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What Business Are You In?

September 18th, 2011

I almost never meet people on airplanes — I guess my headphones and open laptop discourage conversation. But my good friend Bob Berkowitz, CEO of Multivision Video, often meets important people on planes. He believes that his American Airlines upgrades are worth every penny because the person he’ll sit next to in business class will invariably become a client.

A number of years ago Bob sat next to Tom Monaghan. Bob says when he realized his seatmate was the Domino’s Pizza magnate he turned to him and said “I love your pizza. It’s my favorite.” Tom looked at him for a moment before disagreeing, pointing out that Domino’s really wasn’t Bob’s favorite, instead there was some little pizza parlor in Bob’s neighborhood that served better pies. “Maybe you like their fresh mozzarella, or their crispy crust, or their meatballs, but there’s something about their pizza you prefer.” Tom said.

Now, Bob is a lot of things – an innovative businessman, brilliant networker, savvy tech mind, lightening-fast Morse code keypunch operator, a great father, big brother, and all around great guy – but he’s no gourmand. Domino’s might very well be Bob’s favorite pizza after all. But Monaghan didn’t know any of this.

“You see,” Tom went on, “we’re not actually in the pizza business. We’re in the ‘it’s 7 p.m. on a school night and I don’t feel like cooking’ business.’ We’re in the ‘the guys just got here to watch the game and there’s nothing in the fridge to eat’ business.’ We’re in the ‘the twins’ birthday party is tomorrow and I’ve been working all week and haven’t had a moment to go to the store’ business.’ Our pizza doesn’t have to be the best. It has to be the best hot food you can get in 30 minutes or less.”

“Why else do you think we ran a 30 minutes or it’s free promotion? If we take more than 30 minutes to deliver, you’ve got lots of other options – you can pop a frozen pizza in the oven; you can call a local pizza parlor; you can drive through a fast food restaurant. But if you need to feed a crowd in 30 minutes or less, we’re the best.”

Who knew?

But if Tom Monaghan’s not in the pizza business, don’t you wonder what business you’re in?

Pizza Hut thought that just because they were in the pizza restaurant business, they could also be in the free pizza delivery business. But according to Wikipedia, in 1999 Pizza Hut began experimenting with a 50-cent delivery charge in Dallas-Fort Worth. By the summer 2001 they charged 50¢ in 95% of their company-owned restaurants and a smaller number of their franchises. What’s with that? Dominos promises 30 minutes or it’s free and Pizza Hut can charge extra for delivery? What Pizza Hut discovered was that they were in a different business than Domino’s, and that their customers would pay extra for their extra service.

So what business are you in?

If you’re in the business of distributing credit cards but your customers don’t have good credit, are you just handing out cards? Or are you selling something else?

If you work at a newspaper but the majority of your customers download your content on their iPads and laptops, what are you selling?

More and more, disintermediation is pulling the rug out from under the traditional businesses that define themselves one way but actually sell something very different than their business description.

If cars offer transportation, then how come no car company defines themselves as facilitating your movement from point A to point B? Instead, Volvo sells safety, BMW sells performance, Mercedes-Benz sells engineering and status, Audi sells design, and as of last week’s latest bankruptcy threats, Saab no longer sells anything.

The Center for Applied Research reports that between 1988 and 1998 Nike increased its share of the American sport-shoe business from 18 percent to 43 percent; yet an estimated 80 percent of the sneakers they sold in the U.S. are never used for athletics.

I know lawyers who don’t practice law, a doctor who is a bank president, and speakers who do so much consulting that they don’t have time to speak. I know a chiropractor who runs an online information business, and a professional musician who’s a school principal. And I’m an art director who spends much more time writing than directing anything.

So what business are you in?

Tags: Bob Berkowitz, Branding, Branding Speaker, Domino's, Multivision, Nike, Pizza Hut, The Center for Applied Research, Tom Monaghan, What Business Are You In
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Setting The Record Straight.

February 22nd, 2011

If you visit the Smithsonian Institute, one of the exhibits you might see is a lunch counter that’s been carefully relocated from a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina to Washington D.C.

History says that the counter was the site of the first anti-segregation sit-in in the Deep South and that the event, one of the precursors to the Civil Rights movement in this country, occurred on February 1st, 1960.

It’s a riveting display – powerful, emotional and undeniably patriotic. Unfortunately, it’s also wrong. The first sit-ins in the South took place five and dime stores Grant’s and McCrory’s on April 29, 1959. In Miami.

How do I know? Because these first sit-ins were planned and organized by my parents and their friends.

Leonard and Annsheila Turkel moved to Miami from New York in 1956. Len had been stationed in Miami when he served in the Air Force and fell in love with the tropical city. Upon returning to New York, he fell in love with Annsheila Tronick and after their wedding the couple decided to start their life together in the sunshine.

Living in the South, and out of the controlled environment of the armed services, it was clear that some things weren’t quite right. Miami in the mid-fifties was a segregated Jim Crow city. Black residents were mainly restricted to three neighborhoods – Overtown, the West Grove, and the ironically named Liberty City. Besides being forced to ride in the backs of city buses, black workers weren’t allowed on Miami Beach after dark. Black shoppers couldn’t try on clothes in Burdines department store. And black diners couldn’t sit at downtown Miami lunch counters.

Even though they were raising small children and running a start-up business, my parents threw themselves into the civil rights movement. My white father and his black colleague, Dr. John Brown, would test segregation policies by sitting at downtown lunch counters only to be thrown out when they requested service. And my dad’s friend, lawyer Howard Dixon, would drive to small northern Florida towns with names like Frostproof and Loxahatchee to bail out jailed freedom marchers. When I asked my dad how such young guys were brave enough to oppose the establishment in such a violent time, he shrugged and said, “I think we were too dumb to be scared.”

One night my dad drove his truck off a dark country lane and into the three-foot deep culvert that ran alongside the road. The farmer my dad flagged down for a tow climbed down off his tractor, tilted the brim of his hat back to glare at the kid standing in front of his stranded truck and drawled, “Son, you’re either stupid or a Yankee.”

“I believe I’m both, sir,” my dad answered.

While Leonard was busy, my mom wasn’t only changing diapers and reading bedtime stories; she was organizing marches, recruiting volunteers and training protesters. After a few years of this, my parents decided that the best way to promote their cause and promote equality for all of Miami’s citizens was to stage sit-ins at the restricted lunch counters in downtown Miami.

Luckily for posterity, the local TV news covered the event and other protests my parents organized and participated in. After extensive research in the county archives, my sister Amy was able to locate the original news footage. Amy even found a news interview with Dr. Brown, the African-American man who was brave enough to sit at the segregated lunch counter and order food. With the generous help of Bob Berkowitz from Multivision, my brother Douglas, my sister, and I put together a short tribute video to my parents’ courageous higher calling. We posted it on the Internet and I hope you’ll watch it.

Just click HERE.

My parents, who live on Miami Beach, remain active to this day. Some of their accomplishments include building the Anne Marie Adker Community Health Center in Overtown, rehabbing low-income housing at Town Park Village, creating the Instant Vision Program in Miami elementary schools and restoring Miami’s first black library.

So the next time you’re touring the Smithsonian, remember that as important, emotional, and moving as the Greensboro display is, that protest was not the first. It was preceded by sit-ins that occurred almost a year before in Miami, planned and attended by Annsheila and Leonard Turkel. My mom and dad.