The Product vs The Brand

A brand is much more than a name- it represents a symbol, trademark, logo, term, sign, design or combination which distinguishes a product from others. A product is something that is made in factory but brands are those that are actually purchased by customers. When a customer thinks to buy products like: cigarettes and beer, chances are high that he will search out a particular brand of beer and a particular brand of cigarettes to buy. Even commodities like water have powerful brands as a perfect example is Evian. This brand was selling for 20 percent more than Budweiser and 80 percent more than Coca-Cola. Branding is also something timeless. (Wrigley’s, Coca-Cola etc)

On the global scale, companies are divided into two sides, those who believe that the essence of business success is in the continuing development of superior products and those who believe in branding. The product camp believes that “the brand name doesn’t matter. What counts is how the product performs.” They believe that if the product is no good, the product will fail regardless of whether the product has a good brand name or not. Well if I analyze the Consumer Reports and then check the sales rankings of the brands tested I notice little correlation between quality and branding.

Coke outsells Pepsi. Does Coca-Cola taste better than Pepsi? Yet in taste tests in the US most people prefer the taste of Pepsi.
Sure, some people will give up on some brands. They might even say things like: I would never buy a Jaguar” but frankly these opinions are seldom universal.

References:
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries and Laura Ries

Fear Sells-Are you Buying?

Nowadays marketing is mainly based on fear. Keeping the people afraid increases the consumption. We try to buy security by purchasing guns, to buy beauty by purchasing different products which combat the cellulite and pimples. Buy Colgate because if you don’t your teeth will be yellow and no one will ever talk to you. All the media, news and commercial focus on fear and this is the strategy that many firms adopt it in order to increase its profitability.

One solution is to stoke fear. Fear is a primal emotion, far older than our ability to calculate trade-offs. And when people are truly scared, they're willing to do almost anything to make that feeling go away; lots of other psychological research supports that. Any burglar alarm salesman will tell you that people buy only after they've been robbed, or after one of their neighbors has been robbed.

Fear definitely helps to sell the products much easier. Technology, Media, news makes the world look scary and horrific. How many things we buy in order to combat something?! From the anti-cellulite crème to the cell-devices that reduce the UVB, we realize that Fear is nothing but something which we don’t know anything about that fear. For example people are afraid of flying and they tend to use cars, but data shows that there is a bigger number of car crashes than the airplanes’ one. We are like in the movie screen and we must understand that if something bad happens in the world not necessarily is true or it will happen with us.

I guess if you want to be innovative, you should come up with a fear and then to create a product in order to combat it.

References:
"Beyond fear" by Bruce Schneier

Cult of Personality in Business

One of the most important assets you can develop for your business is a powerful brand. Branding is simply a more efficient way to sell things. Brands are not just logos, they represent a mixture of who you are, how you are different from the others and why customers will purchase your goods, Developing a brand is much more than picking up colors or some successful drawings. It is also based on sincerity and it should show what you are up to. All the innovations are created by users due to the tight competition which don’t notice any new demands on the market. Many of the users start to create a product for their own use which lately become on demand and transform it into a personalized brand.

Oh Mama! is a product designed specially for the pregnant women which combats the symptoms of sicknesses and many more. It was created by a couple whose the baby was on the way and they felt the need for such products.

While others create products on their behalf, some of the entrepreneurs create products for the others' happiness. For example SongVest is a grup of composers that offer the opportunity for anyone to buy and to have its own song for a low price. It basically offers the possibility for the fans to own a song or to make as a present.

Creativity and usually small businesses interact with the people all the time unlike the big corporations and it helps the enterprise to be updated with the tastes and trends of the specified target of customers. For example the t-shirt company “Threadless” offers the possibility to anyone to send the desired images to be printed on the shirts and weekly these interesting drawings are rewarded and the most important is that the customers remain loyal to the firm.

Creativity is everywhere, from the shirts, to the music, from the foods to hi-tech and the entrepreneurs should create a personalized brand through which to create a large network for the customers’ feedback.

References:

"The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding" by Al Ries and Laura Ries
http://www.threadless.com/
http://www.ohmamabar.com/

Bad Times going Good for start-ups

This weekend the entire American economy suffered another 9/11 which has been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The collapses of the Merill Lynch&C o, Lehman Brothers Inc. and one of the biggest insurance company American International Group (AIG) transformed 15th September as the Black Monday. Of course these headlines slowdown the start-ups of many enterprises but still it shouldn’t be a barrier. Let’s remember that both Bill Gates and many other entrepreneurs didn’t wait for the recession to pass before launching their products on the marker. Same thing did BMW when it increased its popularity during the 30’s crises.

The question is shall we start a small business during a bad economy? The answer I think that if the opportunity is right then anytime is the perfect. Nevertheless while starting a business always comes with risk and these periods of crisis can make a launch even harder but still it also depends on your kind of business. Sometimes it is even possible to find some reduction in costs like rents and people’s wages can be much lower.

Being a small company you feel safer due to the big companies that retire from the world markets and making the competition narrower. However the CPI decreases because people begin to worry about their finances and they will take fewer vacations, will cut back on restaurant meals, entertainment and other luxuries.

Nevertheless the most essential key to a successful business in any economy is to be carefully organized and while big companies don’t take any risks in the recession period, whereas the small start-ups are out reinventing.

sources:
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/105785/Worst-Crisis-Since-1930s-With-No-End-Yet-in-Sight
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-best-way-to-start-a-business-during-an-economic-recession.htm

Why would I consider becoming an entrepreneur?

I don’t remember exactly when it occurred the idea of becoming an entrepreneur but I guess since I was a little kid I was always up to something. It started with organizing different events within my class, then within my entire school and the last achievement for my community was founding a newspaper. Of course it represented non-profit acts but I did it for the people’s sake, for my classmates’ sake just to transform the school and life a bit more entertaining. That is the goal of entrepreneur: To make people smile, to make people happy but not doing for the competition. Let’s analyze when was the last time I bought a product to hurt a company’s competition?! That’s not why people spend money and purchase the products. In order truly to beat the competition it is necessary to establish an uplifting brand. Nothing is much more exciting than to have your freedom of having your own business, to be your own boss.

What is an entrepreneur? Last week we had a debate based on whether the entrepreneurs were born or made. I realized that being a successful entrepreneur is not based whether you were into a highly ranked school, or just because you have obtained low grades. As an entrepreneur it is essential to think fast and to be able to see the opportunities everywhere.

Nothing is much more exciting than to have your freedom of having your own business, to be your own boss and to have this amazing feeling that you will never be fired. Besides having the mad desire to succeed I guess the best quality of an entrepreneur is to be able to receive feedback and positive criticism even if it’s quite unpleasant most of the times. In order to get into this tiny room of so called business you have to be open-minded as never and to accept your inner dreams as an everyday reality.

Assignment nr. 2 (Veronica)- Formula for Success

Each and anybody can be a brilliant entrepreneur regardless the grades they have obtained at school. I strongly support the author’s point of view concerning his article upon MBA criteria. MBA, GMAT, and many other models are just some systems and there is no absolute correlation between high scores, good grades and money.-Thomas Stanley ( A Millionaire next door)
Being a good entrepreneur has nothing to do whether you had good grades or no especially if we analyze the statistics. I will mention just some of the businesses that were founded by people who performed poorly this system or not at all.
Dell, Microsoft, Yahoo, Napster, Netscape, Rolling Stone magazine, Apple.

Over 50% of Fortune 500 company CEO’s had C or C- averages in college.source:( http://www.rbcdothan.org/LunchPower/The_Power_of_Passion.htm)

As an entrepreneur you must have the spark, a mad desire and none of the systems contribute to this. All of these tests support the idea that profits are the only goal and everything is transformed in a law which we all must follow in order to complete the success formula.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We must explore our burning desire because being successful it is a human right available for us and none of these grading systems can actually change this. It is even worse, because people who can not fit into this system have a low esteem. Sometimes choosing the common path can be more risky and more competitive than ever before. There is nothing more powerful than creating your own dream, goal and following it till the end.

The second article “The Weird Ideas of Creativity” by Robert Sutton brings old ideas in new ways. Sometimes creativity can make the environment more pleasant and in such a way can be broken the TGIF system (Thank God is Friday/Five) and boredom becomes a passion. Even if the ideas seem creative I don’t necessarily believe any of these except the two of them. First of all I would follow the idea of forgetting the past because in order to struggle in the markets it is necessary to innovate itself and only the past mistakes should be remembered.

The last but not the least, I enjoyed the idea that supports the avoidance of talking about money because making a business work it needs passion and drive.

References: MBA admission Criteria and an Entrepreneurial Mind-Set: Evidence from "Western" Style MBA's in India and Thailand by Sheperd, Douglas and Fitzsimmons

"The Weird Rules of Creativity" by Robert Sutton

Assignment nr. 1 (Veronica)- Team of Heroes

Being an entrepreneur you have the complete freedom to dictate when, where, how, with whom to work on. This freedom also offers the possibility to choose your own staff. Hiring employees and transforming it into a creative team is both challenging and difficult.

First I would apply one of the weird ideas by Robert Sutton like hiring people with various educational backgrounds who can personify freedom and creativity. I would accept people who have drive and passion. A creative team transforms environment from boredom into excitement and pessimism into optimism. The staff members included in my company would necessarily improve their skills in: Emotional Intelligence (EQ), Productive Meeting Management, Working Styles and Creativity. Creative individuals have several features that distinguish them from the others by having an enriched knowledge and well-developed skills and of course they find work extremely motivating. (The Entrepreneurial Venture- 2nd edition)Greatness and Innovation is there, within each one of us, waiting to be born and fear turns into courage and confidence. Hiring employees is like recruiting a team full of heroes and fighters that can have the capacity to create and innovate. Collective work means continually offering to employees for more complex tasks and enhancing great work flexibility.

Secondly, I will let my staff to create because I can not dictate the objectives because in such manner the final product may suffer. The creative process can be guided but not controlled because creative people have their own way of making things.

The last but not the least, I will let them solve some issues within the enterprise because it will increase the enthusiasm and also to reward the employees in order to create a more motivating environment.

My first aim in a group environment is to eliminate the fear, confusion and stress in order to achieve the needed creativity process. The stuff’s output depends largely only on the entrepreneur and the team will be creative as long as the people from management will allow them to be.