Marketing Is Not Risk Taking.

The two most recent iconic

The recent market strategy of Burger King and Ford Motor Co is quite the opposite: a comprehensive innovation based on growth strategy, and the other seems to be desperate.

Not long ago, Burger King just announced its 12 quarter sales.

It's not that simple.

Next comes Ford's case. After suffering a huge loss of $12 billion 700 million in 2006, Ford Motor Co is determined to rush ahead with short-term sales.

Ford Motor Co recently announced that it had re posted the already overused Taurus label (Taurus) for its 500 new car.

Why do we need to reactivate the brand?

Obviously, Ford is trying to do wonders again.

Only 40% of people realized the Ford 500 new car released by Ford Motor Co, while the Taurus brand has a glorious history of nearly 21 years, with a 80% recognition rate among buyers.

In 1990s, Taurus achieved the best sales performance for 5 consecutive years, during which 7 million vehicles were sold, which made outstanding contributions to helping Ford Motor Co out of difficulties and won the award of the best selling saloon car in the United States.

Taurus brand is a very competitive brand and has contributed continuously to Ford Motor Co for many years.

But to a certain extent, this also indicates that Ford Motor Co has not kept pace with the times and the needs of consumers.

After 20 years of glory but shrinking, Taurus series withdrew from the market. In the last year, Taurus brand was also "modestly" attributed to fast consumption behavior.

If the reshaping brand is as easy as Ford Motor Co imagine, OLDSMOBILE Netscape, Tears and For Fears may dreamed of such a magic formula.

Burger King has been successful in the past 10 years with diversified ownership restructuring, advertising campaigns, management teams and marketing strategies, which has provided us with good material for brand researchers.

Innovation of Burger King

The Burger King has finally targeted the majority of the male consumers who want to win the most favor from 18 to 35 years old, and more importantly, Burger King has been doing nothing but taking advantage of the innovations made in the "4P" to enter the market.

"In your way" was originally a slogan of the Burger King's attack on rival McDonald's, which refutes the fact that McDonald's is a highly automated but inflexible hamburger machine.

Now, "in your way" is not only a marketing slogan for burger king, but also a special web page of MySpace website.

The webpage is exclusively sponsored by Burger King. On this website, MySpace users can download the popular TV drama "24 hours" free of charge.

Burger King is hoping to attract the increasing number of online social networking users.

The strategy adopted by Burger King, like SubservientChicken.com, has not only re established the brand relevance of young people, but also triggered a large-scale discussion on the Internet.

Burger King creatively brought his brand to life with the help of smart sales promotion tools such as Halloween masks and cooperation with X-box.

Ford Motor Co's Taurus brand rebirth program is more likely to believe that this is just a tactic, rather than a strategy, that Ford Motor Co uses to channel consumers, employees and investors.

For the essence of the product, Ford Motor Co's Taurus brand rebirth is just a symbolic return by changing the label. It is merely a label for a failure model that has nothing to do with today's consumers. It is a failed attempt to promote short term sales.

Brown, an American Automotive analyst, commented that Ford Motor Co's 500 car interior decoration materials were good and its appearance improved a lot, but it is rather conservative in the present market.

The overall design seems to be aimed at the Taurus car user, which is the improved version of Taurus, which is the problem.

Taurus users will feel fresh about Ford Motor Co's 500 cars, but Honda accord users will not be interested at all.

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Make the right choice between innovation and risk taking.

In today's era of blogs, YouTube and product globalization, the rules of competition have changed, but many marketers stick to past success rules and methods.

Authorized marketing directors must now make choices in two different strategies: innovation and risk taking.

It's easy to make the right choice.

However, when marketing managers face the pressure of sales in a more mature market, they are faced with consumers who have very high discernment ability. At the same time, because of the fragmentation of many products, the channel saturation, scarce resources and a business expansion plan may lead the decision makers to take desperate actions.

In order to make the right choice, you must answer the following three basic questions.

The first question is: how can our brand expand reliably and reliably?

One of the most significant examples in recent years is the pformation of Kodak.

Kodak is returning to its original brand line, no longer producing high cost macro cameras, and abandoning the fast imaging film market, returning to its original brand value "capturing memory" and moving to the emerging digital video products.

Based on the image network basic store, image network gold store and image network flagship store, based on many image network shops, Kodak has integrated Kodak image network windows in various cities into a huge digital image operation platform, providing consumers with a comprehensive solution to stay indoors.

Kodak formed its own product and service chain: digital camera (Kodak or non Kodak brand) to FedEx delivery, chain printing shop output, MMS (photo) mobile phone to network pmission, chain printing shop output, FedEx delivery to customer.

By adhering to the brand tradition, Kodak provides consumers with creative consumer solutions in emerging markets with high brand loyalty.

It corrects its own mistakes and moves unswervingly.

The second question is: what kind of unknown opportunities do we have?

All along, in the highly competitive paint industry, Dutch Boy, Holland, has no special advantage, but it is a strong competitor.

The paint industry has always been faced with unfriendly faces when faced with customers: its traditional paint cans need to be screwed off by screws with a spanner, dry with a wet cloth, and need to be struck by hammers.

The paint bucket has always given people the impression that they are dirty and heavy, difficult to carry, difficult to open, difficult to pour, and have no fun at all.

This awful situation has been like this since the first barrel of paint came to market. People are tired of it, but they are used to it, so no one asks why.

In the past, the illusion of manufacturers was that customers bought paint instead of paint barrels.

But for users, they regard paint and paint barrels as the unity provided by manufacturers.

Holland boy paint company realized that there was a lot of opportunities in the middle. They developed a paint bucket for simple pportation, simple opening and simple dumping, and they succeeded.

Compared with other coatings companies' commitment to better colors, Holland boy paint company has introduced "twist irrigation", which is a container made of high hysteresis plastic and can be tightly screwed at the top.

Shortly thereafter, Williams, the parent of Holland small paint company, applied this invention to other parent brand products.

After "twisting irrigation", Holland boy paint company introduced the "rolling" method in the same way, which is a kind of pot embedded with roller table, which is suitable for engineering use.

Holland's success has been achieved because it fully understands the needs of customers and innovates around the shape of products, so as to leverage the portfolio of the entire product and continue unswervingly along this road.

The third question is: what kind of organizational capabilities can stimulate innovation more effectively?

Recall the business expansion plan of the insurance industry: commercialization, channel differentiation, and trust.

Think about what the insurance providers are most annoyed about: insurance coverage, complexity, increasing costs, agency dependence.

Now let's take a look at the Allstate insurance company of the United States. It has introduced Allstate s safe-driving bonuses, liability accident exemption and new car expansion protection, as well as other simple products for families.

Allstate insurance company recombines its insurance products and services so that customers can design their own insurance strategies according to their needs, so that customers can better control their own insurance.

Allstate insurance company has been successful. It has leveraged a new business model, and revolved around the blank areas controlled by customers, and persisted.

No one chooses to take risks instead of innovating as their marketing strategies.

Those who want to speed up business growth through innovation are guided by the answers to these questions, and you will find a very smooth marketing channel.