Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

In assessing the impact on the marketing environment made by technology change, Kotler describes a somewhat unexpected chain of trends, products and markets created by the invention of the condom and contraceptive pill. In fact some claim contraception was one of the most influential inventions on mankind in the whole of the 20th century.
The chain:
- [...]

If you know German advertising, you’ll be familiar with the long-running campaign for the coffee brand Melitta. The slogan “Melitta macht Kaffee zum Genuss” (literally “Melitta makes coffee an indulgence”) has little to do with the content of the TV ads though. For years it’s shown a young father with his son, who regularly shirks [...]

If you’re a product manager on tomato ketchup, it’s hard to imagine that you’d need to watch the marketing environment at all closely in the area of “legal and political developments”. But you do. As Heinz discovered in the early 90s. At the time product managers spent a major amount of time involved with “P [...]

According to a Local Government Association report released in October 2007, up to 40% of packaging used by leading UK supermarkets cannot be recycled. This includes leading names like Marks & Spencer (the worst offender) but also a big German retailer: Lidl, rapped for the worst wrapping on a “standard basket of 29 goods”.
I was [...]

The classic PEST model is often adapted to include new aspects of the marketing environment such as Environmental or Demographic not separated out in the old theory.
Here’s a nice example of a German company spotting a demographic or social trend and using it to arouse interest. It’s from a series of posters describing what people [...]

Recommended reading if you want to get your mind round marketing and the challenges of business from either a general management point of view, or as a thoroughbred marketeer:
Philip Kotler: Marketing Management (12th Edition), approx $130
This is basically the bible in marketing. Kotler was in the right place at the right time when marketing theory [...]

Does language create admin? Do businesses get slowed down by the language they use internally, or with customers?
An everyday incident at work made me realise how German complicates business. Thinks: is this why German companies are being rapped over the knuckles and told to improve efficiency?
We were sending out emails to nearly 100 people. Afterwards [...]

I find myself in one of Mallorca’s few genuine holiday havens - no masses, low key, still a holiday resort, only not spoilt by modern tourism. Frequented by lots of French and a healthy mix of other nations, including many Spanish. Lovely promenade. Just right. Then… as it said in my blog at the time:
…at [...]

A call to retailers: give your customers more hassle-free shopping! No I haven’t been drinking coffee. No I’ve not got anything against old people. Just today, as a working man, it finally dawned on me.
I traipse off to the supermarket to do the shopping and there’s nothing but glue-kneed geriatrics plodding around. One of whom, [...]

Sitting in the late afternoon sunshine in the father-in-law’s back garden I am handed a cool weizen beer. Malteser. The brand I know well from a town in northern Bavaria: Amberg. There used to be 12 breweries in Amberg but with only 40,000 inhabitants some had to fall by the wayside. One of them was [...]