Tuesday 22 January 2013

Passion and Brilliance - a restless tagline

I must confess I am not much of a marketer, if I was then I suppose more people would be reading this blog!  As a result of my continual experimentation   I keep changing my tagline.  A tagline should define what you do and how you do it in a way that is intuitively clear and obvious to everyone.  I can think of at least six that I have tried over the last year.  Here are a few for your personal amusement.
  1. enabling value in your supply chain
  2. realising value in your supply chain
  3. realising value through brilliant supply chain
  4. your unfair advantage in supply chain
  5. brilliant supply chain
  6. passion & brilliance
  7. The warehouse improvement specialists*
  8. The warehouse performance improvement specialists*
  9. Helping you create a High Performance Warehouse**
  10. Helping you create High Performance Logistics***
The first three sound like typical corporate nonsense.  Four was too clever and obscure, several people commented to me that they did not understand what it meant. Five is nice enough but bland.  Six is where I am now.  Two words that, hopefully, everyone will understand and also want.

Passion & brilliance is what I want from any professional that I work with, or who is doing work for me.  It is what I aim to bring to any work that I do for clients or in any context.  It is restless because it is never satisfied.  There is always more to do, or a new way to do it better.

Passion & brilliance is what allows me to develop multi-order picking functionality for SAP Business One (SAP B1) for one of my clients when SAP B1 does not even have warehouse location control.

Passion & brilliance is what allowed me to do warehouse design, project management, SAP Advanced Warehouse Management implementation, go live support and then five months of hands on warehouse management for a new warehouse for one of my clients.

Passion & brilliance is no accident but what comes from over 20 years' of experience in logistics management as an operational manager and consultant.  In the end I just love what I do.  I have developed into a career that ideally suits my personality and temperament.  

I have now set myself the challenge of building my own business and improving the productivity and efficiency of logistics for Australian businesses, not for profits and government organisations as widely as I can.  It will be my privilege to serve you also.

As always, my warmest regards to you.

P.S.  I had great amusement after posting this to see a very similar tagline to reject number 4 in use by the MHLC conference in the U.S.  Is it really an unfair advantage if everyone can do it?



*P.P.S. New taglines number 7 and 8.  Update to this post after changing my tagline again.  No I have not abandoned passion and brilliance in my work.  I just decided to try a new tag that more narrowly reflected my increasing focus on warehousing and all its associated aspects.  No promises that it will not change again next week.

**P.P.P.S.
New tagline number 9. No.8 lasted a few months but as my business thinking and marketing skills develop I find myself finally doing one of the first things I learned about business, but did not believe at the time.  That is to narrow your focus on a particular target market.  This allows you to focus on and market to a particular group of customers.  

So the new tagline defines what I do, which is to serve customers with warehouses.  Specifically my market is small to medium warehouses which includes the neglected mid-sized distribution business and warehouse operations of larger service businesses.

The new tagline is simple and clear and also ties in with a theme that I am building around "High Performance Warehousing".  I hope this is my last update on this post for at least for a year or two!

***PPPPS
New tagline number 10. Surely this is it now! I broadened the line slightly to open up the focus to all of logistics and not just warehousing.  After all this is Logistics Help not Warehouse Help.  I had to widen the tagline to suit the services I am offering to support the three pillars of High Performance Logistics, Inventory Planning, Warehousing and Freight.  It's also slightly shorter which is always a good thing.

BTW I saw another "unfair advantage" tagline on ad for an IT company whilst walking through the airport this week.  Maybe I didn't recognise brilliance when I saw it.

Obviously I cannot give you good marketing advice but if warehousing, logistics and supply chain are important to your business or your personal career then why not follow this blog by email or on Google+.  To tap in to the full benefits of business and career boosting ideas I suggest you join The Warehouse Performance Initiative.

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