Subscribe to RSSAnheuser-Busch | A-B’s head of non-alcoholic subsidiary: Opportunities ‘endless’
Creating a separate subsidiary focused entirely on non-alcoholic drinks allows Anheuser-Busch to escape the rigid laws governing beer sales and tap into locations that don’t require liquor licenses.
To David English, vice president and general manager of the newly formed 9th Street Beverages, those possibilities extend to health stores, spas, gyms, rental car agencies - even oil drilling rigs - basically wherever people are thirsty.
“I’ve grown up in the beer business and have a real perspective on where you can sell beer, particularly to licensed vendors but when you open up the blinders and see what else is out there, the opportunities are endless,” English told the St. Louis Business Journal.
It also helps that the brewer’s subsidiary is free from the stringent laws governing the liquor and beer industry. Now, A-B “can compete like our competitors can,” English said.
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Opportunities missed
Why do big companies routinely overlook new opportunities that are apparently staring them in the face? Why did Nestlé and Kraft fail to predict the popularity of Starbucks, for example? Why did not American Airlines or Delta Air Lines create Southwest Airlines?
Marketing consultants Craig Stull, Phil Myers and David Meerman Scott offer a simple explanation: most of the time, companies look at customers and markets from inside their current operations, rather than adopting an “outside-in” perspective: they simply don’t see things as customers do.
Their book offers a six-step recipe for overcoming this tendency. The first, most important step sounds obvious: search for the problems customers want solving. But this, it turns out, is easier said than done.
Zipcar made an appeal to different groupsMany executives mistakenly think that because they are experts in their product or service they are experts in their customers’ problems. But the two are not the same. Organisations often pay lip-service to solving customer problems, but the focus of their innovation efforts is to solve their own problems: to feed factories with orders, achieve targets and extend their brands’ reach.
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Google Chrome | Google launches new Internet browser
Google shares are rallying this morning after the company announced that today it is launching Chrome, its own Web browser, to compete with Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Google provides details about the new browser in, uh, a comic book.
According to Google’s blog post, the new browser will be open source, and launches today in 100 countries. The news comes just after the beta release of Internet Explorer 8.
The Street seems quite excited about the prospect of a Google browser.
Christmas marketing tips for retailers
Now is the time to start planning Christmas retail marketing campaigns, according to one expert.
Writing on the JCK-Jewelers Circular Keystone website, Rosabel Tao of SpotRunner called on retailers to maximise their festive campaigns by establishing and promoting their unique selling point to stand out from the crowd.
This can apply to all media, including direct mail, TV and search engine marketing, she explained.
Running integrated campaigns that encompass a wide range of channels - both online and offline - can also help to “surround” the consumer with that retailer’s message, offering more potential for conversions, Ms Tao said.
It is also worth testing new approaches to marketing, particularly when it comes to new technologies such as video production, and measuring and tracking campaign success by comparing metrics with the objectives of the strategy, she asserted.
