Tom Peters’ We Are in a Brawl with No Rules Phoenix Technologies/

TP’s 7 Phoenix Technologies Biases 1. Great institution. 2. Great product. 3. (Potentially) great story. 4. Hopelessly under-branded. 5. Awesome opportunities—product & branding. 6. Scope ought to be expanded (dramatically)—“the Cisco of my computer’s innards.” 7. Engineering is cool—but there’s more to life. 8. Success: a marketer-to-marketer sale, not an engineer-to-engineer sale.

I. Confusion Reigns.

“We are in a brawl with no rules.” Paul Allaire

II. Destruction Rules.

“There’s going to be a fundamental change in the global economy unlike anything we have had since the cavemen began bartering.” Arnold Baker, Chief Economist, Sandia National Laboratories

“In 25 years, you’ll probably be able to get the sum total of all human knowledge on a personal device.” Greg Blonder, VC [was Chief Technical Adviser for Corporate AT&T] [Barron’s ]

Forbes100 from 1917 to 1987: 39 members of the Class of ’17 were alive in ’87; 18 in ’87 F100; 18 F100 “survivors” underperformed the market by 20%; just 2 (2%), GE & Kodak, outperformed the market 1917 to S&P 500 from 1957 to 1997: 74 members of the Class of ’57 were alive in ’97; 12 (2.4%) of 500 outperformed the market from 1957 to Source: Dick Foster & Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market

“Good management was the most powerful reason [leading firms] failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership.” Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

No Wiggle Room! “Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy.” Nicholas Negroponte

“IT MAY SOMEDAY BE SAID THAT THE 21 ST CENTURY BEGAN ON SEPTEMBER 11, … “Al-Qaeda represents a new and profoundly dangerous kind of organization—one that might be called a ‘virtual state.’ On September a virtual state proved that modern societies are vulnerable as never before.”—Time/

“Dawn Meyerreicks, CTO of the Defense Intelligence Systems Agency, made one of the most fateful military calls of the 21 st century. After 9/11 … her office quickly leased all the available transponders covering Central Asia. The implications should change everything about U.S. military thinking in the years ahead. “The U.S. Air Force had kicked off its fight against the Taliban with an ineffective bombing campaign, and Washington was anguishing over whether to send in a few Army divisions. Donald Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to give the initiative to 250 Special Forces already on the ground. They used satellite phones, Predator surveillance drones, and GPS- and laser-based targeting systems to make the air strikes brutally effective. “In effect, they ‘Napsterized’ the battlefield by cutting out the middlemen (much of the military’s command and control) and working directly with the real players. … The data came in so fast that HQ revised operating procedures to allow intelligence analysts and attack planners to work directly together. Their favorite tool, incidentally, was instant messaging over a secure network.”—Ned Desmond/“Broadband’s New Killer App”/ Business 2.0/ OCT2002

III. B-I-G “Value Added” Wins.

The Big Day!

: HP bids $18,000,000,000 for PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting business!

“These days, building the best server isn’t enough. That’s the price of entry.” Ann Livermore, Hewlett-Packard

Gerstner’s IBM: Systems Integrator of choice. Global Services: $35B. Pledge/’99: Business Partner Charter. 72 strategic partners, aim for 200. Drop many in-house programs/products. (BW/12.01).

“We want to be the air traffic controllers of electrons.” Bob Nardelli, GE Power Systems

“Customer Satisfaction” to “Customer Success” “We’re getting better at [Six Sigma] every day. But we really need to think about the customer’s profitability. Are customers’ bottom lines really benefiting from what we provide them?” Bob Nardelli, GE Power Systems

“No longer are we only an insurance provider. Today, we also offer our customers the products and services that help them achieve their dreams, whether it’s financial security, buying a car, paying for home repairs, or even taking a dream vacation.”—Martin Feinstein, CEO, Farmers Group

IV. “Value Added” = Scintillating Customer Experiences.

“ Experiences are as distinct from services as services are from goods.” Joseph Pine & James Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage

“The [Starbucks] Fix” Is on … “We have identified a ‘third place.’ And I really believe that sets us apart. The third place is that place that’s not work or home. It’s the place our customers come for refuge.” Nancy Orsolini, District Manager

“Club Med is more than just a ‘resort’; it’s a means of rediscovering oneself, of inventing an entirely new ‘me.’ ” Source: Jean-Marie Dru, Disruption

Experience: “Rebel Lifestyle!” “What we sell is the ability for a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him.” Harley exec, quoted in Results-Based Leadership

WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU?

The “Experience Ladder” Experiences Services Goods Raw Materials

Bob Lutz: “I see us as being in the art business. Art, entertainment and mobile sculpture, which, coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation.” Source: NYT

“Lexus sells its cars as containers for our sound systems. It’s marvelous.” — Sidney Harman/ Harman International

Ladder Position Measure Solutions Success (Experiences) Services Satisfaction Goods Six-sigma

It’s All About EXPERIENCES: “Trapper” to “Wildlife Damage-control Professional” Trapper: <$20 per beaver pelt. WDCP: $150/“problem beaver”; $750-$1,000 for flood-control piping … so that beavers can stay. Source: WSJ/

V. Experiences Plus: The “Dream Fulfillment Business.”

DREAM: “A dream is a complete moment in the life of a client. Important experiences that tempt the client to commit substantial resources. The essence of the desires of the consumer. The opportunity to help clients become what they want to be.” —Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni

Common Products “Dream” Products Maxwell House Starbucks BVD Victoria’s Secret Payless Ferragamo Hyundai Ferrari Suzuki Harley Davidson Atlantic City Acapulco New Jersey California Carter Kennedy Conners Pele Source: Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni

The marketing of Dreams (Dreamketing) Dreamketing: Touching the clients’ dreams. Dreamketing: The art of telling stories and entertaining. Dreamketing: Promote the dream, not the product. Dreamketing: Build the brand around the main dream. Dreamketing: Build the “buzz,” the “hype,” the “cult.” Source: Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni

VI. Brands Rule!

“Salt is salt is salt. Right? Not when it comes in a blue box with a picture of a little girl carrying an umbrella. Morton International continues to dominate the U.S. salt market even though it charges more for a product that is demonstrably the same as many other products on the shelf.” Tom Asaker, Humanfactor Marketing

What Can [Can’t] Be Branded? “Branding is not a problem if you have the right mentality. You go to your team and you pin up a $200 Swiss Army Watch. Competing in the ridiculously crowded sub-$200 watch market, they made it into a brand name, named after the most irrelevant and useless thing in history [the Swiss Army]. And you say, ‘Gang, if they can do it, we can do it.’ ” Barry Gibbons

The Heart of Branding …

“WHAT’S OUR STORY?”

“Most companies tend to equate branding with the company’s marketing. Design a new marketing campaign and, voilà, you’re on course. They are wrong. The task is much bigger. It is about fulfilling our potential … not about a new logo, no matter how clever. WHAT IS MY MISSION IN LIFE? WHAT DO I WANT TO CONVEY TO PEOPLE? HOW DO I MAKE SURE THAT WHAT I HAVE TO OFFER THE WORLD IS ACTUALLY UNIQUE? The brand has to give of itself, the company has to give of itself, the management has to give of itself. To put it bluntly, it is a matter of whether – or not – you want to be … UNIQUE … NOW.” Jesper Kunde, Unique Now... or Never

TP’s plea: No jargon!

“EXACTLY HOW ARE WE DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT?”

“You do not merely want to be the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.” Jerry Garcia

Can Be Done in Tech: “Don’t Leave Home Without Us.” IBM* Intel Microsoft* Norton Cisco* *Clearly did not have the best technology

VII. Leadership: GO FOR IT!

Bill Parcells’ World/ Brand You World! BLAME NOBODY! EXPECT NOTHING! DO SOMETHING! NY Post (9/99)

“If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” Mario Andretti

“Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” Phil Daniels, Sydney exec

TP’s 7 Phoenix Technologies Biases 1. Great institution. 2. Great product. 3. (Potentially) great story. 4. Hopelessly under-branded. 5. Awesome opportunities—product & branding. 6. Scope ought to be expanded (dramatically)—“the Cisco of my computer’s innards.” 7. Engineering is cool—but there’s more to life. 8. Success: a marketer-to-marketer sale, not an engineer-to-engineer sale.

“Let’s make a dent in the universe.” Steve Jobs

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. Michelangelo

Thank You !