Compassion is the ability to understand and communicate that we recognize each other as fallible human beings. It means that we understand that people make mistakes, sometimes fail, and do not always live up to their potential or to our expectations. Dealing with our strengths and weaknesses as people and doing so with dignity and respect for others are all part of compassion. When we do not judge others and are sensitive to their situations, we build trust with them, opening the door for them to be honest and straightforward with us.
While candor refers to the accuracy of communication, credibility refers to the intent of the person offering it. A person’s motive for sharing information with you speaks to his credibility.Are his motives self-serving? Is he giving you information to make others look bad? Partners that are not credible limit trust because people must sift through the message to understand the intent. Once partners weaken their credibility, their effectiveness and that of the partnership are severely damaged.
Whenever you move from “I” to “we” in a partnership, trust issues emerge. Unless partners can reach a consensus, they’ll find that power plays, egos, conflicting agendas, and other disruptive dynamics can take over even well-intentioned partnerships and spin them into chaos and dysfunction. Trust is absolutely essential for working through these complex human dynamics.
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The majority of price movements that is caused by a rating action is explained by new information which is revealed at the time of the rating action. Typically companies reserve the right to hold back certain information from investors, clients, business partners and competitors. This can be long-term projections, business plans or internal analyses. Usually rating agencies have access to internal documents during their rating process. Therefore, the rating of a company reflects more information than available to the public and to institutional investors such as mutual funds or insurance companies. A rating change itself is therefore an information about a change of a company’s credit quality because it incorporates nonpublic information.
Thought needs to be given to how one avoids head-on confrontation with the market leader, the brand with the most to lose. The market leader can be expected to react strongly against newcomers with the aim of crushing them before they have a chance to get established. The brand that is attacking the market leader therefore needs a valuable, attention-grabbing benefit or distinguishing feature, and the ability to convey its message convincingly. Once a position has been taken, the decisions that follow should ensure that it is consistently defended. Consistency is essential: positioning means striving for leadership in one particular area. Another important decision is therefore the choice of a powerful and simple message. For example, Volkswagen launched the Beetle in the United States with the slogan “Small is Beautiful” and for many years Mars bars purported to help you “Work, Rest and Play” (particularly if eaten every day). But you must know how the message will be received. Often the best way to establish a position is to associate with something that may already be in people’s minds. An example is customers’ desire for value, highlighted by low-cost airlines, such as easyJet, Ryanair and South-West Airlines, which emphasise their no-frills service and low prices.
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Positioning depends first on finding a niche or part of the market where there is space to establish a profitable position. To discover whether one exists requires an understanding of the trends and factors influencing the market.
How best to focus on the customer is another important decision. How will potential customers react to the message or offer? Or, to put it another way, what message will have the greatest impact on the customer? With positioning decisions, timing is important. First movers have a head start and can get to know the market in detail and build a strong customer-base, ideally establishing a rapport with customers. Brands that are not the first mover should endeavour to launch when the market leader is weak or quiet, or both.
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When Dupont, an industrial conglomerate, realised that it was not selling enough fibres for use in the carpeting industry, it decided to look at the whole value chain: carpet manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors (retailers) and customers. It found that many customers preferred tiles or wooden floors for ease of maintenance and durability, but also because of unsatisfactory experiences with carpet retailers.
Reasons for their dissatisfaction included inconvenient locations, unimpressive ranges, lack of samples, unreliable delivery and poor fitting. Dupont changed its division from carpet fibre to flooring systems and started to think more of the decorative and fashion features of carpets, rather than just the functional ones (robustness, stain resistance, durability, noise and heat insulation). Consequently, it developed information for the whole value chain, including new information and advertising for customers on how to buy and maintain carpeting, and the Dupont hotline for retailers, providing answers for consumer questions.
Dupont’s expertise on products, selling and understanding consumers was also available to retailers on video, and the company provided information on market trends for carpet manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers.
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The concept of positioning relates to how a product is perceived by customers relative to its competitors. It originated in the advertising industry as a way of identifying those attributes of a product that should be placed in the buyer’s consciousness. For example, a product may be positioned as inexpensive, innovative, old fashioned, prestigious, high quality or any of a multitude of other attributes. Positioning influences attitudes to and perceptions of a product or company brand, rather than changing the product itself. The value of positioning decisions is that they increase awareness of a company’s or product’s capabilities. Positioning can refresh or reinforce an existing brand or explain a specific concept. It links closely with such things as brand management, competitive strategy, pricing, segmentation and market entry strategies.
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This links with the next advantage: the ability of brands to build customer loyalty, again because of the trust and even affection that they can generate. Customer groups can identify preferred brands easily, becoming repeat purchasers. A classic example is the old adage “no one ever got fired for buying ibm”. In this extreme case, even when consumers did not necessarily like the product, they still respected the brand.
Another advantage of brands is that businesses can launch profitable new products with a flying start by exploiting the popularity and strength of an established brand. Cherry Coke and Diet Coke are examples of this approach, where the strong, established Coca-Cola brand (probably one of the strongest commercial brands in history) underpinned the launch of these two new drinks. This reinforced the brand still further by attacking the competition, adding another dimension to the brand (innovation) and developing new markets (such as the diet soda market). There are two benefits: brands often make it easier to introduce new products by exploiting “brand equity”; and they provide opportunities to open up new market segments. For example, food manufacturers often exploit their position to create sub-brands of diet versions (such as an established yogurt manufacturer successfully launching a low-fat product).
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