You're probably not global. Nor are you domestic. You are semi-global.

Pankaj Ghemawat of IESE has a nice series of videos on the Financial Times web site on globalization strategies. Click here for the first video, and here for the second.

He makes the point in these videos that many companies are really semi-global. In my experience, this is true, for the following reasons:

1. Most companies with a domestic profile are actually dealing with multiple cultures. In the USA, the Latino, African-American, and white populations often have distinct value systems and expectations -- with variations depending on where in the USA you are. 

2. Most companies with a "global" profile are really doing most of their business in just a few countries, and are reluctant to completely innovate their product and service line to be completely compatible with the demands of local markets -- thus making their offerings partially local, partially "global". 

3. Many companies in economically unified areas that are nevertheless diverse in terms of language and culture may have to market across cultures with print, broadcast and cable ads in order to take advantage of their ad spend size -- but run into serious issues when they fail to create ads that speak intelligibly in all the cultures they must address. Not to mention having to deal with some local customs and regulations regarding truth in advertising.

So, taking advantage of one's size, extra resources, range of resources, and so on, can be challenging for a global company -- even more so for a semi-global one whose pockets aren't as deep as huge multinationals, and where the margin for error is therefore smaller. We can't all be Wal-Mart, whose essay into Germany cost them billions of dollars -- a mere drop in their revenue bucket. They tucked tail and left the country. Semi-global companies would find a similar loss disastrous.

What's a company worth?

I was poking around the internet today to get some idea about the distressed asset strategies that JP Morgan is employing regarding WaMu and -- potentially -- Wachovia. I found this fascinating link that looks at the relative merits of the class capital asset pricing model (CAPM). It rains hard on CAPM, and makes some really interesting observations about what market behaviors of stock pricing and purchasing really mean.

Apple Competing on Analytics - and Customer Intimacy

It's been said that companies have a choice. Compete on customer intimacy, product excellence, or operational superiority. Pick one, but it's just too hard to do all three.

But Apple has been doing a great job at operations, with arguably the nimblest supply chain the technology sector, as well as at creating excellent products -- even considering their MobileMe hiccup, which has largely been dealt with. 

As for customer intimacy, the sense of closeness that customers feel for Apple has been much more than Apple's actual leverage of customer data. They've won that warm and fuzzy feeling from top-down branding.

Genius, in iTunes8, changes that. 

Genius analyzes your songs and can make recommendations about playlists, either by showing you a list of compatible songs you already own, or by suggesting additional songs on the iTunes Store. It's fast, it's REALLY good at what it does -- and it leverages customer data to create more perceived value in iTunes.

There are two consequences. First, Apple lovers will continue to love Apple, and barriers to exit will be higher than ever. Genius, after all, does what my beloved Pandora does -- recommend songs similar to what I like. (Microsoft has a Channels tool that does something similar, but I've not tried it.)

The second consequence is bigger. Many of Apple's newest customers are switchers. They have bought iPods, the iPhone, and iMacs, spending billions on a product that seemed far less risky to them now than they might have seemed just a few years ago. But these switchers are not the early adopters -- nor even the early followers. Early adopters and followers behave that way because (for various reasons) their risk appetite is quieter than most. Most people, in fact, rightfully want to know more about product choices before they buy. They want to choose carefully -- and they want to suspend their loyalty to a brand at the slightest hint that the brand sucks.

So, in short, Apple has a lot of new customers that are just waiting for it to fail them, at which point they will (and have been) complaining loudly about how Apple products aren't any better than Microsoft products. Apple products may be great, and their supply chain may be great, but if they're not PERFECT, they will get demerit points from this huge, skeptical market to which the company now sells billions of products.

Genius can help Apple win their hearts and minds. It's powerful, it's fast, it's easy, it's fun. It keeps one's music library popping. And, underneath it all, one gets the sense that Apple knows me, and it cares.

Genius does all this, and it's free with iTunes8. It's a great start. I would look for Apple to do more with analytics over the next 12 months to gain even more customer intimacy. If they're smart, they'll acquire a few companies to accelerate the process, and introduce a few high-profile customer-driven platforms that truly elevate the customer from their current position (at best, worshipping at Steve Jobs' ankles) to an entirely new position. A position to be defined by Apple. 

Customer Analytics and Taking Photos While Blind

This heartwarming story, about blind photographers in Israel as recounted in the CNN video below, has lessons for decision-makers: 

1. If you can't see your subjects (customers), use your other senses.

2. Develop skills you currently don't have.

3. Choose from the results you get by employing people who can see.

4. Make the final decision based on what looks right, and what is important to you (and your business).

The lessons flow from the observation that most companies don't really "see" their customers. They don't have the tools to gather information and create insight about what matters to customers and prospects. Even if they do have the tools, and the insight, final choices about what to do must fit a carefully designed strategy that builds value for the customer and for the company -- defined not as revenues or utility, but as value and values created and exchanged. Revenues ain't enough. A product's usefulness ain't enough.

Business intelligence is hard work. Dashboards require clean data. Actionable data requireproper modeling, extraction, transformation and loading. And the right data are absolutely critical. If you keep measuring the same things each time, you may be missing changes in the competitive or customer landscape. 

Still, just getting started is half the battle. It opens up the right slots in your budgets and alerts your staff that customer data -- and decisions driven by those data -- are now central to operations and market position.

Enjoy the video.

Experiencing Wine

Just got back from a grand tour with my wife of part of Oregon's superb wine country. Thought I'd share some thoughts about wine and experience management.

What is wine? Sure, it's a fermented beverage. But just as sensory transference makes Coca Cola more than just sugar water, multiple components of wine tasting influence a person's experience of this classic drink. 

One of the great things about wine is that it captures just about every marketing hook ever invented by wily strategists. You can get people to love the label, the bottle shape, the sensuality, the location (country-branding is a huge new discipline), the people who make it, the history of the grape, the technology, the food-pairing options ... and with the latter, you bring wine into another marketing category: cuisine. Not to mention travel.

So, what is key to the experience of wine? It depends on what the consumer brings to it. Wine is a classic example of needing to capture the state of mind, value systems, and expertise of the customer in order to properly sell it. As rich as the opportunities are to sell wine, it is a complicated task to identify the right hook for the right customer. 

One hope, in my view, is the social network. Online social networks can develop information about consumers' preferences in related areas: travel, food, friendship, luxury, and so on. Using this information, wine sellers and restaurants can better communicate with customers. 

Who's doing this now? 

No one, as far as I know. 

Gentle people, start your engines.

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Photo Copyright (c) 2008 by Paul K. Ward. Photo of the author and his wife Angela at the Sokol Blosser Vineyard near Yamhill, Oregon.