Ford Motor Co.’s luxury division on Thursday debuted the Lincoln Model L100 Concept at Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California. And it’d totally badass…
Lincoln debuted the new futuristic product branding scheduled for 2040 at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The new Model L100 concept pushes the boundaries of Lincoln’s “Quiet Flight” design to create connected experiences that reimagine the ultimate vehicle sanctuary of tomorrow.
WATCH the video explaining Ford’s plans to dominate the future of transportation design…
At the product launch, Ford’s Executive Chair, Bill Ford, said;
“Lincoln has been one of the most enduring and stylish automotive brands in the world and in many ways, it is perfectly positioned for a second century defined by great design, zero-emissions and technology-led experiences. Lincoln has always been special to me and my family, especially my father and my grandfather. If there is one secret to Lincoln’s longevity, it is the brand’s ability to balance its core values with a desire to innovate and create the future.”
“Concept vehicles allow us to reimagine and illustrate how new experiences can come to life with the help of advanced technologies and allow our designers more creative freedom than ever before,” said Anthony Lo, chief design officer, Ford Motor Company. “With the Model L100, we were able to push the boundaries in ways that evolve our Quiet Flight brand DNA and change the way we think about Lincoln designs of tomorrow.”
In 2006, Wired Magazine sold to Condé Nast for $25 million.
Later that year, one of the original founders of the magazine, John Battel, was recognized as being one of the first media executives to point out a simple fact – That for the first time in history, there’s absolutely nothing stopping companies from being media brands to attract the audiences we all need.
We all have access to the same tools and platforms.
The New Barrier to Entry For Every Business Moving Forward
When consumers can choose from limitless amounts of content, on their own terms and on their own devices, the battle for their attention has now become the barrier to entry for any business competing online for the same audience.
Companies have recognized these developments overtime and are reaching towards the same conclusion:
We are all now in the media business…
Remember the Yellow Pages?
Before the internet, brands had to rent consumer attention by interrupting someone else’s audience.
Today, brands are focusing on creating content to attract the audiences they want. We’re now behaving a lot more like media companies.
Overtime brands have been gradually moving away from interruptive advertising to creating a digital network of potential buyers.
Building an audience for your business starts with creating content they actually want to consume.
Why We’re All Media Brands Now
On average, US adults are now spending more than 11 hours a day (which is two-thirds of their waking time) consuming media in some form or fashion. Pretty crazy right?
Think about it, if you weren’t reading this right now, you’d be consuming information somewhere else.
The brands who are succeeding now are the one’s creating content to
dominate their industry category.
Ready or not, we’re all in the media business (we just happen to be selling products and services).
Digital media is changing the world. We can either watch it happen or use it to become the biggest digital brands in our industries. Just as it was in broadcasting.
Welcome to the media business.
Take Action!
Want to learn the strategy to operate as a media company? We created a comprehensive overview, where I can teach you how to operate your business as a media brand in 32 pages.
How well, do you really know the market you serve? It sounds like one of those dumb, cryptic, things marketing people like to ask.
But according to Vusi Thembwayo, most companies don’t really know who they’re actually competing against. Or who we should be.
Who is Vusi Thembekwayo?
In short, Vusi is widely regarded as one of the most disruptive and influential forces in venture capital in Africa.
He was amongst the youngest directors of a publicly listed company in South Africa and now serves on several corporate boards.
Currently, he’s the CEO of a boutique investment & advisory firm in Africa. Leading by example, his firm forces medium, large and listed businesses into much needed, often painful, always lucrative new directions.
Having graced the covers on Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes and Inc500, his social media engagement often mirrors that of a Rockstar dressed in a $3K suite.
Professional accomplishments aside, he’s also more informally known as Aftrica’s biggest champion for spreading entrepreneurship on the continent.
He Hosts a Popular MasterClass on YouTube
Vusi has become famous to entrepreneurs around the world because he hosts an insanely valuable Masterclass. They tackle the hardest challenges facing entrepreneurs today. For free.
He broadcasts the videos to YouTube to allow anyone interested in honest feedback on how to grow a business.
The most common comments on his channel are: “I actually can’t believe this content is free.”
During on of his Mastermind events, Vusi shared that most entrepreneurs compete at an entry level way. Because we assume that our market, is the literal niche marketplace we’re currently selling to.
There is however, another way of looking at your business to scale better, and faster.
To understand what level this is, and how to get there, one needs to understand the value chain of their industry.
WATCH:
For a full explanation you can watch this lesson from Vusi himself in his MasterClass. Just skip to minute 5:06 to get to the good stuff.
Meet the 3 Different Types of Business Owners
The biggest lesson to learn from Vusi is how to move up the value chain to “own” more of the supply chain and not just compete inside of it.
Vusi explains there are 3 types of business owners, and most of us are trained to think like 1stand 2nd time business owners.
The First-Time Business Owner
The first-time business owner focuses all of their efforts on improving and perfecting the product. But what the first time business owner doesn’t know is that the product worth nothing if you can’t actually sell it in mass.
Second-Time Owner
The second-time business owner having already experience this focuses instead on marketing and distribution, dramatically increasing their chances of success and survival.
Create Wealth By Owning the Value Chain!
But what the second-time business owner still doesn’t know, is that even if they got really good at distribution, they still work the third-time business owner.
The Third-Time Owner
The third-time business owner doesn’t focus on product or distribution. They move even farther upstream and provide a majority of all of the core goods and services the first 2 business owners needs to be operational.
Overtime by owing part of in the supply chain the third-time business owner can afford to buy business owner 1 and 2 (and all of their competitors).
This will show you why the biggest brands in the world, don’t have to do ANY marketing.
This Might Actually Blow Your Mind!
Oxfam created a pretty shocking infographic on the consolidation of the food industry industry a few years go.
In it you can get a sense for how massive the scale of production is to be a controller of the inputs to the products that are sold at mass. If you can afford it, it’s far more lucrative to sell core goods to the market than compete as a brand inside of it.
These 10 Companies Alone Make All the Food We Buy
Holy Nestle That’s a Lot of Cash
Nestle, the quant little Swiss multinational food and drink conglomerate is now the largest food company in the world pulling in an annual revenue of around $91.4 billion.
How did they afford to buy all these brands? The built the largest dairy company in the world and bought them.
Meet the Brands that Generate $64.66 billion for PEPSICO
PEPSICO was founded in 1965 when Pepsi CEO Don Kendall, and Frito-Lay CEO Herom Lay, sketched the deal on the back of a napkin to agree to combine companies in order to take get take over the growing larger snack industry.
They unlocked a new brand new market long before Blue Ocean Strategy became a thing.
Unilever’s Little $51 Billion Empire
Unilever started in on September 2, 1929 wither the merger of the Dutch margarine producer (Margarine Unie) and a British soap maker (Lever Brothers). Rub the names together and you get Unilever.
Joining forces they were able to increasingly diversified and supply a bigger market.
Conclusion
Know all the players in your business. This means you should understand the whole process, or the entire value chain.
For long-term planning, how can you partner with acquire a new business to put you into a much larger marketplace?
Visit your venders and get to know their business. This is a sign of a seasoned entrepreneur – they build great networks.
Business is booming! The knowledge-based service industry is now a $355 million dollar per day business. $129 billion billed annually to subject matter experts, trainers, consultants, authors, coaches, speakers, masterminds, webinars, e-courses and more.
The good news is the demand for information and thought leaders is at an all-time high. The bad news? So is the increasing supply and it’s becoming difficult to stand out from the crowded room of other experts.
There’s a growing rate of increase in competition for subject matter experts.
Seriously, subject matter experts are everywhere. Based on a simple search on LinkedIn based on titles, there are:
12 million authors
6 million Experts
550,000 Consultants
300,000 Coaches
300,000 Trainers
40,000 Speakers
That’s a lot of competition!
Just think, if you started a retail business you would have just a handful of competitors in your space. In the knowledge field, it’s fair to say that competition is high.
But where are they all coming from? Why are there so many experts right now?
The rise of professional services & knowledge delivery:
Ever since the 1970s, the American economy moved from a manufacturing to a service-based economy. Today the service business in the US represents 80% of the US private-sector GDP at $10 Trillion annually. The professional service sector consists of agencies, consultants, and specialists championed by individual industry experts.
As the service businesses emerged the brand promise transferred from product quality to specialized knowledge expertise and skill. This led to the rise of individuals as brands.
The Brand Called You! You Can’t Move Up if You Don’t Stand Out!
In 1997, Fast Company recognized the necessity for individuals to develop individual personal brands to compete in the cut-throat digital economy. The key to getting ahead in the services market is directly linked to establishing your personal equivalent of the Nike swoosh. “It’s that simple, that hard, and that inescapable.” At least that’s how Tom Peters put it in this classic branding piece.
Fast forward to today. Because anyone can be positioned as an expert. Everyone is.
