Archives for Business Strategy

The new second opinion: How digital engagement is changing healthcare

Evolving digital capabilities allow healthcare providers to develop better, more personalized care for patients. While the fascinating technological advances are fun to talk about (care to implant a microchip of your medical history?), the more pressing side of technology is how it changes human behavior: how technology reframes the process of finding and using healthcare as patients find new ways to
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Changing Strategy With Michael Porter’s Five Competitive Forces

If you are a strategic thinker or economist by nature, take a look at The Lords of Strategy: The Secret History of the New Corporate World, by Walter Kiechell III, (Amazon: http://amzn.to/ohqbLp).  Walter is a clear-eyed, thorough, and erudite journalist who honed his craft at Fortune, and Harvard Business Publications. What’s shocking to realize is that 50 years ago, strategy didn’t
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Five Rules of US Consumer Engagement for Imported Foods

Imported brands have challenges that ‘native’ American brands can’t imagine. To begin with, your branding is likely to be dictated by a global home office with little insight into the American market. And for many brands, although the U.S. looks like an enormous pot of opportunity, with, at last count, 682 different grocery chains, the splintered distribution system is simply
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What’s the first question your marketing agency asks?

If you’re looking online for a marketing agency to help you, good luck.  We’ve poured over competitive websites and if you can tell us all apart, you’re a genius. But I may have figured out a way to help. I just got off the phone with a friend who runs a creative agency and while we were talking, I pulled
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Specialty Food Marketing Meets Special Delivery

30 years of specialty food marketing teaches you that food people are a breed apart.   The passion for great food, delight at a clever new idea, and the compulsion to share our discoveries with others are the hallmarks of a group unlike any other. So for my fellow hopeless addicts, here’s great news: two really smart services that are taking
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Focus Groups in the Digital Age

A conversation with Anne Brown, moderator with JSC Consumer Insights, Inc. AC:  Clients often ask us for help choosing the right type of research – and new methods are coming out all the time.  Our recent qualitative work with you and JSC led to significant changes in marketing strategy – and tangible successes.  So why does it sometimes feel old-fashioned
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Budgeting for Small Brand Marketers needs Marketing Effectiveness

2015 is coming.  Time for ambitious brands with limited budgets to make really tough choices.  We’ve just won our second award for Marketing Effectiveness, for a project that came in under $350,000.  So we hope you’ll find this helpful: Two things to know about changes in Social Media Be aware that an algorithmic change will drastically reduce your Facebook exposure:  Facebook
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Specialty Food Brands – David versus Goliath battles

  We worked with Rena through the creative food company she founded in 2000 with Tom Eckerle, Soup to Nuts.  Together they created and photographed over 200 recipes for our agency client, Arla Foods. Rena’s expertise in every aspect of food, from recipe creation for the home cook to food service design to the taste preferences of individual markets, was
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Top Planning Tools for 2014

Is it August already?  For the kids it’s back to school, for the rest of us, it’s time to lock and load on our marketing plans for 2014.  If your frontal lobe is a bit rusty, these will help: some of our favorite planning tools and overviews. The Things to Come This will get you started with a 30,000-foot perspective. 
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