reverse businesses

everse BusinessesTrends and Applications

Ali Anani, PhD

It is amazing how long it takes concepts from one field to extrapolate them into business applications

Concepts that have now equivalent business applications.

From Reverse Osmosis and Reverse Engineering to

Reverse Thinking, Reverse Showrooming (Webrooming), Reverse Marketing, Reverse Advertising, Reverse Banking, Reverse Editing and the list goes on…

Reverse MarketingThe normal thing is that firms seek customers.

Its reverse is customers seek firms to see if they may deliver their needs forservices /products

Reverse Marketing comes from the growing trend that customers are participants in influencing a company’s product, price, place, and promotion.

Customers may influence/decide the price (one of the traditional

of marketing).

Let us take an application example

While consulting for a new newspaper, I tested the idea that each customer will have topay initially only 50% of the cost of ad

How about the remaining 50%?

It was left up to the customer to decide.

The customer decides would portion of the remaining the remaining 50%, depending on the level of his/her satisfaction

This helped us determine the delight of customers and areas of desired improvements

The result was fantastic as delighted customers turned very loyal

Thinking deeper, the real success stemmed from using delight as…

…bridge between the customer and the newspaper.

The stronger the bridge is, the more lasting relationship we expect.

Price Reversing such that the customer may decide the price has great more potentials remaining to be explored.

Advertising passionately has been very successful strategy

A great example is

Campaignfor RealBeauty

In a reverse strategic thinking the company didn’t promote its products; rather it promoted beauty

Beauty is the bridge between products and consumers.

Results speak louder.This campaign caused Dove’s sales

to soar above $1Billion and then Dove decided to re-create their brand around this strategy

Reverse Marketing offers two great advantages:Using emotions as the selling element + Differentiation strategy by going against the prevailing, but crowded, trends

A second remarkable example with a great twist is:

BusinessWeek.com

Don’t BuyThisJacket

Imagine an outdoor clothing company advertising

Don’t BuyThisJacket

Companies want to sell; the reverse don’t buy is certainly going to raise curiosity.

This is an embedded form of Reverse Psychology as well

The ad generated customers’ respect to

Respect acted as the bridge between the company (and its products as well) and its customers.

The resultThe respect bridge spurred sales even in economic downturn periods

We are living in a rapidly changing world.The beauty of using emotions as a bridge for marketing is that the value of emotions doesn’t fade

If you sell cosmetics, then advertise beauty and show that you care for it

Invariably, convenience shall be sought after by customers.

People have less disposable times and if you care for your customers’ time and convenience you shall differentiate yourself from competitors

Whenever you have these combined factors then expect changes in trends

An evident trend is Reverse Showrooming in which consumers go online to research products, but then go to a bricks-and-mortar store to do their purchase.

http://www.businessinsider.com/reverse-showrooming-physical-retailers-fight-back-2014-8#ixzz3EmlOk3ZP

Pinterest is adding extra weight to this trend

http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-drives-offline-retail-2013-8

esreveR Advertising is also gaining momentum

Don’t advertise your product except in flashed.

Advertise the emotion your product extends to customers

You may find many examples in my presentation

“Bubbling Ideas”http://www.slideshare.net/hudali15/bubbling-ideas

Reverse Banking is an emerging trend

Here is one exampleReverse Charge Account - Bank of Queensland

www.boq.com.au › ... › Everyday bankingBank of QueenslandGet paid for banking with a Reverse Charges bank account from Bank of Queensland & benefit from a fee free bank account for balances over $2000.

And one more exampleReverse Charges Account®

The Reverse Charges Account® is the first transaction account in Australia to pay you a fee for giving us your business; and it gives you the freedom to do banking your way - with easy access to your cash. http://www.boq.com.au/personal_everyday_reversecharges.htm

Reverse BrainstormingInstead of asking how to solve a problem start with how to create the problem?

Reverse Brainstorming helps uncover new dimensions of problems and may spotlight on you ideas

That is true.Make the “dark” problem darker and then work on solutions.

People tend to generate more creative ideas with truly negative issues.

An example is

Make the package repulsive by:Using tiny fontsWaxy material that sticks to the handThe liquid ingredients to pour out and dirty your car seatsUse bloody cartoons

And so on

The trick now is to find solutions to the most prominent problems

Are we trending to live our lives in

?esrever

Here is one exampleReverse Charge Account - Bank of Queensland

www.boq.com.au › ... › Everyday bankingBank of QueenslandGet paid for banking with a Reverse Charges bank account from Bank of Queensland & benefit from a fee free bank account for balances over $2000.