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The Need For Speed In The Age Of e.

Written by: Ed Delia

Article Overview: The advantages of moving fast and being first have never been more apparent. Our world is moving at the speed of e. Information is shared instantaneously and globally. Markets are affected by minor shifts in supply and demand overnight. There is little time for lag time in our e-driven environment, and no putting off until tomorrow what must be done today.

The Need For Speed In The Age Of e.

Who will the real winners be?

All this spells good news if you REALLY want to take a position of brand leadership. If you move fast, you can strike first and take a leadership position. You just have to keep up to the minute with market trends and opportunities, and be ready to seize the moment at any given moment. Don’t worry about the size of your business. The smaller you are, the more agile you can be, making it that much easier to capitalize on e-branding opportunities. Search marketing, social networking, podcasts, blogs, and other e-branding tactics take large corporations months and meetings to bring on stream. Small and mid-sized companies are nimble enough and entrepreneurial enough to make them happen today.

If you win the race, you own the space.

Remember, first is where you want to be, no matter what business you are in. Because he or she who wins the race, owns the space. Once you’ve staked your claim as leader of a specific business segment or category, no one else can be first. You own the top spot, and the market recognition that can only be claimed by category leaders.

Now, not everyone can be first. So if you just happen to get caught one step behind, don’t drop out of the running. Take full advantage of being second, instead. Tell the world you wanted to wait just long enough to learn from the other guy’s mistakes. Or, do what Avis has been doing from the dawn of the rental car business: turn being second into your vow to try harder for your customers.

Whatever you do, do it fast.

Don’t over-think things when it comes to communicating your brand. The world-renowned scientist and lecturer, Edward Lorenz, who died earlier this year, shared this piece of wisdom with his adoring students, "You're only wrong if you never make a decision in the first place."

When it comes to branding, it is always better to take action, and then adjust your actions along the way, than to agonize over perfection and miss an opportunity to gain a competitive edge. We’re living in an age of instantaneous change. Every time you delay a branding initiative – whether online or offline – there is probably a competitor out there not delaying - taking swift action, instead, and building new customer relationships that could be yours.

Perfecting your brand is a process, not an event.

Of course, consistency and continuity are critical to strong brand development. But don’t sweat the small stuff at the expense of what really matters. There’s always the opportunity to keep refining your image along the way. Even the Coca Cola’s of the world keep evolving. Don’t waste time trying to make everything perfect. The famous and highly successful film producer Joseph E. Levine put it this way, "If I tried to make my movies perfect, I never would have finished a single one."

Your business can’t afford to wait for you to make it perfect, no matter what "it" is. You just have to keep making the best decisions you can, based on the best information at hand. But do so quickly, because in the age of e, tomorrow’s too late.

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Article Tags: avis, blogs, brand leadership, business segment, category leaders, competitive edge, dawn, edward lorenz, large corporations, leadership position, lecturer, market recognition, market trends, renowned scientist, rental car business, social networking, vow, wisdom, worry



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Re: SES Toronto Next Week - In that case, how about the following? Track: Get Me Up to Speed * State of Search Marketing in Canada Track: Practical & Actionable * Beyond Linkbait: Getting Authoritative Online Mentions Track: Advanced * User Search Behavior * Social Media Success * Web 2.0 & Search Engines * Giving Credit Where It’s Due: Which Campaign Sold What?
Re: Meet the NEW Twitter.com - Hey GT, I wasn't aware of this at all. Looks like a good change is coming. The new interface looks much better than the current one, and I like the new features that will be included. Speed is definitely an issue for many sites, and Twitter especially. The current site is somewhat slow at times or doesn't load for me at all which requires having to hit the "refresh" button (sometimes multiple times). Sometimes ReTweeting doesn't work, etc. There's issues that will have to be addressed, and hopefully with the new site rolling out they can find a way to speed things up and make it efficient.
Re: Do bigger monitors save time? - Hi Kevin, Thanks for the welcome! I would agree that two 17's would work well but really, any size would work. I'd be careful in going after the larger monitors that are traditional heights but are really wide, unless you have the desk space for it. Choose your monitors carefully as well to ensure that you try to find ones that have a small frame outside of the actual monitor screen. That way, when you put them together, the screens look a little more uniform. Last tip for either multiple monitors or one large one... Speed your mouse motion up. If you don't, you'll spend forever scrolling from one screen to another or across a larger screen. It'll take a bit to get used to at first but after a few days, using a mouse with regular motion will seem painstakingly slow!
Re: Do bigger monitors save time? - [quote="Raye":k99n31np]Hi Kevin, Thanks for the welcome! I would agree that two 17's would work well but really, any size would work. I'd be careful in going after the larger monitors that are traditional heights but are really wide, unless you have the desk space for it. Choose your monitors carefully as well to ensure that you try to find ones that have a small frame outside of the actual monitor screen. That way, when you put them together, the screens look a little more uniform. Last tip for either multiple monitors or one large one... Speed your mouse motion up. If you don't, you'll spend forever scrolling from one screen to another or across a larger screen. It'll take a bit to get used to at first but after a few days, using a mouse with regular motion will seem painstakingly slow![/quote:k99n31np] Hi Raye, Thanks for the tips! But if choosing monitors with smaller frames outside of the actual screen space is important when using 2 monitors...then wouldn't using a laptop and a secondary monitor be a bad idea? And are there any current monitor brands and models you would recommend? For instance, for the same price, should someone go for a slightly larger screen or a smaller one with Dell's "Ultrasharp" feature?
Napoleon on Project Management - Why do I include this in a list of books aimed at female entrepreneurs? Well...in the expectation that there are as many female history buffs as male ones, and in the belief that anyone interested in history will find this book fascinating, while those interested in project management will learn a thing or two. I think this was the first "gimmick" book - an author using a historical figure (usually a male, military figure, it must be admitted) to talk about modern day business management. I refuse to read any of the kind that advocates - even obliquely - the techniques of the Sopranos or the Mossad - but these military ones are pretty fun. Anyway: Only in the understanding of history, Napoleon might say, do we gain an understanding of strategy in the present. In the same spirit, Napoleon on Project Management offers the recipe for successfully managing your commitments using the strategies, tactics and priorities that propelled Napoleon himself to victory. [The book doesn't gloss over how Napolean eventually fell in defeat, of course, and there's lessons to be learned there as well. TOC Foreword by Douglas James Allan (Napoleanic Society of America) 1. The Rise to Power -The Skills to Succeed -A Compelling Vision -Diplomacy and Networking -Lessons from the Great Campaigns 2. Napoleon's 6 Winning Principles -Introduction -Exactitude -Speed -Flexibility -Simplicity -Character -Moral Force 3. The Downfall -What Went Wrong -Lessons from the Russian Invasion and Waterloo -The Four Critical Warning Signs -Napoleon's Legacy


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