands, they let them slowly perish in a non digital world for maybe a nostalgic to revive  them in a casual conversation.

“It’s easy to predict the future, just remove the fragile elements from the present”

Nssim Taleb

2- Survival of the Antifragile:

“Fragile” if you read this word written on a box that is delivered to you, normally other words that associate with this box are handle with care,easily broken or caution.

The Oxford dictionary defines fragile as ”easily broken or damaged”.

In his book “Antifragile” Nassim Taleb asks, what is the opposite of the word fragile?

What would be written on that box if the item inside is the opposite of fragile.

Words like strong, robust and solid doesn't really mean anti-fragile. Because a fragile object is very risk sensitive where those words describe more of a risk neutral case, where the pressure or risk doesn't really harm the items yet it definitely doesn't benefit it.

If there is an antifragile item in that box the words on that box could read as please mishandle, add pressure or the item inside gains from risk. In this case the objects actually benefit from risk and pressure.

Some brands were able to find a lifeline, a cure from fragileness and a process to becoming an antifragile brand. Introduce risk in fractions so your brand can survive, this process is called 70 - 20 - 10.

Where 70% of the Brands investment is in “Now”, or established and successful programs; 20% goes to “new,” or emerging trends that are starting to gain traction; and 10% goes to “next”.

This concept can be applied to any brand’s activities where 70% of the activities are safe, familiar and cash cows, 20% of the activities are for the stars, trendy and new and finally 10% is for the risky more dangerous activities. This process seeks sustainable growth and most importantly antifragility.

 

Customers tend to abandoned fragile brands and leave them to the memory of textbooks and academic studies of worst case scenarios.

These are two branding survival tools in this series of articles. We will be unlocking more branding ecology mysteries and other survival mechanism in the coming articles.

What are some of your favorite podcasts to listen to in the morning?

An interesting question and some amazing answers here,

I second every podcast mentioned here some of the stuff mentioned I am addicted to.

so here is my list I hope I don't duplicate any of the resources already mentioned,

Inside Personal Growth

This is how they describe themselves
“Inside Personal Growth provides listeners with high quality interviews featuring leading authors in the field of personal development.”

Podcast Episode Archives - The One You Feed

I came across this podcast from Maria Popova’s brain pickings , I find the podcast both beneficial and fruitful.

the idea of the podcast comes from an ancient story that an old man was teaching his grandson and told him that inside all of us two wolfs a good one and a bad one and they are in a constant battle, so the kid asked grandad which one wins? the grandfather said the one you feed.

Writers' Bloc Podcast

Even if you are not a writer I think you can appreciate the create of writing specifically of those who create some of best selling TV series and programs.

The show describes itself as
“Writers’ Bloc is a podcast about comedy writing hosted by J.R. Havlan, an 8-time Emmy Award-winning writer for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. “

Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Interesting in-depth conversation with some of the most talented creative minds, the podcast explore, investigate, create and enlighten about the subject of creativity and innovation.

Books and Authors

I will directly quote the description here “Featuring Open Book and A Good Read. In Open Book, Mariella Frostrup talks to leading authors about their work. A Good Read features Harriett Gilbert discussing a range of favourite titles with guests.”

92Y
92nd Street Y (92Y) is an arts, educational, cultural and community center serving people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds. The most recent episode was with Actress Natalie Portman

The Entrepreneurs - Radio

A tour around the startup world, Looking at the global SME’s and business world, very interesting thoughts and interviews.

Interviewing Authors with Tim Knox, Author, Talk Radio Host, Serial Entrepreneur, Small Business Expert - Interviews with bestselling authors.

Interviewing Authors is one of the Web’s premiere blog and podcast destinations that focuses on the process of creating, writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and selling an author’s work.

I am working on a list of 100 must listen to podcast.I will share it here upon completion.

feel free to reach me on Twitter : @fouad_khafaga

Creative thought and the creative process of linking ideas.

Written by: Fouad Khafaga
Twitter: @fouad_khafaga

Linking

One of the interesting things of the human ability is that we are able to connect and link ideas that in their own nature not necessarily relate-able, for example the evil spirits and the dark those are two independent ideas that does not in their foundation share a common aspect, yet we were able to link those two ideas to create tales, music & movies.

In a lot of the horror movies they use the concept of the haunted houses which are just the host of the two ideas evil spirits and darkness. The concept of merging ideas in this way was able to produce many creative applications in business, entertainment and human development field.

Here is an example

When seen from a distant chess players can sit still in the same place for hours, this in the first sight does not seem like a physical activity and in fact it’s far off from being a sport. However when asked about chess player say it’s a sport and it’s a bloody sport.

Idea 1A : chess                                                                                 Ideas 1b : martial arts

creative link : the book samurai chess

the writer made a creative link between the martial arts techniques and common philosophies like the art of sacrifices and the how to weaken the enemy physically and mental and applied such techniques to a chess board which resulted in what became a very interesting read and some revolutionary concepts.



Note: we can also make the same link through the book art of war by writing a book titled the art of chess war for example.

Our brain contains 86 billion neurons every new connection between two new neurons makes us smarter; following the same concept making new connection between thoughts that might seem either irrelevant or unrelated creates a new channel of creativity.

Consider thinking of cars body and human skin, seems like 2 far apart ideas yet BMW doesn’t think so they did introduce a concept car called Gina the this is what they can to say about the design of Gina :


“The GINA Light Visionary Model has an almost seamless outer skin, a flexible textile cover that stretches across a movable substructure. Individual functions are only revealed if and when

They are needed. With this model, BMW Group Design initiates a fundamental discourse about the characteristics that will affect the development of cars in future. It is therefore fundamentally different from concept cars, which reflect what is expected of them by implementing as many elements as possible in a future production model. In contrast, the GINA Light Visionary Model is a vision of future cars and serves as an object of research.”

Not just skin its seamless skin. The concept is available online on the BMW web site for more details and information about the concept car.

Another field that uses the linking technique in a creative manner is Guerrilla Marketing the idea is to link urban Guerrilla war techniques in the Marketing world. Here is how the founding father of Guerrilla techniques Jay Conrad Levinson defines his art:

“I’m referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remain as always — achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money”.

The original term was coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book ‘Guerrilla Advertising’.
Guerrilla marketing is often ideal for small businesses that need to reach a large audience without investing a huge lump sum of money or if they simply have a tight budget on marketing and advertising. It also is used by big companies in grassroots campaigns to compliment on-going mass media campaigns. Individuals have also adopted this marketing style as a way to find a job or more work.

Now Guerrilla marketing and Guerrilla art can be seen all over the world creating high brand awareness and an amazing advertising impacts with low budget exactly like it was intended to be.

Comedians, writers & concept artists use the linking technique in their character creation process, they try to find two ideas that obviously doesn’t match and create a character around it, this provide them with a human cognitive paradox and depth of character.

 Like for example a military general who’s into cake baking and wedding decoration, a nun who owns a casino in Vegas or a doctor who is sick (HOUSE A.D.).

The linking technique is one of the most widely used creative techniques that can be observed in a Variety of fields.

Five Factors to consider while watching Shark Tank

Twitter: @fouad_khafaga
                  

In Season 5 the TV series shark tank attracted an average of more than 8 million weekly viewers, this made startups , SMEs and entrepreneurs tune in taking notes and looking for free business advice yet these are 5 factors that  you should consider before modeling your business on a T.V. show.

1. They don’t give you the full picture:
   
   Because of the dynamics of the show the viewers get an illusion that what they see is pretty much is what happening on the set (diverse ideas, pitch reviews, questions and feedback) yet truth is that out of 45,000 people who applied to be on the show in 2014, less than 1 percent got the opportunity to pitch their businesses to the sharks.
2.  They don’t finish the deals (Done on T.V.):
   
   not every one who pitches an idea is saying the truth about their business some fudge of their company's financial figures, or make false claims like they have a patent on a product, some actually evaded taxes which is misleading for the sharks and that’s more than enough to cancel the deal.
   
   
   
3. They don’t invest in services :
   
   85% of the deals that are done on shark tank is actually for products even though digital  markets are cost efficient, delivers conversion  and help generate better revenue. In other words if your start up in the next Netflix, YouTube or even Google don’t expect to get a deal on shark tank.
   
4. They are wearing one hat:
   
   May be in their own businesses the sharks are ambitious, visionaries, welling to take calculated risks yet on the program they are putting their investors’ hat on.  They are not willing to share the same passion, dreams or vision with you, they need to share only the profits as Kevin always says (cash flow, numbers and show me the money).
   
5. They don’t believe in rough starts:
   
   Even though by media terms the show had a rough start the first season didn't even break the top 100 primetime shows in terms of average viewership. If your sales are not high, didn’t break even and the business is not scalable most probably the sharks will be out.
   
   Sources: http://bit.ly/1HIm1vk
                   http://entm.ag/1Es6ij4
                   http://bit.ly/1g3FRW8