1. If you were to describe Di Bella Coffee in 5 words or less, what would you say?
The Ultimate Coffee Experience

Some of our team members said:
- Hadi NSW BDM: Dedicated to deliver on the promise of quality, consistent coffee and
fantastic service, every time (sorry more than 5 words).
- Dan NSW Acct Mgr Passionate precision meets consistency
- Chrissie QLD Acct Mgr: Inspiring and passionate company
- Michael TAS Acct Mgr: Determined to deliver amazing coffee
- Steve SA BDM: Consistent reliable fresh coffee

2. What is a success story that you have helped a customer (cafe) with this last week?

Some of our team members said:
- Hadi NSW BDM: Perseverance with getting a customer across the line with a green
bean order, and helping CaliPres launch their cold brew coffee
- Dan NSW Acct Mgr: Teaching a certain barista to make coffee from scratch
(couldn’t hold a milk jug properly) and now being able to make coffee at a very high
level. I use these stories to inspire baristas and owners on a regular basis.
- Chrissie QLD Acct Mgr: Helped Raw Space for an hour and half because his Barista
resigned the night before and he had nobody else
- Michael TAS Acct Mgr: street stall promo at mojo music
- Steve SA BDM: Moved a customer to Paul’s milk saving them money and increasing
the quality of the coffee

3. What has been your hardest lesson or the biggest challenge in the business?
Fast growth has been the hardest challenge – this in itself is great but causes operational, financial and staffing pressures. We are an adaptable company that has been able to evolve through growth without losing sight of our vision. However this is and has been one our biggest challenges.

4. Best Marketing tip?
Tell a story so compelling that the customer chooses you!

5. What 3 books really helped define you?

1. Winning
2. Blue Ocean Strategy
3. Ubuntu

6. Best new cafe?

- Hadi NSW BDM 3 Williams in Redfern
- Dan NSW Acct Mgr: Brewtown, Newtown
- Chrissie QLD Acct Mgr: The Café – Brisbane airport
- Michael TAS Acct Mgr: Tamar River café
- Steve SA BDM: Do Duck Inn cafe

The post Meet Mina Anapo, Director of Market Development for Di Bella Coffee appeared first on Celest Marketing.

It was Sun Tzu who said, “all men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.”

Many people are interested in asking how something was done or had been made, people will try to copy your work by looking at actions. However they will not be successful if they do not understand your strategy.

Deciphering what business you are in and what business you are not is strategy, and from our perspective that is marketing’s core strength. People get confused by thinking purely on the ‘how’, the tactics.

There is a general thought within industry that with ever-faster change, ‘you don’t need a strategy’ or ‘you might be held back by one’, ‘that the real key is to keep re-inventing yourself’. However, this type of thinking will get you in a mess, we have seen countless businesses ‘chasing after the wind’.

Without an effective strategy, you’re going to spend the next several years executing a plan that is less than lean and leaving a pile of money on the table. Worse, you’ll keep the doors open for savvier competitors to swoop in and take over your industry.

When you nail your strategy, top-line revenue growth and bigger margins come almost effortlessly.

In a world of dynamic markets and changing technologies, competitors might be able to quickly copy any market position or competitive advantage. But as HP’s Dave Packard was once advised that “more companies die from indigestion than starvation.”

Strategic positioning means performing different activities from competitors or performing similar activities in different ways.

Strategic positioning in itself is not enough, strategy and operational effectiveness are both essential to building organisational performance. Superior results can be made through productivity, quality, and speed as spawned from Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma or Total Quality Management, etc. However how operational effectiveness differs from strategy is that it is about ‘how well things are done’, whereas strategy is the driver for what should be done in the first place.

Great brands don’t try to please everyone. They focus on being the absolute best at meeting the needs/wants of a small but fanatical group of customers, then dare to be the absolute worst at everything else. In turn, competitors, in striving to be the best in everything for everyone, actually achieve greatness in nothing – and end up as just average players in the industry.

Strategy guru Michael Porter said it best, ‘it’s at the activity level of the business where true differentiation occurs and the business model is revealed’.

A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve.

So how do you figure out an X-factor? Start by asking: What is the thing I hate most about my industry? What is the choke point constraining the organisation?

The post Letting strategy set you free appeared first on Celest Marketing.

1. If you were to describe Queensland Ballet in 5 words or less, what would you say?
A vibrant, creative and breathtakingly beautiful company!

2. What is a success story that you have helped a sponsor/partner with this last week?
One of the things that I am most proud of at Queensland Ballet is when due to an introduction that was facilitated by us I see companies from our corporate network working together in separate projects. Related to this, a few weeks ago one of our sponsors contacted me as they were organising an event and they wanted me to recommend catering and event theming companies to use. Last week at their event I was really proud when I noticed that they hired all of the companies that I recommended.

3. What has been your hardest lesson or the biggest challenge in the organisation?
Being new to the arts, during my first months after my appointment I had to familiarise myself not only with my new role but also with this new industry. Today, after nearly 10 months at Queensland Ballet I could say that the key to successfully achieve this has been to LISTEN.

4. Best partnership tip?
Don’t make any promises you can’t keep.

5. What 3 books really helped define you?
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
2121 by Susan Greenfield
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

6. Favourite cafe?
Gunshop in West End

Christian Rocha-Adames
Crochaadames@queenslandballet.com.au

The post Meet Christian Rocha-Adames, Corporate Partnerships Manager appeared first on Celest Marketing.

Throughout history there is numerous instances where the best product did not win. Nikola Tesla invented the alternating current electrical supply system. For a number of reasons it was technologically better than the direct current system that Thomas Edison developed. So here Tesla was the better scientist but Edison was the better businessman (he went on to start General Electric). Tesla went onto develop the idea of radio transmission but Guglielmo Marconi took it from him and then went onto win the Nobel Prize.

Ideas aren’t all that counts. The best product may not win. Superior marketing and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. However the reverse is not true. No matter how strong your product – even if it easily fits into already established habits and anybody tries it likes it – you must still support it with a strong distribution plan.

“Entrepreneurs…often spend too much time creating products and too little figuring out how to get people to use them.” – Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIn

Every entrepreneur envies the big billboard or a recognisable ad campaign, but we often advise start-ups they should resist the temptation to compete with bigger companies in big media spend and look for a marketing channel they can dominate. I was once told, you are more defined by what you say no to than what you say yes to (i.e. everyone is not our audience).

There are two key performance measures that set the limits for effective distribution. The total net profit that you earn on average over the course of your relationship with a customer (Customer Lifetime Value) must exceed the amount you spend on average to acquire new customers (Customer Acquision Cost). In general, the higher the price of your product, the more you have to spend to make a sale – and the more it makes sense to spend it.

To succeed, every business has to have a powerful, effective way to distribute its product. Great distribution can give you a monopoly, even if your product is undifferentiated. While product differentiation in itself will not get you anywhere. Nikola Tesla did not succeed because he didn’t nail distribution. Understanding the critical importance of distribution is only half the battle; a company’s ideal distribution effort depends on many specific things that are unique to its business. Just like every great company it has a good, unique product, they’ve all found unique and extremely effective distribution angles too.

Companies like McDonalds owe their success more to their distribution systems than anything else. Marc Andreessen, says ‘many entrepreneurs who build great products simply don’t have a good distribution strategy. Even worse is when they insist that they don’t need one, or call no distribution strategy a ‘viral marketing strategy’.

Small business owners are not backwards with their approach to marketing but having a solid marketing channel is the hidden bottleneck. Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work, so it is poor sales rather than product is the most common cause of failure.

As Peter Thiel says, ‘If you get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.’

The post It will go viral appeared first on Celest Marketing.

1. If you were to describeSearch Factory | iProspect in 5 words or less, what would you say?
Results through innovation & Culture

2. What is a success story that you have helped a client with this last week?
Broke a ROI record for one of our newer enterprise level clients (3 months). With this particular client they’d been relatively stagnant in their results of the last few years but after a tedious rebuild of their ad-words account and the implementation of some very sophisticated bid management we were able to kick some significant goals achieving a 68% reduction in CPA.

3. What has been your hardest lesson or the biggest challenge in the business?
Ensuring effective cash flow management whilst experiencing strong growth. It took a lot of planning and projections to make sure we could grow at sustainable rate and ensure the consistency and quality of our service, as reputation trumps everything.

4. Best Search Marketing tip?
Look at the numbers, never engage any marketing tactic unless you’re confident in the ROI that’ll be achieved.

5. What 3 books really helped define you?
Rich Dad Poor Dad, blue ocean strategy, call to action

6. Best new cafe?
Slinky Espresso

The post Meet Michael Bell, MD Search Factory | iProspect appeared first on Celest Marketing.

The region might be more known for the Tulsa Race Riot. A large-scale, racially motivated conflict on May 31 and June 1, 1921, where whites (and the Ku Klux Klan) attacked the black community of Greenwood. The community was the wealthiest black (African American) community in the United States, burned to the ground.

From 1890s Racial segregation laws, commonly known as Jim Crow laws disallowed most blacks from voting. It wasn’t until 1916, Tulsa passed an law forbidding blacks or whites from residing on any block where 75% or more of the residents were of the other race.

What started the economic independence a notable leader J. B.Stradford, arrived in Tulsa in 1899. He believed that African American people had a better chance of economic progress if they if they pooled their resources, worked together and supported each other’s businesses. He bought large pieces of real estate in the northeastern part of Tulsa, which he had subdivided and sold exclusively to other African Americans.

The money in that community did not turn over three or four times, it turned over eight, nine times, ten, eleven, twelve times both legitimate and illegitimate means which fuelled the economy. Sometimes taking a year for the currency to leave the community.

The rise and fall of Black Wall Street gives us an interesting lesson: there is power in economic unity. By pooling together their resources, the African American community had more economic power than the white communities around it.

The post Black Wall Street appeared first on Celest Marketing.

2. What is a success story that you have helped a client with this last week?
Last week one of our clients in the printing industry came to us looking for an easier way to import their online customers into their mailing list. We quickly created a synchronisation between their WordPress eCommerce plug-in and their Sign-Up.to account, so that any new customers were instantly subscribed to their mailing list. We had this up and running for them the next day.

3. What has been your hardest lesson or the biggest challenge in the business?
Understanding that building a solid business takes time. Anything that happens overnight probably isn’t sustainable – we’ve learned not to cut corners and that doing things right will always work out best for all parties. We’ve applied this to everything we do – our relationships with our clients and partners, the work we do for our clients, the events we attend, the people we hire. Everything is done carefully and properly – and with great results.

4. Best Email Marketing tip?
Listen to your subscribers. Email marketing is no longer a one way street – you need to be empowering your customers or subscribers to tell you more about themselves, be it through click stats, capture forms or behavioural targeting. Use this information to create short, personalised messages to key target groups, rather than relying on a blanket email to your entire database once a month.

5. What 3 books really helped define you professionally?
‘Permission Marketing’ – Seth Godin; ‘Getting Things Done’ – David Allen; ‘A Fortunate Life’ – A.B. Facey

6. Best new restaurant?
Kwan Brothers (Aflred St, Fortitude Valley). A modern take on traditional Asian street food – amazing!.

The post Simon Byrne, Email Marketing Specialist appeared first on Celest Marketing.

In the last three years, about two thirds of companies surveyed in the top 1,000 private and public firms have recently (within the last 3 years), or are currently, spending significant amounts of their marketing budget rebranding or repositioning a corporate or product brand.

No matter how your brand is situated for the moment, getting the strategy and execution strategy & execution right is a massive challenge with many different moving parts.

We are briefly going to look at some major brand repositions in recent years.

Woolworths

There was a big public perception that a high quantity of Woolworths food was imported. And the change was likely to have been prompted in part by the rapid growth of the company’s private label brands (if they didn’t address the ‘fresh’ threat). A major point was creating a symbol that represented the company visually as fast as possible.

In a bid to commit to a stronger brand value the emphasis of ‘The Fresh Food People’ was vital. To live up to the name, they needed to become more transparent and highlight the extent that Woolworths was committed to fresh produce. They removed walls to behind-the-scenes areas of its stores so that customers were able to see bakers and butchers in action. The brand refitted stores with better lighting and addressed checkout queues.

The rebrand, was a radical departure for the chain. Head of marketing at the time said: “We believe it expresses in its own graphic way our commitment to fresh food in a way that the logo that it superceded doesn’t.”

- A stylised ‘W’ for Woolworths (resembling a green apple being peeled) with the addition of an abstract leaf symbol representing fresh food
- Reminiscent of one of the most famous Woolworths logos of the 1970s
- It represents a person – the top half with outstreched arms

Virgin Australia

In 2000, Virgin Blue was launched with two aircraft operating on a single route. A decade on, with 91 aircraft in its fleet, Virgin Blue was losing money and market share and the future was unsustainable. This called for a major revitalisation.

Combining its international and domestic operations under the one brand.

The airline had been operating under both national and international brands: Virgin Blue, V Australia, Polynesian Blue and Pacific Blue. Renaming and repositioning the brand, Virgin Australia wanted to compete in this market as a contemporary business and leisure carrier. They needed to shift away from their low-cost carrier image and undergo a complete brand reposition.

The rebrand repositioned the company internally around brand and culture. The rebrand looked at the end-to-end customer experience. Moving the company forward it needed to have the customer and the brand at the heart of everything they did.

The rebrand toned down the bright red and some of the crazy elements of the former identity to create a smarter, cleaner and more contemporary look to appeal to business industry without alienating leisure customers. The rebrand has created some major opportunities against a tired and weary Qantas.

Startrack

A familiar merge between Australia Post and Star Track has created an interesting development.

Letter volumes peaked in Australia in 2008 and have been falling, quite dramatically, ever since. It has meant a need to address Australia’s Post relevance in the market. The majority of Star Track’s business was generated b2b through express road freight.

In October 2012, Australia Post acquired Qantas’ 50 per cent interest in StarTrack, making Australia Post the sole shareholder in StarTrack. More recently they have rebranded ‘Messenger Post Couriers’ to ‘StarTrack Courier’.

Together StarTrack and Australia Post form one of Australia’s most trusted freight and logistics providers. Leveraging the combined business, means utilising StarTrack’s trust and premium service standards. Meanwhile Australia Post was able merge the brand with trust, reach and convenience.

The integration of StarTrack means the creation of one of Australia’s leading logistics and e-commerce solutions for both Australian businesses and consumers. Positioning it as a strong logistics business with enormous network reach, it has developed a brand with new level of service standards. While taking Australia Post’s capability with intergrated e-commerce solutions for delivery and payment capabilities on client websites.

The rebrand has created options for the future including being more commercially ready along with being fully privatised.

ANZ Bank Rebrand – A Super Regional Bank

ANZ needed to create a brand that would streamline its brand as it widened its push into Asian markets such as Cambodia, Vietnam and China. the ANZ brand had become fragmented

ANZ was now almost running with its growth plans in the wake of the global financial crisis. The new brand represents a bank “for the people”. We a new tagline: “We live in your world”

ANZ was increasingly becoming a regional bank, operating in 32 countries and needed a strong, unified brand across all regional markets. As ANZ increasingly moves into Asian markets, where English is not universally recognised, a visual symbol was necessary.

The rebranding was driven by the company’s values which put people at the centre of the organisation. Banks in developed economies were trying to reposition their brand to take the heat from the global financial crisis.

The three shapes in the new signage reflect ANZ’s three core markets – Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific – while the central human shape represents customers and staff.

The introduction of the ‘Lotus’ as the new brandmark very much focused the bank at the Asian market because of its cultural significance. In Buddhist iconography, Buddha is often represented on a pink lotus.

The rebrand cemented the bank’s future beyond Australia and New Zealand and into Asia.

Rebel Sport

Super Retail Group bought the business in 2011. And needing to create a clear distinction between Amart (All) Sports. The two businesses were growing closer together day by day.

The new brand aims to reposition the business as a premium sports retailer while increasing its share of active sports enthusiasts and growing the market among less active female consumers.

The brand’s new livery is yellow and black, with brand awareness of the Rebel name deemed strong enough to warrant dropping the word ‘sport’ from the logo and the second ‘e’ flipped to communicate the spirit of competition.

Rebel Sport was very blokey and very dated. Completely revitalising the brand to appeal to the Eighty per cent of decision-makers who are women. Making the store more women friendly. While rebranding Amart Sports to the low-cost end of the market with messages focusing on developing community, value for money, a big product range and encouraging participation.

The post 5 of Australia’s biggest re brands in the last decade appeared first on Celest Marketing.

1. If you were to describe LEA Group in 5 words or less, what would you say?
Creating leaders and leading organisations

2. What is a success story that you have helped a client with this last week?
A client who is a CEO has a focus on higher performance to be at the leading edge of his market. He is achieving targets, enjoying his role, and well respected by his team. His challenge is ‘what do I do differently to achieve higher performance?’ By gathering and analysing feedback from his team of senior managers it became clear he is contributing too much to their success. Due to his innate skill with business and in leading people, he is unconsciously doing that bit extra for them, and they aren’t fully feeling the heat of their role. My task was to surface this issue, help him develop different leadership behaviours, and plan how to do these consistently.

3. What has been your hardest lesson or the biggest challenge in the business?
In LEA Group, our role is to create the environment where leaders discover the best possible solution themselves and then we support them to implement their new approaches. My hardest lesson has been to realise that I can’t contribute these solutions myself, even when it appears obvious; my role is to facilitate the learning and discovery of others, which always produces a better outcome.

4. What 3 books really helped define you professionally?
Good to Great, Crucial Conversations, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

5. Favourite restaurant?
Aqualinea at Teneriffe

6. How do you do your coffee? 
Flat white, and extra hot!

Graham Hill
Email: graham@leagroup.com.au

The post Meet Graham Hill, Partner LEA Group appeared first on Celest Marketing.

This method is tool that forms the Blue Ocean Strategy. When we achieve value innovation we create the potential for leaps in value both for our customers and our business and make the competition irrelevant.

The post Four Actions Framework appeared first on Celest Marketing.