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1 November 2002 By studying your brand’s momentum, you can adjust its value proposition, market agility, integrity and category leadership. Cisco VP of Marketing Ron Ricci elaborates on the subject of his new book.s — By David Berkowitz A simple refresher course in physics can make you evaluate your business in a whole new light. Thus posits Momentum, a new book from Cisco Vice President of Marketing Ron Ricci and Advanced Micro Devices Vice President of Strategic Communications John Volkmann. To understand the basics, first look at momentum in terms of physics: Momentum = Mass x Speed x Direction What do all these mean in business? Ricci and Volkmann describe it this way:
Through extensive research of 20,000 customers, Ricci and Volkmann deduced the six forces of differentiation and calculated their impact on purchase intent. This is detailed in the chart below.
eMarketer called up Ricci to find out how Cisco is using the six forces and to learn how other companies can apply them. eMarketer: When did you become VP of marketing at Cisco? Ron Ricci: I joined Cisco in July of 2000, but I had consulted with Cisco since about 1994. Cisco was the first customer we had for the Momentum principles, and it’s a customer of the firm that still does the research today five or six years later. I had helped to build the executive platform for [Cisco CEO] John Chambers as well as some of the ecosystem ideas around Cisco’s product marketing. The long and short of it was Cisco was my biggest client, and I ended up falling in love with the company, and it seemed like the right thing to do to join them, especially since they buy the principles of the book, and they’re very much in line with this in terms of how we differentiate our brand. eMarketer: Research continues to go on from the consulting group you were with? RR: Yes. eMarketer: And you’re no longer taking part in that? RR: I basically do the same thing today that I did back when I was a consultant Cisco. There’s the research firm that does the actual research, and my job is to analyze it and to look at what the knobs and dials on the momentum dashboard are telling us about Cisco’s position with customers and help us adjust our position appropriately to what those knobs and dials are telling us. While the research continues, I still have the same sort of analytical and positioning job that I had before. To give you an example of that, the momentum research includes the six forces of differentiation. Underneath the “category leadership” area, one of the things customers have been telling us is, “We believe your products are sturdy and reliable, but we want to know more about your innovation strategy. We feel like you’re not telling us enough about how your products are differentiated on the basis of innovation. What can you do to turn up the volume and your strategic messaging around your product innovation strategies?” In terms of continuing to leverage the model for helping Cisco position itself with customers for differentiation, we continue to use it, and that’s my job here at Cisco. eMarketer: With these forces of differentiation, market agility accounts for only 8% of the influence on purchase intent. If a company lags behind in one but is pretty strong in the other five, can it do well, or does it need to pass a minimum threshold on all six? RR: That's a great question. The reason why we have the six and treat it like a dashboard is that every company is at a different place in every moment in time. What we have found is at certain moments of time, different forces of differentiation are more important than others. <continue> |
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