Mar 26, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Social Media
Everybody has something to say, and the democratisation of the web means everyone has the opportunity.
Just take a look at the twitter feeds of some of the big brands, some inane crap written by a 10 year old intellect can attract thousands of “likes”, and the wombats breed just to provide more of them.
So what?. Why should these big brands bother? Surely such nonsense detracts from their brand?
Well, to my mind they shouldn’t do it, building and maintaining a brand is hard enough without putting extra lead in the saddlebags.
On the contrary, the opportunity to say something of value, pass on some wisdom, offer useful advice is now easier than it has ever been. Those thoughts need to be heard, debated, and they add to our lives.
Just a pity that we have to wade through the mountains of crap, despite all the filtering and prioritisation tools available, to find the interesting stuff.
Mar 25, 2013 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, retail, Small business, Social Media
One of the foundations of mass marketing was to be able to segment your market, geographically, demographically, behaviorally, brand preferences, and so on.
In the old days of mass media, it was really the only way to target messages at those most likely to be receptive, match the media selection to the characteristics of your target market.
But what has happened in the social world of networked consumers and crowd sourced comment and content?
An acquaintance runs a wonderful patisserie in a rejuvenated inner city location. It is pricey, but the value is there, reflected in the range, artistic presentation, great service, and above all, pastries to die for. However, some of the comments on the review sites would lead to a conclusion that the products were overpriced, too fancy, and lacked character.
Standing in the queue on a Saturday morning just before Christmas, observing others, and listening to the comments, the penny dropped. Those in the queue were older, clearly successful, were regulars, and loved the place, whereas the casual buyer, the ones far more likely to leave a comment on a review site were most probably Uni students, on their way between the train station and the campus just down the road. These buyers were more liklely to want a cheap, filling, snack rather than a tasty work of art.
The lesson: Do not believe all your read on social media review sites, any more than you believe all you read in a politicians press release.
Mar 22, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Social Media
Digital communication is now a major consideration in any marketing budget, depending on whose numbers you believe, digital may now be even bigger than “traditional” communication channels.
So how should you develop your creative and communication briefs?
- Concentrate on traditional channels and adapt for Digital?
- Focus on digital and use traditional as the adjunct?
- Split the budget and treat them separately, or consider the cart and horse to be the one integrated delivery vehicle?
Making these choices, deciding which is the horse, the one that provides the “grunt,” you need and requiring real feeding, and which is the cart, which just needs some maintanence, is the key decision. Then you need to decide how you are going to manage the processes of feeding and maintaining, as they require very different strategies and capabilities.
Traditional media is passive, one way, the objective is to disrupt to gain attention and only then deliver a message with no effective feedback mechanism.
Digital media is wholly different. It has the native capability to be two way, a “conversation,” it cannot disrupt as the initiative is with the receiver rather than the sender, the originator can micro-target to the level of individuals, and there are immediate and hugely detailed feedback loops.
All this means that the manner in which the proposition is presented is entirely different, passive, mass creative Vs a message demanding action of an individual.
When put like that, the dilemma becomes more transparent, relatively easily addressed by a few simple questions:
- Is it a commodity, mass market product, or are you building a market customer by customer?
- Are you aiming to build awareness amongst a wide market profile or engagement of a niche?
- Can you identify and target the behavioral characteristics of your target market, or just the demographic ones?
The answers to these questions will offer insight not just to which is the horse, but how much, and what it needs to be fed to deliver the optimum result.
Mar 20, 2013 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Small business
Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal, early facebook investor, uses this term to describe the opportunity created by not competing, not being pushed into the competitive funnel of beating the other guy, rather they prosper by looking for ways to be different, to see an opportunity and grab it, rather than just doing incrementally better than the other guy at leveraging an established product category, business model, or process.
As an investor, he looks to invest in businesses where the founder has a clear view of the future, where the crystal ball has been rubbed and delivered a picture that makes sense, and disrupts the status quo, even if it has not been even contemplated before.
This story of Facebook turning down a billion dollars from Yahoo when it was still in Zuckerbergs Harvard dorm is instructive, and is perhaps a pointer to why Thiel has such a stellar track record. However, the simple notion of investing in businesses where there is no competition, where a creative monopoly exists, is compelling, and is one that should have far wider appreciation that in a VC appraisal. The successful business strategy book “Blue Ocean Strategy” is a tome that makes the same point in 300 pages, and has spawned an industry, so something must be working.
How are you developing your own creative monopoly? You do not have to be a multinational. Several local SME’s I have contact with have successfully created their own creative monopoly in their area, carved out a niche where the competition is minimal, and are doing very well.
Mar 12, 2013 | Lean, Management, Marketing, Operations
It is often said that for successful innovation to occur, you must be prepared to” fail often, fail cheap”.
Early testing and prototyping speeds up innovation cycle times, the longer a project proceeds with issues unnoticed or unfixed, the harder they become to fix, and the remediation is more costly and complicated.
Early failure enables hypothesis testing and idea generation, which can only increase the productivity of assets, human and otherwise that are applied to a development project.
The similarity to Lean Manufacturing methodology is extreme, where small batches matched to demand lead to smaller inventory of raw materials, finished goods and WIP.
Mar 6, 2013 | Marketing, Strategy
Italian mathematician Vilfredo Pareto’s observations that resulted in what is now commonly known as the “80/20” rule, are well understood.
As a young marketer, Lord leverhulme’s wry observation that he knew half his advertising was wasted, he just wish he knew which half was which resonated with me. It also seemed to me that the balance of activity in the marketing departments I inhabited also fell into Pareto’s 80/20 rule, 80% of marketing was creative, and 20% was quantitative.
The last decade has turned that all on its head. We can now comprehensively measure the impact of our decisions, their cause and effect chains, and calculate an ROI, particularly in B2B. I venture that the balance has changed, and marketing is now 80% quantitative, 20% creative.
However, 20% of activity that is creative is more critical than ever, as it is the stuff that offers differentiation, an edge in the market, access to new customers and channels, a reason to engage.
Too many marketers I see are still avoiding the accountability offered by the analytical capabilities developed in the last decade, preferring to remain in the past. However, those who are really successful, the 20%, embrace the notion of accountability for their decisions, and track the returns on their marketing investments.
As a side benefit, effective use of marketing analytics offers greater profile to those seeking corporate advancement, the beanies who generally run the joint, love the numbers!
