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SD#33: Market orientation, sacred beliefs and doing less

Written by

Tomas Ausra

August 28, 2022

Hi friends,

Welcome to another edition of Seven Dawns, your weekly newsletter on marketing, productivity, psychology and more.

Our seven ideas this week:


1. (Marketing) The more a company copies a competitor’s strategy, the more it loses the ability to create its own
There is a long and rewarding literature on the power of market orientation and keeping the customer in your crosshairs at all times. And there is equally persuasive literature on the perils of competitor orientation – of switching our gaze from our customers to our competitors and how they do things. And that danger multiplies significantly if these insights turn to action and we start to replicate our competitors’ moves in our approach.
 
There is the inherent double danger of doing something that suits your competitor and not you. Externally, the position, attraction and image of your brand are bound to certain things. And your rival, in this case TikTok, is bound to others. A focus on doing what it does leaves you vulnerable to attempting to offer things that aren’t your core and aren’t what customers want from you, and which are already being offered – in a superior way – by a competitor.
 
When Facebook internally announced its new TikTok-like features, one bemused employee voiced the fears that there was “a real risk in this approach that we lose focus on our core differentiation (the social graph and human choice) in favour of chasing short-term interests and trends”.
 
Of all the many disadvantages of competitor orientation, the biggest one is that it inhibits and ultimately destroys a company’s strategic capability. When you look at your rival and adopt its approach, you look less and less at your situation, advantages and options. The more a company copies a competitor’s strategy, the more it loses the ability to create its own.
 
Mark Ritson via Marketing Week
2. (Philosophy) The more we observe the world around us, the less we know. Therefore none of our beliefs should be held as sacred

I was reading a  piece about humility from Alex Olshonsky and his excerpt about epistemic humility is what made me smile and think at the same time.
 
Humans are evolutionarily adapted and socially conditioned creatures who are incapable of interpreting Reality. A human-made model—whether it be philosophy, science, religion, woke, or anti-woke—is only a partial representation of Reality. A micro-slice of the great pie.
 
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that we cannot simultaneously know the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle. The more we know about the position, the less we know about the momentum and vice versa. On the deepest, smallest level, we do not know what the hell is going on.
 
The same proof of our ignorance is found in mathematics. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem demonstrates that mathematics contains true statements that cannot ever be proven (that’s an oversimplification of his theorem).
 
Polish-American logician Alfred Tarski expanded upon Gödel’s work by proving that arithmetic truth cannot be defined in arithmetic, essentially restating the brain teaser we first heard in the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching 3,000 years ago: “the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”
 
In other words—all around and everywhere we look—the more we observe, the less we know. The key takeaway here is that none of our beliefs should be held as sacred. We simply do not know enough to hold strong opinions.
 
Deep Fix
3. (Psychology) Arrival fallacy – why do we not feel satisfied after reaching a long-term goal?

“When I achieve this goal, then I will be happy.” If you’ve ever experienced such a when/then thought pattern, you’re not alone. Whether you’re aiming to run a marathon, get a promotion at work or buy your first house, having a goal in mind can increase your motivation. However, we often mistakenly believe that achieving our goals will make us happy. That tendency is called the arrival fallacy.
 
So why are we so bad at predicting our happiness levels? Psychologists found that predictions about how a future event might make us feel are often flawed because of the impact bias. The impact bias leads to an overestimation of the duration and intensity of the positive emotions you may feel as a result of an event. We overestimate the positive impact the accomplishment of a goal will have, and we underestimate how other events or feelings may influence the way we feel.
 
How do we avoid it? The trick is to repackage your motivation to change your perspective, making the process of achieving your goals as important as the result.
 
Ness Labs
 
4. (Productivity) Doing more by doing less

Have you ever noticed how “busy” has become the new “fine”? As in, when you used to ask somebody how they were doing, they would answer, “Fine.” But nowadays, everybody answers, “Busy.” Busy has become the default state for many of us. But is the state improving our lives? Certainly not.
 
How do we unbusy our lives but continue to pursue a significant and productive life?
 
Unbusy people know their purpose and use it to guide decisions. Unbusy people are adamant about saying no to things that do not align with their mission. Unbusy people know they have a choice in life. Unbusy people say no to almost everything. Unbusy people don’t get distracted by unfulfilling pursuits. Unbusy people value the significance of rest.
 
Warren Buffett is credited as saying it this way: “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”
 
Recognize the inherent value in the word no. Learning to say no to less important commitments opens your life to pursue the most important.

Becoming Minimalist
5. (Marketing) Distribution and line length (assortment) matter most in economic expansions and contractions

A group of marketing professors recently looked at why some brands can ride the wave of macroeconomic expansions while other brands are better able to successfully weather contractions. They looked at six strategic brand factors: price positioning (value vs. premium), advertising spending (low vs. high), line length (short vs. long), distribution breadth (selective vs. extensive), brand architecture (single-category vs. umbrella-category branding strategy), and market position (follower vs. leader).
 
They found that all six factors matter in either expansion and/or contractions but that two factors stand out above the rest: distribution and line length (assortment). In good times and bad times, extensively distributed brands win.
 
Jan-Benedict Steenkamp via LinkedIn
6. (Writing) Write one sentence per line

Derek Siver’s advice to anyone who writes: try writing one sentence per line. New sentence? Hit [Enter]. New line. Not publishing one sentence per line, no (we all hate that when people do it on LinkedIn). Write like this for your eyes only. HTML or markdown combine separate lines into one paragraph.
 
Why is it so useful?
 
It helps you judge each sentence on its own. It helps you vary sentence length – sometimes short, sometimes long. It helps you move sentences. It helps you see first and last words.

Derek Sivers
7. (Psychology) Mindfulness might not be the answer to young people’s mental health

I read a lot about the benefits of mindfulness and meditation but this study was interesting as it showed it isn’t always useful.
 
There is a crisis in teen mental health, and schools in many countries are exploring different ways to make young people more resilient.
 
A UK-based research project, the largest of its kind on the subject, has suggested mindfulness training in schools might be a dead end — at least as a universal, one-size-fits-all approach.
 
The study, which involved 28,000 children, 650 teachers and 100 schools, looked at the impact of mindfulness training over eight years and found that the technique didn’t help the mental health and well-being of adolescents ages 11 to 14. The authors suggested investigating other options to improve adolescent mental health.
 
CNN Health

Fun things to click on:


A visualisation of inflation and the cost of everyday items. 100 tips for a better life. For the most complex female characters in animation, look to Japan.


Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.

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Speak soon,

Tom

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SD#32: Availability bias, financial sorcerers and climate action

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SD#34: TEA, eSports, persuasive dissent and shamelessness