The SIVA Model for Customer Focused Marketing

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the difference between traditional marketing and Marketing 2.0, and this post will talk about how the latter interprets the “marketing-mix” as articulated in the SIVA model (proposed by Chekitan Dev and Don Schultz in the Marketing Management Journal of The American Marketing Association).

What Is The “Marketing Mix”?

The term has origins going back to 1948 when James Culliton said that a marketing decision should be a result of something similar to a recipe. Neil Borden interpreted this concept in 1953 in his American Marketing Association presidential address by referring to the recipe as a ‘Marketing-Mix’. Later, E. Jerome McCarthy, proposed the famous 4 P’s classification in 1960.

What Are The 4 P’s?

I’ve talked about the 4 P’s in an earlier post here, they are:

1. PRODUCT: This refers to what’s being sold, whether it’s a product of service. Traditional marketing served as one of the key drivers of product development through market research.
2. PRICE: As the name suggests, this is about setting the selling the price of the product. Again, this was traditionally driven by market research and economic theory.
3. PLACEMENT: This refers to where the product is sold and how it is distributed to target markets.
4. PROMOTION: This represents all of the communications that a marketer may use in the marketplace. This traditionally focused on advertising and public relations.

This model has been modified by various people over the years to include additional P’s, such as “people”, in an attempt to make it for customer focused. These efforts have largely failed though because the articulation of each element reflects the top-down approach of traditional marketing. Of course, marketers have always conducted market research to understand the market, but the idea that customers build brands as much as companies is not consistent with this approach.

How Is The SIVA Model Different?

The SIVA model attempts to rearticulate the 4 P’s in a way that is more consistent with the idea that in today’s market environment brand building power has shifted from companies to communities. This is an idea at the core of the Marketing 2.0 philosophy.

1. PRODUCT becomes SOLUTION: The idea here is that what’s being sold is driven by consumer need. The community now defines that product instead of marketing. Marketing’s role is to understand and articulate user need to the company.
2. PRICE becomes VALUE: Here pricing is driven by the value a product offers users rather than by economic theories. With new economic models there are more and more opportunities for customers to actually set pricing through services like Google AdWords.
3. PLACEMENT becomes ACCESS: Again, rather than defining where the product will be sold, it’s about providing access to users when and where they want it.
4. PROMOTION becomes INFORMATION:Rather than placing advertisements out in the world, this approach is simply about providing users with information about the product so they can determine if it offers value as a solution and is readily accessible.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback.

A Call To Marketers

Fellow Marketers,

Have you been to Wikipedia recently to see what vox populi has to say about marketing? I regret to inform that the entry leaves a great deal to be desired, especially considering the number of marketing related conversations in the blogosphere. I think marketers can do better, and I’d love to work with a bunch of editors to clean up the entry, which Wikipedia iteself has flagged for improvement.

My personal interest is in defining the difference between traditional marketing and Marketing 2.0 … but that’s hard to do if the entry for traditional marketing is so poorly written.

Anyone interested? Send me a note.

Three Steps To Better Product Development Roadmaps (Nike+ & Fitbit)

The Nike+ is a device that often comes up when talking about what makes for a smart product development roadmap because the product embodies all three steps that I think are essential. For those who are unfamiliar with the device, it is pedometer which you attach to your running shoe and which connects wirelessly with your iPod (see Apple’s site for a good introduction). Here are the aforementioned steps:

1. SERVICIZE IT:  Part of what sets the device up for success is that it’s positioned to turn a product into a service. In this way, its reminiscent of the first iPod which took most of the features out of the actual device and relocated them in the management software, iTunes (the service). This may seem obvious today but at the time all the mp3 player manufactures were competing on how to get more features into the player, which was a losing proposition. In the case of the Nike+, they’ve taken the idea of defeaturing the device even further. The device itself has no display and no interactions. You simply put it in your shoe. The display of your iPod can then offer information about how far you’ve run, how many calories you’ve burned, etc.
2. ACCESSORIZE IT: One beauty of servicizing is that it also opens new revenue streams. For example, users can download PowerSongs from iTunes which will play on your iPod if you start falling behind your normal pace, or when you hit that massive hill. Now that you’ve got people online, there are also opportunities to sell them other stuff to enhance their running experience.
3. COMMUNITIZE IT: Getting users online has many benefits. Connecting the Nike+ to your iPod means that you’re connected to your community because your iPod gets synced with your computer, and your computer get synced with the internet. Now you can not only look at all your runs and highlight trends, but you can share them with your friends. Of course, your iPhone may be GPS enabled which means that it can track where you run as well. Perhaps you’ll set up a special  route in your city so that you can participate in a marathon that is a continent away in real time. And, fostering communities online is the best way to power future  product development because you’re users are the best source of market research, new ideas, innovations, etc.

Now there’s another device that may do it even better, it’s called Fitbit. What I like about Fitbit is that it goes beyong running to address the larger implications of this kind of product. In other words, why stop at running? How about walking? How long I was sitting during the day? And, how I slept? Yup, you got that last part right. How I slept. Wearing the device at night while allows it to gather information about how you’ve been sleeping. I wonder if there’s a market for PowerNappingSongs? Fitbit also presents all the infomation it collects in a digestible and intuitive way.

These two examples just go to show that there’s always more roadmap. I remember feeling like the Nike+ absolutely nailed it and that no other product would have a chance to catch up any time soon. And then, Fitbit took a step ahead. I can’t wait to see where they go from here. If you’ve got a product I encourage you to think about these two examples as you look ahead.

Twitter Digest

• UNDERSTAND / FIX THE WORLD
  • My friends at VegRev will upgrade your diesel to run on veggie. Cool video interview on Link TV
  • CNBC covers my friend Martin Fischer at KickStart in putting a major dent in rural poverty in Africa with human powered water pumps.
• MARKETING RELATED LINKS
  • Advertising in virtual communities, interesting podcast.
    
• SOME FUN
  • My good friend Eilen Jewell will be playing at SXSW, she’s increadible go check it out!
  • Someone found a portrait of Shakespeare, maybe.

Hope you’re enjoying the weekend.

My France Photography Book

My passion for art was fostered at a young age by my parents, but it wasn’t until I bought a camera that I began scratching the surface of how art and design were related. I was fortunate to be able to build a darkroom at home in the attic where I could conduct all sorts of photographic experiments. At some point I’ll share those on this blog, but for now I want to share a collection of more traditional photographs that I made while traveling in France in 1994.

The prints fit in an over-sized handmade case containing 60 unique 16″ x 20″ photographic prints derived from 6 cm x 9 cm negative film. The are individually matted and are held in the right side of the open book (as in a portfolio case). On the left, there are over-sized collage pages made from my journals and material that I collected during my travels in France.

Here is a slide show that features many of the photographs in the case. The digital scans do not do justice to the orginals, but at least they are now online to share!

This project represented the impulse to do something in the traditional way (the “right way” according to some) before deconstructing the process. Thus, the results are traditional black and white photographs hand printed on fiber paper. For those who have a technical interest in photography, these were printed using a split filtering process, whereby the exposure of the paper during printing was split into three periods, each with a different contrast filter. The result is the grouping of shades of gray into three tonal ranges. This can be done remarkable easily today using a tool like Photoshop today, but was a rather advanced technique to master when I was in college.