Amongst my favorite Seinfeld episodes was that of “The Soup Nazi”.  As you may remember the story line, The Soup Nazi banished Elaine from his soup kitchen with his announcement “No Soup for You!” While the Seinfeld clan’s attraction to the Soup Nazi may have been soup of extraordinary flavor, the episode offers marketers a more compelling recipe.

In her brilliant book “Different”, Youngme Moon points out that in a mature market, added features that are not highly relevant to the customer offer little incremental value.  She offers the concept of differentiating strategies through “reverse and hostile brands.”

While the Soup Nazi’s fare was surprising good, the service was shockingly bad. I am not suggesting that our clients start insulting customers anytime soon, but there is lesson to be learned from the Soup Nazi.  Disrupters understand the need to find separation, even if it means not offering services and benefits offered by the competition. Southwest Air offers no amenities, but does offer free baggage.  Where United and Delta says yes, Southwest says no and vice versa.

Menchies and similar self serve yogurt shops have exploded on the scene.  Eat all the yogurt you want and we are not going to serve you.  By the way, you are going to spend about a third more than you would otherwise. The model is distressing to our waist line but stimulating to our business sensibilities.  Tart yogurt flavors are particularly hot as they offer the opposite of what we have been conditioned to expect; as sweet is ying, tart is yang.

For a good laugh with clients, I have occasionally handed out calendars from despair.com.  A spoof of the overused motivational posters, they have similar imagery that says things like “Consulting: Why find a solution when you can prolong the problem?” The calendars are popular because they are funny, but also because they are a shock to our senses.  When ordering such a calendar you get an email to the effect of don’t bother calling us. 

To be different may require the marketer to be entirely counter to the marketplace.  The iPad is revolutionary but lacks USB ports and other goodies.  Apple is unapologetic, as consumers intuitively understand the tradeoff.

We are drawn to things we can’t have, and thus one potential strategy in value creation is “the take away”.  To suggest that your product or service is only available to a select group of customers increases its value. When clients ask us to do Executive Coaching we say no (it is not in our core competency) which makes our Strategic Planning services worth more.  Customers know that to get something really good, they may have to give up something in return.

While I am not encouraging anyone reading this to go negative, I am suggesting we need to think more provocatively about creating products and brands that are not only innovative and different but counter to our thinking.  That may include cutting out benefits that we naturally assume are necessary, but may just be redundant. I wonder if George would go for the vanilla tart or caramel latte?

I thought I had seen it all until a Business Week article last week entitled “What a long strange business plan it’s been”.  As it turns out, the Grateful Dead was quite a commercial enterprise. The band was highly profitable, had a Board of Directors, and a successful merchandising division whose lawyers protected its intellectual property.  Was Jerry Garcia a better businessman than the average Joe?

The real lesson here is the level of engagement that the band had with “deadheads,” the iconic fans that would travel the country to take acid and watch 5 hour concerts. “The Dead” had a phone bank announcing new shows and preferred seating for their best fans, a bizarre form of psychedelic CRM. This makes me wonder, if The Grateful Dead, who probably didn’t know what city they were in half the time could run a business with this level of sophistication, shouldn’t all businesses be capable of this level of structure?

We should at least aspire to have fans half as loyal. It appears that the deadheads would do just about anything to consume the product (I am talking about the music) time and time again. What can you do in your business to create raving fans? There are stories of how no two shows were ever the same which would suggest that the band relished the element of surprise. Fans never knew what would come next, and that was a big part of their fascination.

Business should find ways to do the unexpected for customers, like send a Thanksgiving card or an In-N-Out truck to their location. It wouldn’t surprise me if Jerry Garcia did the unexpected and showed up on stage some day.

Intel’s earnings release last week was revealing. The company reported a 28% revenue surge, driven by a 42% increase in microprocessor sales within its data center group.  The shift from personal computing to server farms and cloud computing is clearly underway.

Clouds represent a disruptive force in the delivery model of the Internet and information technology.  Computer makers are talking about a new wave of laptops that are even smaller and lighter than Netbooks and contain no hard drives.  Apple is about to release its tablet, an even thinner multi-media device that serves as iPhone, iMac and Kindle all in one.

Thus our business use of the Internet is about to take on a dynamic shift. Many are resistant to have their information stored on servers they don’t control, but to believe that information is safer on your desktop at home is simply flawed given vulnerability to viruses, hackers, disasters and lost data. Software as a service (i.e. ASP’s) have been popular for several years, but the movement to launching all applications via a browser (such as Microsoft office) has significant business implications, not only in terms of how we use the Internet, but how we invest in technology.

On any given desktop or server, there is a massive amount of underutilized space and computing power. Clouds present the opportunity for the population to collectively use the computing power we need, at the time that we need it, reducing the overall cost and energy depleted. There are also other potential benefits as various applications may be integrated at the server level, reducing the integration required by IT departments and users (an example would be syncing your Outlook and CRM or Blackberry).

For the business community to optimize (still my favorite word) the use of cloud computing will require a paradigm shift. While all companies will seek to mitigate their risk of losing vital information, the upside in terms of IT ROI may be extraordinary and worthy of our attention and investment.

Many of my older colleagues are feeling a bit out of sorts with Facebook, RSS feeds and the plethora of online media which have disturbed the sanctity of our desktops. Many feel compelled to join the party, regardless of their place within the world order. 

I wonder if all of this panic is really necessary.  For some, running Facebook ads seems trendy, but for others it is like selling Yankee pinstripes at Fenway Park. My point is that if you have an old world product, it is hard to convert to online marketing techniques overnight.

Peter Drucker said all management is marketing but I wonder if he is turning in his grave at the prospect of Twitter and its lack of a sustainable revenue model.  He couldn’t have expected marketing to change so dramatically, practically overnight.  Print advertising is dying a rapid death.  Yet some products and service have an experiential component that make Internet marketing difficult.  Companies are spending a lot of money on ad words and other SEO (search engine optimization) tools, sometimes void of any real strategy or measurement other than click through (which is a ridiculous measurement if I ever heard of one).

Companies are well advised to consider their Internet strategy within a broader effort that blends different approaches into an integrated marketing plan.  Marketers must take the time to acquire the skills, resources and technology to compete effectively in the online space. 

One advantage that online marketing offers us is the ability to measure specific outcomes of web traffic, and we should all be a bit more vigilant in measuring the effectiveness of our marketing so that we can better allocate resources to the approaches that work best.  See you all on Facebook.

The endless coverage of the Swine Flu is tiring, but perhaps business people should be paying more attention.  You think the NCAA basketball tournament affects productivity?  Wait until half of your workers are bed-ridden and don’t show up for work.

A limited quantity of H1N1 flu vaccinations will be available in about a month (feared by health officials to be too late to slow down a potential outbreak in October).  The U.S. government and the American Medical Association are advocating that workers get flu shots immediately, and not wait until “Swine Flu “shots are available. Influenza puts a quarter of a million people in the hospital every year, so organizations (who incidentally take on 75% of the health care cost burden) may need to think more proactively about protecting their workforce.

In this case, there really are few alternatives to prevention/education.  Perhaps, we need to educate our employees about washing hands more thoroughly (you may actually have to follow the old rule of singing “Happy Birthday” in your head to calibrate the time needed to remove the germs from your hands).  Most importantly, if an employee is sneezing and coughing and appears ill, send him or her home!

As we have found a comfort zone with $3.00 a gallon gasoline, one might wonder, are $40 per barrel oil prices sustainable?  We are ripe for further volatility in energy prices and huge price swings at the pump.  Consider the converging factors that drive the price of gasoline:

Energy prices are particularly critical because volatility can inflate many layers within the value chain and prices go up faster than they come down. All it will take is a regional conflict, hurricane or other unforeseen event to create a spasm in this market.  U.S. companies who operate fleets or are otherwise dependant on stable transportation or raw material costs are well advised to project a higher price for energy through 2010 and beyond.

The spasm of the global economy over the last year has completely recalibrated the customer- vendor relationship.   In order for suppliers to fend off commoditization in a difficult operating environment, sales professionals must be adept at renegotiating their relationship with customers.

Purchasing decisions have become more transparent, and in many cases, the primary buying contacts of the past have become irrelevant. The $100k decision that was made previously by a Director is now being made by a Vice President.  At a time when vendors face greater risks with customers, there are opportunities to deepen relationships and have more strategic conversations with decision makers.

In fact, offering up a senior level meeting to discuss providing more value or “reducing the total cost of ownership” is compelling for the customer, and opens doors for the supplier.   Such meetings often serve as a lever to identify latent customer needs that can be converted into improvements that create a more synergistic and sustainable business relationship. The downsizing of the workforce provides significant opportunity for vendors who can effectively replace internal functions that are being neglected, or outsourced.

Effective sales people who utilize consultative style selling techniques are adept at discovering customer needs that they cannot effectively articulate.  During the dot com bust, I held a senior position for a national gourmet food supplier.  One day I fielded a call from one of our Regional Managers who asked if I would take a senior level meeting with him at a major U.S. retailer for which our company had gained little traction. I agreed to fly to Minneapolis with him to try and reign in the elephant.

During the meeting, I asked the V.P. a series of fairly provocative questions such as “what are your corporate initiatives, how are you evaluated, etc.” They were not the type of questions that a supplier generally asks of a customer, and I remember the V.P. being amused and befuddled by some of the questions.  After about 45 minutes of discussion, I came to discover the real problem which was that the customer did not have the capacity (in the form of labor or expertise) to manage our category of products. I asked him “what if we could put someone in your office to manage the category for you?” I will never forget the customer’s response: “you mean you would do that for me?” We left the office with a multimillion dollar order at which time I had the Regional Manager buy me a really big steak. Consequently, we renegotiated our relationship and positioned ourselves to provide an innovative bundle of services in alignment with the client’s existing strategic initiatives.

In a world where headcount is being cut, vendors should not be thinking about how to cut prices, but how they can deliver more service.  The art of selling (and serving customers) is really about listening.  At a time when customer’s awareness of the value provided by supplier is heightened, there is a bounty of problems for vendors to solve.  Regardless of whether you are an insurance company or manufacturing widgets, senior managers need to be proactively meeting with decision makers to redefine their offer.

This is not a time to allow salespeople to own customer relationships exclusively. To do so emboldens them not to share critical customer insights that can reshape the service offering.  As business development slows, salespeople engage in more tactical thinking (such as cutting prices).  This market presents the opportunity to teach salespeople how to diagnose needs and to enable their organizations to provide more robust solutions.