Jan 13, 2014 | Uncategorized
Hugh Mackay once told me as a young marketer something I have never forgotten:
“Allen, attitudes follow behavior, so work to change behavior, and attitudes will follow” .
He went on to give several examples to convince me that the advertising I was planning at the time was a waste of money, despite the promises of the ad agency, the determination of the MD of the business I was working for at the time, and my own naïve assessment of what was the right approach.
This pattern has proved true time and time again, and has a brother.
Expectation.
When we expect something, we are very likely to see it, much more likely that we are to see the alternative.
A bottle of Grange, all $600 bucks worth will always taste better than a bottle of its poorer half-sibling, Bin 389, at about $80, (Grange is Shiraz, 389 is Shiraz with a splash of Cabernet) except when you swap the wine in the bottles around. Do that, and by most people, the 389 will be assessed as better than the Grange.
The power of the expectation built by the brand.
So, ask yourself again if the investment you are making in marketing is properly directed? Should you take the easy road, and just discount the price to get the sale today, or the harder, long term road to build a brand that creates expectations that delight customers.
Jan 8, 2014 | Change, Management, Marketing
It may be a bit later in January than most blog posts prognosticating about the coming year, but at least they are different from the pack, so here goes..
- Simple is the new complicated. All the conversations about social media, analytics, fragmentation of just about everything, we are bombarded with messages, options, and imperatives. Amid all this, marketing is at work, and the stuff that works is simple, cut through ideas. David Ogilvy had a bunch of “Olgivyisms”, one of which was , “big ideas are usually simple ideas”. This still holds true, it is just the big ideas have to cut through more fluff and interference than in Ogilvy’s day, and there is more confusing analytics and alternatives to be considered.
- Simplicity facilitated by new tools. Tools to leverage the capabilities of the web have been getting simpler by the month. It will reach the point where those with absolutely no computer kills at all can participate. WordPress has made building a web presence pretty easy, but now the new generation of similar tools like Weebly, take that a further step. The 40% of SME’s who have no web presence beyond a facebook page set up by their children, has passed, they no longer have an excuse.
- Reach and frequency is dead. This was the mantra of paid advertising for most of my long career, you paid for both in a matrix that focused on a demographic, “women 25-40 with children” or “working women earning over 50k” and so on. Before behavior based analytics with any more accuracy than a big U&A study, it was the best we could do, but it was pretty crap. Now with every man, his friends, and parents on facebook LinkedIn, Pinterest, et al, reach and frequency have a different sound. The enormous penetration of social media and the opportunity for behavioral analytics have changed the dynamics of advertising, and advertisers have raced to the new platforms, without recognising that the existence of the platform, free, and ubiquitous, has changed the rules entirely.
- Banner advertising on the web is also dead. Web banners simply do not work in the way a banner on the corner of your street did. They do not grab attention, and convey a message, they are simply in the way. Look no further than the huge drop in rates from a decade ago when they were touted to be the next advertising El Dorado. I am not surprised, simple supply and demand economics would indicate that when supply is infinite, the price at which demand can be met is close to zero. However, there is a caveat. The IPO of facebook in 2012, and Twitter in November 13, based on revenue projections that demand banner ads remain revenue generators is forcing some pretty smart people to consider how to make them sufficiently relevant to continue to attract revenue, and they may just crack the code.
- Values matter, more than ever. The temptation is to “pimp” your products and services at every opportunity. LinkedIn forums are full of new “discussions”, which are just pimping a product, very few get opened, they certainly rarely create an discussion, and are one step away from Spam. If you are gong to spend your resources, money, time, talent, on marketing, make it count, tell people “why”. Steve Jobs articulated this very well when launching the now famous “Think Different” ad to Apple employees.
- Content is serious business. Content is not just a word, it is a consumer of considerable marketing resources, and the capability of creative content creation to build a brand is evolving at a rapid rate. In the past, I have wondered at the capacity of the web as a brand building device, giving it top marks as a medium of delivery, but I could not think of a brand that had been built by the net. Now it seems, that Red Bull will get a guernsey. Their web presence is exceptional, huge resources are put into creating the positioning as extreme sports in all sorts of amazing ways. This best of 2013 post on Digiday has some great marketing, including Red Bull, and this terrific story of an old Nissan Maxima . The new year will see great strides in video brand building, the pace of creative change, and the socialization of the change, as demonstrated by the Maxima example, will continue to accelerate. In 2014, the “Social” component, promising businesses interacting with their markets for free, will be overtaken by the “media” part of the social media equations, as to be noticed bucks will have to be spent. There will be the off the wall hits, but the average cost of being seen will go up substantially. Content creation without any content marketing and compelling reason why a consumer should even look at it let alone give it any consideration will rapidly become almost useless. Your content is competing in a highly competitive and fragmented market for a share of consumers limited attention, and the old rules of marketing apply.
- “Environmental” research. This is not tree-hugging, it is my term for standing back and forming a view of the context in which your customers and markets live, what is changing that will alter their lives, and how can you leverage those changes by innovating in the manner in which you serve them. Now more than ever, this is a skill required, as there is simply so much data and information around, it is easier than ever to drown in the detail without understanding the context. For example, in my view, 3-D printing is an emerging disruption, not just to manufacturing but across industries that are in any way engaged with selling “things” rather than services. Forming some views on how this may impact on you, and your value chains, and taking steps to build the capabilities that will become necessary to survive and prosper is as important as breathing.
- Data accumulation and “personal leveraging” Word of mouth has always been the best marketing tool available, now the continuing development of social media platforms and marketing automation, the opportunity to be “personal” is increasing with every day that passes. In conjunction with this is the building of lists, contacts with whom you have the opportunity to build a relationship.
- Every person is a potential media channel. Just consider the capability to connect to facebook, LinkedIn, and the rest, and send information, ideas, links, referrals, to everyone in their networks. Media channels used to be a few radio, TV, newspaper and magazine channels, they were all one way, the “stuff” got pushed out and the opportunity to respond was limited to letters to the editor. No longer!
- Personal Kaizen. Kaizen is Japanese word for “continuous improvement” extensively used in lean literature. Lean is more than just an operational strategy, it is one for every facet of your life and business. Every time you do something, strive to do it better, by being smarter, than the time before. Being serious about personal kaizen makes you curious, interested, and interesting, qualities that attract opportunity.
- Craftsmanship. In a world of increasing homogeneity delivered by specification driven design and manufacturing, where differences are often just cosmetic and qualitative, genuine craftsmanship, bespoke design, and catering to the individuality of people is increasingly important. The extent to which craftsmanship and “manufacturing” beyond the C20 concepts of mass manufacturing for operational efficiency can become integrated is just starting to evolve. There are many examples, one I am personally familiar with is Ian berry who is Ironsides leather. Ian crafts leather, belts, harness, bags, using just the old tools of the trade, experience, true skill, and passion. It is true craftsmanship, and buying a belt from him is receiving a gift of that experience and craftsmanship. Ian is also a great advertisement for the point above about simplicity. He produced his website using a Weebly template, a few photos, and a bit of time, no cost. No HTML, no complex menus, no computer skills beyond a one finger familiarity with a keyboard.
- Marketing and technology will continue to collide. The days of marketing being unaccountable are over, there is no excuse for not calculating the ROI of your marketing investments these days.Scott Brinkers blog on the intersection of technology and marketing is a terrific resource, his thinking on this is in front of the pack, and allied with Avinash Kaushik’s wonderful Occam’s Razor blog, there is enough brain food to keep most of us fed on the topic.
- Collaborative marketplaces will continue to rise and rise. The web 2.0 enabled one way markets to thrive, Amazon, Ebay, electronic banking, and many others. More recently, collaborative marketplaces have emerged, where both sides of the transaction put something in, rather than just buying a product. Airbnb, Uber, and many others, will continue to explode, mainstream companies in areas threatened will need to consider how they respond. Car hire companies need to have a service, to disrupt themselves, hotel chains need an equivalent to Airbnb, and so on, the disruption is profound, and just beginning. The best thinking around in this is being done by Jeremiah Owyang, whose body of work on the topic is extraordinary
- Mobile first. Use of mobile devices to access websites and social media platforms continues to increase, reaching numbers in late 2013 upward of 65%, and reaching the eighties for some specific sites, numbers that astonish even the bullish predictions of a year ago. In developing countries, where the economies are booming, and fixed line infrastructure is limited, mobile and wireless have simply jumped ahead, and the infrastructure of the developed world will simply not be installed. It is these ocuntries that are driving mobile innovation.
Tell me what you think, please, and have a great 2014.
Jan 7, 2014 | Change, Governance, Personal Rant, Strategy
courtesy Owen Wilson
I am up around Armidale in the North of the state, yakking to a few contacts, a few people I have worked with over the years, and some potential clients.
Nice area, good, although demanding agricultural land, long history of agricultural productivity and initiative, great potential as a tourist destination with the variety of environments, products and enterprises, and with the advantage of the university, which always adds diversity and intellectual depth to the life of a town.
Problem is, the place seems to be dying.
Perhaps it is just the superficial view of an occasional visitor, informed only by his eyes, and the anecdotes and woes of the small group of people he interacts with, but nevertheless, a compelling picture.
The summer has been unusually hot, records have been set and broken, there was little winter rain last year, a short dump in early spring that moved things along, but nothing since. Stock is now being moved out or dumped onto the market because there is no feed on the ground, harvests have been marginal, and the farmers are not looking forward to the next conversation with their banks.
Meanwhile, the public sector fiddling goes on, clogging the arteries of enterprise in the pursuit of saving us from ourselves. One semi retired farmer up here wanted to put a BnB and farm stay facilities on his property, a lovely spot 30k’s out of town. It took 6 months to get a DA from the council, which was meanwhile commissioning reports on what was needed to develop tourism.
Duh!
This is just a microcosm of what is happening all around us.
Unless we start actually doing something about the causes of the problems facing us, instead of always focussing on mitigating and treating the symptoms, we will be truly stuffed, perhaps not in my lifetime, but certainly in that of my children.
We need to stop talking, blaming ,deferring and avoiding, and start doing useful, productive stuff.
Jan 6, 2014 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Small business
Its the new year, 2014, January 6 to be exact, and I have been ruminating on the “List” every blogger accumulates and publishes early in January in the hope that they get noticed, and build some momentum for the year.
All the research tells us that headlines that include a list, like “top 10” and “5 things to…” get opened more than their non-list competitors, so that is what most seem to use, understandably. Being opened is the first hurdle, and a list helps with that, but the following wished for outcomes, being relevant, shared, and useful are just as challenging, and lists do not necessarily help.
Contemplating my list, trying to articulate the things I see happening that may influence our commercial choices in 2014, I saw a common thread. Everything I was contemplating sprang from the opportunities opening by being different, new, or looking at a common challenge from a new perspective. This seemed to hold equally when contemplating new products and technologies, emerging services, and new business models.
It seemed to me that the thread was that the real advantages and advances in 2014 will not come from doing the same things better, but by doing different things.
How different are you planning to be? what is on your agenda that is genuinely new, rather than just a rehash of something old but perhaps proven? how are you going to stand out in an increasingly homogeneous world?
Jan 3, 2014 | Change, Management, Strategy
In a post in January last year, I made 10 predictions for 2013. In the interests of accountability, it is reasonable to see how I went.
So, here goes:
- Marketing is digital and personal, mass marketing is dead! As with Mark Twain’s quip that reports of his death appear to be premature, so to are the reports of the death of mass marketing. However, the trend is clear, and the grim reaper is ‘a comin’. 3/5.
- Social media will overtake traditional news dissemination channels. Few of us wait these days for the evening news to hear about the events of the day. Even if we have not seen it in out twitter feeds, somebody we know has, and has told us. The role of traditional media as a disseminator of news, rather than a source of analysis of the, is clearly over. Arguably the analysis role is also kaput, as traditional media appears to have been highly politicised to reflect the views of the owners, that real analysis hardly occurs. Anyway, who goes to the 7.30 “analysis” shows on TV for anything beyond the foot in the door, inane, and emotive “journalism”. 4/5.
- A few smart SME’s will do very well, but the rest will at best struggle, and many will fail. Still true. 5/5.
- The new “cool” for our kids is to train as a “tradie” as there are insufficient fulfilling jobs left for those with modest, non vocational degrees, to fill demand from the aforementioned graduates. Still true, and getting truer. 4/5
- The shortage of willing and able workers will continue, as we no longer train people to work, we train them to “expect”. As above. A client of mine has a number of farm worker under 457 visas, several of them very qualified (pharmacy, teacher) working happily for wages unemployed Australians turn their noses up at. 5/5
- The 40% of SME’s who do not have web sites, or have sites that act only as an electronic brochure rather than as a magnet to their target customers need to realise they are missing the opportunity to grab the lifeline. Still true. Several services have evolved in the last 12 months that make it even easier. WordPress still rules the roost, but services like Weebly make it even easier again, there is no longer any excuse. This site, Yarralong.com run by a friend of my sisters was done in a few hours on Weebly by someone with few computer skills at all, just a bit of common sense and patience. 3/5
- “Big Data” the combination of traditional data bases and the behavioural and attitudinal data scavenged from social media will become the next big thing during 2013. I still believe this, but the change is slower than I expected. 2/5
- Mobile will take over from fixed line, comprehensively, and across all communication channels. Almost done. 4/5
- The economy will continue to slow, consumers are cautious and risk averse. No change there, the economy is slowing rapidly, in my anecdotal view, slower than the public figures would lead commentators relying on the numbers to see. 2014 will be a crappy year, notwithstanding the drop in the $A. Manufacturing is down the toilet, investment is slowing rapidly, retailers are struggling, large areas of rural Australia are again in the grip of drought, and more will tip into drought as winter approaches. The long paddock will be well used. 4/5
- Around July/August, the economy will stumble into a really nasty hole as we approach a Federal election. The hole was not as deep as I anticipated, but the numbers emerging in the post election period are pretty grim, and we wait to see if the new government has any real strategy, or if they will continue just to dump on the previous government, and focus on getting elected again by spending our children’s legacy. 4/5
Marking yourself can be self serving, so let me know what you think.
