Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com

Giving a Speech and Putting a New Brand on the market is About the Same

At first it doesn't appear to be logical, but after hearing about a man and his story, it isn't too illogical. It goes like this . . . One evening upon his arrival home from work, a woman asked her husband, "So how was your speech that you gave today?" Her husband quickly responded, "Which one?" The wife, very confused, replied, "What do you mean, which one?" To which her husband simply answered, "Well the one I was going to give, the one I gave, or the one I delivered so brilliantly to myself on the way home in the car?" Yes, there are three important phases to every speech: preparation, execution and review.

Preparation:

In the planning of the speech, we work to make sure that all the words are right, the flow of the speech is perfect and all the possible questions are answered. The sound system and lighting have been checked. The slides are in order. Everything is ready to go.

 The same is true for the planning of a new brand. The product is perfect, the packaging leaves nothing to chance, the positioning is perfect, the production is on schedule, distribution is planned, promotions have been scheduled and the price is right. Nothing is left to chance.

Execution:

In the presentation of your speech, the speaker scheduled before you ran over in time, the lighting at the podium is poor, the slides are in the projector upside down, and the sound system malfunctions. However, you struggle through, feeling relieved that at least the words got to the audience.

 The same is true of the brand introduction. Despite all the rush, the timeline has arrived before all our testing is completed. The product aesthetics have not been maximized. Production started late. We only had 35% distribution. Awareness has not reached target. Sales figures are miserable.

Review:

In the car going home, we have time to reflect. We go over the presentation in our head. We don't have lighting problems. We don't have sound problems. There are no time constraints. Everything goes just perfect.

 In the staff review of the brand introduction, the reconstruction of the launch model showed that all the pieces were there. There should not have been a problem. We just let little things get in the way. Little things that we just had not planned for go wrong, they always do.

 Nothing goes as well in reality as it does in the mind. We take the necessary time to dress rehearse our speech and we still have problems, but few companies will dress rehearse their market introductions. Why?


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