bredemarket

Does Your Gardening Implement Company Require Age Assurance?

Age assurance shows that a customer meets the minimum age for buying a product or service.

I thought I knew every possible use case for age assurance—smoking tobacco or marijuana, buying firearms, driving a car, drinking alcohol, gambling, viewing adult content, or using social media.

But after investigating a product featured in Cultivated Cool, I realized that I had missed one use case. Turns out that there’s another type of company that needs age assurance…and a way to explain the age assurance method the company adopts.

Off on a tangent: what is Cultivated Cool?

Psst…don’t tell anyone what you’re about to read.

The so-called experts say that a piece of content should only have one topic and one call to action. Well, it’s Sunday so hopefully the so-called experts are taking a break and will never see the paragraphs below.

This is my endorsement for Cultivated Cool. Its URL is https://cultivated.cool/, which I hope you can remember.

Cultivated Cool self-identifies as “(y)our weekly guide to the newest, coolest products you didn’t know you needed.” Concentrating on the direct-to-consumer (DTC or D2C) space, Cultivated Cool works with companies to “transform (their) email marketing from a chore into a revenue generator.” And to prove the effectiveness of email, it offers its own weekly email that highlights various eye-catching products. But not trendy ones:

Trends come and go but cool never goes out of style.
From https://cultivated.cool/.

Bredemarket isn’t a prospect for Cultivated Cool’s first service—my written content creation is not continuously cool. (Although it’s definitely not trendy either). But I am a consumer of Cultivated Cool’s weekly emails, and you should subscribe to its weekly emails also. Enter your email and click the “Subscribe” button on Cultivated Cool’s webpage.

And Cultivated Cool’s weekly emails lead me to the point of this post.

The day that Stella sculpted air

Today’s weekly newsletter issue from Cultivated Cool is entitled “Dig It.” But this has nothing to do with the Beatles or with Abba. Instead it has to do with gardening, and the issue tells the story of Stella, in five parts. The first part is entitled “Snip it in the Bud,” and begins as follows.

Stella felt a shiver go down her spine the first time the pruner blades closed. She wasn’t just cutting branches; she was sculpting air.
From https://cultivated.cool/dig-it/.

The pruner blades featured in Cultivated Cool are sold by Niwaki, an English company that offers Japanese-inspired products. As I type this, Niwaki offers 18 different types of secateurs (pruning shears), including large hand, small hand, right-handed, and left-handed varieties. You won’t get these at your dollar store; prices (excluding VAT) range from US$45.50 to US$280.50 (Tobisho Hiryu Secateurs).

From https://www.niwaki.com/tobisho-hiryu-secateurs/#P00313-1.

Stella, how old are you?

But regardless of price, all the secateurs sold by Niwaki have one thing in common: an age restriction on purchases. Not that Niwaki truly enforces this restriction.

Please note: By law, we are not permitted to sell a knife or blade to any person under the age of 18. By placing an order for one of these items you are declaring that you are 18 years of age or over. These items must be used responsibly and appropriately.
From https://www.ni w aki.com/tobisho-hiryu-secateurs/#P00313-1.

That’s the functional equivalent of the so-called age verification scheme used on some alcohol websites.

I hope you’re sitting down as I reveal this to you: underage people can bypass the age assurance scheme on alcohol websites by inputting any year of birth that they wish. Just like anyone, even a small child, can make any declaration of age that they want, as long as their credit card is valid.

By Adrian Pingstone – Transferred from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112727.

Now I have no idea whether Ofcom’s UK Online Safety Act consultations will eventually govern Niwaki’s sales of adult-controlled physical products. But if Niwaki finds itself under the UK Online Safety Act, or some other act in the United Kingdom or any country where Niwaki conducts business, then a simple assurance that the purchaser is old enough to buy “a knife or blade” will not be sufficient.

Niwaki’s website would then need to adopt some form of age assurance for purchasers, either by using a government-issued identification document (age verification) or examining the face to algorithmically surmise the customer’s age (age estimation).

Age verification. For example, the purchaser would need to provide their government-issued identity document so that the seller can verify the purchaser’s age. Ideally, this would be coupled with live face capture so that the seller can compare the live face to the face on the ID, ensuring that a kid didn’t steal mommy’s or daddy’s driver’s license (licence) or passport.
Age estimation. For example, the purchaser would need to provide their live face so that the seller can estimate the purchaser’s age. In this case (and in the age verification case if a live face is captured), the seller would need to use liveness dectection to ensure that the face is truly a live face and is not a presentation attack or other deepfake.

And then the seller would need to explain why it was doing all of this.

How can a company explain its age assurance solution in a way that its prospects will understand…and how can the company reassure its prospects that its age assurance method protects their privacy?

Companies other than identity companies must explain their identity solutions

Which brings me to the TRUE call to action in this post. (Sorry Mark and Lindsey. You’re still cool.)

I’ve stated ad nauseum that identity companies need to explain their identity solutions: why they developed them, how they work, what they do, and several other things.

In the same way, firms that incorporate solutions from identity companies got some splainin’ to do.

From https://tenor.com/view/i-love-lucy-lucy-ricardo-some-explaining-to-do-gif-14297186.

This applies to a financial institution that requires customers to use an identity verification solution before opening an account, just like it applies to an online gardening implement website that uses an age assurance method to check the age of pruning shear purchasers.

So how can such companies explain their identity and biometrics features in a way their end customers can understand?

Bredemarket can help.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

Take Me to the (Login.gov IAL2) Pilot

From https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/Pepperidge-Farm-Remembers.

As further proof that I am celebrating, rather than hiding, my “seasoned” experience—and you know what the code word “seasoned” means—I am entitling this blog post “Take Me to the Pilot.”

Although I’m thinking about a different type of “pilot”—a pilot to establish that Login.gov can satisfy Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2).

From https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63a.html#sec2.

A recap of Login.gov and IAL2-non compliance

I just mentioned IAL2 in a blog post on Wednesday, with this seemingly throwaway sentence.

So if you think you can use Login.gov to access a porn website, think again.
From https://bredemarket.com/2024/04/10/age-assurance-meets-identity-assurance-level-2/.

The link in that sentence directs the kind reader to a post I wrote in November 2023, detailing that fact that the GSA Inspector General criticized…the GSA…for implying that Login.gov was IAL2-compliant when it was not. The November post references a GSA-authored August blog post which reads in part (in bold):

Login.gov is on a path to providing an IAL2-compliant identity verification service to its customers in a responsible, equitable way.
From https://www.gsa.gov/blog/2023/08/18/reducing-fraud-and-increasing-access-drives-record-adoption-and-usage-of-logingov.

Because it obviously wouldn’t be good to do it in an irresponsible inequitable way.

But the GSA didn’t say how long that path would be. Would Login.gov be IAL2-compliant by the end of 2023? By mid 2024?

It turns out the answer is neither.

Eight months later we have…a pilot

You would think that achieving IAL2 compliance would be a top priority. After all, the longer that Login.gov doesn’t comply, the more government agencies that will flock to IAL2-compliant ID.me.

Enter Steve Craig of PEAK.IDV and the weekly news summaries that he posts on LinkedIn. Today’s summary includes the following item:

4/ GSA’s Login.gov Pilots Enhanced Identity Verification

Login.gov’s pilot will allow users to match a live selfie with the photo on a self-supplied form of photo ID, such as a driver’s license

Other interesting updates in the press release 👇
From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stevenbcraig_digitalidentity-aml-compliance-activity-7184539504504930306-LVPF/.

From https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/general-services-administrations-logingov-pilot-04112024#.

And here’s what GSA’s April 11 press release says.

Specifically, over the next few months, Login.gov will:

Pilot facial matching technology consistent with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Digital Identity Guidelines (800-63-3) to achieve evidence-based remote identity verification at the IAL2 level….

Using proven facial matching technology, Login.gov’s pilot will allow users to match a live selfie with the photo on a self-supplied form of photo ID, such as a driver’s license. Login.gov will not allow these images to be used for any purpose other than verifying identity, an approach which reflects Login.gov’s longstanding commitment to ensuring the privacy of its users. This pilot is slated to start in May with a handful of existing agency-partners who have expressed interest, with the pilot expanding to additional partners over the summer. GSA will simultaneously seek an independent third party assessment (Kantara) of IAL2 compliance, which GSA expects will be completed later this year.
From https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/general-services-administrations-logingov-pilot-04112024#.

In short, GSA’s April 11 press release about the Login.gov pilot says that it expects to complete IAL2 compliance later this year. So it’s going to take more than a year for the GSA to repair the gap that its Inspector General identified.

My seasoned response

Once I saw Steve’s update this morning, I felt it sufficiently important to share the news among Bredemarket’s various social channels.

With a picture.

B-side of Elton John “Your Song” single issued 1970.

For those of you who are not as “seasoned” as I am, the picture depicts the B-side of a 1970 vinyl 7″ single (not a compact disc) from Elton John, taken from the album that broke Elton in the United States. (Not literally; that would come a few years later.)

By the way, while the original orchestrated studio version is great, the November 1970 live version with just the Elton John – Dee Murray – Nigel Olsson trio is OUTSTANDING.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC1ocO0pVgs.

Back to Bredemarket social media. If you go to my Instagram post on this topic, I was able to incorporate an audio snippet from “Take Me to the Pilot” (studio version) into the post. (You may have to go to the Instagram post to actually hear the audio.)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by John Bredehoft (Bredemarket) (@bredemarket)

Not that the song has anything to do with identity verification using government ID documents paired with facial recognition. Or maybe it does; Elton John doesn’t know what the song means, and even lyricist Bernie Taupin doesn’t know what the song means.

So from now on I’m going to say that “Take Me to the Pilot” documents future efforts toward IAL2 compliance. Although frankly the lyrics sound like they describe a successful iris spoofing attempt.

Through a glass eye, your throne
Is the one danger zone
From https://genius.com/Elton-john-take-me-to-the-pilot-lyrics.

Postscript

For you young whippersnappers who don’t understand why the opening image mentioned “54 Years On,” this is a reference to another Elton John song.

And it’s no surprise that the live version is better.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRngmF-AcFQ.

Now I’m going to listen to this all day. Cue the Instagram post (if Instagram has access to the 17-11-70/11-17-70 version).

Age Assurance Meets Identity Assurance (Level 2)

I’ve talked about age verification and age estimation here and elsewhere. And I’ve also talked about Identity Assurance Level 2. But I’ve never discussed both simultaneously until now.

I belatedly read this March 2024 article that describes Georgia’s proposed bill to regulate access to material deemed harmful to minors.

A minor in Georgia (named Jimmy Carter) in the 1920s, before computers allowed access to adult material. From National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/jica/learn/historyculture/early-life.htm.

The Georgia bill explicitly mentions Identity Assurance Level 2.

Under the bill, the age verification methods would have to meet or exceed the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Identity Assurance Level 2 standard.

So if you think you can use Login.gov to access a porn website, think again.

There’s also a mention of mobile driver’s licenses, albeit without a corresponding mention of the ISO/IEC 18013-5:2021.

Specifically mentioned in the bill text is “digitized identification cards,” described as “a data file available on a mobile device with connectivity to the internet that contains all of the data elements visible on the face and back of a driver’s license or identification card.”

So digital identity is becoming more important for online access, as long as certain standards are met.

Putting the Focus in Customer Focus

This morning on LinkedIn, I was commenting that the March 2024 3.8% unemployment rate makes no difference to someone who is 100% unemployed.

My comment reminded me of one made by a far greater communicator 44 years ago.

By Michael Evans – Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=257844

During the 1980 Presidential campaign, when candidate Ronald Reagan was criticized for not knowing the difference between a recession and a depression, Reagan commented:

“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”

From the perspective of Reagan and his supporters in 1980, technical definitions of recession vs. depression made no difference when you’ve lost your own job. “It’s only a recession, not a depression” doesn’t feed your family.

Remember to apply this customer focus when talking to your prospects. They have a particular way of looking at the world, and as far as they’re concerned it’s the right way. They may be wrong, but you may or may not be able to convince them of this. If you can, focus on things from the customer’s perspective.

Because, as I said in my “Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services” video yesterday, the prospect doesn’t care about YOUR perspective.

Video: Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services

Last week I prepared a presentation for a conference organizer, thinking that I would give the presentation at the conference in question. Instead, the organizer emailed the presentation slides to selected conference attendees. The attendees probably liked it that way.

But I still wanted to give the presentation.

And I also wanted to generalize the presentation so that it applied to ALL technology companies, not just the ones who were attending the conference.

So I recorded myself giving the presentation “Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services.” It’s ten minutes long, and you can view it now.

Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services (April 9, 2024)

This video obviously discusses differentiation, but also discusses customer focus as well as the seven questions your content creator should ask you before writing (including benefits and target audience). Not only are the seven questions good for creating content, but they are also good for differentiating content. (For example, why is your product/service so great while all of your competitors’ products/services suck?)

If you’re watching this video on your laptop, be sure to keep your smartphone handy because at the end of the video I display a QR code to obtain more information. Just point your phone at the QR code.

Of course, if you’re watching this video on your smartphone, you can’t read the displayed QR code. So just go to https://bredemarket.com/drive-tech/ instead.

21st/20th Century Lead Gathering

A client is attending an in-person event and asked for advice on how to collect prospect leads at the event. (For awareness.)

Since I practice a mix of old school and new-school technologies, I’m suggesting the following:

Create a landing page for the event with a form to collect the prospect’s name, email, and other essential information, and feed those names into the client’s customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Create a printed sheet with a QR code leading to the landing page, have the prospect point their camera to the QR code, and then the prospect can enter their information directly from their phone.

There are many other ways to collect information, including specialized software and (really old school) business cards, but this way will work.

I wanted to demonstrate how to do this, but Bredemarket doesn’t have any in-person events on its calendar, and I don’t ask my prospects to sign up for my CRM.

But I DO ask my prospects to sign up for my mailing list.

So I created the form below.

Print it out and give it to your friends.

Subscribe to the Bredemarket Mailing List (April 6, 2024)Download

The Best Way to Talk About Complex Technology Features? Don’t.

Are you a product marketer or content marketer at an engineering-focused technology firm?

The ALMA correlator. The full system has four identical quadrants, with over 134 million processors, performing up to 17 quadrillion operations per second. By ESO – http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1253a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23340651.

Have you been asked to tell your prospects about the marvelously complex features of your firm’s dazzling engineering products?

Well…why would you want to do that?

The complex product with a lengthy feature list

Many years ago I worked at a firm in which the products were driven by engineers, and therefore resulted in engineering marvels.

Two kinds of Segway PTs. By Source: aleehk82 [1]Derivative work: 丁 (talk) – https://www.flickr.com/photos/aleehk82/3144281707/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11852469

I recall one product in particular (not a Segway, but a biometric product housed in a tower) that was an impressive fusion of algorithmic and mechanical excellence. The complex design that went into developing the tower product resulted in a device that performed its function superbly.

The complex engineering also caused the product to have such a high price that no one would ever buy it…but I digress.

But there was another issue with the product. I was writing proposals at the time, and we certainly could have written up a product description that emphasized the product’s lengthy set of features.

But the people receiving our proposals wouldn’t have cared one bit.

Prospects don’t care about lengthy feature lists

You see, prospects don’t care about lengthy feature lists.

And they don’t care about your product.

Altair 8800 advertisement. By MITS staff – Scanned from the May 1975 Radio-Electronics magazine by Michael Holley Swtpc6800, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7219799

Frankly, they don’t even care about your company.

Even if your company has stellar engineers that develop wonderful products.

Elizabeth Holmes “invented a way to run 30 lab tests on only one drop of blood.” WIRED, February 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/02/elizabeth-holmes-theranos/.

Even if your company has won prestigious awards for technical excellence, or as a great place to work, or whatever.

Business Week named Enron Chairman and CEO Ken Lay as one of the top 25 managers for 1999. From https://enroncorp.com/corp/pressroom/awards/executive.html

Even if your company just completed a successful funding round.

Transformco (post-bankruptcy parent of Sears and KMart) received $250 million in November 2019. From https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/07/sears-owner-gets-250-million-lifeline-says-it-will-shut-another-96-stores.html.

It’s painful to admit it, but prospects only care about…themselves.

From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/its-all-me-andrew-scott/.

And the prospects focus on their problems, not your technical superiority.

For example, if your prospects work for certain government agencies, they really care about terrorists who try to board airplanes.

Aerial view of the Pentagon Building, September 14, 2001. By TSGT CEDRIC H. RUDISILL, USAF – http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/Still/2004/Air_Force/DF-SD-04-12734.JPEG Alternate: http://www.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2001289439/ archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2152737

If your product stops terrorists from boarding airplanes, then and only then will they care about your company or your product.

If your product can’t stop terrorists from boarding airplanes, or if there is another product that is better at stopping terrorists from boarding airplanes, then your prospects won’t care about your product.

So how do you get prospects to care?

You don’t get prospects to care by talking about your extensive feature lists.

Let me give you a tip. If you find an employee at the prospect’s company who wants to spend a lot of time talking about your extensive feature lists, that employee probably DOESN’T have the authority to approve the purchase.

The people who DO have the authority to approve the purchase don’t have time to talk about extensive feature lists.

The approvers want to know, in 30 seconds or less, how your solution BENEFITS them.

Do you need help explaining your benefits?

Talking about benefits rather than features is just one tactic to successfully appeal to your prospects.

If you need help ensuring that your written materials (blog posts, white papers, web pages) resonate with your prospects, you can ask Bredemarket to help you.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Technology Firm Services.

More on the Messy Middle

I’ve previously written about the “messy middle,” or the way that people REALLY decide on what to purchase. It’s not as logical as the theories suggest.

From https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-journey/navigating-purchase-behavior-and-decision-making/.

Therefore, when Kevin Indig touched on the subject, I was naturally interested.

From https://www.growth-memo.com/p/messy-middle.

His article includes a section “What we missed about the Messy Middle”:

Different ways of doing SEO

Severe limitations of attribution models

The need to merge CRO and SEO
From https://www.growth-memo.com/p/messy-middle.

Kevin Indig’s article touches upon a lot of topics, most of which I won’t discuss. Read his article. Instead, I’m going to focus on the second of Indig’s three items (on attribution model limitations) because it intersects with my interests, including the trust funnel.

Surround sound

By TonyTheTiger at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10473262

Indig notes the issues with revenue attribution, and how measurements of conversion touch points often end up as wild guesses.

From https://capsulecrm.com/blog/marketing-memes/.

So he proposes something different.

Instead of trying to figure out where to be, try to be everywhere. It’s more important to understand where your competitors are, and you’re not….The surround sound approach seems intuitive but is a very different approach to what’s happening at companies today….Surround Sound doesn’t mean to do everything, but to carefully observe where competitors are and pull even.
From https://www.growth-memo.com/p/messy-middle.

At this point I only want to interject that you should also carefully observe where competitors AREN’T.

But what are the analysts going to analyze? What they can.

We should also rethink the numbers we look at. Recurring visits and the average number of visits until conversion reflect user behavior and improvements better than bounce rate or pages per visit since users hop around so much.
From https://www.growth-memo.com/p/messy-middle.

While much of the activity remains invisible to us, we can still look at the activity that we CAN see.

Some things remain secret

And yes, much of the activity does remain invisible. A former coworker messaged me on Sunday with a question, and he closed his message with the following.

Btw, enjoy your posts
From a private message.

I’m tossing that message over to Bredemarket’s chief analyst.

Doing Double Duty (from the biometric product marketing expert)

I’ve previously noted that product marketers sometimes function as de facto content marketers. I oughta know.

sin, a one-man band in New York City. By slgckgc – https://www.flickr.com/photos/slgc/8037345945/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47370848

For example, during my most recent stint as a product marketing employee at a startup, the firm had no official content marketers, so the product marketers had to create a lot of non-product related content. So we product marketers were the de facto content marketers for the company too. (Sadly, we didn’t get two salaries for filling two roles.)

Why did the product marketers end up as content marketers? It turns out that it makes sense—after all, people who write about your product in the lower funnel stages can also write about your product in the upper funnel stages, and also can certainly write about OTHER things, such as company descriptions, speaker submissions, and speaker biographies.
From https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/28/the-22-or-more-types-of-content-that-product-marketers-create/.

That’s from my post describing the 22 (or more) types of content that product marketers create. Or the types that one product marketer in particular has created.

So it stands to reason that I am not only the biometric content marketing expert, but also the biometric product marketing expert.

I just wanted to put that on the record.

And in case you were wondering what the 22 types of content are, here is the external content:

Articles
Blog Posts (500+, including this one)
Briefs/Data/Literature Sheets
Case Studies (12+)
Proposals (100+)
Scientific Book Chapters
Smartphone Application Content
Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, Twitter)
Web Page Content
White Papers and E-Books

And here is the internal content:

Battlecards (80+)
Competitive Analyses
Event/Conference/Trade Show Demonstration Scripts
Plans
Playbooks
Proposal Templates
Quality Improvement Documents
Requirements
Strategic Analyses

And here is the content that can be external or internal on any given day:

Email Newsletters (200+)
FAQs
Presentations

So if you need someone who can create this content for your identity/biometrics product, you know where to find me.

Four Reasons Why Differentiators Fade Away

I’ve talked ad nauseum about the need for a firm to differentiate itself from its competitors. If your firm engages in “me too” marketing, prospects have no reason to choose you.

But what about companies that DO differentiate themselves…and suddenly stop doing so?

There are four reasons why companies could stop differentiating themselves:

The differentiator no longer exists.
The differentiator is no longer important to prospects.
The market has changed and the differentiator is no longer applicable.
The differentiator still exists, but the company forgot about it.

Let’s look at these in turn.

The differentiator no longer exists

Sometimes companies gain a temporary competitive advantage that disappears as other firms catch up. But more often, the company only pursues the differentiator temporarily.

In 1985, amid anxiety about trade deficits and the loss of American manufacturing jobs, Walton launched a “Made in America” campaign that committed Wal-Mart to buying American-made products if suppliers could get within 5 percent of the price of a foreign competitor. This may have compromised the bottom line in the short term, but Walton understood the long-term benefit of convincing employees and customers that the company had a conscience as well as a calculator.
From https://reclaimdemocracy.org/brief-history-of-walmart/.

Now some of you may not remember Walmart’s “Made in America” banners, but I can assure you they were prevalent in many Walmarts in the 1980s and 1990s. Sam Walton’s autobiography even featured the phrase.

From https://www.biblio.com/book/sam-walton-made-america-my-story/d/1389503897.

But as time passed, Walmart stocked fewer and fewer “Made in America” items as customers valued low prices over everything else. And some of the “Made in America” banners in Walmarts in the 1990s shouldn’t have been there:

“Dateline NBC” produced an exposé on the company’s sourcing practices. Although Wal-Mart’s “Made in America” campaign was still nominally in effect, “Dateline” showed that store-level associates had posted “Made in America” signs over merchandise actually produced in far away sweatshops. This sort of exposure was new to a company that had been a press darling for many years, and Wal-Mart’s stock immediately declined by 3 percent.
From https://reclaimdemocracy.org/brief-history-of-walmart/.

The decline was only temporary as Walmart stock bounced back. And 20 years later, the cycle would repeat as Walmart launched a similar “Made in USA” campaign in 2013, only to run into Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement actions two years later.

The differentiator is no longer important

The Walmart domestic production episodes illustrate something else. If Walmart wanted to, it could have persevered and bought from domestic suppliers, even if the supplier price differential was greater than 5%.

But the buying customers didn’t really care.

Affordability was much more important to buyers than U.S. job creation.

From https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/secrets-walmart-employees-wont-tell-you/.

So while labor leaders, politicians, and others may have complained about Walmart’s increasing reliance on Chinese goods, the company’s customers continued to do business with Walmart, bringing profitability to the company.

And before you decry the actions of consumers who act against their national self-interest…where was YOUR phone manufactured? China? Vietnam? Unless you own a Librem 5 USA, your phone isn’t from around here. We’re all Commies.

The market has changed

Sometimes the market changes and consumers look at things a little differently.

From https://www.calvert.co.uk/our-history/.

I’ve previously told the story of Mita, and its 1980s slogan “all we make are great copiers.” In essence, Mita had to adopt this slogan because, unlike its competitors, it did NOT have a diversified portfolio.

This worked for a while…until the “document solutions” industry (copiers and everything else) embraced digital technologies. Well, Fuji-Xerox, Ricoh and Konica did. Mita didn’t, and went bankrupt.

The former Mita is now part of Kyocera Document Solutions.

And stand-alone copiers aren’t even offered.

The company forgot

Before Walmart emphasized “Made in America” products, former (and present) stand-up comedian Steve Martin was dispensing tax advice.

“Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars. Now.. you say, “Steve.. what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, ‘You.. have never paid taxes’?” Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: “I forgot!”
From https://tonynovak.com/how-to-be-a-millionaire-and-not-pay-any-taxes/.

While the IRS will not accept this defense, there are times when people, and companies, forget things.

I know of one company that had a clear differentiator over most of its competition: the fact that a key component of its solution was self-authored, rather than being sourced from a third party.
For a time, the company strongly emphasized this differentiator, casting fear, uncertainty, and doubt against its competitors who depended upon third parties for this key component.
But time passes, priorities change, and the company’s website now buries this differentiator on a back page…making the company sound like all its competitors.

But the company has an impressive array of features, so there’s that.

Restore your differentiators

If your differentiators have faded away, or your former differentiators are no longer important, perhaps it’s time to re-emphasize them so that your prospects have a reason to choose you.

Ask yourself questions about why your firm is great, why all the other firms suck, and what benefits (not features) your customers enjoy that the competition’s customers don’t. Only THEN can you create content (or have your content creator do it for you).

Read the book: https://bredemarket.com/7Qs/.

A little postscript: originally I was only going to list three items in this post, but Hana LaRock counsels against this because bots default to three-item lists (see her item 4).