Tag: Strategic Marketing

Is Marketing Planning a Strategic or Tactical Process?

Last week in this blog I complained that too many small and medium-sized enterprises see marketing solely as a tactical exercise. I regularly see small businesses advertising for marketing staff and predominantly the job description focuses on day to day activities such as writing social media content, designing print adverts or entering product content onto websites. These activities are no doubt related to marketing; BUT THEY ARE NOT MARKETING.

That last statement may seem counter-intuitive but bear with me.

Advertising is an activity closely linked to marketing.  It is the process which will likely follow the determination of a marketing mix. You can also say the same of sales force management, copywriting and web design.  Those are all activities which derive from the creation of a marketing mix. Marketing isn’t the derivative activities needed after the creation of a marketing mix; it is the analysis of the market, and of an organisation within that market, and the development of a plan which allows that organisation to make best use of profitable gaps in that market.

Marketing is the process of taking the aims, goals and mission of an organisation and putting a consumer focus upon them.  Marketing is the process of giving an organisation a clear and differentiated identity in the minds of consumers.

Business Planning should be structured and systematic process.  It has three main components:

  1.  Objectives: which have to be achieved,
  2.  Actions: which define how objectives are to be achieved
  3.  Resources: what is required to implement those actions

Corporate planning involves creating objectives for all parts of a business.  It is the overall coordination of an organisation’s functionality. Different functions contribute to common organisation wide goals e.g. turnover, profit generation and dividend value. A corporate plan will integrate functional objectives e.g. productivity levels, creation of market share, sales volumes, cash flow, efficiency, quality assurance.

So a corporate plan which aims to improve customer retention will likely lead to a marketing plan focused on key account management and customer service; a human resources plan aimed at attracting high quality staff and an operations plan focused on quality control and assurance.

A strategic corporate plan will be integrative; coordinating functional activity towards common goals.  It will take a whole organisation view and provide collective targets for functional groups.  It’s aim should be to provide focus by defining the overall scope of a business e.g. the markets served, the nature of its activities, so appropriate functional strategies and tactics can be developed.

Corporate plans should be concerned with making major business decisions over the long-term and set required resource profiles.  A corporate plan should match the organisation to the current and future business environment.

I suspect the senior management of many small businesses get the fact that corporate plans are long-term strategy documents. What they then do is assume that anything below the corporate plan level is a short-term tactical planning process.  So marketing is a campaign to campaign process where ad hoc activities are collated in the short-term. So a corporate plan is for five years, but a marketing plan is annual, or seasonal.

Many businesses will also see a marketing plan as being at the same level as other functional plans. I do not see marketing planning in this way.

Marketing is about having a consumer focus to your business.  That focus should be represented in your marketing mix. We know the seven Ps of that mix; Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People, Physical Evidence, Process.

So a marketing plan will directly influence other ‘functional’ plans.  So the process element of the mix will directly affect your operations planning; the price element of the mix will affect your financial planning; the place element of the mix affects your distribution and logistical plans; the people element will affect your human resources planning; The physical evidence element will affect your location and facilities planning; and so on.

So marketing planning is not a traditional functional plan. It sits between your corporate plan and your functional planning because your marketing plan reflects your corporate plan and influences your functional plans.

In truth marketing is both a long-term strategic process and a short-term tactical process. Your marketing plans should have both long-term goals and targets and short-term activities which deliver those long-term goals.

A marketing plan should have a broad focus that defines the market and your organisation’s place in that market.  Bear in mind that the information and problem-solving at this level may appear unstructured, external to the organisation and speculative.

So marketing can impinge on long-term strategic processes such as new product development.  This is strategic marketing planning.

Marketing planning can also be short-term.  These are the day to day activities involved in keeping your organisation on track with its strategic goals.

For example, your strategic plan may require your business to be the market leader (in terms of market share) within five years. However, the market is not static. it changes constantly. New competitors enter the market; others leave; consumers are fickle and change their preferences. So to achieve your long-term strategy, you need to constantly tweak the tactics used to achieve your goal of gaining market share.

So tactical marketing is the process of adapting your plan to the changing market.  This often involves addressing structural processes which are internal to your organisation and which may be repetitive.

Too many SMEs view marketing as only a short-term, tactical, exercise.  They ignore its strategic intent. Marketing is both a long-term corporate process AND a short-term functional process.

Marketing planning is key to adapting to environmental change, allocating resources, consistency in business practice, integration of activities via the marketing mix, motivating and communication with stakeholders and developing control over your organisation.  Marketing is not simply the process of producing some adverts or putting up social media content.

 

The Inevitability of strategic Wear Out

Regardless of your position in the marketplace; whether you are a market leader, a follower, a challenger or a niche marketer; you need to recognise that over time successful marketing strategies begin to wear out and will need to be replaced.  They will lose impact.

It is imperative that you continually adapt your strategy to meet new competitive challenges and to match shifting consumer needs.  Many extremely successful brands, from Kodak to House of Fraser have suffered from over-reliance on their long-standing strategies ignoring the fact that the consumer base has moved on to other new, sparkling concepts.

House of Fraser maintained a department store model based on concessions whilst the fashion brands they relied upon built direct selling through websites and brand-specific stores.

Kodak, despite inventing the digital image sensor, failed to invest in the digital camera and continued to invest heavily in 35 millimetre colour film.

Blockbuster video tried to retain the model of DVD and cassette rental in an age of downloads and Netflix.  Similarly HMV, which has failed twice, ignored the rise of music streaming services such as Spotify and iTunes.

Often management are unwilling to change what they see as successful strategies.  They only see the need to change when it is already too late.

The following effects can contribute to strategic wear out:

  1.  Changes to market structure
  2. The entry and exit of competitors from the market
  3. Changes in your competitors’ strategic positions
  4. Competitive innovations
  5. Changes in consumer expectations
  6. Changes in the macro and micro economy
  7. Changes in legislation
  8. Technological change – including change which at first appears unrelated to your market
  9. Changes to distribution and supply channels
  10. Lack of internal investment
  11. Poor cost control
  12. A tired or uncertain management philosophy.

Perhaps one reason that businesses hold on to outdated marketing strategies is that the process of creating new ones can be painful.  Managers may feel the move away from tired and trusted methods is a black mark against their personal record.  Often, changes to marketing strategy can only be achieved through a change in personnel at board level.

However, there is a law of marketing gravity. Regardless of how big or powerful an organisation is in the marketplace, sooner or later its marketing programme will decline.  Marketing gravity is entropy, that all things break down and become dust.

Four principles are often evident in firms retaining outdated marketing philosophies and strategies:

  1.  Marketing Myopia:  That you ignore the impact of your actions on your brand.  You apply the rules of marketing whilst ignoring the spirit of marketing.  So marketing planning becomes an annual chore.  Marketing is only a sales support activity.  This is the decision by British Airways to redesign the tailfin of their aircraft in an attempt to be more exclusive and ‘international’; the redesign blurred BA’s distinctive image as a national flag carrier and by trying to focus on only high end and executive customers, they restricted the size of their potential market limiting earning potential.
  2. Marketing Arrogance:  You ignore the effect of your actions on your brand. This is the attitude of Gerald Ratner when he may a supposedly humorous after dinner speech about the jewellery sold in his shops being ‘crap’; a speech which hugely damaged the Ratner’s/H Samuel brand.  This is the manager who operates on hunches and that they know what the customer wants without carrying out any research or analysis.
  3. Marketing Hubris:  This is believing in your own PR to the detriment of your brand.  Microsoft believe it could operate free from the constraints of other brands. Richard Branson used to believe Virgin could ignore traditional strategic planning and could do things differently. Both Microsoft and Virgin have reversed these positions.  Branson now says that the strategic planning process is crucial and central to the success of his brand.
  4. Marketing Silliness:  This is putting common sense aside in an attempt at being creative.  We all see TV advertising which is glossy, has startling imagery and artistic flair; but when we are asked what the product or service on offer is, we cannot identify it.

It is also the case that ‘dead cats only bounce once’.  Once a strategy has worn out, you will likely only get one attempt to revive it and gain lost market position.  if that attempt fails, your market share and position will drop dramatically.  We live at a time where many traditional high street retailers are facing oblivion as the internet and home delivery services drive down margins.  To respond, these retailers need to focus on strategies which create unique value for consumers.  Increasingly, to get footfall, these firms will need to create experience beyond that of traditional high street shopping.  Too many of these retailers are relying on consumer inertia or consumer ignorance.  An example is high street banks and utilities firms which often only rely on consumers reluctance to switch to other providers; expecting that consumers will stick with what they know rather than try the new.

You cannot simply stick with what has worked in the past.  The future will be different.

You cannot stand still.  You must always look for the next strategic step. Break away from the past and create strategies for the future.

 

Finding and Communicating a Market Position

To develop a strategic marketing plan, there are a number of stages.

  • You need to analyse the environment in which you will operate.  This is the wider macro-environment of politics, economics, societal trends, technology, environmental concerns and legal concerns.  It is also the micro-environment represented by Porter’s five forces model of organisational stakeholders – competitors, suppliers, staff, stakeholders and new entrants.
  • You need to analyse the internal operations of an organisation, its skills, resources and capabilities.
  • Once you have analysed the environment, you need to analyse the market.  You need to examine where market gaps exist and you need to confirm that those market gaps can offer sustainable competitive advantage.
  • You then need to analyse the consumer base of the market.  Who buys the products in the market?  What is their spending power?  What are their expectations and perceptions of the market?  How will their needs be satisfied?
  • Only once you have carried out all this analysis can you develop you’re preferred market position.
  • Once you have decided on a market position and you design a marketing mix aimed at meeting the consumer need whilst fitting the competitively advantageous market gap.  And remember, the mix is two-pronged; it has to be able to compete against other market players; but it must also defend your place in the market.

Crucial to the development of a marketing mix and its associated communications strategy is the development of a positioning statement which fits your chosen integrated marketing objectives.

A positioning statement must be clear and concise.  It should clearly state what your brand stands for and differentiate your offer from that of competitors.

There are two approaches to a positioning statement:

  1. A functional statement which clearly shows brand benefits, e.g. Gorilla Glue is the strongest adhesive on the market
  2. An expressive statement – which shows the ego, social and hedonistic satisfactions of a brand, e.g. Smirnoff vodka being the spirit of choice for party people.

In managing positions, you need to:

  • Determine the positions of your competitors: using tools such as perceptual mapping
  • Examine the position of a focus brand in a market (the market leader or the brand with the greatest share of voice; the brand which consumers will use to evaluate your offer).
  • Confirm that your desired market position is feasible.  Can you defend it, do you have the resources to achieve it and will it offer sufficient returns in the long-term?
  • Develop your positioning strategy
  • Implement your marketing mix and communications programme to achieve the desired market position
  • Continue to monitor consumer perceptions so as to evolve with the market.

There are three broad approaches to developing a position based on the market, the customer profile and the appeal of the brand.

From these three basic approaches a range of strategies can be developed.  Often there is a need to develop a hybrid approach using one or more of these strategies.  Examples are:

  1. Product Features:  This is a commonly adopted approach.  Examples include Dyson promoting vacuum cleaners on the basis of improved suction or the Halifax promoting the ease of making small payments with their debit card.
  2. Price/Quality:  Again a commonly used approach.  Examples include Aldi advertising how much you can buy in their stores compared to buying branded goods at other supermarket chains (for no apparent loss of quality).  Price itself can be a good indicator of quality.  Sainsbury’s used to advertise using the slogan ‘Good Food Costs Less’; Stella Artois Lager is ‘Reassuringly Expensive’.  An Audi car costs more than the equivalent Volkswagen despite both brands sharing hundreds of components.
  3. Use: Informing consumers as to how a product should be used. For example, Readybrek was ‘Central Heating For Kids’, a nutritious hot breakfast for winter mornings.  Kellogg’s are currently trying to reposition Corn flakes as not a breakfast cereal but a snack food which can be eaten at any time of day.  Belvita is doing the opposite and trying to make biscuits a breakfast food.  After Eight chocolates are the wafer thin mint to finish off a dinner party. Wash and Go is the shampoo that is quick and easy to use and suitable for people with busy lifestyles.
  4. Product Class Dissociation:  This position is often taken in markets which appear humdrum or boring.  It is often used where competitors have taken all available positions.  You disassociate yourself from your competitors.  So if you produce margarine, you compare your product to butter, not other margarines, e.g. I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter.  You compare your brand to a higher quality offer.
  5. User:  You position yourself by clearly defining target users.  So Sheila’s Wheels was car insurance specifically for women drivers.  Often celebrity endorsements are used as a shortcut to defining the user.  Hence the proliferation of fragrances which use the names of pop stars.  Sports endorsements often try to link brands to users.  Nick Faldo used Mizuno golf clubs, Tiger Woods links to Nike, Justin Rose uses TaylorMade, etc.
  6. Competitor:  You position yourself against your main competitor.  Pepsi uses its ‘taste challenge’ to directly place itself against Coca Cola (and does so without naming Coke).  Avis Car Rental ‘Tries Harder’ i.e. is better than Enterprise.  Qualcast advertised their lawn mowers as ‘A lot less bovver than a hover”; a direct comparison to Flymo.
  7. Benefit: You position your brand by proclaiming a benefit.  So Sensodyne toothpaste reduces or eliminates sensitivity from hot and cold foods. Voltarol gel relieves pain and allows you to be active.
  8. Heritage or Cultural Symbol:  Some brands use coats of arms to indicate heritage (although this can be a risky tactic as UK heraldry bodies regularly prosecute for the misuse of heraldic symbols).  Bass beer’s red triangle is the oldest registered trademark in the world.  Lyle’s Golden Syrup and ‘From Great Strength Comes Forth Sweetness’ is a similarly long-lived brand.  Many businesses state ‘Established since’ in advertising.  Kronenberg 1664  lager uses the date in the brand name to indicate longevity. These dates and symbols infer permanence and depth of experience.

Whatever position you choose, it must be supported and expressed across your communications and across your marketing mix.  You must be consistent.

If you promote a high quality position, your product and service quality must be better than your competitors.  Land Rover markets a position as a tough off-road access all areas vehicle, yet they also have a reputation for mechanical faults. Land Rover’s position has often differed from the experience of consumers. A troubling situation.

If you are promoting a position of exclusivity, that will directly affect your communications mix.  You will be less likely to use sales promotion and advertising will be in carefully chosen publications.  Your messages will infer affluence, particularly visually.  A family car will be shown being driven down a local high street; A luxury car will be shown motoring in the Cote D’Azur and arriving at an exclusive restaurant or nightclub overlooking a marina of luxury yachts.

Dimensions of your position must be relevant and important to the target audience of your communications.  Image cues must be believable and considered credible.

Market Positions must developed over the long-term if they are to prove effective; but they must also be flexible enough so as to cope with changes in the market environment and consumer expectations.

Often it is necessary to reposition a brand within a market.  Technology means that consumer tastes are changing rapidly as is their behaviour.  Market positions therefore must evolve at an equivalent pace.  technology also allows new substitute offers to proliferate.

Market positions are frequently being challenged in the minds of consumers.  If your position has strong foundations and it is continually reinforced; if your position can be communicated by clear, simple messages, there may be little need to change your original market position.  otherwise, situations will arise where you will need to reposition.  This may be as a result of market opportunities and developments such as takeovers and mergers.  Buyer preferences change.  This may make an existing position untenable.  Repositioning will therefore be necessary.

Repositioning is difficult, and risky, but it can be successful.  often consumers have entrenched positions as to brands.

To reposition successfully, the old market position needs to be suppressed so that consumers no longer relate to it.  Consumers also need to learn the new position.

These two processes can be complimentary as by weakening the old position you can reinforce the new position.

 

Developing Customer Retention Strategies

Most senior managers in a business talk of developing customer or brand loyalty.  The principle is that the longer you keep a customer, the more you earn from them.   To survive in the long-term, you need to develop high lifetime value.

However, loyalty is fickle.  Successive academic studies have shown that even the most loyal of customers will switch to a competitor if the believe there is better value on offer.

In this blog we have also discussed that there is no longer a product which is purely defined by the definition goods.  All products have a service element and often the opportunity to differentiate goods from those of competitors and to add distinctive value.

This makes it odd that in some sectors little is done to retain customers and customer service is, quite frankly appalling.  For example how many of us have been stuck on the telephone line for what seems like an age to a bank or utility firms call centre with no ‘call back’ option.

Then there are industries where customer retention seems to be an alien concept and customer lifetime value appears to be the last thought of company directors.  The car insurance industry is one such sector.  The aim appears to be to get consumers to switch every year by only offering discount to new customers.

In business to business markets, where there are often fewer customers, higher purchase costs and complicated contracts, there is often a constant battle to adapt and improve service capabilities and product functionality.  In such markets, customer retention is the key to business growth and survival.

Senior managers shouldn’t confuse customer or brand loyalty with customer retention.  You don’t develop brand loyalty strategies, you develop customer retention strategies.

So how do you develop customer retention:

  1.  Target Customers:  Not all customers are worth building a relationship with over the longer-term.  Some customers are habitual brand switchers.  Some will not generate significant lifetime value; they will not provide sufficient income or their service demands incur excessive costs.  Some customers; disruptive ‘zombies’; may actually disrupt service provision and affect a firm’s relationship with other more profitable customers.  This is a classic marketing segmentation and targeting approach.  You should aim to retain, high value, frequent use, loyalty-prone customer groups who recognise your product as having high service values and utility.  You need to identify those customers  in that group who are most likely to defect to competitors and ask whether they are worth retaining.  You then need to build a value-added strategy to meet those customers demands.  For loyalty-prone customers, it is important to maintain communication bonds.  It is worth remembering the Pareto principle that 80% of turnover comes from 20% of your customer base.
  2. Bonding:  You need various levels of strategy to bond customers and service providers together.  You need to select the  level of strategy most appropriate for the bond with each customer:
    1. Level One:  You bond through financial incentives.  You provide discounts for bulk purchase or you provide a loyalty scheme for repeat purchase.  However, such financial incentives are easily copied by competitors.
    2. Level Two:  You develop more than just price incentives; you build sustainable competitive advantages through the creation of social as well as financial bonds.  Customer service encounters are often also social encounters.  To build social bonds, you require frequent communication.  You need to provide community of service through and entertainment activities.  for some customers you need to make them feel that they are being treated as an individual.  For example, Harley Davidson runs events for their owner’s club; Las Vegas casinos offer ‘High Rollers’ the use of luxury suites and special tables.
    3. Level Three:  You need to develop financial, social and structural bonds.  The relationship should feel more like a partnership than that of a supplier and a customer.  This often involves the creation of bonds which tie the customer to your company.  For example some logistics firms provide customers with packing equipment which only works with the logistics firm’s systems..  Such structural bonds often create formidable barriers against customer switching and new competitors entering the market.
  3. Internal Marketing:  To build high quality service delivery, you need high quality performance from employees.  Recruitment and employee selection is often key to bonding as is employee retention. Retained employees often develop expert knowledge about your products and services.  You need to provide high quality staff training.  You need effective communication channels with your staff and they need to be appropriately motivated.  Staff need to have technical competence but they also must be able to relate to customers.  All your staff, from your receptionist to your engineers, are part-time marketers.
  4. Promise Fulfilment:  You must make credible realistic promises, keep those promises and give your staff the knowledge and equipment to deliver upon them.  this is the keystone of maintaining customer relationships.  They are the cues to match customer expectations and to avoid customer disappointment, dissatisfaction and defection to competitors.  The mantra should be ‘under-promise; over-deliver’.  First impressions count so your first contact with customers is critical. For example, Marriot Hotels have a ‘first ten minutes strategy’ to ensure the relationship with hotel guests gets off on the right foot.
  5. Building Trust:  Customer retention relies on building trust.  Services are intangible.  To ensure retention you need to keep in touch with customers and modify services to respect their views.  This means providing guarantees which inspire confidence and which reduce perceived purchase risk.  Your policies need to be considered fair by consumers.  Staff must recognise required high levels of conduct with consumers.
  6. Service Recovery:  Solving problems can restore customer trust.  Ideally, potential problems should be eliminated before they actually happen; but that isn’t always possible.  If incidents occur, systems should be capable of modification so those incidents cannot be repeated.  This means having a quality assurance system capable of adaptation such as Kaizen or Six Sigma.  Systems should be tracked to identify service failures. Customers should be encouraged to report problems.  Monitor complaints and their resolution.  Follow up on service provision.  Most importantly, train and empower your staff to deal with problems and complaints before they escalate.  Successful resolution of a complaint can actually increase a customer’s positivity about a service provider.  This is called the recovery paradox.  But if the complaint recurs, the increased positivity can dissolve into dissatisfaction and recrimination.  Service recovery can encourage organisational learning and service staff should be motivated to report problems.  Effective service recovery systems can increase customer retention.

Does your organisation properly define the Sales and Marketing relationship?

Does your business have a Sales and Marketing department?

Do you call your sales force ‘Marketing Representatives’?

Do you have a sales office or a marketing suite?

When you employ marketing staff or consultants, do you measure their performance on the basis of sales KPIs?

I have found many businesses which can answer all these questions in the affirmative and that is puzzling.  These businesses clearly have a confused definition of two separate but linked specialisms.

Worse, the description Sales and Marketing is worrying as it gives prominence to the activity of personal selling over the strategic role of marketing professionals.

Sales is the activity of personal selling usually based on the employment of a cohort of sales representatives and involves direct face to face communication between the seller and the buyer.  It is a promotional activity based on two-way communication.  Sales presentations are also often designed to meet the needs of individual customers based on specific buyer demands and taking into account knowledge of the buyers status and issues.

Personal selling is often an expensive communication channel. You have to pay for expenses such as cars, travel expenses and a sales office. The total bill for a sales representative can be double their salary.  The practice of the traditional sales representative model is also changing through the increasing use by organisations of centralised purchasing teams.

Sales representatives are increasingly having to learn new skills.  Often the focus is now on the retention of profitable customers whilst the zombie customers that represent costs are abandoned.  Sales reps are now Customer Service Representatives, where the focus is on long-term customer retention as opposed to short-term one-off transactions.  Salesmen are now also expected to provide knowledge and database management providing market research data and administration.  Their role is to promote products and develop solutions; not just to sell.  Representatives are now problem solvers who develop partnerships with their clients.  They satisfy needs and add value.

The stereotypical image of the salesman as a  slick, fast-talking charmer is gradually disappearing to be replaced with that of the thoughtful, knowledgeable professional.

However, personal selling is not a stand alone business activity.  It sits as one part of a wider marketing mix.  It is only one element of a comprehensive marketing strategy.

Modern sales practice depends on:

  1. Target market choice: the targeting of profitable accounts.  This requires a wider of your targets through market segmentation and key account identification.  These wider strategic marketing functions provide for effective sales force management.
  2. The creation of differential advantage: The start of  successful marketing strategy.  This strategy needs to be embedded in the sales plan and be effectively communicated to all staff involved in the sales process.  The sales force must be able to articulate the differential advantage to customers.

One danger is that your sales representatives dilute your differential advantage by caving in to customer demands for price concessions.  it is also important that product benefits are communicated in terms that are understandable to the customer.

So sales activity relies on the strategic objectives of your marketing plan.

There are four generic marketing strategies depending on your market position.  These reflect the four quadrants of the Boston Consulting Group Growth/Share matrix:

  1.  Build your market: grow market share and sales volumes; increase your levels of distribution and increase your service levels. prospect the market for new accounts
  2. Hold your market position: maintain your market share, sales volumes and service levels. Limit prospecting
  3. Harvest the market: Increase earnings by reducing costs and targeting the most profitable customers. Reduce the cost of service. Reduce market prospecting. Transfer less profitable accounts to telemarketing.
  4. Divest: Limit sales visits to the most profitable accounts and increase order levels to minimise stock levels. No market prospecting.

Each of these marketing positions requires a different sales strategy:

  1.  Build:  Requires high call rates to existing accounts.  Highly focused sales activity during calls. Increased prospecting for new customers.
  2. Hold: Maintain current call levels.  Moderate focus during calls.  Call on new customers as they appear.
  3. Harvest: Call on profitable accounts. Move others to email contact and telemarketing. Don’t prospect for new customers.
  4. Divest:  Apply quantity discounts to hive volume accounts.

Perhaps the term Sales and Marketing should be reversed to recognise the strategic role of marketing.  it is your marketing strategy that determines the activity of your sales force.  Your sales force should not determine your marketing and corporate strategy.  This would be a better representation of the relationship between marketing and sales.

Even better, your marketing function should be allied to your wider corporate planning rather than being located as a silo function of your sales team. Strategic marketing planning should be a central part of your organisations top-level business planning.

 

 

 

 

Don’t worry it may never happen

As an ex-pat Scot, I regularly visit the pages of The Scotsman newspaper.  the Scotsman is a broadsheet based in Edinburgh and it covers all the big national stories as well as those affecting Scotland.

Over the weekend, I chanced upon two stories in the paper.  the first was an opinion piece on the future of Scottish agriculture outside of the EU.  It highlighted some of the UK government’s recent press releases relating to the trade in agricultural produce once the UK has left the EU.

In recent weeks, press releases have highlighted the prospect of selling pigs trotters to the Philippines and deer antlers to China (they are used in Chinese traditional medicine).  The article equated these press releases to applying lipstick to a pig.  Firstly, the trade deals mention were in the low millions of pounds not the billions needed to replace the drop in trade likely after we leave the EU.  Secondly, UK agricultural and food suppliers already carried out a lot of this form of trade from within the EU.

As a trading standards professional, I regularly had to inspect two large poultry processing factories.  Both of these factories exported chicken heads and feet to China.  In total these factories processed around 2 million chickens a year.  The value of their existing chicken by-products was larger than some of the trade benefits quoted in the UK government press releases.

The second article I spotted was a survey of UK and EU CEO’s by Thompson Reuters.  This survey stated that 69% of CEO’s had yet to include the potential effects of Brexit in their corporate strategic plans.  The survey also stated that 21% of those surveyed had paused or stopped investing in the UK as a result of Brexit.  The International Trade minister Liam Fox was given a score of three out of ten for his performance so far.

The spin applied to the survey in the article was that company CEO’s were not worried about Brexit.  I would suggest that many have yet to become worried; that they are in denial at the potential chaos of the UK’s exit from the EU.  I suspect many company directors still believe that Brexit isn’t going to happen.

The problem is that there is not a lot of time left before the Brexit deadline for CEO’s to plan and get their act together for a political and economic whirlwind.

To illustrate the lack of thought that is being applied to the process of Brexit, I refer you to two of the position papers recently published by David Davis, the cabinet minister for exiting the European Union.

The first of these relates to the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  The second is the position paper relating to the continuity of the availability of goods for the UK and the EU.  Both of these documents are the thinnest of gruel.  They consistently lack the appropriate detail to give business an idea of how life outside the EU will look.

The paper on the Irish border is particularly awful.  It talks of the border remaining identical to now.  Goods will be able to cross the border freely, as will people.  But such an assertion stands directly against the facts of the Republic being inside the EU and the UK outside.

The proposals in relation to customs are particularly baffling.  Two options are given.  The first is the ‘have your cake and eat it Brexit’.

The paper argues that the UK could leave the current European Customs Union and set up an identical but different UK/EU customs union.  This would allow the movement of goods to go on unhindered.  At the same time, the UK would be able to go out and make new free trade agreements with other states.

There is no way that the EU will agree to such a situation.  It would allow third-party nations which have agreed a free trade agreement to siphon goods through the UK into the EU avoiding existing tariffs and customs controls.

The second option is that a class of ‘trusted traders’ either side of the border are exempted from customs and tariff law.  In particular, the UK government wants to exempt small firms from such measures.

This is a bonkers suggestion.  You cannot have one law for some and a different law for others.

In summary the UK government proposals for the Irish land border are a recipe for smuggling, people trafficking, tariff evasion and carousel fraud.  The position paper resembles a first year undergraduate politics essay.

The paper on the continuity of the availability of goods is equally terrible.

It only talks about goods up to the point that the UK exits the EU.  It states that goods placed on the market prior to the UK exit should be treated as they are currently and not under the new arrangement between the EU and UK.

What this means is that goods made or ordered at five to midnight o March 31st 2019 will be EU goods and treated as such.  Nothing is said about the status of goods made or ordered six minutes later on the first of April.

The paucity of detail in these position papers should have businesses of all sizes extremely worried about the potential effects of Brexit.  They clearly show that the UK government has no strong policy on Brexit and little idea how life will look outside the EU.

Beware, get contingency business plans and strategies ready now because it looks like the UK out of the EU will be a particularly unstable place to do business.