100% responsibility
What happens when you own your life and projects, futurist trends for a post-COVID world and why the power of brand can be a huge marketing play (even when you don't have a great product).
What does 100% responsibility mean to you?
Recently I was listening to the High Performance podcast interviewing ex-footballer and fashion brand owner Reece Wabara (episode here). In it, Wabara talks about how success happens when you own your journey and everything that happens within that journey. An idea he calls “100% responsibility”.
This means that if you hire someone in your company and it goes wrong, it is still your responsibility. If you aren’t making the sales you need, it’s your responsibility. If you need to learn something new, or adapt, it’s your responsibility.
Basically, any failure or success is on you.
While this seems obvious, I thought it was an important idea.
How often have you worked with someone who takes 100% responsibility for what happens in their role or company?
I’d say this happens rarely.
When I think back to the most successful, and enjoyable team I’ve ever worked in, one of the things that made the team so great was that every single person there took 100% responsibility for their work and role.
There were no excuses, no arguing, no passing the blame or buck. This meant that everyone owned their role and had a part to play. When something went wrong, that person owned the mistake and we learned as a team. Resulting in nothing but empathy, understanding and a desire to help things go better next time.
When you take 100% responsibility for yourself, you become a more considerate and valued employee.
When you take 100% responsibility for your work and career, you own the journey and ultimately, the success of that journey.
It’s certainly a concept I’ll be keeping front of mind in the future.
What does 100% responsibility mean to you? I’d love to hear.
Yours, with empathy,
Beth
Marketing Disciplines: Explained 🙏
Brand Power
The high street where I live is rife with coffee stores, including a Costa, Starbucks AND Café Nero, as well as a host of independents. Yes: us residents love coffee.
But you know which one performs the best? A single independent.
As a marketer, I’m obsessed with just why this independent is so popular.
At first, you may think it’s the food.
As an example, they charge £6.75 for a breakfast wrap. The wrap contains bacon, avocado, scrambled egg and a type of chilli jam. It’s good, my husband tells me, but is it great? From anywhere else the product wouldn’t be enough to warrant the hefty price tag. Yet the shop’s patrons queue for it almost every single day.
Now what about the coffee? The coffee again, is good, in fact it’s one of my favourite tasting coffees on the high street. But is it great? Many agree with me that this particular store’s coffee is served frustratingly luke-warm, which means you have to drink it really fast. It also comes in much smaller cup sizes than the other stores. A latte is the size of a flat white, a cappuccino, barely bigger.
Yet, we all continue to buy.
So if the product isn’t amazing and its offering certainly isn’t unique, why is this single coffee store cleaning up?
The truth is, it has the best brand on the high street.
People go there because it’s become a symbol of aspiration. The staff who work there are undeniably cool. The products represent the latest trends in food (they were one of the first to begin serving avo on toast as an example). The coffee cups, the store’s interior and even the signage outside are all incredibly “instagrammable”.
This, is the store’s unique selling point. Simply put, it has focused on having a desirable brand. This is a great lesson that marketing isn’t a one size fits all proposition. You can be successful because you have the best brand, the best product, the best marketing, the best customer service, or a combination of some, or all, of those things.
This particular store has focused on brand, whether consciously or subconsciously, and they are the high street’s most successful coffee store as a result.
Things to Read 📚
It’s looking as though 2021 will be another year for virtual, rather than physical, events so I liked this guide on how to create a successful digital event strategy
This was an important read on what it’s like to be Chinese in London during the pandemic
“The next normal arrives” - an interesting futurist piece on what 2021 will look like after COVID based on spending and consumer trends seen in China and Australia, two locations that have largely overcome the pandemic - This reminded me that we can look at the past to see what might happen in the future. I’ve been reading a lot about the “Roaring 20s” lately, a post-war decade that saw a boom in creativity, fun and entertainment due to a well-needed release after WW1. Many are predicting that we’ll see the same type of cultural prosperity in the next few years - what do you think?
Interesting read from Vogue Business on why brands are gearing up for the “longest ever summer season” as a result of the pandemic - definitely worth thinking about this if you have a consumer sales cycle