Jan 15, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing
Low interest and confronting categories present problems for marketers.
It is relatively easy to generate interest in a new beer, a car, fashion item, but what about insurance, toilet cleaner, and petrol?
Typically we frame communications in the context of a problem to be solved, a tried and true method, but it means always coming at the product from a negative perspective, “you have a problem, here is the solution”. The marketing focus is on the happy smiling person who has solved their cleaning problem, the financially saved flood survivor, and the cleaner injectors in your car from “Factor X” in their petrol. The approach works well, but it often seems that the ad we end up with is a compromise, the best of a modest lot.
The marketing challenge is that the fake happy consumer depicted in the advertising always comes at the product from the point of view of the problem, and whilst it is nice to solve the problem, the context is still one of a problem, and the smile is still fake.
The better way is to concentrate on the person, rather than the problem, make the owner of the problem feel better, even happy. Change the context from the problem to the person who owns the problem, and be human in the way the problem is discussed. This great post by Barry Feldman, one of the great contemporary copywriters, demonstrates how with a collection of poop campaigns, a confronting topic we all face. Make sure you watch the video.
It takes some magic to make a boring or confronting product sufficiently fun, engaging, informative and interesting to enable a piece of communication to work, but it can be done with imagination and some marketing courage. The age of social media offers a new array of tools, but there is no substitute for being brave, and stepping beyond the boundaries of the norm.
Nov 25, 2013 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
In these times of abundance of marketing “stuff”, bloggs, video content, on line advice and templates, what we are missing is a deep intellectual understanding of the marketing process.
The tools have changed, but at its core, human behavior has not. We are still motivated by the same things our parents, and their parents were motivated by, it is just that the frills are a different color, and are in different places.
The first modern advertising man was the dodgy monk who first used Guttenberg‘s new fangled printing device to print church Indulgences, effectively forgiveness for sale, around 1439, leading to Martins Luther‘s 1517 nailing of the “95 Thesis” on the local, Beta version of facebook, the church door.
400 yeas later, enterprising newssheet vendors realised that their readers were a market that sellers of a range of products were prepared to pay to reach, and modern advertising was born, and honed by the Madmen, so beautifully exemplified by Don Draper.
Now we have all this internet stuff bombarding us day and night, and we seem to have forgotten the basic rule of communication:
The receiver has to do something with the message you send before it is communication.
The tools have changed, the drivers of behavior have not.
Nov 19, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Marketing
Advertising gets a lot of bad press, TV, radio, magazines, the backbone of advertising all last century have been supplanted by various digital platforms that accepts and places advertising, supposedly direct to a highly targeted audience, when they are looking for something.
Or do they?
Digital advertising has largely failed to live up to the hype, even while advertisers throw up to 50% of their budgets at it, and are often being at best gamed, at worst, ripped off.
Over a long period, I have found that whilst the tools of marketing have changed radically, the behaviour that drives those who use the tools, consumers, has not. This is a true now post digital, as it was when TV was the new bloke on the block.
A letter written by Bill Bernback in 1952 to the owners of Grey advertising worrying that the technicians were taking over from the “creatives” .
Great stuff.
Bill Bernbach’s contemporary David Ogilvy had a lot to say, his book “Confessions of an Advertising Man” first published in 1963 has a prominent place on my shelf. Even as the nature and mediums of advertising have changed completely, the foundations remain the same. Five of Davids “Ogilvayisms” have been put into Don Drapers mouth, and they all still hold true.
Great advertising still needs to tell a story that gets into your head somehow.
In a world bombarded by messages of all types, our visual and audio senses are grossly overworked, so how good it is on the very rare occasions when you see an ad that also engages our emotions to tell a story? This Guiness advertisement is such a piece of communication, an ad that tells a story, engages, brings a smile, and says something memorable, important about us and the brand.
As good as the Guiness ad is, I still think this Union Carbide ad for insulation is the best ad I have ever seen, and it comes from the 60’s by a company that did not survive its own stupidity.
Oct 28, 2013 | Alliance management, Communication, Management
A story on myself.
I am in the middle of a small project that requires considerable collaboration amongst people not used to collaborating. Always challenging.
In a conversation over the weekend with an old mate, wise in the ways of start-ups, he offered me a gentle shove by saying:
“Sometimes people spend huge amounts of time and energy getting their ducks in a row. Pity it does not really matter what they look like, it is what you do with the ducks that counts”.
Ouch.
What are you doing with your ducks?
Oct 21, 2013 | Communication, Governance, Lean, Operations
I had a post prepared for this morning, relating to the evolution of “local” agriculture, specifically around Sydney.
However, the events of the weekend, the burning of Sydney’s surrounding bushland, including several of the farms of those I have been talking to, seems to make everything else trivial by comparison. Getting your head around the scale of the fire disaster facing us is difficult, for most of us, most of the time, as it is no-one close to us who is affected, so can be pushed aside as we go about our business.
This morning is different.
Walk outside your comfy suburban home, and look at the sky, smell the smoke, observe the odd orange light, and you just know this is different, it is not just another Sydney summer bushfire. Hurts to wonder what may happen when summer actually gets here.
As we watch and listen to the news reports, there is a huge application of technology and human effort to managing the logistics of the fire-fighting effort, but one shot on a news report caught my attention. Behind all the activity of the control centre, the people on phones and computers, handling reports and updates, stood a big whiteboard, what appeared to be a visual record of the fires, their relative risk, resources deployed, resources expected and in reserve.
It always happens, people relate to visual material, when under pressure, a picture can immediately summarise a situation that words alone cannot, so they tend to gravitate to pictures, or a whiteboard in a large group situation, something that can be kept up to date in real time, that all people who need to see it, can see it as it evolves. The whiteboard is perhaps the best collaboration tool ever invented.
When the fires are out, the cleanup someone elses problem, and the inevitable wrangling with insurance is the news topic of the day, the lessons of visual should remain with all of us as we go about improving the way we go about achieving goals.
Our thoughts go to all those who have been impacted by the fires, ands will be over the next few days as the fires continue to ravage Sydney’s bush outskirts. Our grateful thanks for the courage, and committment of the “fireies”
Sep 2, 2013 | Communication, Management, Small business, Social Media
Digital technology has offered all of us an astounding range of opportunities to challenge and interact with our social environment, creating as we go. Gary Hamel has summarised them into a “5 C” list,:
Contribution
Connection
Creation
Choice
Challenge.
You read them, you just know the truth of it, but the next step, the really hard one, is how to harness the potential energy unleashed by these revolutions.
As a consultant to small businesses, I find no lack of energy, determination, and intelligent, informed risk taking, but I do find that the digital revolution has marched past the capabilities of many of the established businesses, and as time passes, the gap just becomes wider.
Recognising the presence of the capability gap, and finding a way to bridge it is rapidly becoming the most significant challenge faced by SME’s. Until that bridging has happened, digital is a millstone rather than a freedom, and freedom feels great!.
Go for it.
