Ironbound Consulting Group - Blog

Reaching Far for your Customers

5/18/2018

Image: Box Office Weekend Hits

Corporate Challenge: Creating a black swan event for your brand.

Ironbound Strategy: The most powerful brands in the world are constantly looking for ways to create value for customers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action: California based Walt Disney Company was recently made aware that Compton, California has over 31,000 children (under the age of 18), and no movie theaters. A Wrinkle In Time director Ava DuVernay believed her movie would be inspirational to the children of her hometown of Compton. So Disney built a movie theater for the city. According to a 1948 antitrust landmark case by the Supreme Court, movie studios are not allowed to own movie theatres, so the movie theater that Disney created had to be temporary. Powerful brands create ‘black swan’ events that create value for their customers, employees, and society.

* Disney has a $157B Market Cap, with $55B in revenue last FY

The Flat Organization Theory and Rapid Growth

5/4/2018

Image: SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket

Corporate Challenge: How a company can attain high goals quickly.

Ironbound Strategy: Brands that constantly create value for their customers, employees, and society progress the fastest.

Ironbound Action: California based SpaceX considers itself a “Flat Organization”, where the best ideas mean more than seniority or hierarchy. An intern on their first day of work can have their idea implemented just as easily as a tenured engineer. By constantly promoting the best idea forward, SpaceX has outperformed every expectation for space exploration, at unprecedented speed and efficiency. Hierarchies have been known for ‘analysis paralysis’. The advent of flat organizations are helping brands with exponential growth, as they set new benchmarks that are out of sight for their antiquated competitors.

* A SpaceX rocket launch costs $61 Million, far less than the nearest competitor, Airbus, that charges $77 Million.

Merging Tech and Fun to Attract Millennials

4/20/2018

Image: Coach Snapcode Pins

Corporate Challenge: Finding creative ways of attracting millennials.

Ironbound Strategy: Millennials are loyal to brands that create value for customers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action: New York based Coach has been creating fashion products since 1941. The coveted market space ($360B) that top fashion brands are trying to attract are millennials, who will become the largest purchasing demographic for the next several decades. Coach experimented with creating fashionable pins that emblazon a Snapcode that generates unique filters and games on Snapchat. By creating an interactive product, customers and their friends can discover fun ways of interacting with the Coach brand. Millennials’ purchasing decisions will decide which brands survive in the future.

* Coach reported $4.55 Billion in revenue last fiscal year. Up from $4.2 Billion the previous year.

Maintaining Loyalty by Giving Customers More Content

4/6/2018

Image: WWE

Corporate Challenge: How to garner more customer loyalty.

Ironbound Strategy: Providing new and fun content is a great way to create value for customers, while making employees prouder to work for the brand.

Ironbound Action: Connecticut based World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) was established in 1952 to promote the sport of wrestling but pivoted in 1983 to promote the entertainment of wrestling through a syndicated weekly television show. At CES Stephanie McMahon, heir to the WWE empire, shared that the WWE brand has been utilizing technology to bring fans as much content about their favorite wrestlers as possible. Every day their team creates new ways of giving their customers more content. Providing content allows customers to immerse themselves in a brand, and forges a stronger sense of loyalty.

* Approximately 3.4 million viewers tune into the live WWE program each week. WWE has 14.4 million Instagram followers. WWE recently signed UFC world champion Ronda Rousey who has 10.1 million Instagram followers. Ronda's debut wrestling match will be during Wrestle Mania, which Stephanie McMahon credited as being the Super Bowl of wrestling.

What is the Social Responsibility of Business?

3/29/2018

Image: Apple Fifth Avenue

Corporate Challenge: New generation of consumers prefer organizations that lead and demonstrate responsible corporate citizenship.

Ironbound Strategy: Powerful brands generate stronger brand awareness by focusing on creating holistic value for all stakeholders. By supporting social objectives brands can efficiently reach more markets.

Ironbound Action: California based Apple Inc. in less than 40 years has scaled from startup to closely becoming the first Trillion Dollar market capitalization company. This phenomenal valuation and sustainable growth challenges conventional business wisdom. Holistic value creation encourages greater innovation and improves marketing efficiency. Helping protect the environment gives Apple free and positive press. Continuously leading product innovation creates value and attracts more customers. Beautiful architecture in society helps get the brand noticed, galvanize the workforce, and attract new customers.

Celebrating our 100th Blog Post

3/15/2018

Dear Friends, Family, and Dreamers at Ironbound Consulting Group,

In 2012, Co-Founders William Rearden and Sarah Abigail embarked on a quest to create a holistic consulting firm with a societal mission to Build A Better World. In 2014, we opened our Wall Street office in downtown Manhattan. Today, we are publishing our 100th Blog. Thank you to everyone who believes in a better tomorrow. With quantum chips, and new disruptions being developed in innovation centers across the globe, we are on the precipice of phenomenal change, growth, and opportunity. Our 1,000th Blog might be written by an AI. We are working hard to make sure that AI developments of the future follow our strategy of ceaselessly creating value for customers, employees, and society.

Thank you for believing in our mission to Build A Better World.

Best,

Bill, Sarah, and the Ironbound Team

The Perks of Creating Unimaginable Value for Society

3/2/2018

Image: Tesla Model X

Corporate Challenge: How to make employees happier, while paying them less.

Ironbound Strategy: Employees are willing to get paid less when their efforts create unimaginable value for society.

Ironbound Action: California based Tesla has been making electric cars with very happy and very underpaid employees. When Tesla is hiring, potential employees line up around the block hoping for an underpaid job. Tesla is in a unique position to offer entry level jobs between $30,000 and $40,000 below the market rate in Silicon Valley due to the unimaginable value Tesla continuously creates for society. When a brand does good for society, their employees are prouder to work for the brand. Employees want their work efforts to mean something to the world.

Encouraging Vacations to Increase Business Efficiency and Productivity

2/23/2018

Image: Courtesy of CNBC.com

Corporate Challenge: Skyrocketing productivity by encouraging vacations.

Ironbound Strategy: Powerful brands create value for stakeholders to optimally align external markets with internal capabilities. Creating value for employees helps increase productivity and drive better business efficiency.

Ironbound Action: Most American workers utilize only half of their paid vacation time. Productivity over the summer declines as members of teams take vacations at various times. Boston based Humanyze in 2017 incentivized employees to take assigned weeks for summer vacation. During these assigned times a 5-day week only counted for 3 vacation days. Having assigned summer vacations meant more people were on vacation at the same time and increasing productivity during the other times of summer. Incentivizing, designing, and encouraging vacations helps increase long-term productivity.

Rapidly Expanding Across into New Markets Successfully

2/9/2018

Image: Starbucks

Corporate Challenge: Scaling rapidly into international markets.

Ironbound Strategy: Powerful brands are able to successfully accelerate growth into new markets by holistically creating value for all their stakeholders. Sustainable growth rests on creating value beyond customers to include employees and society.

Ironbound Action: Seattle based Starbucks Coffee Company is actively expanding global locations to 37,000 by 2021. In China, their fasted growing international market, Starbucks opens a new location every 15 hours. To scale this rapidly in an orderly fashion, powerful brands zone in on creating meaningful value for stakeholders. Starbuck’s cares about employees and their education, in 2017 they celebrated tuition reimbursements for their 1,000th graduate completing a bachelor’s degree. Creating value for employees is at the core of any successful and orderly global expansion.

Creating Experiences as a way to Generate Value

1/12/2018

Image: Lyft

Corporate Challenge: A company wants to generate value for their stakeholders.

Ironbound Strategy: Find new ways to share an experience that creates value for your customers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action: California based Lyft partnered with Budweiser to provide New York patrons a ride in a vintage branded car. By offering a new experience to both customers and employees, Lyft and Budweiser were able to increase happiness, improve their cool factor, and create a positive sharable image of their brand to society. Finding new ways to experience a brand can turn into a fantastic and sharable brand growth strategy.