Joy Thomas
February 13th, 2012 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
Love is in the air…or maybe it’s just pizza I’m smelling.
News recently broke that Pizza Hut has released an intriguing new temporary revenue stream: the Pizza Hut Engagement Package, which includes the company’s $10 dinner box (a medium one-topping regular pan pizza, five breadsticks with marinara sauce, and 10 cinnamon sticks with a sweet icing cup).
![[Fox News/Pizza Hut]](http://motivstrategies.com/motiv_blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/pizza_hut_proposal640.jpeg "Pizza Hut Engagement Package")
Photo: Fox News/Pizza Hut
That the pizza conglomerate is offering a Valentine’s Day special is no surprise. After all, what’s more traditional than sharing a romantic dinner with your valentine? But what
is unusual is the engagement package’s
$10,010 price tag, which includes costs for a ruby ring, limo service, flowers, a fireworks show, a photographer, and a videographer. Although some may raise eyebrows over Pizza Hut’s foray into romance, a company spokesperson
reports that Pizza Hut has already received over 800 serious inquiries.
I think Pizza Hut’s over-the-top new pet project was a brilliantly thought-out guerilla marketing tactic. But the marriage of food and engagements (sorry) seems to be, well, a match made in heaven—and an opportunity that has been seized by marketers for years.
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Joy Thomas
January 9th, 2012 | Filed under: Customer Experience, Motiv | No Comments »
According to Reuters, Starbucks is raising its prices by about 1% in the Northeast and Sunbelt regions, which include major urban hubs such as Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, NYC, and Motiv’s home base of Wash., DC.
The past year has not been kind to the companies that have tried to raise consumer costs in attempts to improve corporate profit margins. Some well-documented examples from the past year include Netflix (which we blogged about), Bank of America, and Verizon. It’s simple: people don’t like paying more money to get the same thing.
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Jeneanne Rae
January 4th, 2012 | Filed under: Motiv | 1 Comment »
This post was a column featured on the Management channel of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Click here to view.
Let’s face it, 2011 was a tough year by all measures. The sluggish global economy and European debt crisis were a drag on our confidence, the way Congress behaved scared us all, and the twin trends of a shrinking tax base combined with runaway health care costs make it impossible to see how things will turn around any time soon.
This is precisely why innovation is so critical at the moment. Trying to maneuver through the unchartered waters we find ourselves in cannot be accomplished through traditional means alone. Here’s a list of 10 innovation resolutions that I think you will find valuable for 2012.
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Katie Waterson
September 21st, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | 1 Comment »
The apology of Netflix CEO on the company's blog was apparently more popular than the change in the company's service offering
Poor Netflix. These last two months have been rough, for both the company and its subscribers who are suffering whiplash caused by simultaneous price increases, service changes, and the Qwikster rebranding. The result? Too much to swallow for some – more than one million (and counting) of Netflix’s 25 million subscribers have discontinued their service agreements, fueling nothing short of a social media frenzy of disappointed customers.
Hindsight is always 20/20. I hate to pick on the company while its down, and I believe CEO Reed Hastings, despite his somewhat lukewarm apology posted on the Netflix blog this week, really is trying to figure out a way to stay in business and keep customers happy despite the massive challenges he is facing in regards to his business model. But because the company has become somewhat of an iconic, disruptive innovation case study for innovators and strategy academics for all Netflix did right, it’s important to really understand the errors that the organization made that together acted like dominoes falling, compounding one mistake into a mix of many. Here are a few key takeaways and lessons learned from my analysis:
Do You Know the Industry in Which You Really Compete?
I coach my clients to reframe their dominant logic of their business and expand their view of the business in which they compete. This exercise creates a new lens that identifies companies that are either directly or indirectly competitors and substitutes with the potential to either threaten or complement your business model. Too narrow a view limits growth potential and risks sneaky competitors rendering you obsolete. Continue Reading»
Colin Hudson
July 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
In light of this jobweek’s Twitter topic of corporate finance, I find it relevant to comment on Apple’s third quarter earnings call and the $76 billion of cash that the technology manufacturer and retailer now has on its books. Investors are clamoring for dividends or stock buyouts, and the blogosphere is lighting up with rumors of acquisitions, but the Designer-in-Chief Steve Jobs has yet to show his hand or capitulate to the demands of the masses.
Customers queue up outside of Manhattan Apple store. Image courtesy of Wikipedia
Apple is the epitome of innovation in the consumer technology sector, and has grown from $7.8B in revenue in 2000 to more than $65B in 2010. Apple’s formula for success is equal parts disruptive and incremental innovation. The company introduces revolutionary, well-designed and intuitive products with relatively short shelf lives, as periodic rollouts of new models cannibalize sales of existing models.
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Carl Fudge
July 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
Today, leading bookstore Borders announced it is going out of business and will be liquidating its 399 stores, starting Friday. Borders had been dying a slow death for a while (it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection back in February), yet it still comes as a bit of a shock to see such a well known and prominent retailer vanish off the face of the earth, almost overnight.
As sympathetic as I am to the more than 10,000 Borders employees who will soon be looking for a new job, I couldn’t be less sympathetic to the leadership of Borders. Quite simply, their industry shifted dramatically and Borders was unable to innovate its business model quickly enough in response. They failed to understand that no longer did consumers want to drive to their local bookstore to spend hours browsing and buying books but instead they wanted books shipped straight to their door or delivered instantly to their Kindles or iPads. Just like a train leaving a station, the book industry moved on and Borders was left behind.
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