Oct 28, 2022 | Customers, Marketing
The J. Walter Thompson advertising agency is one of the prototypes for the ‘Madmen’ of advertising, the architype of the explosion of consumer advertising that occurred in the sixties.
The agency was started by James Walter Thompson in 1896, when the ‘advertising’ function was nothing more than a brokerage service for selling space in newspapers.
Advertising in those days, well before even radio and consumer magazines, had only newspapers as their communication medium. It slowly expanded into creating the ‘advertising product’ to make selling the space easier into the expanding range of communication options, all on commission.
Simple days.
Most success relies on simple things, breaking down the complex so they are easily understood. So it was with advertising in those early days, before we were blasted by ever increasingly complex offers and intrusive psychological hooks to sell us more stuff.
It is often useful to go back to these roots, to see what made for success early, what were the simple things that worked.
The ‘Thompson T-Square’ is one such tool in copywriting.
Every successful copywriter used it, a few simple questions to focus the mind on what was really important as they wrote the copy. At J. Walter Thompson, it was pinned to the wall of every copywriters office.
What are we selling?
To whom are we selling it?
Where are we selling it?
When are we selling it?
How are we selling it?
Simplistic yes, but also effective, and leading to the ‘four P’s’ of marketing, articulated by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960.
Those simple questions lead to the consideration of the most effective articulation of value to the ideal customer, who would be receiving the messages in a manner that made them comfortable, and receptive to the idea of a purchase.
So, the simple answer to the question in the header is ‘Yes, every day”, it still works!
The header is an 1868 portrait of James Walter Thompson, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Oct 24, 2022 | Customers, Marketing
Following on from a previous post about the value of information, it seems relevant to ask how long any value created lasts.
We are all familiar with the notion of the ‘1/2 life’. The time it takes for radioactivity of an element to decay by 1/2. Uranium 238 has a 1/2 life of several billion years.
What about the 1/2 life of information?
The 1/2 life of a daily newspaper is arguably 1 day, today’s news is ‘tomorrows fish wrapper’, and for 99.9% of blog posts, and most other so called ‘content’, it is about 2 seconds. This seems odd in what is supposedly the ‘Information age’. Why is the life so short, in most cases, and what make the difference for the 0.1%?.
The answer seems to be: It depends on the value of the information, and the ‘friction’ or resistance which is applied to its transmission.
Businesses, and most institutions are structured to be top down, in functional silos. This is a system that evolved before digitisation of information, which enabled the scaling of effort and the most efficient allocation of resources. A 20th century solution to the challenge of information transfer and leverage.
In the 21st century, with digitisation, the structures of the 20th century are redundant. They are simply too slow to be competitive in an environment where the action happens at digital speed on the ‘front lines’ of customer interaction. It takes too long for the siloed decision making processes to work, the customer has moved on to someone who is able to satisfy their need on the spot.
This change requires a wholesale change in the way our organisations are structured and the tactical actions that take place every day are managed.
What happens on the ‘front lines’ evolves quicker than the siloed information and instruction exchanges that worked well last century. We must turn our power structures upside down, and give the front lines the authority to make on the spot customer focussed decisions within a much broader remit than was previously the case. The risk if we do not is that customers will simply go down the road to someone more responsive.
This creates huge complications for organisations, as the status quo is upset. The power people at the top have worked for all their lives is diluted, and for those at the bottom, suddenly they are being tasked to take decisions that last week were being referred up the chain.
There is a driver of activity, always present, but to date well in the background for most, being the ‘operating rhythm’ of the market in which they compete. When their decision cycles are slower than the operating rhythm of the market, the market will go elsewhere, or at the very least, opportunities will be lost.
Getting ‘inside’ the operating rhythm of your competitors and the market more broadly, being able to respond quicker, is an emerging key to strategic success.
The 1/2 life of information is now in the hands of others, those who really count, by being customers.
Oct 14, 2022 | Analytics, Innovation
We set out to measure things, to give us a sense of achievement, to allocate priorities, and simply to keep score as we proceed. It is an engineering perspective.
We do not have any way of objectively measuring how we feel, but how we feel is what drives our behaviour.
This would not matter if we all perceived the world objectively, but we don’t. We observe the world through the complex frosted window of our experience, context, opinions, and did we get our coffee this morning.
So, how do we dig away at this problem, and it is a problem, simply because we use objective means to make subjective decisions, and it sucks.
We ask better questions, and we ask those questions from as wide a variety of perspectives as we can. We must ask those better questions, and experiment, test stuff, be allowed to fail, as in the outliers you will find the unexpected. However, you must also expect the unexpected, you just cannot predict where it will be.
Bees, amazing insects that they are, have the process nailed. They have a behavioural characteristic scientists call the ‘Waggle dance’, which is a communication medium that leads others to the source of nectar. Bees must find nectar, that is the job on which their lives rely.
Depending on variables like the weather, location, season, and others, a percentage of bees, 10 – 20% ignore the waggle dance, and go off in a different direction. When they find a new source, they start the ‘waggle dance’ to attract other bees to that new source, thus keeping the hive healthy and well fed.
This is experimentation, sacrificing a small part of the current returns to build for the future.
As we consider how to best allocate our available resources, we can learn from bees.
Bees in blogs
Oct 10, 2022 | Governance, Marketing
Marketing programs should always be driven by the combination of your current position and the agreed strategy. Your marketing objectives should be directly and overtly tied to the achievement of the longer-term strategy.
In the absence of an overall strategy, writing a marketing plan becomes an exercise with little meaning. The marketing plan is how you allocate external communication investment and align internal resource allocation priorities to the achievement of the strategic objective.
The marketing objectives should be designed to contribute to the achievement of the strategic objectives, along with other corporate plans such as the financial plan (budget) manufacturing plan, personnel plan. They work together to achieve the overall strategic objective. They represent the desired end points, the strategies and tactics employed are how you get there.
It is a simple formula: Objectives = Current situation X strategic choices.
A plan without an objective is not a plan.
Objectives have three functions:
- They provide the target that every stakeholder understands is, or should be, the focus of their daily, weekly, monthly activity.
- They provide the framework and means for the alignment of cascading contributing objectives, performance measures, milestones, accountabilities, and responsibilities, through the organisation, up, down, and across.
- They provide a framework for measurement of progress.
The compounding of the effectiveness of effort when these three functions are present, and working together, is enormous.
These three functions of objectives are the same at the strategic level as they are at the coalface. The only difference is the time frame, the nature of the immediate objectives, and the activities to be undertaken by individuals.
At the coalface you are looking at the objectives for today, tomorrow, and next week.
At the strategic level you are looking at next quarter, year, and 3 years.
The means by which the gap between the levels is addressed is reflected in the 2-way flow of information, priority and feedback that occurs, which is a function of the culture and resulting ‘flow’ through the processes in the business.
It is easy for me to say, but very hard to get right, and it is not a task, it is a continuing journey.
Everyone, at every level should be aware of the strategic objectives, the strategy, and how their piece of the world fits into and contributes to the larger picture.
Think about the many wheels inside a mechanical clock, all are driven by the central objective of telling the time, then hours, minutes, date, day of the week. All are run off the central powered flywheel.
The strategy is the flywheel, delivering accurate information is the objective.
The strategic objectives should evolve out of the interrogation and questions that are asked in the assessment of the current situation, and the vision/mission, whatever you choose to call it, of the organisation.
A daily ‘toolbox’ or ‘stand-up’ is the coalface equivalent of a quarterly strategy review, just held at a different level. They are the catalyst for the difficult questions that need to be answered.
Sep 23, 2022 | Branding, Communication, Management, Marketing, Small business
In 1960, E. Jerome McCarthy published his idea of the four foundations of marketing. Price, Promotion, Product, and Place. The world has changed in the intervening 62 years, so you must wonder if this idea is still relevant, let alone a foundation.
To my mind, they are not only relevant, but retain their place as a seminal part of the marketing process, it is just that the context in which we think about marketing has changed radically, so the role the 4 P’s plays has also evolved.
This used to be simple, there was a product, and there was a price. Whether it was a consumer product, or one sold to another business, it was simple, and uncongested with notions of service.
Life, and the environment in which we compete has completely changed. Let’s see.
Product.
The idea of ‘product’ has changed along with everything else. We used to buy a car, increasingly, we are now buying the means to get from point A to point B, and discovering new ways to pay for it beyond the options of cash, or some sort of loan from a bank.
Product rather than being a singular physical product or service delivered has become a system that delivers value. The scope of ‘produc’t has also changed from the immediate geography to global, and the channels by which this is achieved look nothing like those available 62 years ago.
Price.
The exchange of money is how the economy goes round; money is the fuel. However, the articulation of the ‘Price’ of a product/service bundle has changed as much as everything else. Along with the product and delivery options now available are the pricing options. There are now many ways to be paid, only a few of which were available 62 years ago.
In all developed economies to differing degrees, the taxi industry has been regulated over time. Nothing changed from 1962 when the ‘Four P’s were articulated until along came Uber and disrupted the cosy taxi environment. Uber eliminated the uncertainty of how long you had to wait for a ride, creating great psychological value, and introduced surge pricing that would entice more supply into the system at times of high demand.
Surge and subscription pricing have changed the face of commerce globally. Amazon uses both in their operations, adding the willingness of a buyer to pay higher prices based on their browsing and purchase history.
Place.
We used to buy products at a defined place, in a defined manner. No longer. The notion of ‘Place’ has been replaced by one of ‘How’ you buy rather than ‘where you buy’.
The old model of a set of mechanically driven distribution channels has been replaced by a melange of ‘omni channels’ that deliver value in a wide variety of ways.
Control of the channels, formerly in the hands of the sellers has moved into the hands of the buyers, who demand and are given in increasing amounts of transparency backwards into the supply chain. All this is enabled by the explosive growth of digital technology.
Promotion.
If the other factors have changed radically, there are no words to describe the magnitude of the change to the ways promotional activity has evolved.
It used to mean the way we gained attention of potential customers via a limited number of options, engaged them, then sold product through whichever stable distribution channel was available. While the core process is unchanged, how we promote out products has exploded.
This brings us back to the question posed: are the for ‘P’s’ of marketing still relevant.
My answer is ‘Yes’, but the clothes they wear have changed radically and therefore the way we think about then must change.
My response to the change necessary is to look at the marketing process more from the perspective of the customer. This brings me to the view that both customer and supplier can look at the process from within the framework of Objectives, Value proposition, Ideal customer, and the Current state. Each party to a transaction sees these four parameters differently, but they are all relevant to the way the transection and relationship proceeds.
