I’m often asked by the businesses I work with about my strapline ‘Thinking in 3D’.
By that I mean being ‘dramatically and demonstrably different’ – and the question I often get asked is: Why is this stuff so important?
Well, this fast-changing world needs a ‘Dramatically Different’ approach. Don’t believe me?
Here are 20 stats that demonstrate just how different a world we are all currently running our businesses in….
- ‘Tainted Love’ by Soft Cell was in the charts closer to the end of World War 2 than today.
- There are now more than 4 billion people around the world connected to the internet – nearly a quarter of a billion new users came online for the first time last year.
- In one 2018 minute there are 16 million texts sent, 3.5 million searches on Google, 4.1 million videos viewed on YouTube, 156 million emails sent and 990,000 ‘swipes’ on Tinder.
- Logan Paul is a 22-year-old YouTube star with more than 14 million followers who last year generated revenues of $12.5 million.
- 72% of adverts are skipped by people with personal video recorders like Sky+.
- 76% of consumers don’t believe that companies tell the truth in their advertisements – when I was a kid, we honestly believed that ‘for mash, we had to get Smash’!
- 81% of shoppers conduct online research before making big purchases.
- 75% of UK customers believe that customer service levels are the worst they have ever been.
- The average time shoppers are prepared to queue is two minutes, down from five minutes only six years ago.
- Amazon Go is a grocery shop in Seattle where you can just walk in, take the goods you want, put them in your bag and just walk out again!
- 57% of customers will wait three seconds or less for a website to load before abandoning it – a one second delay in load time would cost Amazon an estimated $1.6 Billion a year.
- ALDI is the highest-performing supermarket for customer satisfaction, overtaking M&S and Waitrose.
- Apple sold more i Watches last quarter than the whole of the Swiss watch making industry.
- The average length of time employees stay at Facebook is 2.02 years, at Amazon it’s 1.85 years, Apple 1.84 years and at UBER it’s 1.23 years.
- 69% of jobseekers use the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to get insights into the culture of a company.
- Dennis The Menace is no longer a ‘Menace’ – he’s just ‘Dennis’ now! (On the upside, Wacky Races are back on our TVs).
- 92% of customers trust recommendations from people they know… and 70% trust consumer opinions posted online.
- 93% of people claim that ‘word of mouth’ is one of the most reliable sources of information (up from 50% in 1977), and texts, mobile phones, email, websites and social media are all making this easier.
- We’ve got a female Doctor Who!
And finally…
20. It’s not going to stop or slow down!
So, it’s a more transparent and connected world, customer and employee expectations are getting higher and they don’t believe the hype – it’s all about what you DO, not what you say.
The question I’d ask businesses in return is: Are you doing things ‘dramatically differently’? And do you ‘demonstrate’ that in everything you do?
