1.
Choose a short name like 'TIDE', and not a long one like 'Screaming
Yellow Zonkers'.
2.
Aim your advertising at special groups of
consumers.
3.
Concentrate your time, your brains, and your advertising money on your
successes. Back your winners, and abandon your losers.
4.
Don't dawdle; speed up whole process of
marketing.
5.
The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the shortsighted
opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term
promotions.
6.The
process of pricing decisions is one of guesswork.
7.
Regard advertising as part of the product, to be treated as production
cost, not a selling cost.
8.
Keep your eye to the heavy users. Hey are unlike occasional users in
their motivations. Advertising is the cheapest form
of selling.
9.
The task of advertising is not primarily one of conversion but rather
of reinforcement and assurance.
10.
When you have to communicate a lot of different points, use
'call-outs'. They are above average in recall tests.
11.
Seldom are two-page spreads worth the cost.
12.
It pays to make your poster a 'visual scandal'.
13.
Capital letters are extremely difficult to read.
14.
Reverse type is almost impossible to read.
15.
Sanserif fonts are particularly difficult to read.
16.
It is a mistake to put a period at the end of headlines.
17.
Testimonials are below average in their ability to change brand
preference.
18.
Commercials with a large content of nostalgia, charm and even
sentimentality can be enormously effective.
Cartoons
can sell things to children, but they are below average in selling to
grown-ups.
19.
Musical vignettes are on their way out.
20.
Use the brand name within the first ten seconds.
21.
Show the package.
22.
In commercials for food, the more appetizing you make it look, the more
you sell. It has been found that food in motion looks particularly appetizing.
23.
It is a good thing to use close-ups when your product is the hero of
your commercial. The closer you get on the
product, the more you make people's mouths water.
24.
Grab the viewer's attention in the first frame with a visual surprise.
25.
When you have nothing to say, sing it.
26.
While music does not add to the selling power of commercial, sound
effects can make a positive difference.
27.
It is better to have the actors talk on camera. Research shows that it
is more difficult to hold your audience if you use voice-over.
28.
It pays to reinforce your promise by setting it in type and
superimposing it over the video, while your soundtrack
speaks the words. But make sure that the words in your supers are
exactly the same as your spoken words. Any divergence confuses the viewer.
29.
Avoid visual banality. If you want the viewer to pay attention to your
commercial, show her something she has never seen before.
30.
Changes of scene. On the average,
commercials with a plethora of short scenes are below average in
changing brand preference.
31.
Mnemonics. It can increase brand identification, and remind people of
your promise.
32.
Show the product in use. It pays to show he product being used, and if
possible, the end-result of using it.
33.
Everything is possible on TV.
34.
Mis-comprehension. If
you want to avoid your television commercial being misunderstood, you had
better make hem crystal clear.
Article
2
Contract
Manufacturing: Now’s the Time to Diversify
As those in the contract manufacturing field already know, there’s
been a
significant downturn in U.S. capital spending over the last few months.
The trend began in early 2001 when business spending on technology
declined for the first time in a decade. The telecom industry was the
first to be hit, followed by the consumer-electronics, semiconductor
and
semiconductor-equipment industries, all major contract manufacturing
customers. Along with a significant slowdown in orders, contract
manufacturers didn’t have a good plan in place fast enough to avoid
being
stuck with excess inventory. Faced with warehouses full of
work-in-progress and finished inventory, contract manufacturers are
finding they need to refocus their approach.
When the technology market bottomed out, many contract manufacturers
had
to institute restructuring actions, including consolidating their
facilities and cutting their workforces. For larger contract
manufacturers, restructuring charges amounted to tens of millions, and
in
some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars. Even for small contract
manufacturers, the revenue prospects for the fiscal year are not
exactly
optimistic. However, industry experts believe the slide is temporary
and
not permanent. Indicating a turnaround, the thousand or so contract
manufacturers in the U.S. seem to be making a move towards outsourcing
production, particularly as the OEM’s they serve continue to redefine
their
core operations. Industry heads are acknowledging a consolidation of
business from OEM’s to top-tier contract manufacturers while
consultants,
such as Douglas J.Tuttle of Deloitte Consulting, point out that the
amount of total production being handled by the industry - estimated
between 20% and 30% - appears to be on the rise.
As the technology market regroups, contract manufacturers should use
the
downtime to address issues critical to their long-term success -
improving
information, diversification and flexibility.
Both contract manufacturers and OEMs should be conscious of the fact
that
demand must be constantly present throughout the supply chain.
Investing
in solutions like ERP systems and web-enabled collaboration, while
helpful
in many respects, is not enough. A single investment in these
initiatives
by itself will not drive material flow. Contract manufacturers, as well
as
their sub-suppliers, will need to implement up-to-date sourcing
technology
and sourcing techniques to enable them to signal their suppliers based
on
actual demand, rather than relying on ERP push-style capacity planning.
Flexibility becomes an issue determining how dependent a contract
manufacturer is on any one OEM customer. If one customer makes up more
than 10% of a contract manufacturer’s total business they are risking
future revenue potential and undermining their own competitiveness on
the
market. What they need to concentrate on is being the best manufacturer
in
the broadest sense of the word. This means having the best engineering,
the shortest lead times and the highest quality, rather than just being
known for perfecting one product to the exclusion of all others.
Being a well-rounded manufacturer also requires maintaining a high
level
of customer diversification, which in turn requires serving a variety
of
markets. This helps to ensure a steady flow of new orders and minimizes
the risk of orders drying up altogether when a particular segment of
the
market experiences tough times. Savvy contract manufacturers have
identified ten market segments that their industry can focus on
serving:
auto electronics, consumer electronics, wireless communications, wired
communications, computer systems, computer peripherals, test equipment,
industrial electronics, medical electronics and military and aerospace
electronics. In addition, some have pointed out an enormous demand for
semiconductor
capital equipment and complex electromechanical items. By
focusing on more than one of the above segments, contract manufacturers
can widen the channel of
demand for their manufacturing services and
maintain the flexibility their industry needs in an ever-shifting
economy.
Potentially weakening this crucial flexibility is the fact that many
contract manufacturers have been buying up
plants from the less-flexible
OEMs. In addition, the continuous updating of production equipment and
software packages, as well as various cultural hurdles that still need
to
be cleared, have slowed the drive toward manufacturing flexibility.
Whether operating with plants purchased from an OEM or not, contract
manufacturers and their customers have continued to wrestle with
finding
the optimal manufacturing mix, a task which involves identifying a
manufacturer that makes high-volume, low-variable products and a
manufacturer that makes low-volume, high-variable ones. According to
Deloitte’s Tuttle, The
contract manufacturer actually has to adapt to a
more flexible manufacturing process, so it, in fact, can do the high
volumes and also do the smaller volumes with high mix. If they can
achieve that kind of flexibility, Tuttle says, contract manufacturers
can, in fact, make pretty good margins.
ARM
Notes:
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