How Sara Lee Can Focus

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Sara Lee needs to create focus messages around strategic groups of like-businesses based on a number of different factors.  It can be for same main ingredient commodity items, similar types of products or services, or geographical focus.  Then, a group of like businesses or individual businesses can “camp out” a position based on high quality/premium, low cost, or differentiated niche.  The focus messages in turn will then cultivate and strengthen the relationships between the brands, items, and targeted groups.

As for the “bonus round” after or during this refocusing for Sara Lee, they can look to rev-up growth and profits even more by acquiring synergic businesses for strategically important businesses that are currently lagging.  Any company, and especially Sara Lee, can look first look to identify candidates that blend well with its identity or brand’s position, as well as offer a value proposition for its customers.  Sara Lee should look for businesses that offer wide margins well over their 12% desired target, in addition to businesses in growth niches. Any company they acquire should provide the 2 + 2 = 5 effect: the acquired company’s business lines must complement the products and services of a Sara Lee business and should positively synergize sales such that “the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” 

So, again, I ask you Sara Lee, “Where is your intensity?”

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Mike Bolden marketing expert and blue ocean strategist – writing to inform, enlighten, and inspire.  Author of forth coming book, “Owning Marketspace”.  Available for consulting and speaking engagements.

Would You Like Some Cheesecake with that Shoe Polish? – Sara Lee’s Dilemma

Of course you wouldn’t. But Sara Lee has a dueling dilemma of high commodity costs and a lack of focus among its portfolio of businesses as outlined in the July 23rd edition of The Wall Street Journal’s Marketplace Section.  Sara Lee’s CEO Brenda Barnes is facing significant cost inflation for commodities in categories that don’t respond well to price increases.  If this problem wasn’t enough, Ms. Barnes has inherited a conglomerate of a variety of businesses that lack focus, as Sara Lee’s product portfolio ranges from cheesecake to underwear to shoe polish. Sara Lee’s margins for its food products are among the lowest at 7.7%, compared to 17.5% for General Mills and 15.5% for Heinz.  Although sales grew by 10% in its fiscal 3rd quarter, Brenda Barnes is still concerned about its sagging stock price, which is down 35% since she became the CEO.

Remember Cameron Diaz in Any Given Sunday? As the owner of a professional football team in Miami, she barks at Al Pacino, the team’s long time coach, “Where’s your intensity?!”  I ask Sara Lee, “Where’s your intensity? Where’s your focus? Where are you going?”  Because General Mills and Kellogg have strong brands, they “have been able to weather high commodity costs without hurting volume and margins as much.”  Both these brands have a high quality/good value focus, and they communicate this proposition to their targeted consumer groups effectively.  Sara Lee is just as capable of creating focus and value around their brands, but how?

Sara Lee
Brenda Barnes
Any Given Sunday
Advanced Market Strategies
High Commodity Costs
Target Consumer Groups
Turbo Tagger