Moscow and the Big Mac.
It must have been 8 degrees outside; maybe 9. The tip of my nose was frozen, and it didn’t look like the snow was going to stop. The line was long, and we were quite a ways back.
Moscow, February 1993.
It was our second trip to Russia. There would be more. The Soviet Union had formerly broken up a couple of years earlier and the line we were standing in was outside one of the first MacDonald’s in Russia.
Russians loved the burgers, at that time treating the fast-food restaurant like fine dining.
There would eventually be 850 locations in more than 100 cities in Russia selling Big Macs. But with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, global politics changed, and McDonald’s management pulled the plug in June of 2021. All of the golden arches were sold to a Russian businessman, and you can no longer buy a Big Mac in the land of borscht and Bolsheviks.
While 850 locations may seem like a lot, the fact is that MacDonald’s has 40,275 restaurants in operation and closing or selling off 850, isn’t as big a dent as you might think. There are golden arches in 133 countries worldwide. From Pago Pago in American Somoa to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, MacDonald’s restaurants generate more than $23 billion a year in annual revenue.
In fact, they are the largest restaurant chain in the world.
And they have one thing in common with the largest coffee chain in the world and, in fact, with the largest corporation in the world: ….yep, they survey.
“To remain number one in the fast-food industry, McDonald’s frequently uses market research to make its customers happy.”
“In the case of McDonald’s, a positive attitude when it comes to listening to their clients has allowed them to excel and rapidly grow to become a global fast-food chain.”
https://mcdonald551991527.wordpress.com/2019/11/10/mcdonalds-market-research/
Are you getting the picture?
MacDonalds – one of the most successful companies in the world – surveys. And, frankly, so do thousands of other successful companies
How about you?
Surveyed your customers or prospects lately?
You want to your drive your sales and income?
“We took bids on this project, and none of your competitors offered such a short turnaround…. At the same time, your cost was lower than all the competitive bids, again permitting us to move quickly and get more for our budget for this project than we would have afforded from anyone else.”
K.C., Ph.D., Vice President, Systems & Information
Call or email me about who you want to survey and pricing (which will be more
Best,
Bruce
Bruce Wiseman
President & CEO
On Target Research
www.ontargetresearch.com
Br***@br**********.net
1-818-397-1401
Starbucks Vs Apple
A few days ago, I wrote an article about how Apple used market research and surveys to help them become the largest corporation in the world with a market cap of $3 Trillion. Three trillion!!
Let’s look at another world leader: Starbucks. Starbucks is the largest and most successful coffee chain in the world.
With a market cap of $113 million, Starbucks doesn’t have Apple’s market cap – nobody does. But the company has 35,711 units operating worldwide, generating $25.3 billion a year in revenue.
That’s a lot of Joe.
Apple, the world’s largest corporation, and Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee chain, have one thing in common…
“However, it is no secret how they became the number one coffee company in the world …
“Starbucks became the largest coffeehouse chain in the world because of its value for market research.
“Over the past 14 years, Starbucks has used market research by obtaining consumer feedback…
“These ideas can range anywhere from new offerings to minor changes in a current product. Starbucks considers all customer feedback for its business and marketing strategy.”
How about you and your business? Are you charging toward the top?
Have you surveyed your customers lately? Your prospects?
You might be surprised with what you find.
Surveys drive sales and income.
We have been conducting surveys for more than 25 years.
We get results.
Do what the most successful companies in the world do to drive sales and income? They SURVEY.
“On Target is fantastic. Their ability to extract relevant and powerful data from C-level executives is remarkable. In a short period of time we were able to get profound insight into the hearts and minds of our potential clients. Their research is invaluable for all of our marketing, branding and sales initiatives.”
Call or email me with any questions about surveys for your company.
Best,
Bruce
Bruce Wiseman
President & CEO
On Target Research
www.ontargetresearch.com
Br***@br**********.net
1-818-397-1401
Steve Jobs and my computer camera.
It started when I couldn’t get the camera to work on my MacBook.
Besides banning me from the growing number of zoom and other online video meetings, this was going to be a problem for my radio show.
What radio show?
I do a weekly live radio show out of Los Angeles every Thursday. I broadcast from my home office, but the studio connects to me via a SKYPE video feed.
No camera, no video feed, something I had been providing to my audience for years.
I called Apple support. They spent a great deal of time with me, going through all of the potential software problems it could be, found nothing and said,
“It’s a hardware problem,” and he made an appointment for me at the Genius Bar at the closest Apple store.
Down the mountain to the Apple store in Santa Clarita (I live in a small community, 6,000 feet up in the Los Padres National Forrest about 1.5 hours north of Los Angeles).
Arriving at the Apple Store, I took my seat at the Genius Bar. A guy named Garret came over and asked what the problem was.
I told him. It took him 2, maybe 3 minutes to fix it (the problem was due to something I neglected to do, not something wrong with the computer).
Cost of the online support = $0
Cost of the Genius Bar = $0
Quality of the personnel = Excellent
Some statistics.
There are 1 billion iPhones on the planet
There were 61 million iPads and 26 million Mac and MacBook units sold in 2022.
Apple sold 82 million AirPods and 53 million Apple Watches in 2022.
Apple Music has 88 million subscribers; Apple TV+ has over 75 million.
You think Steve Jobs was on to something?
Apple is the largest corporation on the planet by market capitalization.
In fact, their market cap of almost $3 trillion is bigger than the GDP (gross domestic product = in short, the country’s production) of:
Italy
Canada
Spain
Turkey
Mexico
Saudi Arabia
South Korea
Australia
To name a few.
And look at this current graph of their stock.
Graph courtesy of Yahoo Finance
Why do they have the largest market capitalization in the world?
As you can see from above, their service is excellent. The quality of their products is world class. I mean they dominate markets.
But there’s one more thing that is at the core of Apple’s success.
“Apple is one of the most successful technology companies worldwide. Apple made that possible through product unit innovation and market research to understand its customer’s needs.”.
“… Its research is done through a variety of customer satisfaction surveys. As a result, these surveys have paved the way for new product development and modification of existing Apple products.
“The iconic tech company has made impressive changes to its products based on consumer feedback.…”.
The largest company in the world by market cap attributes it’s success, in large measure, to surveys of customers and prospects – something On Target Research has been doing successfully for more than 25 years.
Have you surveyed your public lately? How about prospects for your products or services?
You may not reach a $3 trillion market cap, but surveys drive sales and income.
“We are having our best year ever!! On pace for a 50% growth in revenue! You did a great job for us and we are pumped!” ~ President NEDC
Call or email us today.
Best,
Bruce
Bruce Wiseman
President & CEO
On Target Research
www.ontargetresearch.com
Br***@br**********.net
1-818-397-1401
A marketing genius moves on
There are countless definitions of the word “genius” online and elsewhere. The one below is a good one.
– Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for the future, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabilities of competitors.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/genius
– A person having such capacity.
These days one can’t help but think of Elon Musk. Scanning back through recent history, Nelson Mandela, who’s managing of South Africa after his release from prison can’t be deemed anything less, or Winston Churchill during the Second World War.
These are people that demonstrated political genius as opposed to the more common academic genius like today’s news article about the 13-year-old who just graduated college with separate degrees.
https://local12.com/news/offbeat/gallery/13-year-old-graduates-four-diplomas-elijah-muhammad-osu-computer-science-cybersecurity-oklahoma-cincinnati-ibm-google-it-langston-intelligence?photo=7
In October of last year, a genius passed from the world in which I operate – market research, marketing and PR – the genius was Al Ries.
“Al Ries was the father of positioning, a legendary marketing strategist, a global brand in his own right and the bestselling author of 12 books that have sold over 4 million copies worldwide.”
https://www.alries.com/
After reading Ries’ marketing classic, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, decades ago I was “hooked” and followed his writings via his many subsequent books and had the privilege of communicating with him on some marketing ideas. I keep his validations of some of my marketing ideas in a secure location on my computer.
When one talks of Al Ries, one must talk of positioning.
There are countless definitions of positioning and how it works.
Simply put, positioning makes the unfamiliar* familiar by tying it to something that is already familiar in the mind.
(*Think of the unfamiliar as your product or service).
This facilitates instant communication (because what you are tying your product to with marketing or PR is already in the recipient’s mind).
Positioning has long been used in politics – usually negatively.
“The famous speaker and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), for instance, when he defended his supporter Sestius, did not shrink from publicly accusing the enemy Clodius of incest with brothers and sisters,”
Political Debates In Ancient Rome: Great Harshness, Personal Attacks And Unpleasant Atmosphere
(Positioning the enemy with incest.)”
This kind of positioning goes on daily in the U.S. Congress. One is no longer just a Kennedy Democrat or Reagan Republican today. The campaign, sourced by the Democrats, driven by the media, the intelligence community and the Justice Department to position Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin was one of the most vicious and well organized I have ever seen.
Of course, Cicero did not have access to Twitter, Facebook or any of today’s digital weapons. But he had an enormous presence and ability to communicate. His presence and oratory in the Roman Senate is easily compared to modern social media.
“Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, writer and academic skeptic who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman empire. He is considered one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists and the innovator of what became known as Ciceronian rhetoric.
His influence on the Latin language was immense. He wrote more than three-quarters of extant Latin literature that is known to have existed in his lifetime.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero
But politics is far from the only use of positioning. When used correctly in marketing and PR, positioning can not only drive business sales, but, more importantly, establish your brand as an industry leader.
Here are some excellent examples of positioning.
Here’s a commercial for strong cheese that uses positioning very cleverly. Click the link.
One of Burger King’s cleverest commercials starts with a shot from the back of a Burger King restaurant. There is a number of people standing in a single line waiting to order.
In the middle of the line is someone with a hat with orange hair sprouting out of the sides. The person is wearing an overcoat, collar up, obviously trying not to be recognized. He turns his head for a moment and his identity becomes obvious: this is Ronald MacDonald who has snuck into Burger King to get a hamburger, trying not to be recognized.
This is, of course, Burger King cleverly positioning against Mac Donald’s.
One I had a great time creating was some years back. Around 2000, Internet service was largely done via dial up. Remember that?
High speed broad band was just beginning to roll out.
ISPs (Internet Service providers) were just beginning to provide high-speed Internet. Our client, an ISP in the Southeastern United States was just introducing their high-speed service, as was their chief competitor, Time Warner.
Positioning takes two surveys. The first survey that we conducted of small to medium-sized businesses (our client’s public) in that region, found that the main thing businesses wanted from Internet service providers was speed . No surprise.
Time Warner had a visual icon going for it that they could use to promote speed, the Road Runner (a type of bird known for running at high speeds, that was always being chased in a cartoon series by a coyote [Wiley Coyote]. Wiley Coyote was always just about to catch him, but the Road Runner was always too fast).
Road Runner Rd., Runner clip art related keywords to dash wikiclipartwikiclipart.com
When we did the follow-up positioning survey, we found that what represented speed to this public was a Daytona racing car (the client was headquartered in Florida).
The advertisement?
A Daytona racing car with the client’s name on it roaring down the highway. Off to the side of the road bent over and panting is the Road Runner.
Positioning.
Here’s feedback from a couple of startups we positioned.
“The positioning that grew out of your research was nothing short of stellar work. We now have a strategically researched, laser like position that will dramatically assist us in rolling out our new brand.”
J.D. – President
“ In launching our new company, I considered one of the most important things we would do is brand and position the company. Your work to help us get into the minds of our customers and prospects really pinpointed – with precision – what our brand should represent. And the rest fell in place from there. …I feel confident that we have hit on a position and brand that impinges on our public and will have lasting value. I look forward to continuing to work with On Target as we build our company.” M.D. – EVP
This came after we implemented an in-depth market research program followed by positioning surveys.
“When we implemented On Target’s research survey findings, our profits increased and marketing cost decreased. From a financial analysis of our company, we discovered that over a two-year period, On Target Research saved our firm over $300,000 a month or, ballpark, a total of $7.2 million so far.” R.C. – President
Does your company have a position that drives sales? If not, give me a call. We can discuss what would be involved.
Bruce Wiseman
President & CEO
On Target Research
www.ontargetresearch.com
Br***@br**********.net
1-818-397-1401
