Boxing The Air

Boxing The Air

“So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.” - 1 Corinthians 9:26

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In the early 1970s, Braniff Airlines was charging $62 to transport coach passengers from Dallas to San Antonio, while Southwest Airlines charged a meager $15 for the same route. One of Southwest’s shareholders approached CEO Herb Kelleher and asked, “Don’t you think we could raise our prices just two or three dollars?” To which Herb replied, “You don’t understand. We’re not competing with other airlines; we’re competing with ground transportation.” 

In his 1984 book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini uses the term “click, whirr” to describe the automatic, conditioned responses we have to certain situations.

Our brains don’t analyze every situation equally. We usually pay attention up to the point we feel that we have enough information to roll the tape in our heads (hence, “click, whirr”) that tells us how to react.

Nowhere is this more true in business than in the discipline of marketing.

Most leaders unconsciously assume a lens which says that “marketing is a fight for existing market share with a better product and a better brand.”

The issue with that mindset is that, on average, the category leader dominates, capturing a staggering 76% of the market's economic value within its category. That leaves everyone else fighting over the remaining 24%. So when the marketer shows up with a better product and a better brand ready to compete for existing demand, what he is really saying is, “Our strategic plan as an organization is to compete in someone else’s market category, with an agenda they set, and we know the best we can do is fight for our share of the remaining 24% of the market that the leader has not taken.”

And that is the reason that most marketing fails...(READ MORE)

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Kate Farthing

Helping corporate professionals and emerging leaders to advance their careers by communicating effectively | 200+ Proven Client Successes | Soft Skills Trainer & Career Coach | Fractional Social Media Manager

1mo

From my limited experience: Ag companies believe farmers want to see "safe" marketing. Dan Schultz do you think farmers will respond to disruptive marketing methods?

Justin McMenamy

Podcaster & VP-Disruptive Products

1mo

As the authors of "Play Bigger" write. No executive of an incumbent company, who fears loosing thier job, can go about the work of category creation. Investors won't tolerate the non linear and unpredictable path of category creation. Additionally, ag specifically and somewhat uniquely (also industries like defense, mining...) has a very small, interconnected, and isolated customer base. Someone creating a category in ag must be able to self fund growth through profits or have patient investors because the time scale for adoption is ~20 years.

Mark Branch

Founder, Team Builder

1mo

Totally agree. You want to be successful? Carve out a new path that solves a problem no one else has attempted. Don’t build a solution and go looking for a problem. If you’re not sure of your fit, let’s talk. Been there! Done that! Spoiler alert…..it will not be easy but it will be some of the best work in your career. Help others solve their problems and most of yours solve themselves.

Jeff Caldwell

Ag communicator, writer, tech fan (especially for agriculture), idea-starter and networker. The guy who knows people. Give me a call and let's talk.

1mo

Ask 100 crop farmers of their definition of a successful crop and you will get 100 answers that are variations of "improved crop yield/quality." That's the bar. Period. I think what a lot of ag tech companies miss is trying to create a new bar. Sometimes, creating a solution to a problem that doesn't yet exist. Other times, trying to convince potential customers that another bar is more important. We can be forward-thinking and forward-looking, planning for the future and laying the foundation for future solutions. But in an industry that I would argue isn't one comprising a tired game, farmers are sold "the next great thing" every day. And they themselves are selling the output that today is the assembly of a lot of innovation. But the innovations that are adopted are those that work here and now and set farmers up for success tomorrow. Putting on my farmer hat, we have to see results to invest in something. There's a pragmatism to agriculture that I think is often not fully understood by new entries into the ag technology space.

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