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1997年股东大会 · 喜诗糖果:巴菲特投资理念“从猿到人”的标志性案例

118 段 · 3 位说话人 · 原片 12:33
M1
M10:00

来自 New York City 的 Mike Assael。

Mike Assael from New York City.

你能不能再多讲一点,你所说的消费者心智和产品属性到底是什么?另外,也请你解释一下,你们在实际当中是怎么运用这些概念,去找到那些需求不断增长、而且最有投资潜力的公司的?

Could you explain a little more about what you've called the mind of the consumer and the nature of the product and explain how you actually apply these concepts to find the companies with the growing demand and the best investment potential?

也谢谢你们二位,你们是我遇到过最伟大的两位教授。

And thank you for being two of the greatest professors I've ever had.
F1
F10:22

谢谢。

Thanks.
M2
M20:29

你知道,真正当你进入消费品这个领域的时候,你真正感兴趣的是,要弄清楚,或者说去思考,现在全世界有多少人心里对某个产品有怎样的认知,以及五年、十年、二十年之后,这个产品在他们心里很可能会是什么样子。

You know what you really— when you get into consumer products, you're really interested in finding out or thinking about what is in the mind of how many people throughout the world about a product now and what it's likely to be in their mind 5 or 10 or 20 years from now.

现在,地球上几乎每一个人——也许,嗯,我们保守点说,全球百分之七十五的人——心里对 Coca-Cola 都有某种认知。

Now, virtually every person on the globe, maybe— well, let's get it down to 75% of the people on the globe, have some notion in their mind about Coca-Cola.

他们心里——Coca-Cola 这个词对他们来说是有含义的。

They have— the word Coca-Cola means something to them.

你知道,RC Cola 对世界上几乎任何人来说都没什么意义,不过,你知道,对拥有 RC 的那个人,还有装瓶商来说,它当然有意义,但是——但是每个人心里对 Coca-Cola 都有点什么,而且压倒性地是正面的。

You know, RC Cola doesn't mean anything to virtually anyone in the world, but, you know, it does to the guy who owns RC, you know, and the bottler, but— but everybody has something in their mind about Coca-Cola, and overwhelmingly it's favorable.

它是和愉快的体验联系在一起的。

It's associated with pleasant experiences.

当然,这里面有一部分是刻意设计出来的。

Now, part of that is by design.

我的意思是,它总是出现在你开心的时候。

I mean, it is where you are happy.

它会出现在 Disneyland、Disney World,也会出现在棒球场,还会出现在所有那些你脸上很可能挂着笑容的地方,顺便说一句,也包括 Berkshire Hathaway 的股东大会。

It is at Disneyland, at Disney World, and it's at ballparks, and it's every place that you're likely to have a smile on your face, including the Berkshire Hathaway meeting, I might add.

而且,它在人们心中的这个位置已经建立得相当牢固了,并且在全球接近两百个国家都是这样。

And that position in the mind is pretty firmly established, and it's established in close to 200 countries around the world with people.

一年之后,它会在更多人的心里建立起来,而且它整体上的心智位置会有一点点、一点点、一点点的变化。

A year from now, it will be established in more minds, and it will have a slightly, slightly, slightly different overall position.

十年以后,这个位置还可以再往前挪一点点。

And 10 years from now, the position can move just a little bit more.

这叫心智份额。

It's share of mind.

不是市场份额。

It's not share of market.

真正重要的是心智份额。

It's share of mind that counts.

Disney 也是一样。

Disney, same way.

Disney 对几十亿人来说都是有意义的。

Disney means something to billions of people.

如果你是个家长,家里有两个年幼的孩子,眼前摆着五十盘你可以买的录像带,你不会在决定给孩子看哪一盘之前,先坐下来把每一盘都预看一个半小时。

And if you're a parent with a couple young children and you've got 50 videos in front of you that you can buy, you're not going to sit down and preview an hour and a half of each video before deciding which one to stick in front of your kids.

你知道,你心里对 Disney 是有某种印象的,但对 ABC Video Company 你没有;甚至对别的公司——对 20th Century,你知道,你也没有;或者对 Paramount,你也没有。

You know, you have got something in your mind about Disney, and you don't have it about the ABC Video Company, or you don't even have it about other— you don't have it about 20th Century, you know, or you don't have it about Paramount.

所以,这个名字对几十亿人来说——其中还包括很多美国以外的人——它是有含义的。

So that name, to billions of people, including lots of people outside this country, it has a meaning.

而且这种含义压倒性地是正面的。

And that meaning overwhelmingly is favorable.

它还会被公司其他业务活动不断强化。

It's reinforced by the other activities of the company.

你就想想看,如果真有人能买下全世界几十亿人心里的那份心智份额,他愿意付出多大的代价。

And just think of what somebody would pay if they could actually buy that share of mind, you know, of billions of people around the world.

你做不到。

You can't do it.

你做不到,你不可能靠十亿美元的广告预算,或者三十亿美元的广告预算,或者雇两万个超级销售员,就把这件事做成。

You can't, you can't do it by a billion-dollar advertising budget or a $3 billion advertising budget or hiring 20,000 super salesmen.

所以,你现在已经拥有这个东西了。

So you've got that now.

问题在于,五年、十年、二十年之后,它到底代表什么?

The question is, what does that stand for 5 or 10 or 20 years from now?

你知道,以后人会越来越多。

You know there'll be more people.

你知道,听说过 Disney 的人会越来越多;你也知道,永远都会有父母想给孩子找点事情做;你也知道,孩子喜欢的东西大体上就还是那些;你也知道——那个——

You know there'll be more people that have heard of Disney, and you know that there will always be parents that are interested in having something for their kids to do, and you know that kids will love the same sort of things, and you know that— that—.
M1
M13:22

那个——

That—.
M2
M23:23

哎呀。

Whoops.

等我们讲到那些的时候,他会把关键点特别强调出来。

He emphasizes the key points when we get to those.

但这就是你在看消费品时要去思考的东西。

But that is what you're trying to think about with the consumer product.

Charlie 和我当年买 See's Candies 的时候,想的就是这个。

That's what Charlie and I were thinking about when we bought See's Candies.

我是说,那是在一九七二年。

I mean, here we were in 1972.

你知道,我们觉得自己对糖果还是懂不少的。

You know, we think we know a fair amount about candy.

我懂得都比我今天早上刚坐下来的时候更多了。

I know more than when I sat down this morning.

我是说,我已经吃了差不多二十块了。

I mean, I had about 20 pieces already.

但是,你知道,那个——谁会——你知道,在情人节那天,你递给别人一盒糖果的时候,如果你说,这就是个没什么特色的东西,然后说,来,亲爱的,我挑了个最便宜的,你觉得她脸上会发光吗?或者类似这种情况。

But, you know, what— who's— you know, does their face light up on Valentine's Day, you know, when you hand them a box of candy and say, you know, it's some nondescript thing, and say, here, honey, I took the low bid, you know, or something of the sort?
F1
F13:58

不会。

No.
M2
M24:00

你想要的是那种东西——你知道,有几千万的人,至少也是很多很多万人,都会记得,他们第一次送出那盒糖的时候,没过多久,他们就得到了人生中的第一个吻,或者类似这样的事。

You want something, you know, you've got, you've got tens of millions of people, or at least many millions of people, that remember that the first time they, they handed that box of candy, it wasn't that much thereafter that they got kissed for the first time or something.

所以这——这——这——回忆是美好的,联想也是美好的。

So it's, it's, it's— the memories are good, the association is good.

整个、整个过程不只是糖果本身,还包括那个在圣诞节照顾你的人——她已经站了八个小时了,前面排了五十个人,大家还冲她嚷嚷,可她还是会对顾客微笑。

Total, total process isn't just the candy, it's the person who, who takes care of you at Christmas time when they've been on their feet for 8 hours and people have been yelling at them because they've been in line with 50 people in line, and that person still smiles at them.

还有配送的过程,还有那家店——顾客在里面能得到各种各样的东西,还有我们给他们的小招待,这些全都是营销个性的一部分。

The delivery process, it's the shop in which they get all kinds of things, the treat we give them, it's all part of the marketing personality.

但对消费品来说,真正重要的是它在消费者脑子里占据的位置。

But that position in the mind is what counts with a consumer product.

这意味着你得有一个好产品,非常好的产品。

And that means you have a good product, very good product.

这也意味着你可能需要大量的基础设施,因为这些你都得具备。

It means you may need tons of infrastructure because you've got to have that.

我到中国爬上 Great Wall 顶上的时候,那里已经给我备好了一箱 Cherry Coke。

I had a case of Cherry Coke awaiting me at the top of the Great Wall when I got there in China.

你知道,那个——你必须得把东西铺到位,这样人们想要这个产品的时候,它就在那儿。

You know, that— you've got to have something there so that the product is there when people want it.

这种事在 World War II 的时候就发生过。

And that happened in World War II.

General Eisenhower 当时跟 Mr. Woodruff 说,他希望全世界每一位美国军人伸手就够得到一瓶 Coca-Cola,于是他们建了很多装瓶厂来满足这个需求。

General Eisenhower, you know, said to Mr. Woodruff that he wanted a Coca-Cola within arm's length of every American serviceman in the world, and they built a lot of bottling plants to take care of that.

这种定位方式可能强大得惊人。

That sort of positioning can be incredible.

它看起来对 American products 尤其有效。

It seems to work especially well for American products.

我是说,全世界的人都想要某些特定类型的 American products。

I mean, people want certain types of American products worldwide.

比如我们的音乐、我们的电影、我们的 soft drinks、我们的 fast food。

You know, our music, our movies, our soft drinks, our fast food.

至少我很难想象,一家 French firm、German firm,或者 Japanese firm,能做到那样——卖掉全球百分之四十七到四十八的 soft drinks。

You can't imagine, at least I can't, a French firm or a German firm or a Japanese firm having that— selling 47 or 48% of the world's soft drinks.

我是说,这种事——事情不是这么发生的。

I mean, it just doesn't— it doesn't happen that way.

这属于——你可以广义上把它叫作 American culture 的一部分,而全世界都很渴望这个东西。

It's part of— something you could broadly call an American culture, and the world hungers for it.

比如说 Kodak,可能就没有那种—— George Fisher 把公司经营得非常好,这说的是在那之前的情况——但 Kodak 在全世界人们心里的位置,大概已经不像二十年前那么强了。

And Kodak, for example, probably does not have quite the same— George Fisher is doing a great job with the company, this goes back before that— but Kodak probably does not have the same place in people's minds worldwide quite as it had 20 years ago.

我是说,那些年里,人们不会觉得 Fuji 也处在差不多同样的位置。

I mean, people didn't think of Fuji in those days, we'll say, as being in quite the same place.

后来我记得,Fuji 拿下了 Los Angeles 的 Olympics,然后他们就——他们就这样一路往前挤,慢慢做到跟 Kodak 更接近平起平坐了。

And then Fuji took the Olympics, as I remember, in Los Angeles, and they just— they put them— they pushed their way to more of a parity with Kodak.

而你是绝对不想让他们做到这一点的。

And you don't want to ever let them do that.

所以你就会看到,像 Coca-Cola 或者 Disney 这样的公司,会去做一些你觉得,嗯,这看起来好像也没那么特别合理的事。

And that's why you can see a Coca-Cola or a Disney or companies like that doing things that you think, well, this doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.

你会想说,他们要是不花这一千万美元,难道 Coca-Cola 的销量还会少吗?

You know, if they didn't spend this $10 million, wouldn't they still sell as much Coca-Cola?

不过你也知道,我引用过 Coca-Cola 一八九六年那份报告,里面讲到他们当时为了把消息传播出去所做的推广。

But you know, I quoted from that 1896 report of Coca-Cola and the promotion they were doing back then to spread the word.

你永远不知道具体是哪一块钱起了作用,但你知道的是,世界上几乎所有听说过你产品的人,压倒性地都会对它有好感,而且下一代也会接收到这种印象。

You never know which dollar is doing it, but you do know that everybody in the world that virtually has heard of your product, overwhelmingly they've got a favorable impression of it, and the next generation is going to get it.

所以,这就是你在做 consumer products 生意时要做的事。

So that's, that's what you're doing with consumer products.

拿 See's Candy 来说,你知道,我们也并不更高明。

With See's Candy, you know, we are no better.

我们想做到——不比那个刚刚被服务到、刚刚拿到最后一份糖果产品的顾客所感受到的体验更差。

We want to— no better than the last person who's been served their candy with the last product they've been served.

但只要我们把这件事做好,别人就追不上我们。

But as long as we do the job on that, people can't catch us.

你知道,我们就可以——可以——可以卖得稍微贵一点,因为人们并不想一味选最低价,他们也不会为了 cola 每瓶便宜一分钱就改买别的。

You know, we can, we can, we can charge a little more for it because people are not interested in taking the low bid, and they're not interested in saving a penny a bottle on, on colas.

你们记得,我们以前在这些会议上谈过 private labels,而 private label 在 soft drink 这个行业里已经卡住了,做不上去了。

They remember we've talked about in these meetings private labels in the past, and private label has stalled out in the soft drink business.

他们想要的是真货。

They want the real thing.

还有,今天在全世界,Coca-Cola 的产品会卖出大概九亿多份、每份八盎司的饮用量。

And, uh, 900-some-odd million 8-ounce servings will be served today of Coca-Cola products around the world.

九亿份,你知道,而且明年还会增长,后年也会增长。

900 million, you know, and it'll go up next year, the year after.

我真不知道你要怎么撼动这样的公司。

And I don't know how you displace companies like that.

我的意思是,就算你给我一千亿美元——我也鼓励在座任何有这个想法的人站出来——但如果你给我这笔钱,然后要我把 Coca-Cola Company 从全球 soft drinks 领导者的位置上拉下来,你知道,我一点头绪都没有,不知道该怎么做。

I mean, if you gave me $100 billion, and I encourage any of you who are thinking about that to step forward, but if you, if you gave— and you told me to displace the Coca-Cola Company as the leader in the world in soft drinks, you know, I, I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to do it.

而这就是我们喜欢的那种生意。

And those are the kind of businesses we like.

Charlie?

Charlie?
F1
F18:13

对,我觉得 See's Candy 这个例子,对我们所有人来说都有一个很有意思的教学意义。

Yeah, I think the See's Candy example has an interesting teaching lesson for all of us.

Warren 说过,那是我们第一次真正为品牌和品质迈出一大步,而对我们这种一直习惯于用五十美分买一美元东西的人来说,这是一次非常艰难的跨越。

Warren said we were— it's the first time we really stepped up for brand quality, and it was a very hard jump for us who had been used to buying dollar bills for 50 cents.

而且,有意思的是,如果当时他们对 See's Candy Company 再多要十万美元,我们就不会买了。

And, uh, the interesting thing was that if they had demanded an extra $100,000 for the See's Candy Company, we wouldn't have bought it.

那还是在 Warren 已经跟着他那个时代最伟大的教授受过训练、而且每周工作九十个小时之后。

And that was after Warren had been trained under the greatest professor of his era and had worked 90 hours a week.
M2
M28:54

还吃了不少巧克力呢。

And eaten a lot of chocolates too.
F1
F18:55

吸收着这个世界上的一切知识。

Absorbing everything in the world.

我的意思是,我们当时的思维训练还没有好到能够轻轻松松就把正确决定做出来。

I mean, we just didn't have minds well enough trained to make an easy decision right.

结果阴差阳错,他们没有再多要那十万美元,所以我们——我们还是把它买下来了。

And by accident, they didn't ask the extra $100,000 for it, and we, and we did buy it.

而且随着它做成了,我们也一直在不断学习。

And as it succeeded, we, we kept learning.

我觉得这说明,关键中的关键,就是要持续学习。

I think that shows that the name of the game is, is continuing to learn.

就算你受过很好的训练,也有一些天赋,你还是得不断学习。

And even if you're very well trained and have some natural aptitude, you still need to keep learning.

这就带来了一个有点微妙的问题,有时候人们会说——两位年纪渐长的高管。

And that brings along the delicate problem people sometimes talk about— two aging executives.

我真不知道这个形容词到底他妈是什么意思,因为我不认识任何一个——是朝着相反方向发展的。

I don't know what the hell that means as an adjective, because I don't know anybody that — is going in the other direction.

不过你们这些持有股票的人,至少在一段时间里,在更年轻的接班人出现之前,你们某种程度上押注的,还是我们这两位现在只能委婉地继续称作年纪渐长的高管。

But you people who hold shares are betting, for a while at least, until younger successors come along, you're betting to some extent on what we'll now tactfully continue to call aging executives.

继续学习。

Continuing to learn.
M2
M210:12

你知道,如果我们当时没买 See's,再加上后来发生的一些事——因为那让我们注意到了别的东西——那我们一九八八年就不会买 Coca-Cola。

You know, when we— if we hadn't have bought See's, with some subsequent developments after that, because that made us aware of other things, we wouldn't have bought Coca-Cola in 1988.

我是说,你完全可以把我们目前在 Coca-Cola 上赚到的一百一十多亿美元利润里,相当一部分功劳,记在 See's 头上。

I mean, you can, you can give See's a significant part of the credit, uh, for the, I guess, $11 billion-plus profit we've got in Coca-Cola at the present time.

那你会说,好吧,你们怎么会那么迟钝,连 Coca-Cola 这样的公司都认不出来?

Now you say, well, how could you be so dumb as not to be able to recognize a Coca-Cola?

这个嘛,我也不知道,不过我——

Well, I don't know, but I—.
F1
F110:43

你那时候一天也就喝二十罐左右。

You were only drinking about 20 cans a day.
M2
M210:45

对,对。

Yeah, right.

倒不是说我之前没接触过它,或者——这真的很神奇,但它确实让我们开始想得更多了。

It wasn't that I hadn't been exposed to it, or— and it's amazing, but it just made us start thinking more.

我们——我是说,我们看到自己围绕 See's 所做的那些决策,在市场上是怎么展开的,诸如此类,我们也看到了什么有效,什么没效。

We— I mean, we saw how decisions we made in relation to See's played out in a marketplace and that sort of thing, and we saw what worked and didn't work.

这让我们更加看重那些确实有效的东西,也让我们对那些没用的东西敬而远之。

And it made us appreciate a lot what did work and, and, and shy away from things that didn't work.

不过它——它确实把我们引向了 Coca-Cola。

But it, it led— it definitely led to a, to a Coca-Cola.

还有,呃,我们也很幸运,买过一些完整的企业本身,而这些企业教会了我们很多东西。

And, uh, we've had that— we've had the good luck to be— to buy some businesses themselves in their entirety that taught us a lot.

你知道,我们,我们买过——而这一次是从反方向起作用的。

You know, we, we bought— and this worked in the other direction.

我是说,我们有一阵子做过 windmill 生意。

I mean, we were in the windmill business one time.

我当时——Charlie 没碰 windmill 生意,但我做过 windmill、生意,做过 pumps,还做过三级百货店,或者二级百货店。

I was— Charlie stayed out of the windmill business, but I was in the windmill business and pumps and third-level department or second-level department stores.

然后我就发现这有多难,而且根本不奏效——你往里面投入再多精力也没用。

And I just found out how tough it was and how it didn't— you could apply all kinds of energy to them and it didn't do any good.

所以,弄清楚该跳进哪个池塘特别有意义,而且你跳进哪个池塘,很可能比你游得有多好更重要。

It made a great deal of sense to figure out what pond to jump in, and what pond you jumped in was, was probably more important than how well you could swim.

Charlie?

Charlie?
F1
F112:07

我不觉得人们有必要像我们当年那样,无知那么久。

I don't think it's necessary that people be as ignorant as we were as long as we were.

我觉得 American education 本来可以做得更好,不过不是交到现在很多这些教书的人手里。

I think American education could be, could be better, but not, not in the hands of many of the people who are now teaching.
M2
M212:25

还有哪个群体是我们忘了得罪的吗?

Is there any group we've forgotten to offend?

我是说——好,二区。

I mean— Okay, zone 2.