What marketers can learn at church

What marketers can learn at church

Dec 19, 2018 | Branding, Marketing

Every religion, from the worlds great ones to the meanest cult with a few deluded followers has something in common.

They communicate their message, engage their followers, with stories.

In most cases they are setting out to explain the mysteries of the human condition, to get at the essential truths that underlay behaviour, to explain the complexity in a simple and memorable manner, that makes recall and retelling easy and consistent.

The story of Adam and Eve is set in a perfect garden, with a snake representing evil, and an apple representing the pressures of the human condition.

Try explaining that without a story.

Every story in the Christian bible, from Cain and Abel to Jesus walking on water and making a crippled man walk contains a message. It is the same in the Koran, Hindu Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist Tripitakas.

With effective storytelling, they have all succeeded at the marketers dream.

Brand differentiation, and effective segmentation within the brands

Longevity

Strong loyalty and commitment that is multi-generational

Sustained commercial success

It may be a touch insensitive to make these observations as we are about to go into Christmas, but think of all the stories around Santa, and traditions that have built up over generations about what you eat, how you behave, and who you commune with.

All communicated by stories that support the central proposition, and even if you do not believe it, the behaviour still prevails. 

You have to give it to the clergy, of every brand,  they have this marketing gig nailed!

 

 

 

 

 

Keep looking for the ‘Big Idea’

Keep looking for the ‘Big Idea’

Oct 29, 2018 | Branding, Communication

 

Following on from my rant about content porn, it seems to me that the real problem has become the immediacy required by the digital age.

You need more stuff, on line, now!

At least, that is the demand, but more stuff is of no value unless it moves someone to an action.

Time is no longer allowed to curate and enable the creative process that can deliver what my old advertising colleagues used to call ‘The big idea’.

Now we just upload any old crap and move on, thinking we have done the job of producing ‘Content’.

So perhaps the problem is not having a framework for  the big idea to emerge?

This is despite the disciplines necessary for effective marketing I have spoken about previously. The persona of the ideal customer, and differentiation, as well as understanding from the  customers perspective what problem you are solving for them, and why they should pay you to solve it.

Setting out to enable the big idea to emerge without having gone through the pain of defining these boundary items first will be in most cases, a waste of time and effort. However, having defined them, there are some simple to say, but very hard to do, steps that you can take that may assist.

Attract  attention.

Unfortunately this is a chicken and egg proposition. To attract attention, you need an idea that resonates with your ideal customer, without which, you will not attract the attention. To resonate, it must solve a problem, often one they did not realise they had, or had just got used to having, so was not a constant itch. The creativity required to see the problem from the perspective of the customer, and frame it in such a way that motivates them to action, is the essence of the process, and is not something that happens quickly, or regularly.

The classic example is Apples ‘big idea’ for the original iPod: ‘A thousand songs in your pocket’

Hold attention.

To hold the attention once passed the huge hurdle of attracting it, the idea must be compelling. Most businesses compete in markets where there is little that is genuinely new, where you have some sort of defensible ‘uniqueness’. Patents are defensible, but the sad reality is that you need very deep pockets, and even then, they are increasingly just a road bump a competitor has to negotiate. Therefore, you need to create some sort of differentiation in the minds of the ideal customer that you can ‘own’. In their minds, it is what you become known for, and is sufficiently compelling that they reach for their wallet. The iPod line achieved this in spades.

If you were in the market for a hard floor covering, and you stumbled across this optical illusion from British tile maker Casa Ceramica, used as the header for this post, you would at least look at them closely.

Have a strategic roadmap

Every idea you generate should be a brick in the road towards your long term strategic goal. You cannot predict the future, but you can define where you want to be, then set out to go there. The route might change, not the goal. You will have challenges and obstacles to overcome on the way that were never envisioned at the outset, but keeping your eyes on the goal provides the framework against which you ask the question ‘Does this idea take a step forward in the journey?‘

This post evolved as a result of seeing the photo in the header on social media somewhere. If you happened to be in the UK midlands, and were thinking of replacing your floors with tiles, you would add this lot to the list to talk to. The aspiration of their website is: ‘We aim to inspire you and help you stand out. We aim to give you the aspirations you need, the innovation of our showroom and knowledge and the dedication you deserve.’  Their mission is all about leading the independent wall and floor tiling industry. This example of a piece of content moves them along towards that goal, and I would suggest, is a great example of the big idea in action.

 

 

 

 

A marketers rant about ‘content porn’

A marketers rant about ‘content porn’

Oct 10, 2018 | Branding, Communication, Social Media

Content has become a marketing buzzword delivering a tsunami of crap into our inboxes, cluttering up our phones, and potentially delivering all sorts of nasty surprises if we open them.

Content started as a great idea, suddenly we could communicate directly with those in our markets and give them stuff of value, that coincidentally led to a transaction, perhaps many transactions.

Anyone would think this was new, this is what advertising has done for decades, we can now just target the recipient more accurately.

We have forgotten the ultimate objective of content is to create circumstances where a transaction can occur. However, ‘Content’ has become a cliché, and we all indulge, churning out shit that does nobody any good.

It is like Porn, interesting at first, perhaps educational for some, offensive to others, but quickly becoming just boring.

People are keen to receive things of value, things that make a difference to their lives, but increasingly the stuff they are being delivered is just content porn, doing nobody any good, leading to the turn off, so that the good stuff gets missed in the never ending churn.

There is a branding opportunity here, send only good stuff, and personalise it!

What we need to produce is ideas, not indulgence, and there is way too little of the former and too much of the latter.

Let’s be fair dinkum about what content is.

Fair chance it is a regurgitated version of something else, and by the time the first good idea has been reshaped, and re-imagined, it has become blurred and unrecognisable. An original good idea is something most recognise when they see it, simply because it demands attention and action.

That is what  we need, more ideas, originality, and deviance, in a nice way, that demands your attention, and drives an action. We do not need more of the same old content porn.

I read somewhere, and I wish I could take credit for it that: ‘if I take a photo of a pile of dog shit, I have a photo of a pile of dog shit, if I upload it to  a website, it becomes content’

Sounds a bit like the inimitable Bob Hoffman, but could not locate the source.

 

Jack is back!!

Jack is back!!

Oct 8, 2018 | Branding, Marketing

 

Tesco in the UK is in the launch phase of a discount chain, ‘Jacks’ as a competitive response to the inroads of German discounters Aldi and Lidl.

I can only assume Coles and Woolies management are watching with interest, as they have yet to find a way to combat Aldi in their backyard, and in the absence of a better idea might just copy it, almost as something to do.

Second ranked Sainsbury’s strategy has been different. They are ‘merging’ with Wal-Marts Asda chain in a deal reported to be  worth 7.3 billion pounds. This deal would take them past Tesco as the UK’s biggest retailer, and so needs regulatory approval. Wal-Mart bought Asda in 1999, believing their discount model that made them the biggest retailer in the world by a country mile, would work in the UK. They have clearly failed in the face of more effective discounters from Germany. Meanwhile, both Aldi and Lidl are rummaging around in Wal-Marts US backyard.

Perhaps Wal Mart have recognised the threat to their dominance is coming from more than Amazon and are hunkering down for a fight?

As this all unfolds, I suspect history will reveal that Tesco has made a huge blue.

They are setting out to make Jacks clearly part of the ‘Tesco family’ according to the blurb sprouted by CEO David Lewis at the opening of the first Jacks, just down the road from an Aldi site. At the same time, they are committed to sourcing ‘British first’.  This is a mix of business models that must make the Aldi executives giggle with joy, as all it will do is drain money from the Tesco coffers while highlighting Aldi’s positioning as the cheapest around. Setting out to ‘out-Aldi’ Aldi will be a doomed strategy, particularly as they have already compromised it by being overtly British first. This approach may appeal to some, but those who shop at Aldi do so for the price, first, second and last, and will not care about ‘Britishness’, so all Tesco will be doing is damaging their own positioning, and dropping bundles of cash.

From a distance, I hope those few in Coles and Woolies who have been around for a while will whisper some common sense into the ears of their bosses.

‘Anyone remember Jack the slasher, Franklins, Bi-Low, and Jewel’ ?

All discounters, all now gone.

The online advertising fantasy revealed

The online advertising fantasy revealed

Sep 20, 2018 | Branding, Marketing

 

The web gives us huge value, piles of stuff we want that we think we need, for free.

Or is it?

The web is fuelled by advertising. Pure and simple.

The ‘free ‘ stuff we get is really in exchange for our eyeballs, not because there is some benevolent power seeking to help us.

The two most powerful businesses on the planet, Google and Facebook are dependent on advertising for their profitability. Ok, Google has diversified a lot, and now generates profits from all sorts of other activities, but the core is still ads.

As consumers we all want the free stuff, and resent the advertising, otherwise, we would not install all the millions of ad blockers we have.

Pity no-one seems to have figured out what Don Draper knew, that advertising to be of commercial value has to be entertaining, as well as informative and behaviour changing. The deluge of crap on the web seems to have overwhelmed the need to be anything other than there. Those who flog various forms of unaccountable ‘ad tech’ have badly  mistaken the value of the big idea, believing that many small poor ideas used every day, labelled content, can add up to the impact of the one big one.

Fantasy.

This missive is fuelled by the recent tightening of the LinkedIn algorithms related to the number and apparent management of ads being shown on an individuals home page, and the increasing challenge of communicating in groups. Clearly, the Microsoft behemoth is becoming more aggressive about squeezing  a return from its purchase of LinkedIn. Not unreasonable in principal, but if they wreck the reason we are all there, it will blow up in their face.

It is time to wake up and recognise that advertising is the foundation of the web, so it had better be good, or the foundations will crumble. Advertising itself is not bad, it is bad advertising that is bad, coupled with its rotten digital bedfellow, tracking.

Having our digital footsteps stored and accumulated to better ‘personalise’ the ads we see, which is really code for trashing any personal digital security and privacy we may have, is not something I like at all. To my mind, it is a significant part of the price we really pay for the ‘free stuff’, and is on he verge of becoming too high.

Cartoon credit: Once again to Tom Fishburne, who continues to distil the fluff, self interest, hubris and pure bullshit that infests the marketing industry into bite sized chunks of reality.

‘Data Science’ in marketing is frequently bullshit

‘Data Science’ in marketing is frequently bullshit

Sep 17, 2018 | Branding, Marketing

I started life as an accountant, and luckily, recognised before anyone else that I would be the world’s worst. However, from my trials, I do have respect for numbers, proof, real outcomes tested and validated by the scientific method.

As a marketer, I have always tried to find the quantitative base of the stuff I was doing, rather than being seduced by the hyperbole, supposition, and self-interested ‘data’ presented by someone with an interest in the outcome.

Usually that someone has had a pecuniary interest in the decision. They are selling something, from a piece of machinery to an advertising campaign, to a bottle of shampoo sitting on a supermarket shelf.

Science starts with a hypothesis that you set out to prove by trying to disproving it. Having failed to disprove it, the result must be the truth. As Arthur Conan Doyle via Sherlock Holmes said ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.‘ A sample of 12 carefully selected personnel from your ad agency does not constitute proof that your made up new natural sounding ‘extract’ will make your hair shine.

‘Data’ as used by whole ranges of marketers, advertisers, and perhaps worst of all, politicians, is often nothing like a reliable representation of the truth, it is just the opposite. It is the selective use of bits of pieces of information, (real or imagined)  and contextual engineering that suits the pre-ordained conclusion that is presented. The opposite to the scientific method, in that the result is determined, then data is constructed that does as good a job as possible to ‘prove’ the outcome.

In academic and scientific circles, this is a heinous crime that will end your career.

From time to time I have not been popular as a result of asking what to me seems to be reasonable questions of those presenting ‘data’ in an effort to sell something.

What is the size and structure of the sample used?

How does the methodology replicate actual behaviour?

What controls were used to manage the data?

Where did the outliers come from, and where are they in the stats?

Have the results been substantiated by independent repeat studies?

There are a few more, but usually I only get one or two out before I am dismissed as some sort of data cretin who does not understand these things.

It is amazing to me how often I see major decisions taken on the basis of flawed, incomplete and inconsistent ‘data’ where the vested interest is clear to all who choose to look closely.