B2B marketing
Economic Outlook: Extreme Outbursts Predict Market Jumps as GDP Slumps
While last week’s Economic Outlook luncheon hosted by the Executives’ Club painted a rather dull picture for the U.S. economy in 2012, the event was anything but boring. The panelists exhibited emotional extremes, laid explosive blame and presented outrageous solutions and predictions as each delivered a relatively similar forecast of anemic 2% growth in the GDP along with an optimistic upswing in the stock market.
Diane Swonk, Chief Economist at Mesirow Financial began her comments by blaming today’s global ills on men and the lack of women leaders. She also believes we should insist on Santorini as collateral should the Euro zone melt down. One of her biggest concerns is that Europe could derail us.
“Decoupling is a myth,” said Swonk. “When one major economy falters, the whole world falters.”
However, she believes the euro will survive, because the cost of it failing would be greater than the cost of continuing the Euro zone.
She forecasts the U.S. economy will grow at 2.25% and the Dow Jones industrial average will end up at 13,500 this year. Her prediction for last year, that the Dow would end up between 12,500 and 12,700 was pretty close. Continue reading
Municipal Electricity Aggregation – A Customer Acquisition Silver Bullet?
This has been an exciting year for electricity providers in Illinois. Competition to acquire new customers has been fierce. In fact, many providers, having just introduced themselves to consumers, are claiming success. Early on, these wins came through marketing campaigns that drove brand awareness and enticed residential customers to switch via money-saving offers. As we wrap up the year, a new phase has emerged.
Providers are now heavily courting municipalities. Municipal aggregation efforts have significantly gained in importance. An enormous amount of outreach by providers and broker organizations have helped educate communities on how residents would benefit and how village boards might realize a boost to their bottom line along the way.
And while it may have started with a handful of communities, voters in several Northern Illinois municipalities have passed referenda approving the process for aggregation and many more are poised to follow. The deadline to pass a board ordinance to place a referendum on the March 20, 2012 ballot is December 31st, and over 100 townships and districts in Northern Illinois alone are on the membership list of the top-ranking broker organizations specializing in aggregation.
The energy providers competing in this space embrace aggregation opportunities enthusiastically. They view it as a cost-effective avenue to acquire customers and as a way around having to spend money to build a brand and consumer trust. But there are significant perils to that approach. First, it’s a winner take all scenario, and to date, only a small number of providers are winning these bids. That means many energy providers competing for aggregation are coming up empty. Secondly, these efforts put the providers who do not win the bid in a situation where marketing becomes even more critical. That’s because they are faced with the challenge of convincing residents in aggregated communities that they can still switch. But those marketing efforts will require more education, surgical and targeted application, and offers that extend value far beyond price. Differentiation through value proposition development is something the entire industry has yet to focus on, and prefers to ignore. It’s the hard work that has to be addressed and thanks to aggregation the time to tackle it is now.
Private label continues the march
The Private Label Trade Show was a big event last week here in Chicago. This year’s show was a major endeavor, with over 2,000 exhibitors representing a mind-boggling
assortment of food, beverage, wellness and home goods products. From high-end chocolates to pork rinds … even organics, one in four products purchased today are store brands – a category growing twice as fast as national brands.
So, what drives the consumer to buy private label? While the private label industry shed the “cheap bland generic” image long ago, store brands are still a bargain. Without the heavy spending on advertising and promotion, store brands won big during the last recession.
A 2011 Mintel study found that nearly half of respondents believe that store branded products are of better quality today than they were five years ago. And over 60% of shoppers believe that there’s no real difference between name brand and private label in the key categories of dairy, canned and shelf-stable products.
What impressed me most about the products on display at the PLMIA show is the move toward higher quality, more innovative products that store brands are seeking. Many retailers have invested in their own brand reputation that impacts the perception of the items that carry their name … often, products with enhanced health and wellness attributes as differentiators. Trust your retailer, trust their brand. Trader Joe’s has made a fortune on that philosophy.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the plethora of “sanitary wipes”, particularly the one pictured here. In chocolate!
Not sure I’d ever buy that, no matter what the label. What store branded “labels” or products do you buy?
Mobile – the NEW Lead Generation Tool
One just needs to observe pedestrians walking down the street to see how mobile devices have drastically changed our behavior from information-on-demand (the desktop model) to information-always-available (the mobile model). Smartphone users have developed a relentless habit for immediate access to information and stored entertainment. “What did we do without it” never rang truer than for mobile devices that provide us constantly flowing email and messaging, mapping and location based services, and on-the-fly reference resources. By the way, 17% of smartphone owners have bumped into someone accidentally this past week, so please keep your head up.
The implications of this behavior-shift significantly affect marketing plans targeting prospective new students. Here’s what you should know. Continue reading
Utilities Ignore their Customers at their Own Risk
I just read a blog post by Phil Carson, Editor-in-Chief of Intelligent Utility Daily, in which he says that an associate of his had been told by more than one CEO of a utility company that they are a monopoly and don’t need to listen to their customers or partake in any sort of real customer “engagement.”
That a CEO of a regulated monopoly said something like this shouldn’t come as a real surprise to anyone. As our research has shown, utilities are not thought of as the most progressive or forward-thinking of companies, and are probably not at the top of anyone’s “best customer service” list. And so far, consumers have been seeing that the only “smart” part of the smart grid seems to be utility facing, with few evident customer benefits.
In my conversations with electric utility representatives, they have a hard time explaining how customers would benefit beyond “a reduction in outages.” That’s nothing to sneeze at, but if you live in an area that experiences one or two outages a year, are you really going to see a difference?
The same goes for smart meters. There’s been a lot of pushback from customers and communities on utilities’ plans to install smart meters. We’ve seen that a lot of reticence over these meters comes from utilities not fully explaining the benefits to customers or deploying meters that don’t provide significant perceived value to customers. Again, the “you’re a captive audience, we don’t need to engage with you” mentality is at play here. But again – this should not be a surprise: in the utility-customer relationship, the party that has a vested interest in reducing or being more efficient with energy use: the customer. Continue reading
The Superbowl of Wind Farms
In 2000, the wind power generated in the USA was only 2,472.5 Megawatts, and that mostly coming off the wind farms in northern California. Activity then was predominantly in 15 states with California clearly the front runner. Since then, wind generating capacity has increased by 1571%.
Today, the race is on with 38 states accounting for some measurable amount of wind power generation, now topping 42,432 Megawatts. Wind power generation has quadrupled in ten years, an astonishing number considering the federal and local regulatory hurdles proponents face, not to mention community resistance often the result of lack of education and understanding of the issues.
It might be surprising to many that the Midwest collectively provides 34% of the national output of wind generation. Only Texas comes close to challenging that output.
So the race is on…the Superbowl of wind power, if you will. Who are the players?
Note: neither Illinois nor Washington accounted for any wind generation in 2000.
Illinois has been the fastest gainer, with 2173% increase since 2005 and 19% increase over last year. However, reportedly Deepwater Wind is planning a 1GW installation of 200 turbines to be operational off Rhode Island by 2014. And then there’s the 40 turbine project being considered in Lake Michigan off Evanston, Illinois
Yes, the race to the Superbowl of wind farms is on.
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