Fat Copycats

©2015 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"Imitation is not only more abundant than innovation, but actually a much more prevalent road to business growth and profits."  -- Theodore Levitt, 1966, a late marketing professor at the Harvard Business School

Opinions Matter in the Global Marketplace

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Companies who ignore customer feedback risk their very survival.  As the late Theodore Levitt once said, "One of the surest signs of a bad or declining relationship is the absence of complaints from a customer.  Nobody is ever that satisfied, especially not over an extended period of time.  The customer is either not being candid or not being contacted.  Probably both."  (Source:  Theodore Levitt, "After the Sale is Over ...," Harvard Business Review, September 1983, http://hbr.org/1983/09/after-the-sale-is-over).

Enter Irish company Instant Opinion with its QnA product that offers a private and secure way to capture event interaction in real-time.  And, they've allegedly gone global with contracts secured, for example, with the Canadian government and the NUI Maynooth Innovation Value Institute (IVI) Spring Summit in New York.

What's QnA do?

It's a tool that enables you to capture both positive and negative customer feedback and deal with any issues before they get shared with the world.  Further:

Because the system is real-time, the service provider can respond and react to this feedback immediately, resolving the issue for the customer and ensuring that the customer leaves happy.

Oh how Professor Levitt would love this.

Read more:  Irish Company Instant Opinion's real-time engagement product goes global

Visit:  Instant Opinion

Acceptance and Respectability of Global Marketing

Photo courtesy:  ©Laurel J. Delaney

Revisiting the work of one of my favorite thought leaders who was an academic at Harvard Business School for some 30 years and started teaching marketing there at a time when, legend has it, he had never previously read a book on the subject.

That's my theory about everything, you must jump right in to master something. Similar to taking your business global!

Learn more about Theodore Levitt (they need to spell his name right) here.  And just a tad more on what folks say about him:

Levitt is sometimes credited with coining the term “globalization” in a 1983 article, “The Globalization of Markets."  Although the term had undoubtedly been in use before—The New York Times said it was used in other senses “at least as early as 1944”—it was Levitt who first popularized (marketed?) it as referring to the spread of corporations around the globe.

Related articles:

Managing Brands in Global Markets: One Size Doesn't Fit All

Global Managers:  Is There Such a Thing Anymore? 

Note:  They've corrected the misspelling of Levitt's name from Leavitt to Levitt (6/4/12 at 11:24 a.m. CDT)

Global Managers: Is There Such a Thing Anymore?

Photo credit: Laurel Delaney

Death of a salesman.  The Death of the Global Manager?  Not so fast and not so sure here.  I don't believe defining managers as "global" is a dead concept.

Meanwhile, Julia Hanna makes her case with:  The Death of the Global Manager for HBS Working Knowledge.  As always, the comments are more telling than anything.  Add yours if you like.

But let's not forget one of my favorite Harvard Business articles that I pulled (dusted off) from my library shelf:  The Globalization of Markets (pictured) by Theodore Levitt. Oh if Theodore were alive today ... what would he say?

And there's Customizing Global Marketing (1986)

Harvard Professor Who Coined "Globalization" Dies

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One of my favorite people (minds) on the planet and the person who coined the term "globalization" died at age 81: Theodore Levitt. The reason why Professor Levitt became such a force in my life was because in the '80s -- before any individual or company was thinking about going global -- he turned me on to the importance of looking at the world as your market. He also knew how to deconstruct and solve problems by asking the right questions. Something to this day I still find myself doing. Here are some things I will remember the most about Levitt:

• Harvard Business Review -- He holds the record with Peter Drucker for publishing the most articles in HBR.

• What turned me on to Levitt -- "The Globalization of Markets" and five other great articles authored by HBR talents.

Using the term "globalization" in a 1983 Harvard Business Review article about the emergence of standardized, low-priced consumer products. He defined that globalization as the changes in social behaviors and technology which allowed companies to sell the same products around the world.

• Marketing Myopia -- HBR Classic: A groundbreaking article originally published in the Harvard Business Review (1960) in which he asked managers, “What business are you really in?” And that's probably why Starbucks is doing so well with its business model because they figured out early on that they were not just in the "coffee" business but in the "people" business. Levitt would be proud that his ideas were turned into practical solutions. Even Wikipedia features Levitt's work. We all know that focusing too narrowly on anything creates limited results.

Another way Levitt posed a question is like this: “What problem are we trying to solve for our customers?” For tool makers, the implication is that it is not really about the tool. Rather, it is about the resulting condition that customers desire from the use of the tool. That is to say, it is holes in the ground they want, not shovels. Fascinating stuff. So pure. So simple. But so many people just don't get it. Levitt did.

• Design Sense magazine No. 26 -- And I bet you didn't know Levitt contributed to this publication. Here's the title his work went under:

"How Major Companies Change Their Names"

An analysis of successful -- and not-so-successful -- name changes by New York Stock Exchange-listed corporations in the late 1950s and early '60s. Also: excerpts from Innovation in Marketing, by Harvard Business School Professor Theodore Levitt.

• Marketing Imagination by Theodore M.Levitt -- My absolute favorite book (and according to my notes in the inside cover, I read it in 1984) on marketing that I still refer to today. It's so relevant that you never want to put it away.

• Two favorite remarks by Levitt that were made in "The Marketing Imagination" -- Henry Ford's: "They can have any color car they want, so long as it's black." -- Page 142. And Levitt's: "The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer." -- Page 5.

HBR obituary on Professor Levitt can be found here. My sympathies go out to the Levitt family during this time of great sadness.

May Professor Levitt rest in peace in our brave new world and I thank him for helping me and millions of other people understand (global) marketing.