Do you see what I see? I see dinosaurs, monkeys, even cockroaches. Maybe you can't see them because you're standing too close. But to see it, you have to step back. That is the essence of strategy. Stepping back so that we can see farther away. Welcome to the segment on marketing strategy. Here we will learn what strategy means and I'll keep it really, really simple. I'll talk about mostly animals. Through these animals, I'll talk about why that stepping back, creating that distance, is another form of myopia. It's not so much a matter of height, but it's much more about distance. And it helps us to understand why this is definition and doing it properly matters so much, especially in the international marketing context. So, let's get started. Okay, let me ask by giving you rhetorical question about who is stronger? So in the left corner, I present T-Rex weighing in at 9 tons. In the right corner, we have a common cockroach weighing in at 9 grams. So on the face of it, it's no contest because one is so much bigger, the one is almost invisible. And yet, it depends on what we mean by strong because size sometimes does not matter as much. In fact, we'll learn that size can sometimes get in the way of you winning. So ultimately, it is about winning. And that's where this word strategy comes from, it comes from Greek for generals. Even though it's usually in the past mentioned as about winning wars, here it's about another type of war. It's about marketing wars, and it's about long term, who is the last man or animal standing. In other words survival. And that's where hands down, the cockroach is much, much stronger. Because we know what happened. They're still around, like it or not. I think most people don't like it. Whereas, dinosaurs have become extinct. They became extinct because of their inability to adapt to the changing environment. So survival, avoiding becoming extinct. That's not just a problem for dinosaurs. Not just for animals. It happens to companies. So this table, which is just a summary of the top ten. But if we include the top 500 Fortune companies from back in 55, and compare them to recently. Amazingly, almost 90% are gone, are gone. So the ice age, that's not just a problem for, again, animals. It can happen to companies, and that window for change is becoming much shorter. Okay, so why do companies become dinosaur-like? It's a combination of reasons. I'll get into the details later, but it's a function of size and related to that and maybe success. And really, part and parcel of that is how we define our Industry. Okay. So, what is the issue with size? Well, size in and of itself is not a problem, but it could proxy for other much more fundamental problems. Such as bureaucracy. Such as how we think about change. How we maybe lose focus on what we need to do to survive. Here in Asia, we have a lot of companies. A lot of them large companies. Here is Korea, Japan, and India as well. And when we combine even just two or three companies, we're talking about millions of people effected. That is why sometimes change or innovation can be very slow. Because you have to again, encourage all of these people to change as well. So it's not just a handful of people needing to change, but ultimately the whole organization has to change. It's like that aircraft carrier which needs a couple of kilometers to turn course. Well, companies can be like that too, so the message here is clean. Even if you're big, at least act more innovative, act or even think very small. Okay, what's the problem with success? Well, I talked about maybe standing too close, so I won't go up to the camera again. But, sometimes success breeds myopia. So we can look at the monkey and especially, the monkey trap and how monkeys were caught. A lot of people are very surprised when they see that, by their unwillingness to just let go. Let go. And I think as monkeys, or even as companies and as people, especially when we're faced with risk. Imminent risk that could effect life or death, we have to let it go. So even though we are saying, we are thinking, oh poor monkey. That monkey could be you. That's how you may be perceived from other people's eye level. They're myopia. Okay, so success can breed myopia, which is a physical condition. And there's this landmark paper written by Theodore Levitt on marketing Myopia. And what she talks about how companies and industries because Myopic, and how this lead to their demise. And so success again, like size in and of itself is not a bad thing, but we need to separate results and process. And we have to really understand why we're successful. And also, really carefully, especially from the consumer at noon looking standpoint, define our business well. In terms of what our end benefit is, what our value proposition is. And we have to be able to separate short term gain from long term risks. And when that long term risk is greater than our short term gain, again we just simply have to let it go. Okay so, issues with Business Definition. I have an example here. So [SOUND], this is a drill. So, this is actually a very famous B2B question. Which asks, what business are they in? And you my have answered, oh, they're in the drill business. No. The answer is they're in the [SOUND] hole business. Because from the consumer standpoint, that's what they want. Again, the new niche of the consumer is that they're buying holes and not the drill. And holes can be made with many other products such as an awl. So we can do it with an awl. We can do it with a computer, numerically controlled machines. We can even do it with a laser, so let's assume that this is a laser. So, we can again make holes with different kinds of technologies. But companies that are myopic and limit themselves to just what they pleasantly produce. They close their eye, they put blinders on as to what potential competition may be. Future competition that are better, that are cheaper. That are maybe, more global. Than you are. Maybe you don't have that competition at home, but lurking behind the scenes somewhere else may in fact be that competitor. So we have to learn from even maybe either I'll say this very quietly. Cockroach-like organisms or other adaptive organisms, because they're able to trans. So we'll learn about transing in a different segment. And cockroaches, I've learned, are able to even adjust. Their evaluation serve functions, and so we know of the cockroach trance where they lure them with the sugar coated bait. And some cockroaches apparently have learned to think that even though it's sweet, that it's bitter. So again they are adjusting a new niche, believe it or not. I maybe that is for the kind of risk oriented evaluation method, keep for performance index. That companies need to adapt. Even though again like that monkey, that melon seed now may seem rewarding, but that should maybe throw a red light. A red signal that it can actually be quite dangerous. So called low hanging fruit, might ultimately be very dangerous to companies. And we have to add more functions that enable us to assess that. From the international marketing standpoint, again, I think we tend to look, many companies do, at only the domestic market. But these kinds of threats may actually lie well beyond that. So don't be like that frog in the well, where you isolate yourself into thinking that you're safe. Whereas, the reality may be very different. And as we saw with the grill, you have to go beyond the product focus. You have to go beyond defining what is your competition. And also realign the organization accordingly. So this isn't just a marketing issue, it could be related to finance. It could be related to production. It could be related to an HPAR. Okay, so wrapping up, we learn that survival is looking far, in terms of what we need to survive. And we survive the adapting to the changing environment. And to do that, we have to open our minds. We need to broaden not only our height adjustment, but also distance adjustment in terms of how we look at the market. How we look at the consumer. How we look at the competition. And all of this will help us to ultimately become a survivor. And we have to adopt that sense in international marketing as well.
