Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

If you think you can afford not to focus, think of Sears.
Focus and the Clinton Campaign
He was dying. Bill Clinton had taken too many blows in the 1992 Democratic
presidential primaries. Almost everyone involved with the campaign thought the
end was near.
Clinton’s problem was not his alleged fondness for women other than Hillary
Clinton. It was his apparent fondness for chaos. He gave a speech one night and
another the next, with no common themes.
Midway through the campaign, however, and with one dramatic gesture at a
blackboard in Clinton’s headquarters, campaign manager James Carville turned
Clinton’s entire campaign around with four words: “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”
From that moment the campaign rarely lost this focus. Before, his campaign
speeches touched on everything from subsections of the tax code to escalator
clauses in the Social Security laws. Now, Clinton hammered on the economy
repeatedly. And eventually he hammered that message right through George
Bush’s heart.
Clinton aimed at the core of Americans—their historic materialism and their
fears in the middle of a long recession—and repeatedly spoke to them. He

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became the economy candidate, the one who would address that problem. And
despite all the rumors and all the suspicions, despite a controversial wife and a
style that caused many people to mistrust him and dub him Slick Willy, Clinton
won. Focus won.
Focus. In everything from campaigns for peanuts to campaigns for
president, focus wins.
When the Banker’s Eyes Blurred: Citicorp’s Slip
If innovation drove Citicorp to the top, a lack of focus almost knocked it all the
way back down.
In the 1980s, Citicorp resembled an overpaid and overpraised athlete who
had read too many press clippings. The company’s enormous success, fueled by
its string of innovations, apparently convinced the people in the corner offices
that Citicorp was above a fundamental principle of marketing: It did not have to
focus. It could reach out everywhere and dominate the landscape, from high-
volume consumer banking to global merchant banking.
At the same time, however, several banks got the focus religion. Bank of
America left overseas and wholesale branches of banking to focus on becoming
the dominant consumer bank on the West Coast. Chemical Bank moved out of
international banking to focus on a large available niche: the middle-market and
small-business customer.
Citicorp continued to stumble; it became a case study in stumbling, in loss of
focus, in overreaching.
At this writing, the company’s survival seems likely, if only because Citicorp
now appears to have a focus: on the low-cost, high-volume niche of consumer
banking. But the company’s rise, stumble, and survival from its fall suggest this
lesson:
No one—not even the most innovative and remarkable company in its
industry—can be many things to many people.