Will Amazons venture into book stores rewrite history?

Will Amazons venture into book stores rewrite history?

Jul 3, 2017 | Branding, Change, Marketing

I love books, thousands of them infest my home, and I have spent years of my life browsing. I may be one of the last “heavy consumers’ of books, and particularly coming towards Christmas, my local Dymocks and Berkelouw’s which have so far survived, welcome me with open arms.

There is a physical tactility to a book that you cannot get on a ‘device’, no matter how great the design, which has the potential to generate an emotional attachment.

Perhaps it is just me?

As a result of this I am on the Dymocks mailing list. Every month or so, I get an email outlining the deals on the best sellers, books of interest, and new releases.

Now, I do not mind the odd romance, or light ‘love and discovery’ adventure, I have probably read 2 or three in my time, but they are not my normal fare.

Nowhere near my normal fare.

Despite a couple of emails, and even a phone call to them indicating my absolute lack of interest in their hit list, and observing they have access to a significant amount of purchase data should they choose to use it, I still get this crap filling my inbox.

Meanwhile Amazon is opening book stores, bricks and mortar book stores.

Unthinkable a few years ago that having disrupted and almost destroyed book stores, they then venture into them.

Shades of the Washington Post turnaround under Jeff Bezos

They will be doing all the stuff in bricks and mortar stores that Dymocks, and all the other retailers now disappeared had the opportunity to do, but lacked the foresight and understanding of their customers to be able to do, despite having 15 years head start.

Book stores have a place, long live real books, and the stores that sell them, I guess they will be branded ‘Amazon’, and Jeff will keep laughing.

 

 

 

Is it schizophrenia or just something in the cactus?

Is it schizophrenia or just something in the cactus?

Jun 30, 2017 | Branding, Innovation, Marketing

For years consumer markets have been relentlessly commoditised by retailers who hold the power over the distribution, and who not unreasonably, have sought ways to divert the proprietary margins available from manufacturers pockets into their own. Short term thinking, but that seems to be the world we live in.

Largely retailers have won the game, and branded FMCG products are now becoming an increasing rarity, and mostly where they survive, it is on the back of trade deals and residual strength of brands built by smart and visionary marketing in yesteryear. In liquor there are still many brands, but unbeknownst to most consumers, many of them are just housebrands infused with the wine industry hyperbole that seems to be expected.

The impact on category innovation is yet to be really seen, but I suspect it will stumble further, as by my observation of the shelves, it has done over the past few years.

There however, is the schizophrenia.

Every now and again, a product emerges that runs against the trend.

Consumers are increasingly concerned with the integrity of the supply chains that deliver products to their mouths, so on the fringes there are some very expensive products, usually in alternative distribution that use long lists of adjectives to describe their products: organic, hand- made, all natural, crafted, you have seen them all. Occasionally they are genuinely ‘new’ products, but mostly they are better quality, low volume versions of the commodities available on supermarket shelves.Sometimes they work, and consumers pay a significant premium for  the story that supports the claims, but generally the promise given by the adjectives is taken on trust by consumers.

Technology will increasingly have a role in this as magic like Blockchain emerges that can both guarantee the integrity of products supply chain, and make it absolutely transparent. Suddenly the hyperbole can be subjected to rational scrutiny.

In 2013 George Clooney and a few of his mates wanted their own brand of tequila. Why not, they can afford whatever they want, (but why Tequila??) anyway, the brand they chose and subsequently built,  ‘Casamigos’ has just been bought by Diageo for $US1 billion, around 1.3 Billion Aussie. Not bad in four years!

I do not drink tequila, and the term ‘Super Premium Tequila’  seems to me to be an absolute oxymoron, although perhaps I am unduly influenced by one very bad night involving a bottle of the stuff and a lemon tree while at University.

For $1.3 billion I could be persuaded to give tequila a second chance. Is this growth and purchase of such a highly personalised brand another signpost that consumers are demanding a whole set of new experiences from the items they buy, or is it just something in the cactus?

 

 

 

 

 

Will great marketing always powered by humans?

Will great marketing always powered by humans?

May 5, 2017 | Branding, Marketing

Great marketing has a strong visual component, even the great long form ads from the days before TV. Always has been, always will be.

Sometimes that ‘visual’ are the pictures that you form in your mind as a result of hearing something, which is why radio was, and still should be, a great communication medium, sometimes it is a great photo, video, or piece of printed material that speaks to just you.

Creativity and design are a huge part of this mix.

 

All  the tools around are convincing us that we can design stuff ourselves, just as we all seem to believe that we are photographers, just because we have a great little camera in our pockets all the time, or writers, because we can easily publish our scribblings on a multitude of channels.

Owning a saw does not make you a carpenter.

Part of the problem is that most so-called marketers know so very little about marketing any more. They do know about the tools, the algorithms, and sometimes bits of the martech stack, but little about the human reactions, relationships and intimacies that make for effective communication, the sort that does not bludgeon you into doing something, but those that deliver a message that resonates as if it was a personally addressed letter.

Remember those?

As an aside, I bought a book of stamps for  the first time in a long while last week.. a buck a stamp. I was shocked, and my first reaction was  ‘no wonder we are all going digital’  but my second was, ‘what an opportunity to be different, and get an almost 100% open rate, for just a dollar!’

The tech bunnies, headed by top bunny Facebook are doubling down on video, recognising the power. They are right to be doing this for commercial reasons, they are the advertising platforms of the 21st century, although the demise of TV particularly is grossly overstated, as old mate Bob Hoffman loves to point out. However, the users of the platform are being grossly manipulated in order to be a more marketable commodity that the platforms can sell to advertisers. Most of the users are largely blissfully unaware of their algorithmically manipulated experience, and I am increasingly uncomfortable about the ‘brand morality’ of this sad fact.

They are just eyeballs being wholesaled by the platforms for profit. At least with a TV you can grab the remote and change the channel, or go make a cup of tea.

I wonder if in the long term they will not look back as see that  they have broken the moral component of the foundations of a brand.

Facebook particularly is aggressively using their huge base to be continually testing, adding features, and renovating older ones in order to maximise ad revenue. It is pretty easy to be taken in by the often published numbers,  but sometimes a dose of reality would be useful, as highlighted in February’s MUmBRELLA article.

Bob Hoffman was right again.

 

This Social Media Examiner podcast has Mari Smith outlining what Facebook is doing,  and is worth the 40 minutes, and a scan of the show notes and links .

Back to where I started.

As marketers, we have a responsibility to both those who pay us, and those who listen to and act on what we suggest to them. We need to consider the foundation skills of our craft,  to react in a human way, to reflect the wisdom and experience coming from the humanity around us, rather than taking that feedback and running it through a bunch of algorithms to get the most clinical outcome.

As AI augmented AI, and machine learning continue to make inroads, they will consume the repetitive tasks in every job, but are a very long way from replacing the emotion and humanity that turns a slab of copy into a compelling call to action.

In answer to the question posed in the headline, Yes!

In time, mediocre, mass marketing may be executed by algorithms, but in a highly personalised world, that will not be good enough.

Image credit: Once again, Hugh McLeod at the Gaping void.

 

In defence of United Airlines employees

In defence of United Airlines employees

May 1, 2017 | Branding, Marketing

United is the butt of everyone’s jokes and derision, including mine, but it maybe useful to consider how  they got there.

Carlos Munoz was awarded the communicator of the year  in March, a few weeks before the unfortunate Dr Dao booked a seat to go and see a patient in Louisville. This now seems to be the ultimate irony, and I suspect the communicator of the year award now has its own PR problem.

However, in hindsight, a real brain-fart seems almost inevitable , with several recent similar events, and even further back, Dave Carroll‘s guitar signalling a truly broken culture.

When you think about it, the actions on flight 3411 were driven by the rigid, unthinking application of a set of rules.  The culture of an airline is one based on checklists, inviolable rules, and strict adherence to those rules. When you are flying, and want the plane to stay up, it seems that it may be a good idea to have whole sets of rules that ensure that it does so.

Perhaps the challenge at United may not have been about the stupidity and arrogance of staff, after all they are people, who have the same concerns and pressures, loves and joys that the rest of us have, but about the culture of rules that drive behaviour, and do not allow any room for doubt. Mix that with a few insensitive individuals and you have the toxic mix demonstrated so visibly on flight 3411

When there is a rule, follow it, without question, creativity or deviation.

That explains away the actions, sort of.

So the challenge is how to have a rule based culture that ensures that the job gets done the right way, every time, co-existing with one that  enables individual initiative and sensitivity to the situation.

This is not a unique challenge.

Almost every business  I work with is a medium sized manufacturer, they require rules to operate safely and efficiently, and the less explicit, transparent and flexible the rules are, the greater the CUS (cock up score) that exists.

One of the tenets of the TPS is ‘respect for people’ and never has the value of this as a foundation of culture been more on display that at United, over a long period.

Respect for People is a double sided coin. On one side there is the necessity for stable, repeatable and optimised processes, and the other on personal initiative and situational sensitivity, challenging to reflect in a set of detailed rules.  At the intersection is respect for people, their intelligence, initiative, desire to do the job as best they can, and go home safely.

At the time of posting, United CEO and chief PR guru Munoz has come out with a couple of further statements. The first outlines changes to improve customer experience as a result of the ‘incident’. This,  in contrast to the blame shifting and destructive crap put out after the incident is not a bad effort, but it reflects no more than a reasonable expectation of someone paying for a seat on a plane. At least it is clear, and Munoz at last took responsibility for the treatment of Dr Dao. The second simply announces that Dr Dao and United have reached an ‘amicable resolution’ of the incident, without any details. My guess is that the next time Dr Dao needs to fly anywhere, he can just call up his private plane, no need to  bother with those uncomfortable commercial flights any more.

As a final thought, the only one in an organisation who can really change a prevailing culture is the person at the top. I guess United needs a new one, as both a symbol that they are committed to change, and to get the process going in deeds rather than just a bunch of belated words following the crappola sandwich first served up.

 

 

 

The two faces of a successful brand

The two faces of a successful brand

Apr 28, 2017 | Branding, Marketing

People relate to brands, see them as having characteristics best described in human terms

Whenever I have done research over 40 years in this game and sought to identify the elements of a brand, the one constant has been that human terms have been used to describe them, both good and bad.

I wonder what words would be used to describe United airlines at the moment?

Who would want to be in the airline business anyway? It is a capital intensive, highly regulated business, competing on price with a number of significant airlines being subsidised as the national flag carrier, with a major consumable cost, fuel, subject to wild and largely unpredictable fluctuations.

The branded competitive framework we all work in is a double sided coin.

On one side is the regulatory requirements, which must be followed, the other is the moral responsibility that all businesses have  to their customers, the promise made by the brand. You take their money in the promise of delivery, just how you go about that delivery can vary, that is the moral dimension.

United airlines failed miserably.

As far as I am aware, the United flight 3411 arrived in Louisville safely, and roughly on time. But they failed the moral responsibility badly.

An airline is legally entitled to overbook, they are legally entitled to remove passengers for a number of reasons, and they are legally entitled to fly their staff to a destination where they are required. Question is, do they have a moral right to pull a passenger off the plane to and substitute their own staff for operational reasons.

They made a promise to their customers, that they would take their money to get them to a destination safely, and in some comfort.

Coming in the same week as the United fiasco, this story of Alaska Airlines managing a problem represents the difference in the moral decisions that are taken and they have a profound impact on the brand.

Those who own brands make choices about a range of things, how they want to be seen, usually represented by the statements of missions and values they stick in their lobbies, however, what really matters is how they behave, particularly when there are choices involved, and the harder the better, as it is the hard ones that demonstrate the real value of the brand.

Customers do not read and remember the crap in your lobby, but they watch what you do, and remember.

So, what sort of brand to you aspire too be?

 

Image credit: By Unknown or not provided – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17413025

Leveraging the flip side of an elevator pitch

Leveraging the flip side of an elevator pitch

Apr 24, 2017 | Branding, Communication, Small business

Honing an elevator pitch is something we all should do, and many spend hours writing and practising a pitch, following one of the many templates around, most of which are similar.

Grab attention.

Describe the product.

Articulate the benefit.

All in 30 seconds.

We fantasise about catching that mystical perfect customer alone in an elevator, enthusing him/her to such as extent that they rush out and buy.

Rarely happens.

More often, you get the opportunity to deliver your pitch at a networking meeting, or some semi social gathering.

Still rarely happens that your perfect customer is there, listening, but we are happy to be delivering a pitch perfectly in that hope.

However, most people, somewhere in their networks, will know someone who will be the perfect customer.

The question then becomes how do make the pitch sufficiently memorable, that they are able to recite it back to their networks.

Do this successfully, and you will have  a host of sales people out there pitching for you, and we all know  the most effective marketing is still person to person, word of mouth endorsement.

It comes down to being able to articulate your differentiator and value proposition, in one sentence, in simple words.

It must be memorable, simple, and describe why they should be interested beyond any apparent alternative.

In the early days of Uber, founder Travis Kalanick described Uber as “Push a button and in 5 minutes a Mercedes picks you up and takes you where you want to go”

Nothing about platforms, technology, marketplaces, or any of the other buzzwords we slip into so easily, just the benefit. More recently it has been further simplified into ‘Push a button, get a ride‘

One of my clients in Sydney, Planet Press  that I met after I was ‘constructively rude’ about a botched elevator pitch delivery has a rare differentiator. It is a medium sized printing business with a highly experienced and skilled design function, combined with digital and offset printing, a wide range of die cutting, perforating and assembly options, along with a slick distribution service, all under the one roof. How do you make that lot sufficiently memorable that someone hearing the pitch will be able to relate it to their networks?

‘Quality printed communication from under one roof’?

Perhaps not quite there yet, but closer.