How to stay a step ahead
We asked the brightest minds in business how they do what they do – and how you can cash in on their advice in the coming year.
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Reed Hastings
Reed Hastings
Co-founder and CEO, Netflix
Turn Your Biggest Weakness Into Your Greatest Asset
Truly brilliant marketing happens when you take something most people think of as a weakness and reposition it so people think of it as a strength. In the 1990s, Apple Computer was selling an Intel board that ran in a Mac to make it PC-compatible. It didn't work. Steve Jobs took that weakness - incompatibility - and with the "Think Different" campaign turned it into a statement of style. And under the covers, Apple kept improving it. With Netflix, the big weakness is that it takes a day to get your movie. If we talked about that, that would be ineffective. So what we talk about is no late fees, no due dates, and being aggressive on price. You focus their attention on features that are compelling, like allowing people to keep movies as long as they want. Most people always try to fix the product, which is a good thing. But brilliant marketing is taking the product you have and figuring out the right positioning.
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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.