Jun 2, 2014 | Branding, Marketing
brand destruction centre
On Friday I got another of those calls from an offshore call centre flogging a product I did not need or want. Some poor person obligingly named “Kevin” whose first language was not English, scrolling through a prepared screed that bore no relationship to the situation he found himself in talking to me.
What a waste of everyone’s time, and money.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of blogs, learned papers, and stories demonstrating clearly the power of social media, all being ignored by the enterprise stumping up the cash to make the useless, brand destroying phone call.
Why is it that the outsourced marketing unit called a “call centre” still uses C20 technology to waste my time when there are plenty of opportunities to pick up information about me on the various social C21 platforms I inhabit?
Why is it unreasonable to expect that the investment made in these centres would be better spent on some activity that did not piss off 99% of those unfortunate enough to answer the phone?
The available technology easily supports the scraping of social media to build a profile of individuals that can then be targeted with a message that at least has a better chance of being welcome than an annoying phone call from a “Kevin from Mumbai” who is simply reading a script that bears no relation to the circumstances of the callee.
Turn your Call centre into a Social centre, and I bet the results will improve.
May 29, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
http://tomfishburne.com/?s=word+of+mouth&x=0&y=0
This morning a friend was telling me about a product he had used recently, and how it changed his life. Well, made a small piece of it better at least.
Next time I am looking for a product in that category, I will try it. Very little to lose even if I do not share the enthusiasm, and I value my friends opinion.
Word of mouth marketing.
Free marketing for the product supplier, right?
Consider how much effort went into making the product right, managing and optimising the value chain, in creating the programs that engaged and made an advocate of my friend, and gave him the stories to pass on to me.
Word of mouth is very effective, the most effective form of marketing we humans have ever seen, and on the surface it is free, but beneath the surface, there is frantic paddling going on.
Word of mouth marketing works but is not free, it is earned.
May 28, 2014 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Leadership, Small business
Mojowire.net.au
Tonight is the first Origin game of 2014, and so I expect to hear lots of people using sporting analogies over the next few weeks, particularly football.
Sporting analogies abound in business, “A team of champions does not make a champion team”
How many time have you heard that?
As management layers are removed, and the management culture evolves rapidly towards recognising the value of teams in a commercial context, we often use the sporting team as the foundation of the commercial team .
Familiarity, known skills, interpersonal relationships, all that stuff gets considered as a team is put together. Sometimes of course, in the real world teams are put together with whoever is to hand, has some spare time, is at the water cooler too often.
We confuse this simplified sporting stuff, useful in its own context, with the key components of a commercial team faced with commercial challenges.
In that case, you need a range of technical and domain skills, a questioning mentality, and a willingness to try things, and usually some diversity, some new or unusual blood being injected to create a sense of discomfort that always precedes game changing ideas and insights.
Unlike sporting events, which last for a hour, more or less, commercial challenges are way longer term, when the micro interaction is important more as a learning event than a game breaker.
May 27, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Strategy
‘Rich red Fountain Tomato sauce”
Fountain Tomato Sauce used to be the market leader in NSW, daylight was second and third. This was a long time ago, and responsibility for the Fountain brand was my first real job as a product manager who had real accountability, and the power to make lasting brand and resource allocation decisions.
I walked into the job just as Franklins (remember them) launched a “No Frills” tomato sauce, at 0.69c on shelf against the 0.73 for Fountain. Our volumes immediately took a huge hit.
I still remember the details, and the near panic that ensued.
“No Frills” was the first real housebrand of the type that 25 years later would play a role in the demise of the Australian food processing industry.
The immediate instinct was to drop the price of Fountain, and compete aggressively, certainly that is what the sales people insisted on, but we took a different tack.
We increased the price, to 0.81c, improved the product a fraction by adding a few percentage points more of tomato paste, and advertised, giving consumers a reason to pay the extra. When it was just 3 cents, chances were the products were pretty similar, but when the difference was 0.12 cents, consumers recognised they were not the same, both might be tomato sauce, but they were not the same, and they had to make a conscious choice.
We set about telling people why Fountain cost more, and why it was a great choice over the “cheapie” delivering real value to them and their families, and they paid the extra, willingly. Our sales went up, margins were up, the MD was very happy, and I was over the moon.
Point was, we gave consumers a reason to buy Fountain, we told a story, entertained, informed, it was a significant premium, but not one that would break any budget, and the product was better, much better, and consumers felt better buying it and having it on their table.
“Rich Red Fountain Tomato Sauce, Australia’s finest red”.
Wish Youtube was around then, and I had copies of the radio ads, they are still the ads I am most proud of over a long marketing career, with many successful ad campaigns.
May 25, 2014 | Governance, Leadership
SMH.com.au
The photo of Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann smoking a cigar just before the budget has raised temperatures in all sorts of places.
I wonder why? After all, it is just a cigar.
Some are annoyed that they seem to be promoting a nasty habit
Some say that it shows the inherent sense of elitist attitude in the government party
Some are just aghast at what seems to be a self satisfied indulgence.
Parts of all these reasons may be right, but I see it a bit differently.
To my mind we the led are pissed that our “leaders” appear to have forgotten why they are there. They volunteered to put us, the electorate before themselves, to do the right thing by us, to act in our interests, not their own.
That self sacrifice is the essence of leadership, and by this photo, a moment of time, two blokes who have worked hard together to deliver a project that has an impact on our lives, seem to be saying it was for them that they did the work, not us.
That is why we are pissed, or at least some of us, most are more realistic and recognise it is just a moment. Nevertheless, we rather it had not happened as it feeds our insecurity about the motives of those who volunteered to lead, and in whom we placed trust.
