Underserved Segments
Another way marketers try to break out of the commodity mess is to tailor the product, channel, and brand message to "underserved" market segments. This is how Wal*Mart had its first success: while Sears and everyone else battled for the suburban market, Sam Walton built stores in small cities away from urban centers. He had less competition in those areas and did not have to unseat entrenched competitors like Sears. The hokiness of the advertising and the stores reflected the fact that Wal*mart was not trying to win over New York "sophisticates", but a more traditional demographic.
Friday, April 04, 2003
Brand Positioning
To be successful and break away from the pack, a product needs to be different in some way. It is not necessary that the differentiator be relevant or make the product objectively "better". Even "irrelevant" attributes can drive consumer perceptions. Two common examples given are the beautiful color of Perdue chicken (has nothing to do with taste or freshness, it comes from feeding the chickens marigold petals) and Folger crystals (no reason it makes the "coffee" taste better, but Folgers is the only one with crystals while every one else has powder).
Almost by definition to be better is to be different. It is easier to convince consumers that you are better if you also show them that you are tangibly different.
To be successful and break away from the pack, a product needs to be different in some way. It is not necessary that the differentiator be relevant or make the product objectively "better". Even "irrelevant" attributes can drive consumer perceptions. Two common examples given are the beautiful color of Perdue chicken (has nothing to do with taste or freshness, it comes from feeding the chickens marigold petals) and Folger crystals (no reason it makes the "coffee" taste better, but Folgers is the only one with crystals while every one else has powder).
Almost by definition to be better is to be different. It is easier to convince consumers that you are better if you also show them that you are tangibly different.
Words Fail Me
From William Saletan of Slate
the liberation of Jessica Lynch is a 24-hour mediathon. We’re celebrating her rescue for the worst of all reasons: because she’s American.
From William Saletan of Slate
the liberation of Jessica Lynch is a 24-hour mediathon. We’re celebrating her rescue for the worst of all reasons: because she’s American.
Thursday, April 03, 2003
Armed Young Men in Uniform
One Hand Clapping looks at the crowning glory of the American soldier in WWII and today: they bring gifts and freedom, not destruction and slavery. You have to read it.
One Hand Clapping looks at the crowning glory of the American soldier in WWII and today: they bring gifts and freedom, not destruction and slavery. You have to read it.
Why Chirac Did It
Interesting discussion over at asymmetrical information on the motives behind France's opposition to our Iraq policy
Read the comments... there are a lot of ideas brewing there.
My two cents:
1) Old Europe has more continuity in its governing class than does the US. Their national leaders tend to share similar outlooks and personalities. This led Chirac to underestimate Bush 43's resolve compared to Clinton or Bush '41.
2. Institutions versus sentiments. France stirred up ill will in the US and "new Europe" rose in our esteem. But two years from now America will forget who was with us and who was not. France knows she will still be in charge of the institutions of the EU.
Interesting discussion over at asymmetrical information on the motives behind France's opposition to our Iraq policy
Read the comments... there are a lot of ideas brewing there.
My two cents:
1) Old Europe has more continuity in its governing class than does the US. Their national leaders tend to share similar outlooks and personalities. This led Chirac to underestimate Bush 43's resolve compared to Clinton or Bush '41.
2. Institutions versus sentiments. France stirred up ill will in the US and "new Europe" rose in our esteem. But two years from now America will forget who was with us and who was not. France knows she will still be in charge of the institutions of the EU.
Just saying is all
PFC Lynch has a brother in the service. Which means the Lynch family of Palestine, WV has contributed almost as many soldiers to the war against terror as did the Princeton class of 2002.
And another thing, that awful idea for a reality series-- the Real Beverly Hillbillies-- basically the producers are talking about dropping people like the Lynch family into a lala-land mansion so we can laugh at their attempts to cope.
The concept for this particular "reality" show is to find a rural Appalachian family of diminished economic means and send them to live in Beverly Hills for the amusement of a network television audience.
Cameras would record the poor "hick" family's every faux pas, their astonishment at modern appliances, their ignorance of even the most basic essentials, such as Guccis and Rolex watches.
"Imagine the episode where they have to interview maids," one CBS executive famously gloated.
Sometimes i miss Andy Jackson. He would have known how to deal with this executive.
But i will close with some words from Tom Wolfe.
In the Korean War there were 78 Medal of honor winners. 32 of them were from the South, and practically all of the 32 were from small towns in or near the Appalachians. The New York metropolitan area, which has more people than all these towns put together, had three Medal of Honor winners, and one of them had just moved to New York from the Appalachian region of West Virginia.
PFC Lynch has a brother in the service. Which means the Lynch family of Palestine, WV has contributed almost as many soldiers to the war against terror as did the Princeton class of 2002.
And another thing, that awful idea for a reality series-- the Real Beverly Hillbillies-- basically the producers are talking about dropping people like the Lynch family into a lala-land mansion so we can laugh at their attempts to cope.
The concept for this particular "reality" show is to find a rural Appalachian family of diminished economic means and send them to live in Beverly Hills for the amusement of a network television audience.
Cameras would record the poor "hick" family's every faux pas, their astonishment at modern appliances, their ignorance of even the most basic essentials, such as Guccis and Rolex watches.
"Imagine the episode where they have to interview maids," one CBS executive famously gloated.
Sometimes i miss Andy Jackson. He would have known how to deal with this executive.
But i will close with some words from Tom Wolfe.
In the Korean War there were 78 Medal of honor winners. 32 of them were from the South, and practically all of the 32 were from small towns in or near the Appalachians. The New York metropolitan area, which has more people than all these towns put together, had three Medal of Honor winners, and one of them had just moved to New York from the Appalachian region of West Virginia.
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Couldn't let this pass
From over at the Command Post:The Gurkhas Have Arrived
They are in Iraq, some of the most legendary fighters in history.
I can highly recommend Byron Farwell's The Gurkhas as an entertaining and informative history.
George MacDonald Fraser, in Quartered Safe Out Here, talks about them as a soldier who fought side by side with them.
but having tea with the Gurkhas is something special, for they radiate a cheer and good-fellowship that has to be experienced, and once you have, you understand why British soldiers have always held them in an affection that is pretty close to love."
*****
"No one would have dreamed of taking offense [at their pranks]; it would have been downright cruel, for the Gurkha was as eager to please as a playful grandchild. The thought of quarreling with one of them never even occurred-- for one thing, you'd be better picking a fight with a king cobra.
That was a thing that was often hard to remember: that this delightful little man, with his ungainly walk and protruding backside and impish grin, who barely came up to your shoulder and was one of nature's born comedians, was also probably the most fatal fighting man on earth. Their reckless courage was legendary.
*********
I was once privileged to watch, from a distance, a company of them attacking a Japanese position. There was a Highland unit on their left....and I was profoundly glad that I was not Japanese. One of the Highlanders told me later that when they came out again they found the ground before the position littered with Gurkha rifles: most of them had gone in with kukris alone.
During the Falkland War, i remember reading about a journalist who asked a Gurkha officer why they were sharpening their kukris (heavy, curved fighting knives) before battle. His reply-- because we don't have time to sharpen them during battle.
From over at the Command Post:The Gurkhas Have Arrived
They are in Iraq, some of the most legendary fighters in history.
I can highly recommend Byron Farwell's The Gurkhas as an entertaining and informative history.
George MacDonald Fraser, in Quartered Safe Out Here, talks about them as a soldier who fought side by side with them.
but having tea with the Gurkhas is something special, for they radiate a cheer and good-fellowship that has to be experienced, and once you have, you understand why British soldiers have always held them in an affection that is pretty close to love."
*****
"No one would have dreamed of taking offense [at their pranks]; it would have been downright cruel, for the Gurkha was as eager to please as a playful grandchild. The thought of quarreling with one of them never even occurred-- for one thing, you'd be better picking a fight with a king cobra.
That was a thing that was often hard to remember: that this delightful little man, with his ungainly walk and protruding backside and impish grin, who barely came up to your shoulder and was one of nature's born comedians, was also probably the most fatal fighting man on earth. Their reckless courage was legendary.
*********
I was once privileged to watch, from a distance, a company of them attacking a Japanese position. There was a Highland unit on their left....and I was profoundly glad that I was not Japanese. One of the Highlanders told me later that when they came out again they found the ground before the position littered with Gurkha rifles: most of them had gone in with kukris alone.
During the Falkland War, i remember reading about a journalist who asked a Gurkha officer why they were sharpening their kukris (heavy, curved fighting knives) before battle. His reply-- because we don't have time to sharpen them during battle.
Some Times It's All about Them
There is a school of thought that believes the embedded reporters are inherently biased in a pro-war direction, (for example, see here).
What is not often discussed is how professional ambitions make journalists defeatists. When wars go well, the uniformed military receives the praise. It is they who enter into history. We remember Nimitz and Patton, not the correspondents who wrote dispatches about the victories at Midway and Bastogne.
In contrast, Vietnam made the careers of David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, and Neil Sheehan. Exposing military failure and atrocities makes the journalist the hero not the chronicler. It is a powerful temptation, one which could cause a reporter to lose proportion and distort the meaning of events. Yet this is not something that seems to get discussed much.
There is a school of thought that believes the embedded reporters are inherently biased in a pro-war direction, (for example, see here).
What is not often discussed is how professional ambitions make journalists defeatists. When wars go well, the uniformed military receives the praise. It is they who enter into history. We remember Nimitz and Patton, not the correspondents who wrote dispatches about the victories at Midway and Bastogne.
In contrast, Vietnam made the careers of David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, and Neil Sheehan. Exposing military failure and atrocities makes the journalist the hero not the chronicler. It is a powerful temptation, one which could cause a reporter to lose proportion and distort the meaning of events. Yet this is not something that seems to get discussed much.
PA Blogger
I received an email from Lane Core, Jr. who writes the view from the core. Turns out he is from Washington county. Check out his site, especially his pictures from the Flight 93 memorial.
I received an email from Lane Core, Jr. who writes the view from the core. Turns out he is from Washington county. Check out his site, especially his pictures from the Flight 93 memorial.
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Real Life Spy Story
It appears that Mark Riebling written a real life spy thriller. Check out the first couple chapters here
It appears that Mark Riebling written a real life spy thriller. Check out the first couple chapters here
Television News in Perspective
Fifty-seven boxes were recently returned to the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya in Zeit trucks—large Russian military vehicles—by the Iraqi government authorities. Each box contained a dead child, eyes gouged out and ashen white, apparently drained of blood. The families were not given their children, were forced to accept a communal grave and then had to pay 150 dinars for the burial.
—London Sunday Observer, 1987
When the man responsible for such an atrocity—one among many others and not by any means the worst—appears on American television to talk to “America’s most respected newsman” about his hopes and fears, his devotion to his people, his respect for American leaders, and his strong religious faith, is it then just a matter of good manners not to mention the dead children, like John Cleese’s character in “Fawlty Towers” not mentioning the war to his German guests? Presumably Dan Rather, who recently (as he puts it) “found himself” interviewing Saddam Hussein in one of the latter’s presidential palaces in Baghdad, would say that it was. And, unlike Basil Fawlty, Rather was far too slick to get caught inadvertently mentioning his interlocutor’s career as a mass murderer.
James Bowman in the latest New Criterion. The rest of it is here.
Fifty-seven boxes were recently returned to the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya in Zeit trucks—large Russian military vehicles—by the Iraqi government authorities. Each box contained a dead child, eyes gouged out and ashen white, apparently drained of blood. The families were not given their children, were forced to accept a communal grave and then had to pay 150 dinars for the burial.
—London Sunday Observer, 1987
When the man responsible for such an atrocity—one among many others and not by any means the worst—appears on American television to talk to “America’s most respected newsman” about his hopes and fears, his devotion to his people, his respect for American leaders, and his strong religious faith, is it then just a matter of good manners not to mention the dead children, like John Cleese’s character in “Fawlty Towers” not mentioning the war to his German guests? Presumably Dan Rather, who recently (as he puts it) “found himself” interviewing Saddam Hussein in one of the latter’s presidential palaces in Baghdad, would say that it was. And, unlike Basil Fawlty, Rather was far too slick to get caught inadvertently mentioning his interlocutor’s career as a mass murderer.
James Bowman in the latest New Criterion. The rest of it is here.
The Pause
It is clear that many journalists and commentators believe that the pause in our advance from the south toward Baghdad is a bad thing. It is also pretty clear that they have no idea why this is so.
Many times a pause in the advance does help the defense and hurt the offensive. This happened to the Germans in 1914 after the battle of the Marne and to the Allies in the autumn of 1944 when we could not supply our divisions in France and were unable to finish the German armies in the West. In these two cases, the retreating forces were able to stop, resupply, integrate reinforcements into their order of battle, build new defensive works, and restore command and control.
But this is not some law of nature. Clausewitz warned of the "culminating point of victory" beyond which the attacker becomes weak and vulnerable to a counter-stroke. There are circumstances when a pause is preferable to continuing the pursuit. For example, many historians believe that the Germans would have been much better off in 1941 to stop well short of Moscow. That would have allowed them to dig-in, build up their supplies for the winter, and choose the ground where the Russians would have to begin their counter-offensives.
The key question is this: whose side is time on?
The RG is already in defensive lines of their choosing. Each day of bombing weakens those lines.
Each day our troops receive more supplies. I doubt that there is very much moving out of Baghdad in the face of our air interdiction.
Each day more Iraqi soldiers grasp Saddam's strategic poverty and realize the hopelessness of their situation.
It is clear that many journalists and commentators believe that the pause in our advance from the south toward Baghdad is a bad thing. It is also pretty clear that they have no idea why this is so.
Many times a pause in the advance does help the defense and hurt the offensive. This happened to the Germans in 1914 after the battle of the Marne and to the Allies in the autumn of 1944 when we could not supply our divisions in France and were unable to finish the German armies in the West. In these two cases, the retreating forces were able to stop, resupply, integrate reinforcements into their order of battle, build new defensive works, and restore command and control.
But this is not some law of nature. Clausewitz warned of the "culminating point of victory" beyond which the attacker becomes weak and vulnerable to a counter-stroke. There are circumstances when a pause is preferable to continuing the pursuit. For example, many historians believe that the Germans would have been much better off in 1941 to stop well short of Moscow. That would have allowed them to dig-in, build up their supplies for the winter, and choose the ground where the Russians would have to begin their counter-offensives.
The key question is this: whose side is time on?
The RG is already in defensive lines of their choosing. Each day of bombing weakens those lines.
Each day our troops receive more supplies. I doubt that there is very much moving out of Baghdad in the face of our air interdiction.
Each day more Iraqi soldiers grasp Saddam's strategic poverty and realize the hopelessness of their situation.
Higher Education
Many if not most of our "elite" universities believe themselves to be morally superior to our armed forces. Some will not permit ROTC on campus (see here for more on that issue.) Their tenured faculty is a hospitable home to people like Dr. De Genova at Columbia ("one million Mogadishus").
Right now, the Left is so deeply dug-in there that the Academy is the equivalent of French-occupied territory.
Doesn't have to be that way. The ROTC issue is the easiest to address. Harvard and the rest are receive tens of millions of dollars in federal money-- research grants, student loans, student grants. That means that Congress can require that they admit ROTC on campus or cease to be eligible for those programs. Why Republicans have passed on this issue is a puzzle.
The problem of the anti-American faculty is not as easily dealt with. Legislation is out of the question, and Columbia doesn't care about public opinion: they only care about the opinions of their faculty, donors, and prospective students.
Although, in some political races it might be fun to make a candidate defend the statements of professors from his alma mater, especially if said candidate attempted to make his education an issue or was a fund-raiser for the schools endowment. It may or may not get traction, but it would be a way to send a message that would eventually get the schools attention.
Many if not most of our "elite" universities believe themselves to be morally superior to our armed forces. Some will not permit ROTC on campus (see here for more on that issue.) Their tenured faculty is a hospitable home to people like Dr. De Genova at Columbia ("one million Mogadishus").
Right now, the Left is so deeply dug-in there that the Academy is the equivalent of French-occupied territory.
Doesn't have to be that way. The ROTC issue is the easiest to address. Harvard and the rest are receive tens of millions of dollars in federal money-- research grants, student loans, student grants. That means that Congress can require that they admit ROTC on campus or cease to be eligible for those programs. Why Republicans have passed on this issue is a puzzle.
The problem of the anti-American faculty is not as easily dealt with. Legislation is out of the question, and Columbia doesn't care about public opinion: they only care about the opinions of their faculty, donors, and prospective students.
Although, in some political races it might be fun to make a candidate defend the statements of professors from his alma mater, especially if said candidate attempted to make his education an issue or was a fund-raiser for the schools endowment. It may or may not get traction, but it would be a way to send a message that would eventually get the schools attention.
Sort of makes freedom fries look mild
Iraq protesters deface British war monument in France
Vandals have defaced one of the biggest British war cemeteries in northern France with graffiti condemning the US-British invasion of Iraq, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) said.
The words "Rosbifs [British] go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood" were painted in French over the base of the cemetery's main monument - an obelisk topped by a cross.
On one side was a swastika and the words "death to the Yankees".
Also daubed were the words "dig up your garbage, it is fouling our soil," and "Bush, Blair to the TPI (International Court of Justice)".
Charming.
Iraq protesters deface British war monument in France
Vandals have defaced one of the biggest British war cemeteries in northern France with graffiti condemning the US-British invasion of Iraq, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) said.
The words "Rosbifs [British] go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood" were painted in French over the base of the cemetery's main monument - an obelisk topped by a cross.
On one side was a swastika and the words "death to the Yankees".
Also daubed were the words "dig up your garbage, it is fouling our soil," and "Bush, Blair to the TPI (International Court of Justice)".
Charming.
News, bad news, good news, bad news
Pejman has moved here.
Unfortunately, in the move he dropped the Sam Adams quote in his title banner and replaced it with one from Teddy Roosevelt. The Adams quote was what first told me that his was a blog of distinction.
But that means i could use it as part of my title section since he isn't using it anymore.
Except, i can't make it work when i try to incorporate it into my template.
So anyway, here it is:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams
Pejman has moved here.
Unfortunately, in the move he dropped the Sam Adams quote in his title banner and replaced it with one from Teddy Roosevelt. The Adams quote was what first told me that his was a blog of distinction.
But that means i could use it as part of my title section since he isn't using it anymore.
Except, i can't make it work when i try to incorporate it into my template.
So anyway, here it is:
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams
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