If I Were: Arm&Hammer

‘Fresh box for baking!’


If I Were: Smuckers

Smucker’s Grape Jelly

Seriously. Sell jelly in squeeze tubes. Just be done with it already.  OK, get fancy and sell PB&J in a dual-tube.  Tube packaging efficiency is so much better, and, if you do the nozzle right, you don’t need to refrigerate because no air will enter (see Franzia/bagged wine).  TetraPak and others have this figured out; why are we still discussing this?

Enable your customers

Here’s one of many articles describing the challenge of maintaining personal privacy amidst the spread of data brokers http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article166488597.html

The core and often unacknowledged challenge here is the asymmetry, that people will generally modify their behavior (self-censor in some contexts) according to their surroundings and present purposes.  This ability falters when we do not know what our friends and adversaries know about us, preventing us from leveraging our friendship or guarding against their power.  So far we’ve avoided the utopic and dystopic extremes, but the classic example of Target illustrates the potential benefits and dangers:




These situations and extremes can be avoided.  While the first responsibility is on companies to ethically and honestly interact with their customers, that is essential, I can see the temptation to wring customer data for pennies, and that once some return has been achieved to expand these datastores. As Target stated in the preceding, “We’ve developed a number of research tools that allow us to gain insights into trends and preferences within different demographic segments of our guest population.” and “Our mission is to make Target the preferred shopping destination for our guests by delivering outstanding value, continuous innovation and exceptional guest experience…” 

Years ago, I complained on twitter that companies like Roundy’s, in the notoriously low-margin grocery sector, have customer loyalty programs but retain all of the data and conclusions for their internal use.  Hiding the purpose and mechanism of these programs is one way to avoid customer ire, but this tactic is one misstep or abuse from cataclysmic failure.  I think it better to share the results with customers.  Given the limited shelf life of many products and limited shelf space for all the rest, customer predictability is directly related to efficient stocking and pricing, but they could do much better than coupons in creating and maintaining product demand.  Specifically, grocery stores should email or have an app that forecasts my likely grocery needs and serves as a starting point for the weekly grocery list. It is quite easy to curate a list of things that a given customer uses on a weekly and monthly basis and is probably close to running out of.  This is a service to the customer, an aide to their busy life, but most importantly it shifts the customer’s mindset from one of generally needing to get groceries to a plan to go to a particular grocery store for these specific items…and some others.  Coupons could be issued in the email/app for ancillary purchases (Cool Whip® to go with the planned ice cream), but they’re made more valuable because they can be applied to the customer’s shopping list, reinforcing the commitment and articulating the expected savings.  At this point it does not matter if other stores have the same prices and coupons, they can’t match the convenience.  This system would naturally encourage online/pre-bagged grocery pickup and it could give a very meaningful perspective on the customer’s consumption trends.  Again, they have the data and are currently using it to improve their processes while denying the same benefits and insights to their customers; if they open the access both grocer and consumer can understand their consumption, but they can also collaborate and discover a more efficient relationship.

So, I do not see a reason for companies to hide their insights from their customers and believe that the negative effects, both in bad PR and missed opportunities, exceed whatever benefit there is in deceiving customers.  As we both know, it’s been too long since I had a Twinkie..

Pandora Bounties







Consider a Facebook/Netflix/etc. app that analyzes a user’s profile to determine how sheltered they may be relative to their peers.  This data would be presented to the user, accompanied by a breakout plan to get them up to their peer norm.  Offers from media providers (Netflix/Amazon/etc.) would encourage the user to ‘rectify’ the situation through term-limited catch-up deals/packages ($10 to ‘get’ Game of Thrones or $20 and the Fifty Shades of Gray will be on your doorstep tomorrow).  The obvious revenue elements are kickbacks from providers (essentially referral fees), demographic intuition for advertisers (what groups are not responding to our advertising campaigns), appreciation from data providers (for promoting complete taste profiles), social literacy trivia games (à la Jeopardy), and offers in an ongoing to-do list to maintain social literacy (number and frequency of entries informed by prior rectification speed/thoroughness).  The offerings should also be tailored by age/maturation as the desire to be socially-literate varies/decreases with age.

I can’t say I would use such a ‘service’, but because the data and revenue model exist it should as well.