Sep 15, 2011 | Branding, Marketing
Rubbish you say, marketing always matters.
Well, the next time you try and get some sense out of Optus or Telstra when you have anything that does not fit into an easily packaged Q&A form for someone in Bangalore who does not know Sydney from Senegal , try and tell yourself marketing does matter to them, and fall about laughing.
If it did, your issue would be treated as important to them, there would be someone who could fix the problem in easy reach, you would not have to wait hours being told your call was important to them, and then never get a return call.
Clearly in the current telco environment, demand is greater than supply, so marketing does not really matter, or so they think, customer churn is a part of the game, and annoying a few is a small price to pay in the chase for short term margin maximisation.
Marketing does not matter to them, at least for now!
However, the worm usually turns. Remember when you could not get a spot on prime time television without selling your grandmother, or a preferred position in the Herald Saturday classifieds, and had to wait weeks and sometimes months for the local bookstore to get in an obscure title you wanted?
Now, response can be virtually instantaneous, and we have become very used to instantaneous, and when we do not get it, we can pile buckets on the perpetrator via social media, just as we can promote their great service on the odd occasion it happens.
Marketing always matters, because without a customer, you have nothing.
Sep 2, 2011 | Branding, Communication, Marketing
The link here is to the Social Media Examiner site, probably the best commentator on things “social media” amongst the thousands out there, offering 9 reasons why content does not get shared, emerging from some useful research.
Thing is, as I read the list, it is not just about the leverage offered by social media, it is about marketing generally.
All the 9 reasons can also explain why your brand has little relevance to a consumer, refuses to “stick” despite the huge advertising budget, and just gets missed by busy consumers.
Make sure you have a look at the Volkswagen ad in the post, sure to bring a smile to the face of anyone with a heart, it also ranks in the top 10 viral ads, according to the number of on-line views.
Aug 22, 2011 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Social Media
Media is now “free”, you can make a commercial and put it up on youtube and work/hope to attract an audience, a significant difference to buying time on TV, where you are paying for the delivery of an audience to your advertisement, assuming not too many of them can time-shift to avoid it.
Most ads on youtube and other free media fail to generate viewers beyond the immediate family of those who made it. Some however, generate a significant audience, and a very few deliver a huge audience, one that chooses to watch, and have therefore the potential to delver a brand proposition with enormous authenticity.
This commercial for Dove achieves this rare double, powerful positioning, and a wide audience, almost 13.5 million views to date, although a few, like me, are hardly in the target market, but it is one of the very rare few where they got far more than they paid for.
Aug 5, 2011 | Branding, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Tesco is the leader in the field of retail social media marketing, as noted in the past, but have really outdone themselves with this experiment with a virtual store in railway stations in South Korea.
The speed at which innovations are being tested, and if implemented is increasing, but usually we would expect a smaller business to be sufficiently agile to try some of this stuff, but Tesco is building a really impressive track record.
Australian supermarket retailers are in the dark ages by comparison, although some of the smaller food service retailers are starting to move with location and coupon promotions, but I would expect Coles particularly, now managed by a veritable cricket team of ex-Tesco Poms to make the running amongst the big boys.
Aug 3, 2011 | Branding, Leadership
Really good brands often display remarkable resilience to the depredations of those who do not understand what makes a great brand, and from time to time, one is resurrected by insight and hard work.
I am not a gardener, but the most appropriate metaphor appears to be a gardening one, someone who “really understands” comes in and heavily prunes the almost dead roses to the exact size and shape necessary for renewal, and come the spring, a newly vigorous plant arrives.
Such a resurrection has been evident in the Starbucks chain of coffee shops. Founder Howard Shultz re-emerged from retirement as CEO after the management that followed him stuffed a great business, did some radical pruning, and Starbucks is now again a great business, whatever you may think about their coffee.
In England a few years ago, there was a Starbucks on every corner in the West end, and the coffee was rubbish, to be avoided, but the near death corporate experience has renewed the chain in the UK, perhaps requiring a revisit next time.
It takes a very strong leader to acknowledge the mistakes of the past that led to the weakening of a brand, and usually there are many mistakes, often small and logical when viewed in isolation, but profound when seen as a whole. This leaked memo from Shultz is such an acknowledgement, and served as the “burning platform” from which the changes to rebuild the Starbucks brand could be launched.
Jul 28, 2011 | Branding, Marketing
Sometimes asking a customer, or potential customer what they want is a bad strategy, as they can only respond from the perspective of what they already know and understand.
When you have something different and unknown to offer, there is not much point asking, you just need to get trial.
The elBulli restaurant run by Ferran Adria has been voted the best restaurant in the world for some years now, it costs a fortune, is very hard to get to, and has anything but a conventional menu, yet thousands are turned away each week. Chef Adria ignores customers, and they love him for it.
Several times over the years I have launched products that were genuinely new, and learnt very early on not to do any quantitative research at all, and no qualitative work unless those involved could see, touch, feel, and use at least a close prototype of the finished product. Only then can they offer an opinion worth listening to, but even then, there is little you can do to prototype the power of the brand which may evolve over time.
To continue the elBulli example. Had Chef Adria put some plates of curry ice-cream in front of a group of a group of people who ate at 5 star locations, and told them how much a trip to his restaurant would cost, and by the way, it was a 2 hour drive through treacherous mountain roads to get there, and they would have to wait 6 months for a booking that had nothing to do with when they may want to eat, it possibly would not get a gold star from the research group. How is it then that it is judged the best, and is probably the most famous restaurant in the world?
Just when you thought you had the rules of marketing nailed, something like this comes along!
