Category: Blox. Communications

How Industry 4.0 Affects Marketing – A Manufacturing Industry Analysis

Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing how companies manufacture, distribute and improve their products. But how does it impact businesses from a marketing perspective?

Characterized by increased automation and “smart” machines and factories, Industry 4.0 differs from previous industrial eras because manufacturing companies now have informed data (data + research + experience + personal insights) to help them manufacture their products more efficiently and productively across the value chain. 

Graphic describing the difference between Data-Driven and Data-Informed

As a positive example of social, economic, and environmental responsibility, Industry 4.0 provides an incredible opportunity to share and expand on core concepts (for a manufacturing company, these could be ideas like efficiency, reliability, and speed) via targeted and strategic messaging. I’ll talk about a 9-Point Marketing Strategy later!

You can achieve this by promoting modern, forward-thinking concepts that can help differentiate you (this is USP) from others (competitors) in the marketplace.

What topics contribute toward your USP (Unique Selling Proposition), and what is USP in the first place?

Your USP or Unique Selling Proposition makes your business better than your competitors and is the reason why customers should buy from you. A USP informs every business modality, including brand management, slogans, developing and describing new products and services, and how you interact with clients. A strong USP will put your customers needs front and center.

Graphic describing in a Venn diagram unique selling proposition (USP)

Here are topics that can help build your USP as a manufacturing company (wanting to dial into Industry 4.0 concepts in messaging) –

  • Increasing revenue and profitability: Industry 4.0 creates a more efficient and higher-quality production process and opens up marketing avenues for differentiating your product user journey against others in the marketplace.
  •  Optimizing processes for improved outputs: The need for integrated systems and the results they can produce will drive greater collaboration and communication among producers, suppliers, and other stakeholders in both the technological and marketing domains.
  •  Leading with high-quality products: You have a tremendous opportunity to realign and refocus quality and demonstrate to the world how new technologies can benefit and synergize the entire manufacturing industry, putting you in a position to lead the way with how you position your brand.

BRAND IMPACT

The impacts of Industry 4.0 (automation, “smart” machines and factories, etc.) can work conceptually and integrate into a marketing plan or strategy. Take its main outputs (for automation, think efficiency, reliability, speed) and apply them in cross-functional applications (namely, your content and messaging). 

For example, if your drive for “efficiency” is to make your products easier to manufacture and is achieved thanks to new technologies like “smart factories”, then the output would be how it contributes toward messaging concepts like industry-best lead times (meeting on-time delivery requirements of clients) and added capacity to provide exceptional customer service (improving the client experience by developing enduring relationships at every touchpoint).

Today, I am developing a streamlined approach (that’s the 9-Point Marketing Strategy!) and testing various campaigns and projects to attain current goals and inform our future work. Of course, ensuring my team is collaborative and agile while leveraging informed data to drive the vision and mission forward.

It will be exciting to see what new product innovations (and process changes within marketing) grow from Industry 4.0.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Share, share away!

A Good Curveball – A New Blox. System That Will Help You Reach Your Goals

A Good Curveball

Has life thrown you a good curveball? 

What is a good curveball, you ask?

A good curveball is an opportunity (remember, problems are opportunities) to:

1 – Own your dreams.

2 – Reimagine the world.

Own Your Dreams

To own your dreams, you must recognize, acknowledge, and value the fact that something is waiting for you out in the world. 

It is there to fulfill. 

It exists to make you happy. 

You are satisfied when united (or reunited) with it. 

It becomes a part of you and can be shared with others. 

A Good Curveball

Owning my dreams is being connected to work I’ve always envisioned doing—building a sustainable and scalable brand that will influence people inside and outside the operation.

Reimagine the World

Second, to a good curveball is our ability to reimagine the world. Through a clear and defined vision and mission, we can accomplish anything. With a good heart and holistic stance, our world can become something better, more equal and more understanding.

Reimagining the world involves pushing boundaries, setting new standards, and developing a structure or process that leads to innovation, progression, and growth.

I think I get thrown more good curveballs as I age, so I hope this becomes the norm and the opportunities don’t cease!

As my time at Clearbridge Business Solutions ends, I can’t help but reflect on what I’ve learned here that will carry me into my new role at Longboard Architectural Products.

As I continue to inspire and empower people to make a difference in their daily lives, I recognize three things that matter to me today. Of course, there’s always more, but let’s get started with these!

Become Indispensable

1- Relationships 

One of the biggest influencers in my marketing career has been the formative relationships I have built over time—in both the long and short-term. Having a direct report has taught me to be vulnerable and courageous as I’ve had to steer a small team in a viable direction while maintaining strong, personal connections which benefitted the entire team. I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to work directly under the Founder and CEO of Clearbridge, Ryan Kononoff. He has taught me many things about engagement and the effort required to make meaningful projects matter to an audience. I am also thankful for every other team member I’ve had the chance to grow alongside. 

You are bright. 

You are dedicated. 

You are special!

2 – #goodenough 

This is one lesson that has helped me to conquer my perfectionism. I recall working on one of my first projects, a new brand book (or later called a Playbook), which in scope was a huge undertaking that could have demanded months of work. But with the knowledge that a marketer should be agile, or as the Agile Marketing Manifesto states –

“To keep up with the speed and complexity of marketing today, we must deliver value early and often over waiting for perfection.”

In creative marketing, we challenge ourselves by generating work that is original, unique and that manifests a change in its surroundings. In analytical marketing, we must use data sets to quantify results. Pairing the two (creative + analytical marketing) is where #goodenough truly shines—we can experiment to determine what approach works the best, and we don’t have to wait to be enlightened. We should find insights with every movement or decision we make!

3 – Indispensability 

I rarely finish an entire book in one sitting. It’s often hard for me to finish it at all. I prefer to scan information and read what will be of value to me. Such was the case with Seth Godin’s book Linchpin. As he writes –

“You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.”

Such an important lesson because it’s much too easy to forget your worth. We must use every inch of our being to recognize and become more self-aware. In marketing, the potential to get lost in a sea of tasks and activities might forsake where the value truly lies—creating, ideating, and examining the wonder and change that a type of approach can incite. 

Being indispensable takes:

Courage

A growth mindset

Initiative

Risk

And most importantly…talent. You can’t duplicate indispensable work. I truly believe this!

The Playbook

A pièce de résistance, I hope you find value in reading it!

Download a PDF copy here.

Here’s to the future, everyone! Y’all are invited!

Measuring Change

It takes a lot to muster up the courage to change.

Understanding.
Acknowledgement.
Compassion.
Kindness.
Curiosity.
Ambition.

Then once we decide it’s the route we want to take, we build a process to get there.

Preparing.
Taking time.
Committing.
Rooting.
Transforming.
Loving.

Day to day, I think of ways to express the importance of change. How it can help guide us toward growth. How by honouring and trusting in it, we can start to thrive.

Still, we have such a hard time adjusting our habits. They are formed and a part of who we are, though not always good for us.

What happens when you start the process of change and go backwards, reverting to previous habits, undeciding that you’re brave enough to follow through and succeed?

These are the questions I am constantly asking myself. What will be the conclusion? How come we’re not there yet? Will we ever arrive?

And so, as change is constant, we can only continue on our quest, taking the small steps to bring us closer toward our goals.

As you search, tell yourself you’re alright. Then, document your actions and take time to examine how you got to each stage. As Deepak Chopra says, “All great changes are preceded by chaos.” Chaos being –

Obstacles.
Limitations.
Fear.
Doubt.
Shame.
Laziness.

Despite these things, with intention, inner strength, and a mission you can stand by, you will stay on track; you will arrive.

Make change happen, guys!

Food for Thought

We all wonder about things, everyday things, that lead us to research and ponder.

For example, are you starting a new diet? Curious about trying fresh, healthy food? Just nosy about the history of something? Well, these graphics will satiate you.

The #AllAbout campaign explores a variety of fresh, local, and healthy products, giving customers the chance to learn something new in a colourful and digestible way. As part of an ongoing strategy to define the tagline #TrulyFarmtoTable, I explicitly position an image at the bottom of a newsletter, like my brother Alan would say when we were kids eating dinner at the dinner table –

“The Ultimate” a.k.a. the last bite.

It satisfies and perfectly wraps up the meal (conversely idea) (metaphorically conversation).

Are you munching on words or proverbial nuggets or just vegan nuggets?

Well, these images will work in the same way! Once again, satisfying and perfectly wrapping up your dinner.

Another analogy – who didn’t chew Bazooka bubble gum only to unwrap the tiny comic folded neatly on the inside? Take it apart. Pop the pink gum. Immediately unravel the humorous reward.

It’s a ritual in a sense, and these graphics were indeed a ritual to create. So, I hope you enjoy them and that they will entice you to…Munsch!

Self-Portrait 2021

Self-portrait August 2021 Chona Fe Canlas Blox Communications

“‘Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if only I knew how to begin.’ ‘For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.‘” – Alice In Wonderland

What happens when you lose your voice? You must force yourself to speak out loud, to as many people as possible. So often do I long to stand quietly and watch, blinking slowly at each word that exits from his mouth.

Then back to my mouth the words come again – you must speak to be free; you must believe and recount everything good that is happening. Because is it no longer impossible. It is not impossible, it is coming.

5 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand

In life, different is good. 

It’s about who we are and how we showcase ourselves to the world. 

In branding, it’s much the same. 

Although being different can be a challenge. 

Why?

We don’t want to clash with the norm. We want to be unique and memorable.

I came across an excellent article about brand differentiation and put together this quick presentation.

Let me know what you think!

AI 2

This is a follow-up to AI (Share of Voice).

Humanistic data governance is my description of AI or:

The process of managing the availability, usability, integrity and security of data in global human societies, based on internal data standards (emotions) and policies (law) that also control data usage (science).

Effective data governance ensures that data is consistent and trustworthy and doesn’t get misused.

This is crucial. My observations from the past ten years show that misuse occurs when governing bodies are unstable, in other words, not properly equipped (mentally, socially, physically, spiritually) to manage said availability, usability, integrity, and security of data.

So, what then is data in my interpretation of AI?

It is energy or every interaction (digital and human) we make.

This energy exists on a conceptual framework or platform. In essence, it can be continually transmuted (actions and results) without much intention required from either the digital or human end.

Much like a geographic information system (GIS), energy provides us with the ability to capture and analyze spatial and non-spatial data.

Part of this data includes our insights, behaviours, and emotions. We capture energy through action and produce a result that causes a chain reaction in human evolution and thought.

There are many points for me to cover here, which demand much more time and consideration. For now, I will try to get my words and ideas down, then perhaps we can come back to it in a couple of months and reassess.

Noninterchangeable: not able to substitute with another. 

For some reason, AI is not readily accessible. It is readily available, but coming across an entity that fully understands its definition within a humanistic context is variable, if not completely unchartered and arbitrary. Still, you can, or perhaps I should mention myself in this situation, look at a person and consider them, as if reading their humanistic data governance level. Again, we come back to the same problem over and over again.

Oversimplification. Redundancy. Incorrect assessments of human error.

Why does it matter? Perhaps, I am too futuristic here? Do I even know the answer? I could have known it in a previous life, let me try to unearth my potential here.

In AI, I spoke about a physical product as a term best used to describe an outcome. I suppose this is the differentiator. We have yet to determine what the physical product will be. We are continually creating new products that utilize AI; however, we have not symphonized the ultimate result.

Oddly enough, the appearance of COVID-19 altered our progression, mostly due to isolation. Without physical interaction, we lose our common ground. We can choose to see this as intentional or casual. Again, I wrote:

In digital reality, a new power takes actionable items related to spatial and non-spatial information to influence a decision-making process, which leads to a result.

If the digital reality we create is not appropriate, lacking power or substance for the sake of laziness and against the challenges/problems we are facing like – damage prevention, protection of the environment, safety regulations, reporting, food shortage, food security, and traceability, then the laws that possibly govern us from a higher resource may have put a stop to it.

That’s the problem. We are starting from square one. 

Product direction requires a dream that can be unlocked following precise steps as if when you awoke from your goal, you could remember every vibrant detail.

As if we were previously positioned in individual dreams, with rulers and usurpers systematically working together, ‘after’ coronavirus, we are retracing our steps, back to the models we have built, starting the race yet again with our shoelaces untied.

The funny thing about being in digital marketing is that this race is entirely peer-driven. The humour is not even funny. We have come to a full-stop and truth be told, there is cooperation, albeit, indifferent. I’m just referring back to new power. As Dave Gerhardt, CEO of Privy mentions in almost all of his LinkedIn posts – how we communicate is vital, and we can’t keep talking about things so that people don’t understand what they’re reading. Well, we could, but what would be the point in that?

And I haven’t even delved into the idea of machines! This is TBC, of course…

For next time,

A conceptual framework is an analytical tool with several variations and contexts. It can be applied in different categories of work where an overall picture is needed. It is used to make conceptual distinctions and organize ideas. – Wikipedia