Jun 2, 2014 | Branding, Marketing
brand destruction centre
On Friday I got another of those calls from an offshore call centre flogging a product I did not need or want. Some poor person obligingly named “Kevin” whose first language was not English, scrolling through a prepared screed that bore no relationship to the situation he found himself in talking to me.
What a waste of everyone’s time, and money.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of blogs, learned papers, and stories demonstrating clearly the power of social media, all being ignored by the enterprise stumping up the cash to make the useless, brand destroying phone call.
Why is it that the outsourced marketing unit called a “call centre” still uses C20 technology to waste my time when there are plenty of opportunities to pick up information about me on the various social C21 platforms I inhabit?
Why is it unreasonable to expect that the investment made in these centres would be better spent on some activity that did not piss off 99% of those unfortunate enough to answer the phone?
The available technology easily supports the scraping of social media to build a profile of individuals that can then be targeted with a message that at least has a better chance of being welcome than an annoying phone call from a “Kevin from Mumbai” who is simply reading a script that bears no relation to the circumstances of the callee.
Turn your Call centre into a Social centre, and I bet the results will improve.
May 29, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
http://tomfishburne.com/?s=word+of+mouth&x=0&y=0
This morning a friend was telling me about a product he had used recently, and how it changed his life. Well, made a small piece of it better at least.
Next time I am looking for a product in that category, I will try it. Very little to lose even if I do not share the enthusiasm, and I value my friends opinion.
Word of mouth marketing.
Free marketing for the product supplier, right?
Consider how much effort went into making the product right, managing and optimising the value chain, in creating the programs that engaged and made an advocate of my friend, and gave him the stories to pass on to me.
Word of mouth is very effective, the most effective form of marketing we humans have ever seen, and on the surface it is free, but beneath the surface, there is frantic paddling going on.
Word of mouth marketing works but is not free, it is earned.
May 27, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Strategy
‘Rich red Fountain Tomato sauce”
Fountain Tomato Sauce used to be the market leader in NSW, daylight was second and third. This was a long time ago, and responsibility for the Fountain brand was my first real job as a product manager who had real accountability, and the power to make lasting brand and resource allocation decisions.
I walked into the job just as Franklins (remember them) launched a “No Frills” tomato sauce, at 0.69c on shelf against the 0.73 for Fountain. Our volumes immediately took a huge hit.
I still remember the details, and the near panic that ensued.
“No Frills” was the first real housebrand of the type that 25 years later would play a role in the demise of the Australian food processing industry.
The immediate instinct was to drop the price of Fountain, and compete aggressively, certainly that is what the sales people insisted on, but we took a different tack.
We increased the price, to 0.81c, improved the product a fraction by adding a few percentage points more of tomato paste, and advertised, giving consumers a reason to pay the extra. When it was just 3 cents, chances were the products were pretty similar, but when the difference was 0.12 cents, consumers recognised they were not the same, both might be tomato sauce, but they were not the same, and they had to make a conscious choice.
We set about telling people why Fountain cost more, and why it was a great choice over the “cheapie” delivering real value to them and their families, and they paid the extra, willingly. Our sales went up, margins were up, the MD was very happy, and I was over the moon.
Point was, we gave consumers a reason to buy Fountain, we told a story, entertained, informed, it was a significant premium, but not one that would break any budget, and the product was better, much better, and consumers felt better buying it and having it on their table.
“Rich Red Fountain Tomato Sauce, Australia’s finest red”.
Wish Youtube was around then, and I had copies of the radio ads, they are still the ads I am most proud of over a long marketing career, with many successful ad campaigns.
May 22, 2014 | Change, Governance, Marketing, Small business
The future prediction business has so far failed to find a sustainable business model, apart from the fun stuff in the tent with the funny lady with the cards and crystal ball.
About the only serious people who still profess to be able to predict the future with any accuracy are politicians, and we all know how that usually turns out. The rest of us set about controlling what we can control, and preparing for the unexpected from the things we cannot.
By contrast, with some effort, staying on the leading edge is possible for all enterprises. Information is now so freely available, and consulting services whose stock in trade is “leading edge” whatever you want, so ubiquitous, you can stay in front of most if not all of your competition, and be aware of changes occurring so you are in the best position to leverage them.
Small and medium sized companies are best placed in this game of staying current, should they be prepared to make the commitment to do so.
Smaller companies can try stuff out, see if it adds value, and deploy in the time that their larger competitors take to organise the conference call to test if there may be a good idea in here somewhere. The only hurdle is that it does consume scarce resources, but when you see that consumption as an investment, the payoff can be huge.
In the marketing space, my hometown, the cost of testing has fallen so dramatically over the last decade that there is no longer any valid excuse not to be testing extensively.
So get on with it, apart from being strategically and competitively sensible, being at the front is where the fun is.
May 20, 2014 | Change, Communication, Leadership, Marketing, Small business
“Serendipity” . Luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for. Websters Dictionary.
My old Dad used to say “Son, the harder I work, the luckier I get” and it has usually worked out that way.
It follows then that if you combine the definition of Serendipity and Dads old chestnut, Serendipity can be managed.
How you ask!
- Recognise that Serendipity is a state of mind rather than a quantitative outcome, and should be managed that way.
- It requires a management culture that has everyone working together, “alignment of strategy and activity” as a popular management article would probably purr. A utopian notion, but doable.
- Ensure there is “spare” time allocated to staff to pursue ideas, contribute to collaborative activities, and look for improvements. Personnel whose performance measures are quantitative box ticking exercises are unlikely to risk compromising their KPI’s by allocating time to potentially serendipitous pursuits.
- Provide the forums for casual and social interaction. This can be done in all sorts of ways from the way the offices are designed to organising staff picnics.
- Encourage the behaviours you are seeking by publicly recognising it when it happens. Financial and organisational rewards are of little value, but is the social rewards that really count.
- Trust and respect are critical components of productive collaboration. Neither can allocated, both need to be earned. “Ideo“, the creative agency has it nailed, one of their core values is “Make others successful”. When everyone works to make others successful, trust and respect follow, and the culture tends to expel anyone who does not work with that culture and its behaviours.
The great benefit if success in these endeavours is that it will make your place a great place to work, and that ends up attracting the best talent, attracting interesting, challenging and rewarding customers, and making good money. A virtuous circle.
That’s how.
May 19, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business
Imagehaven, Innovation by design
On several occasions last week I found myself frustrated that I could not find a piece of information I needed on a website, I knew it had to be there somewhere, it is just that someone had effectively if inadvertently hidden it. GGGRRRRR
Over the years I have asked many people, individually and in audiences, what for them constitutes the perfect website.
There have been many answers, but there are always three that recur almost every time:
- Simple, clear, and quick to navigate.
- The information needed is on the site.
- We know what to do next.
How easy is that?, yet how often do we find ourselves searching a site, getting frustrated before we move onto the next likely one in the search list.
Usually it appears that the confusion and clutter comes from a few common sources. Designers try and put all the information up front, rather than creating a hierarchy of information that reflects the way people search, they let their “designer” genes run riot with the result that there is simply too much “design”, or that the original design has been added to over time like a house that goes through a series of renovations and extensions and ends up just being a collection of rooms.
It is really just a question of thought being put into the design. The combination of white space, written information, graphics, and calls to action (CTA). There are many “rules” of design around, this article by Zoe Sadokierski from UTS offers some of the perspective of history, that can be usefully applied to website design, but a bit of common sense goes a long way.
Next time you set out to design a site, consider these three simple rules, or you could just call the gurus at Imagehaven.
