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Ah, Mini MBA, how are you? Welcome to your first QA session. I hope it's going well. Two modules down, try and keep the weekly rhythm going. In these QA sessions, what we try and do, or I try and do is uh basically answer anything that's come up over the each of the two modules. So how this works is as explained in the module, um basically you at any point in the two modules, if you get a question, you can uh you can jump on the tile, type in the question. Here's an example here from Renee. I then on a Friday morning get up early, Aussie time, and answer them. I record this, um uh, and this then take is put back on that tile and it stays there for the rest of the course. So it's not live, you don't need to to to be there at 12 o'clock. That's the date and time, Friday, 12 o'clock, when this video becomes available. But it's there for whenever you want it in both video and also in audio format. Keep the questions as tight as you can. I will answer all questions, but if it's you know, if it's a giant paragraph, it's gonna take up a lot of time for everyone. I love doing it, don't get me wrong, but we want to keep it tight. Try and keep them on the topics. But if you've got one from a previous week or something has happened, that's fine. Remember, you know, these this is watched by a lot of people, so you may not want to go into too much detail about your name or company if it's getting into private stuff. I don't mind, but it's up to you. Just just keep that in mind. Um, and we've created cohorts, it's a big class this uh this April. So if you look up on the web address there, you'll see that you're cohort B. And that doesn't mean you're not as good as A. It means we've split people into A, B, C, and D, so we can do these in under an hour. Yeah. So I spend a day doing them, but I don't want you sitting listening to four hours to get to your question. So this is this is we're just dividing them up to answer the questions. Um, if I get any specific requests for follow-ups or a particular document, I'll make a note and I'll put something on our LinkedIn group for Monday. And I'll and you'll see me flagging that when it comes up. Okay. Um, and you should by now be a member of that LinkedIn group. And if you're not, you need to get on it and talk to our team because that's where we're doing all the chats and admin. Okay. All right, let's get on. I want to do these quick um without rushing. So let's always under an hour is my promise, which I don't always keep to. Let's start with Renee. Uh, I'm really enjoying the first week. Thank you. My question: what strategies or actions have you used to influence leadership in an organization that's sales or product oriented? It's one thing to adopt a consumer or marketing first approach yourself, but how do you build alignment across the business? So this is going to come up a few times, and and I'm gonna be I'm gonna answer Renee's question in detail because I think then for others I will refer you back to the Renee question. So, and I think this is a a fault of how I've done the module this year, I think. I I don't think we can uh educate and train the organization to be more market-oriented, they're gonna stay sales or product oriented, and to some degree they should, yeah. I think I would say there are two things Renee and everyone else asking this question should focus on realistically. I mean, great, if you can transform the organization and make it like Amazon, go for it. But you it's a waste of your time and resource. It's not gonna happen. You haven't got the power or the influence or or the motivation on their side to do it. So, what I'm saying to you is don't try and make the company market oriented. In meetings where they're going wrong because of a lack of market orientation, you need to be the change that they're looking for. Yeah. So you're not gonna teach them to fish, you're not gonna teach them to be market-oriented, you're gonna show them the fish of market orientation and they're gonna eat that fish. Does that make sense? I think your focus, Renee, is on two things. You stay market-oriented, stay disciplined. And two, your team, the department, the marketing group, who I have to tell you, most times, eight times out of ten, are not market-oriented. They're advertising oriented, they're product oriented, make them market-oriented. That's the job. And by all means, influence the rest of the organization, but influence them at the decision point with data. Don't try and make them into marketers. I think you'll fail. Yeah, does that make sense? Um, and we'll get a few questions like that, I think, in the QA. Pia. One of the key takeaways is marketing to bring the customer perspective to the company. Due to the very technical nature of our service, the deepest knowledge, sits, customer knowledge sits with sales and customer success who are in frequent contact with our clients. Trying to match this through any type of desk research seems five steps behind. How could you approach this? How would you make sure marketing is more integrated in the content and with the clients? Yeah, the the key P is although your sales guys and customer success teams are talking to your customers, what's missing is the bigger marketing perspective. So the role you play there is going, oh, that's great. You've got all these one-on-one anecdotal responses from customers. Great. But here's the whole market. And many of the people we're not speaking to, because they're not customers, think this. I think that's the way you can add the value that's required. Lisa, I'm working in a mature market with an established organization. While we all understand that being truly customer-centric is critical, in practice it remains very difficult to embed this mindset across teams and get buy-in. From your experience, what are a few simple practical actions or interventions that help shift an organization towards customer centricity, especially in environments with ingrained habits? Look, we mentioned the two that work, Lisa. Again, under that rubric that you can't change them completely. The first is using raw qualitative data as a the voice of the customer literally has power. And second, I would say being able to use quantitative data rhetorically at the right time and in the right place, not just to build your strategy, but show the rest of the organization that they're wrong. Yeah. They're the two points of intersection that have worked most for me. Marianne, I'm working in a mature market. No, I'm not. The WHO barrier. What's another example of who the who could be for a B2C company? I.e., if your business sells directly to consumers without going through other companies first. Yeah, I mean, there's loads of them, right? There's prescriptors. So there's uh barmen and bar women in bars. Uh, they're a perfect example. I mean, you know, when I worked at Hennessy, we spent a fortune on prescriptors. It's the person that makes you your cocktail or serves you your drink or suggests what to drink. Um it's a perfect example of someone that we have to understand and we have to target and we have to influence and so on, right? They're everywhere in every value chain. Shi Ling, uh, I work for a company that owns and operates seven different lines of business, all with different product offerings, solutions and segments. As such, we're a bit all over the place, and we're in the process of trying to unite and orient ourselves as one larger company. In the past, each of these lines of business did their marketing in a way that was very siloed. However, we're now making a Herculean effort to transform our marketing strategies to be more market-oriented. Great. Um, we're still in the midst of trying to steer our orientation to be less sales and advertising oriented. I'd love to know if there's any case studies of businesses that have been able to do something similar and what the approach might have been. Yeah, it's a very specialist topic, that one, Sheering. If why don't you send me uh via LinkedIn a little a little message and I'll send you some specific stuff just for you, because I think it's the it's the structuring of the seven that that you need to work on first. So uh you send me a note and I'll I'll come back to you. Philip, I think it's important when talking to customers to talk to different groups, mainly not falling into the trap of talking only to heavy category buyers and assuming all customers are like them. Do you have any advice on how to balance light versus heavy category buyer feedback? Yeah, it's not just that, Philip. I think it's also that um there's a bias towards customers first. So, you know, your own customers, the noisy customers, heavy category buyers, and then the light customer buyers, the light buyers and those that aren't even in the category yet. It sort of spans out from there. The the key is representative market research, which includes a category buying frequency measure, and which then asks the famous question would you be interested in taking part in further research? Which allows you to take a group of light customer buyers in the survey who've expressed very different points of view and go, right, let's do some qual on them, because now we can really dig into this. Yeah. But that's the representation and representative samples play a crucial role here. Um uh uh they always do. Caitlin, I was a bit lost on the marketing 180. I got it to a certain degree, but I felt it went through quite quickly. Okay, can you explain that part again? I've just finished watching the video. Okay, okay, okay. So here's me, Caitlin, looking at you. Yeah, looking at you in your chair right now, okay? I don't know what you think of this, right? This thing we've got here, right? Or the course, yeah, or anything. And I'll never be able to look at this video myself and go, oh, this is great, uh, fantastic, just wonderful, very clear, right? That module's wonderful, right? I have to always stop, pause, and go, I made this, so I don't really know what it's like to consume this. I al I know all this stuff already. I'm teaching it, right? So it's clear to me, obviously, right? So what I have to do is go and see it from Caitlin Holman's point of view, yeah. Do you see that it's clear? Yeah. Do you how do you see all of this? That's that's all we mean by the 180. Yeah. Not me like pretending, but actually saying, is it clear? And it's clear from your question, it's not. The 180 part isn't clear. So I have to make a note. 180 may not be as clear as I think it is, and we've done the 180. Yeah, make sense. Brad, more. On the back of this module, I'm already considering having some direct conversations with customers. That's good. Uh, which is typically the best, what is typically the best method? Okay, okay. Uh Caitlin, well done, Caitlin. Module two is called customer research. So I reckon Mark might cover it in that. Having done module two, I have the answers to this question. There you go, Brad. You've learned an important lesson, right? It's a good question from module one, but module two has the answers. You'll find that happens a lot, which is good. It's good. It means we have a proper narrative. Daria. Hi, Mark. What a pleasure to start a new course with you. Same thing, Daria. A question about we have we have some alums from previous courses for everyone else's benefit. Levitt argues that companies should define themselves around customer needs rather than products. But how do we reconcile that with cases like Apple, where breakthrough innovations, such as the full-screen iPhone, appear to originate from product vision rather than articulated consumer demand? Consumers could hardly have specified the need for a full-screen smartphone. Does this suggest that breakthrough innovation sometimes requires a product-led approach? And Ashwin points out, we actually have a quote from Steve Jobs about this. Yeah, some breakthroughs you can't, the consumer doesn't know what they want. They don't know that they need a car. They would have, you know, to Henry Ford's quote, they would have asked for a faster horse. But that doesn't stop once you've got the prototype car testing it. Yeah, once you've got the full-screen iPhone, testing it. And then once it's in the market, improving it. But yeah, some breakthroughs are just that breakthroughs, and we have to go with them, but it doesn't divorce the whole need for market orientation. Claudia, I love the idea of backward market research, but I've never heard of a company who applies it. Can you give any examples of FMCG companies that are applying it? Uh, I don't know if they are. I know it's much more common in pharma, in consulting. Um, and I don't think you need, I mean, I think FMCG companies are exactly the kind of companies that wouldn't normally use it because they, frankly, they do so much research and most of it is wasteful, as you know, Claudia. So, no, I can't give you an example, but I would strongly encourage you to apply it. It will have a revelatory effect. Have a look. I put the mark in James go back goes backwards to give you a practical example of it. Brad again. What is the best way to make the rest of the business more market-oriented? You're having a bad day, Brad, and it's not your fault. Um, back to that earlier initial question. I I don't think there is a way to do that. I don't think you want to make a company market. I think you do want to make a company market-oriented, but I don't think you can. I think it's about intersecting, as I said earlier, at places with data to stop them making enormous mistakes and therein generating the value. You be market-oriented, keep your team market-oriented, and that will do. Sam Duggan, I love the breakdown of the different types of business orientation. Uh, having worked in a few of them, I always struggle to try and influence the wider business. Any thoughts? Same answer. I'm gonna have to do a piece on this, aren't I? Because everyone's asking when you guys ask the same question, it means I'm not answering it properly in the module. Yeah. Uh don't make the company MO. Got it. All right, I'll work on that. Eric Schwed. Similar to what I'm sure a lot of people are asking, how to make your organization more market-oriented? How would you go about this if you're not part of the organization but a part of a marketing consultancy that works with organizations as clients? The budgets we have to work with are smaller, timelines are tighter. How would you approach overcoming these barriers? Well, it's the only tips I can give you that have seemed working, Eric, are the two in the module. Using the actual organic, uh, qualitative data, ideally the audio video, first. And second, using the quantitative data rhetorically to disprove politely what executives are saying. They're the two that throughout my career worked sometimes. Sometimes they're the ones, they're the points of intersection where you can say, that's a great idea, but you'll see from the data, and slowly that the impact of that can bear fruit. Pia, I'm working in an industry that is rapidly evolving. Space tech. The customer needs change, environmental regs, end user behavior, the competition intensifies, the alternatives have become better, and we face the challenge of constantly revisiting our positioning statement and defining ourselves. Yeah, you shouldn't have to do that. Hang on. The exercise of doing this and making sure we're on the right track is fine, but it feels like we're constantly in definition. Yeah, you shouldn't have to do that versus executing. Uh, how could you tackle this in the diagnosis phase? You can't. It's it's a strategy error, Pierre. So we will cover positioning in module five. It will change your life, okay? Just wait for that. What your company's doing is wrong. Markets change, but positioning doesn't. Um, you you'll see, you'll see. Hold on. Stay with me on this. We'll definitely answer your question when we get to positioning. Jayna, Jaina, what are some examples of the touch points you mentioned in the marketing 180, aside from advertising and comps? Uh, windows, store windows, uh, salespeople, uh uh registration. Uh, what's one of my favorite ones of all time? Corridor, corridors, toilets, casino toilets. We will cover touch points in a lot more detail. Any place, Yana, where a consumer brushes up against the business is a touch point. Me at a conference for Mini MBA. See what I mean? And I will show you a tool for working out what they are for your business in the product module. It's all coming. Emma, I'm loving the course so far. Steady on, Emma. We've only started and enjoying the chance to actually learn again. My question is: how do you work through the different layers of consumers and decide which is actually your consumer and therefore the needs you focus on in marketing? I'm thinking about the Intel example. We provide software to retailers, trying to figure out if the retailers are our customers, the end user. So the unfortunately, Emma, for you, the answer to the question is all of them. Yeah. So in a simplified example, uh, you know, if I'm selling yoga, I have to understand Tesco's dairy team. Yeah. I have to understand the mom or the dad who's buying the yoga and the kid who consumes the yoga in her pack lunch. Okay. And ideally, you understand those nodes better than the person upstream. So I know more about what your kid likes about yogurt than you do, so you trust me and you buy me. I know more about yogurt consumers than Tesco do. So Tesco trusts me and they list me. Yeah. That's the theoretical and frankly the practical answer. Yeah. You need to know all of them. And so the challenge goes kind of vertically down that channel, and then it also goes horizontally. Who is the market? Yeah. Um, because you're gonna have to broaden that out as far as you can. And we talk about that next week in Targeting. Amy, I really appreciated the special case SME research element of the market research module. I I know, right? It's ancient, but it's one of my faves, so we're keeping it. Yeah, this is Star Wars, yeah. Uh with custom, we have customers in academia, biotech, and pharma, and it can be very difficult to get survey participation. No shit. For transactional product customers using the website, this is easier, as it's possible to offer loyalty points as an inducement. This can mean that participation are from select key accounts and therefore give a skewed, overly positive picture. Do you have any advice on ways to get to better engage B2B customers in some sort of survey who are unable to accept compensation? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So until last year, Ames, I would have said to you, you're a bit screwed. Synthetic data is completely changing your sector because these incredibly difficult B2B customers are now available very quickly. Now you can do this. So look, I'm a as you'll see as we spend time together, I'm a massive Claude lover. Claude has replaced my wife as my most trusted ally, right? Um, and is in every aspect of my life. I'm mad for Claude, it's fair to say. But so if you ask Claude or whoever your AI friend is, um, they can do a pretty good job. There's a difference between saying to Claude, you know, uh what do you think of this product? Is it any good? And saying, run some synthetic research. Give me whatever you want from module two, create a conjoint, run a focus group, and report back the results. It takes about 10 minutes, but it reports back. Give it a very clear customer perspective. And in my experience, that's 70% as good as what Evidenza are doing, and they're the best in the world at synthetic data and will cost some money. Now, if you really need proper, precise B2B stuff, go and talk to companies like that. Synthetic data is phenomenal, especially in B2B. It it's it's the area where AI is right now changing marketing the most. Felicia, great start to the Mini MBA. Loved your delivery style. Good. Wished you were my marketing prof during my university days. Well, I'm here now. Reading through some of the questions posted, I quickly realized I too face a similar challenge. Coming from a company that prides itself to be tech driven, this means we first have the product solution from RD, and marketing then works backwards to find an angle to bring the proposition to life. In that kind of organization, how can we take stakeholders along to be receptive and be marketing first? I don't think you can, Felicia, but I think, and we'll talk about this a lot in the product module. Even though most of us on the course, you've got a product and you have to market it as you have. We're gonna talk a lot about EPI, existing product improvement. And once you've got that product, how we do research around it. I don't think you're gonna change the product orientation of your company at all. But I do think it's possible to have an influence on how the company successfully works by adding marketing post-product creation. Okay, and we will get to that in great detail. Megan Gunn, I found market orientation to be such a fantastic way to rip up the rulebook to start looking at what we do with a fresh approach. Great. As regional head of marketing with multiple global brand teams providing us with product and strategy from all over the world. I feel your pain. How would you recommend we remain market-oriented at a regional level within an execution-led role? It's dead easy, Megan, and it's dead hard. Get your ass in the market. Okay. You know, I have loved and hated regional heads of marketing in my career, and I can tell you the difference between the two. There's some regional heads of marketing who sit in an office in Singapore, want to talk to consumers, sorry, want to talk to agencies, consultants, fly to head headquarters and have meetings, but they never get their ass in the market. And there's other regional heads of marketing who are in Tokyo, they're in Sydney, they're in Kuala Lumpur, and they're doing the shit. Get into the market. That's what we do. That's that's that's when you start. Really get it right. Rushin, I'm really enjoying Monument One, particularly the section on market orientation and the Morton scale. The framework is a great diagnostic. I agree. But in practice, how would you operationalize the Morton scale? Although, I've used it a few different ways. The first of all, it's just a good thing to read to get a sense of what are the drivers of proper market orientation. That's partly why I put it in there. Second, um, you can use it. So I've used it, for example, I worked on a big medical client and the CMO got me in. He was really convinced they were pretty behind with marketing. So we just ran Morton and we got a score, yeah, from different parts of the organization. We then correlated that score with job satisfaction and also performance reviews. So that gave us some ideas of what are the more important levers in this company, at least, for making people happy and making people more productive. But we had the score, and that was useful because the next year we went back and we showed the rest of the organization we've done a big training program, and these scores have gone up because we still hadn't really done much better marketing because they were still doing it. But our point was look, we've already got marketing much better. Next year you'll see the results, and sure enough, they did. So it's a good pre and prost as well. So yeah, that's how I would operationalize it in my world. We talked for years about doing it in mini MBA, so you could you could fill it out for your company and find out where you sit, but we never got our shit together. Uli. Uh having been a fence hitter for a while, I'm glad I signed up for this course. Well, we'll see, Uli, we'll see. My questions. Just to clarify, do I understand that we will hear and learn more about market research, not only for for the architecture piece, but also methodologies as we progress along the modules? Yes, it's called module two. In module eight, product or service concept development methodologies in design thinking, maybe. In module seven, advertising, pre-testing methods and pre-criteria. Uh, yeah, we'll talk a bit about that. In module nine, marketing mixed modeling, talk a bit about that. Sample size and digging deeper. Yeah, we'll talk a bit about that. Um and how would you go what is your question here, Uli? Is it are you asking what the course is going to do? Uh okay, uh, okay, you've got one question two. Okay, sample size and digging deeper. While I understand the 400 as a sample size for total population, what if you want to analyze specific segments? Yeah, it's look, technically you have to have a representative sample, even if you slice it down. I have to tell you, practically, I've never seen anyone ever, ever do that. What they do is they go, not statistically significant, right? Because it's a smaller group. And almost everyone just makes sure that the overall sample is representative. It's not technically correct, but it's practically what everyone does. That's how it plays out. Uh, Brad, I'd like to understand who our customers consider as alternatives without prompting them to start actually looking at an alternative supplier. How do you tread that fine line? An open-ended box, Brad. When thinking about boom boom boom, which brands or products or services come to mind? Open box. Ta-da! Ruben Marshall, as a marketer in a small marketing team in an organization with a large product team, how can I help my product manager colleagues to foster a customer-centric approach? Ruben, I'm gonna tell you something that you may have already started to realize, okay? Your product team have no clue about anything to do with the customer, okay? So, what I would suggest you do is let's get the course done, and then you can go back and bedazzle them with pricing, uh, existing product improvement, jobs to be done, touch point analysis, uh, causality analysis, pre-testing analysis. There's so much shit coming, okay? So, my point is intersect, as we said earlier, with them using the expertise of the course and the data in your work to have a massive impact. They need your help. Philip Stemple, I'm just listening to the podcast after reading the optional material and got to the part where advertising and its role are overrated by marketers. One question advertising makes up the majority of contacts with the market, doesn't. Compared to other touch points, it doesn't. How does sheer quantity play in the waiting? Um, it's really important. But you will find that um uh what's a good example? I mean, I did it with Louis Vuitton years ago. Uh people look in Louis Vuitton windows far often than far more often than they see a Louis Vuitton ad. Same with banks. Uh, when we started closing branches down at certain banks I worked for, no one had taken into account the impact of salience from the windows because they didn't think of them as a touch point. Companies think advertising is the big touch point. It's really not for consumers, services. Yeah. I I'll give you another good example. I worked, I'll be indiscreet. I worked for a really nice guy who was the head of marketing and advertising for Qantas 20 years ago. And I said to him when I met him, what a strange title. He said, How do you mean? I said, Why would you include advertising? You know, you're in charge of marketing. You know, 99% of my Qantas touch points are on a metal uh tube flying through the sky. You know what I mean? It's got nothing to do with advertising. Why would you highlight that? It's like the head of HR going, I'm the head of HR and photocopying. You know, the everyone is too biased here. Uh uh, and I love advertising, but it's in its right place. It gets one module out of 10, slightly too much, my opinion. But it's not that important, Philip. Honestly, broaden out is my advice. But you have to decide. No. Ritson. Okay, okay, no. Uh, I have two questions. Given the SMBs and startups face cost barriers in accessing large-scale market research, often relying on limited observation, listening that may not be representative, how can startups practice market orientation? Well, first of all, uh, market orientation isn't about research, it's a philosophical practice first. Yeah, you have to be open to the market. And it doesn't matter how much money you do or don't have, to be open to the market is a philosophy. Second, we've talked about it. Synthetic data is a genuine opportunity for B2B and SME and SME B2B companies, you should embrace it quickly. Yeah. Two, given the constraints of small and medium businesses and startups, especially the lack of historical data, how can leaders prioritize efforts? And could you suggest the right frameworks to embed customer entricity from day one? Yeah, if you look right at the end of module two, which you might not have got to yet, Nung, I actually go through a kind of practical sequence of research for smaller companies. Have a look at that. That's what you want. Georgia. The brand I work for sits within luxury retail. Lovely. How best can we ensure we have effective market orientation while still providing the luxury experience? How do we communicate with our customers in an effective but brand aligned way to gather the information needed? Look, I did this a long time ago for a lot of very big luxury brands. And what we worked out at LVMH was, and the thing I would use in your situation, Georgia, is just because we are thinking about customers, just because we are listening to customers, does not mean we're going to give them what they want or what they expect. And the minute you add that caveat, everyone that works in luxury gets reassured. Yeah. That at the end of the day, we may not be giving it to them, but we do want to know what they think. And that lifted a cloud from our work at LVMH. And I think it made it suddenly much more doable. Wai Ling, uh, what is the science behind the creative pretesting tools like System One? We'll get to it. We'll get to it. We're going to cover it in um module nine on communications. Um and what you'll find is it's a very good way, not ideal, not perfect, but a very good way of essentially measuring the facial and emotional response of consumers. It has a lot of critics. Um, the proof of the of the pudding is it's very predictive of advertising success once the ads are launched. So that's for me is is is the proof. We'll get onto it. We'll cover it in comms. Claire, I'm curious to know whether the Louis Vuitton ad bombed with its target audience or not. It's a perfect example for the module, but based on my personal reaction, who isn't a customer, I love the ad. I just wonder if I sat in the cinema, you also had the OFCK, that it's not the right forum for this. I I don't know, Claire. I I love the ad still, you know. So maybe, yeah, it was wrong targeting, but either way, it was, you know, the point, the point that I'm sure you got was market orientation. Asmita, often we hesitate to start something new because we're not fully sure what customers want. It's true. In such situations, how can organizations truly become market-oriented? Where should we practically start when customer needs are unclear? You start by making a prototype. Yeah. I'm doing a I'm doing a big podcast, not a boring one, you know, not an interview one, like a game show one. And um, we've just I've just started, I've done enough research. I've started and I'm gonna test it out, uh, a module out, maybe on you, and then I'll change it until it's until it's good. You know what I mean? So I think you can turn the wheel from products can be prototypes first, you know what I mean? And and that's a good way to start. Jody, how do you work out what business you're in? I work in banking, financial services is too broad, money management is probably better. How would you approach defining what business a company is in? I I can't do it, you have to do it using customer data. There's two questions you're gonna have to answer: what business are we in? And how big is the market? What's the total market? And they're both important questions, they're both questions that you can't be precise. There's no perfect answer, Jod, but you have to explicitly answer the question. Yeah. Um, and so you just gotta go for it. Um, and I know that's not the best answer. Uh uh, you were probably hoping I was gonna, well, you're the answer is this explicitly come up with an answer and then stick to it. And it's very important, as you learned in module one, why we need to know what business we're in in the broader, more consumer-centric uh definition. Felicia, I must admit the concept of backward market research is interesting and almost intuitive, which also emphasizes the importance of a well-written brief from the get-go. With due respect, if it's really so invaluable, why hasn't this been practiced much? And why haven't I seen it in the last 18 years? Any watch outs? Um, it's just Andreason is a genius. Sometimes, uh Felicia, simple things are, you know, there's this weird correlation in a lot of people's minds that something has to be complicated for it to be important. Um, it's not true. It's just not true. So you haven't seen it much because it's deceptively brilliant. I never thought of it until I read Andreason's column and then I did it, and it was like mind-boggling. So, yeah, don't fight it. It's there, it really works. It's amazing. It's one of the things to learn on the course, to steal and to use. Time check. We're just over 30 minutes, but we're going well. We're gonna we're gonna tick our hour-long box here. Pat Hamill. It's been nearly 30 years since I last did anything academic back in art college in Dublin. I don't know, Mr. Hamill, if that even counts. Sorry, you might be Ms. Hamill. I don't know, Pat, if that even counts. Being in art college in Dublin in the in the 80s sounds like too much fun to be academic. Anyway, carry on. So this has been a really refreshing and enjoyable way to learn. Honestly, not what I expected at all. Good. One question came to mind. While I'm fully bought into the market orientation model, are there any brands that have successfully bucked the trend and still have strong futures? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are many examples of brands, annoyingly, that were totally unmarket oriented and did very well. The classic one was um, what do you call them? Uh uh those hula hoops is it hula hoops? You know, the the hoops you put around your waist. In tests, everybody hated those and they were wildly successful, and they were always held up as an example of the consumer didn't like it. I worked with a uh a horrendous woman in a perfume company, and she just constantly talked about this perfume that had tested very badly but had been a big success as proof that I was an idiot, you know? So there will always be outliers, um, but they are outliers, Pat, and you don't you don't want to point towards them too much. You know what I mean? You want to you want to go. Emma, can luxury goods be segmented in different ways, focusing on specific orientations and still succeed? More broadly, are there different product categories that lean towards certain orientations? Could you give general examples in modern day that are leaning towards specific orientations and why they do and don't work? Look, I don't think so, I think it's too precise, Emma. I've gone as far as I want to go with those orientations. Don't get too into them. They're they're more vague than that. Two, consumer centricity, two by two graph. What hypothesis might you have as to why companies often believe they're customer-centric while customers feel they're not? Yeah, that's easy to answer. Most companies that are wildly uncustomer-centric uh really are so out of touch with their customers they think they're serving them brilliantly. Yeah. It's like if you look at marriage uh guidance uh data, the couples that are uh actually going to divorce are the ones that think their partner is the happiest. Yeah. Because they're so completely disconnected from reality, they're just imagining shit. So that's why you know companies that are if you talk to Jeff Bezos at Amazon, he'd be completely paranoid that Amazon were getting shit at marketing, yeah, and not delighting the customer. That's the right response. And companies that aren't switched on aren't paranoid enough. And three, how do you how do you go about empathy for the consumer if you are inherently not part of the group we're trying to reach? How do you go about building that empathy? I I think it's easier, honestly, Emma. I used I wrote a column ages ago about, you know, is it good to be an ex-tennis pro if you're selling tennis rackets? And the answer may be better if you can have more empathy for consumers if you know nothing about it. I've worked very successfully in women's fashion, not literally, but in the sector. Um, I've worked in uh, well, all kinds of medical things, you know. Uh uh, you know, uh diabetes, for example, and and and I have no idea about any of those things. I think it it your empathy is stronger if you if you don't pull yourself into it. I think it's I I'll say something sexist. I think women are better marketers in general than men because I think their skills of empathy are more advanced. Doesn't mean all women are better than men, but I think women have an advantage in in being, I think, a more empathetic bunch. It comes easier to them. But generally, I think it's better to be um I think it's better to not be in the in the market and to look at the data with empathy than be part of it. I think it's it's actually an advantage. How do you relearn that empathy later on when you're more senior in your level and you're learning experience rather than research? I don't think you relearn empathy. I think you either have it or you don't. And I think it's a difference in a trait and a skill. So I think empathy, curiosity, uh thinking long-term, being performance-focused, I don't think they're teachable skills. You can improve them a bit. I think they're traits that people either have or don't have. And we all have different traits. So I think it's something that you need to curiosity and empathy are right up there for me as traits of marketers. And I think without them, you you'll you can still do well, but it's it's harder. But traits and skills, for me at least, are not the same thing. Ashwin, great to be here. Longtime listener, first-time student. The Burger King case study is a good example of an ad orientation. But were you cherry picking uh where they did a cool campaign and they didn't perform well as a business? I couldn't see the connection between the Moldy Whopper and the bad business performance. Can you elaborate on that? For me, it looked like a case of two things. Yeah, a little bit. Um, that's fair. But they, you know, they were doing that work all over the world, that kind of creatively loved, effectively poor execution and getting smashed for it while everyone in marketing loved it. But you're right, I was cherry-picking one example. There were lots, there were lots. Nicola, fantastic start. I'd like to hear your thoughts on market research that looks at social media comments, online product reviews, and so on. Yeah, I'd I'd call it secondary data. I think it could be a useful step for servicing new attributes, or we could use it mid-stage uh to check whether our findings match what people are saying. That that being said, the comments are biased, which could mean poor data quality. What's your take on it? I I think it's qualitative secondary data, Nick. I think that's what it is. It can't be quantitative because it's not representative, but I think it's like an online ongoing focus group. And for that reason, I think it's beautiful, free data. Andrew Anderson, look at your brand from the customer's perspective article. You agree with the institute's critique of loyalty, but add, lest I develop error bassian tendencies. That suggests you don't fully buy in. Where does the institute lose you? Oh, many places, many places. I I don't I you'll see where they come later on. I don't think uh distinctiveness replaces differentiation. I think you have both together. I don't think mass marketing replaces the need for targeting. I think you have both together. Um I I I get the idea that you know loyalists aren't more important than wide penetration, but it doesn't mean I wouldn't target loyalists if it was the right strategic thing to do. I love what Ehrenberg Bass have done. I think they over-eg their pudding a lot, and they're very annoying. Very annoying. Um, if it isn't invented by them, they don't like it. I find that really annoying. But I love Byron, I like Jenny, you know. Um, I'm just, you know, I'm just not I'm the same age as Byron. I've known Byron for 35 years. Uh, you know, you know, and and I'm I'm really happy for their success. I think they've they've been an amazingly positive force on marketing. I just don't buy the whole dogma, you know. I mean, it's all a bit. But but great stuff. John, how would you extrapolate the information and apply it to a B2B business with very long lead times? What information are we talking about, John? I appreciate that's a broad question. Okay. The surveys, for example, our business doesn't sell products like wine or anything like that. We sell solutions in heavy industry and manufacturing. So it's not exactly something you purchase on a whim. Yeah, I mean, Neva's a car, but you still do market research, John. As a small player in our field, how would you recommend we extract the data from our clients, past and potential, who may not wish to do this? Not to mention being quite difficult to ask the question. Well, one, we talked about synthetic data can rock your world. Two, I am not buying your long lead times as any kind of excuse. I worked for Royal Van Lent. Yeah. Royal Van Lent is the world's greatest boat company. Their lead times are about 38 years, and we were doing plenty of market research, John. So I think you can you can fall into line, yeah. Um you have to accommodate those long lead times in brand perceptions and market definition and segmentation, sure, but it's still a market, right? Lead times can be two seconds or they can be 35 years. You still need to understand the market. But I would look here at the synthetic data as a as a real uh a real opportunity. And we're gonna end with Marco. Hey Marco, great course so far. I'm really glad I decided to join. Good. It could get worse later, though. Uh, a few of my classmates have already asked questions I was wondering about. But there's one point from module one I'd love to understand better. It relates to barriers to market orientation and the point about experience. If I understood it correctly, you mentioned that as people become more experienced, it becomes harder for them to justify spending time talking to consumers. It's true. Could you expand a bit on what you mean by that? I'm asking both because I'd like to understand the idea better and because I'm still early in my career. So the good news, Marco, is you know very little at the moment, so you have to ask customers. Later on, when you get to be good at something, uh, it becomes trickier to be humble because you think you know, because now you know what you're doing. I'll give you an example from my life. So when I started teaching 30 years ago, I was the youngest person in my MBA classroom when I was the professor, my first ever class. So I asked those students, man, pretty much every week, what do you think of that? Was that okay? Could I have made it better? How do I improve? Now you jump forward 20 years. I've won the teaching prize at MIT at London Business School. I'm one of the rock star professors at the business school. And some student comes up to me and says, Hey, you know how you could make the pricing class better? And I go, Oh yeah, you think you can tell me how to make the pricing class better, boy? Right? Do you know who I am? You see the difference. It's important to keep the humility because with time and experience, it can be beaten out of you by success. Okay, good stuff. Great questions, good start. Now, get module two done, get into module three, and I will see you uh in the virtual classroom next week for module three segmentation, which is awesome. See you next week.