Life Style Study Finds Mother's Day Not Fave Holiday
Most Americans will do something to celebrate Mother's Day. Whether it be buying flowers, sending a greeting card, calling her on the phone or serving her breakfast in bed, children young and old will mark the occasion and take a moment to thank Mom for all she does.
A recent DDB Life Style Study survey revealed, however, that while mothers across the country appreciate the attention and love their families bestow on this occasion, Mother's Day is not, in fact, their favorite holiday. Only 2% of moms cite Mother's Day as their favorite holiday. Sixty-one percent of moms cite Christmas as their favorite, and Thanksgiving is next for 21% of moms.
Despite this, the study finds that most moms genuinely enjoy spending time with their children and even admit that they love their kids more than their spouses.
This doesn't mean that we should let Mother's Day go unmarked or unnoticed. But it is clear that most mothers love their children and their role as moms, regardless of what happens on Mother's Day. The study indicates that 95% of moms enjoy spending time with their children, and 88% say that raising a child brings them a lot of happiness. Only 9% of mothers find parenthood to be a real burden.
For most mothers, their relationship with their children is their top priority. Seventy-six percent of working mothers say they would dial back their careers if they felt it was negatively impacting their parenting, and more than 50% claim they would not even miss one event that was important to their kids because of a work obligation. Perhaps most surprising, 75% of mothers admit they love their kids more than their spouses.
According to the DDB Life Style Study data, mothers put a lot of effort and love into nurturing their children and cultivating the experiences that their families share. Family traditions are very important to 88% of mothers, and an equal number say they seek out ways to create lasting memories with their families.
What is also readily apparent in the study is that mothers are highly successful when it comes to fostering a loving and lasting relationship with their daughters and sons. Among adult men and women, 81% feel "extremely close" or "close" to their mothers. Only 5% describe their relationship with their mother as strained or worse (e.g., they are not on speaking terms). In fact, adults feel closer to their mothers than their fathers, with 43% saying they are closer to their mother than their father, and only 13% saying they are closer to their father than their mother.
This feeling of closeness that more people have towards their mothers might explain why we are more likely to see "MOM" tattoos than "DAD" tattoos. And it is probably also why we can more easily remember times of trouble when we thought or said aloud, "I want my mommy.
The Party Has Just Begun: DDB Mudra & the APAC Region
Chuck Brymer, CEO of DDB Worldwide, was recently interviewed in IMPACT Magazine on how DDB is shifting its focus to the APAC region in a significant way and how India is expected to play a critcal part in DDB's APAC agenda. DDB took a major step in India last year when it completed the 51% take-over a Mudra Communications, rebranding it as DDB Mudra Group. DDB is confident that its return on investment will come in the form of creative client work and clients' subsequent successful communications. It is imperative to ensure that DDB's creative standards are the same across markets, so establishing a creative culture in Mudra is requisite.
See below for excerpts from Chuck's interview with Malay Desai:
Q: Tell us about your plans for India and the role it should play in DDB's overall agenda?
A: To me, the Indian marketplace is not an emerging market, it is here and now. We are making plans for today and tomorrow. We believe strongly that India will continue to grow and it will be a focus area for our clients, as they look to expand. The scale in this country will provide opportunities for our clients and we would be in the driver's seat with them, leading the charge creatively. Doing that means we need to have the right people and the right tools. Our vision continues to be focused on creativity; therefore, we want the best creative talent but we want that talent put together in an integrated fashion.
If you observe the DDB Mudra Group today, it represents not only advertising but through-the-line communication, which is similar to DDB. Our vision remains on doing great work, which manifests into success solutions for clients. We do so by coming up with insights in a powerful way that influence and persuade people, and we do it with different media.
Q: Do you think the agency is doing its best to derive maximum value out of the range of services you offer?
A: It's consistent that our clients are looking for integrated, through-the-line communication and we are able to bring that to the table. We house strong digital capability, shopper marketing and so on, and it is the ability to bring the best in each of these areas that makes us a strong brand. We will continue to look at digital services more closely, but we offer a holistic approach to our clients.
Q: Internet users in India crossed the 100-million mark last year. What do you think about the way digital advertising is shaping up in India?
A: It's opening wide up. Digital penetration will continue to grow with the importance of digital solutions. But I must say the word digital is confusing. What do you mean by digital? Is it social? TV has become digital. Does something that has the power to go global, mean digital? It is important for any campaign we develop that we are not just thinking about the media by which we are going to engage consumers. We can engage on TV, but our ability to engage through other channels creates a stronger opportunity for us. We have been working on those lines.
In the past, if I sent you a message on my car, you would go and tell someone about it. But the speed with which Internet travels, it can influence thousands of millions of people at one go. It starts with you and ends with you. Internet needs to connect to people as much as it connects to my brand. Historically, I want to tell you about my car and also want to reach out to your peer and then go through your social network that works and it's fantastic because my returns are much greater. My efficiency is much greater and my engagement factor with that brand is much greater. From that point of view, I don't see how a number can be attributed to a digital platform. I can't figure it out because if you see how much you are digital, that's included in what people think is digital. We don't operate that way with the work we do, which is integrated. In many cases, there is no television buy or radio buy, it's an event, an activity and an online program.
The way we position DDB is to refer to social creativity. We want work that people want to share and want to be engaged with. Social creativity is the driving position behind the work we do. Now that could be television. In the US for example, there is a show called American Idol, which here is 'Indian Idol', where people call in and are engaged with the product and the content that they see on it. That is creativity. That is the work people are sharing and engaging with, so it doesn't need to be all online. There are ideas that we come up for our clients. We bring that kind of engagement and that's what we need to do.
Q: You have been quoted on the importance of the right creative culture. How do you ensure that you have this culture across all your offices?
A: It starts with establishing a value system in the company and systems are based on two key principles. The first is creativity. To work at DDB, you must be creative. Whether it is a planner, digital specialist, an accounts person, IT or a creative person, we want the very best creative talent in our organization. Creativity is the pedigree and legacy of this organization. The second value is very important and that is humanity. Creativity and humanity are the two values we look for in all our offices. We want people who are collaborative. We want people whose egos are secondary to that of DDB's values. We want people who work well with other people. We expect our people to work together and be entrepreneurial in terms of creating work collaboratively. Equally, you could be a very nice person but if you are not a good creative, you don't fit. You have to have all those values in our organization to succeed and that culture is followed in all our offices.
Q: What are advertisers in India looking for?
A: Most clients are looking for communication that would enable them to strengthen their brand equity and grow their business. If you know your equity, then you are providing long term value to the organization. The combination of strengthening a brand and creating a leadership position for that brand generates sustainable differentiation. Globally, clients look for this and India is no different. Two years ago, I was sitting in the office with a client and we were getting into a sophisticated discussion about segmentation and he said he wanted DDB to sell more stuff - I have never forgotten that. Not much has changed since, even today, clients are looking for the same thing.
Q: There have been conversations of slowdown in the industry, affecting some markets including the likes of India and China. Is DDB experiencing something of the nature too?
A: The world is moving at different speeds. Some markets, particularly in Asia, are moving faster. We have seen higher growth rates. As a consequence, our clients are becoming more active in those markets to capture that growth and India is amongst those markets.
Data, and its sister, analytics, are the new sexy in advertising and marketing. Every agency and company now has an in- house data and analytics practice. It is blasphemy even to think of making any business move without the aid of sifting through mounds of data, given its ability to lead to better (more accurate) decision-making.
In today's technologically-advanced environment, the ability to capture and report data is much more accessible. With increased data-processing capabilities, we can build more complex models that can churn out more complex data. Both descriptive and predictive analytics can now do an exceptional job of uncovering the answers to "who, what, where, when, how and why."
So, with all of this data at our fingertips, you would also expect that we are becoming smarter, more efficient, and productive marketers. Perhaps in some instances this is true, but in many cases we have yet to optimize a data-driven creative process. We are overflowing with data, but there is a critical missing link.
What's missing is the optimized ability to identify insights from data. What's missing even more is the role of "creative" in this process. The very notion of inserting a creative person into the research process probably would send the greatest scientists, strategists, engineers and doctorates running. The commonly held view is: "to ensure the purity of data collection and unbiased analysis, this is where art and science shouldn't mix."
In fact, at the data-mining stage in the research process, we are just trying to uncover the facts. However, by introducing a creative into the process earlier, we are more likely to capture data that truly leads to insight. The ability to glean insight from data is where the art must take precedence over the science. Insight is necessary to make data meaningful and inform/inspire strategy and creative development.
In marketing, insight is now king. Insights, with their potential to inspire more conceptual design and creative, are what ultimately motivate consumer behavior. The critical question of how a consumer or shopper will respond or how an event will unfold in the future remains the role of insight. Insights can be used to guide merchandising decisions, drive brand relevance and help a brand differentiate itself within the category.
The creative challenge in shopper marketing is the ability to integrate multiple insights. The ecosystem of shopper marketing requires a blending of consumer, shopper, retailer, and cultural insights to form a differentiated strategic direction that will guide creative development.
As data from multiple sources is synchronized (say from the point-of-sale terminals, credit cards, loyalty cards)--the analysis of integrated data get us closer to a holistic view of the shopper. Who better to own this job than the creative team partnered with the research and strategy team? Today, it is our creatives who most deeply need to understand every aspect of the consumer/shopper at all moments of potential purchase and usage of brands.
DDB Life Style Study® Reveals Consumers Not as Green as Seem
April 22nd, 2012 marks the 42nd annual Earth Day, a day devoted to increasing environmental awareness and inspiring more sustainable attitudes toward conserving the planet. Yet, while there is a pervasive trend of consumers espousing "green" attitudes and holding companies to higher standards, the DDB Life Style Study® reveals that the majority of Americans are unwilling to stand up for these beliefs if it means negatively affecting their wallets, time, or quality of life.
Overall, the biggest revelation was that a mere 36% of Americans agree that they would be willing to accept a lower standard of living to conserve energy. This statement is particularly disconcerting, as this value has depreciated a full 24 percentage points from a high of 60% agreeing to accept a lower standard of living to conserve energy back in 1980, a time that was far less impassioned about environmental sustainability.
When surveyed on the topic, less than half of all Americans agree that they would pay more for an environmentally safe version of a product or make a special effort to buy from businesses that are environmentally conscious.
This unwillingness to make individual sacrifices might be explained by a belief that all companies should shoulder the costs associated with producing "greener" products and behave in a more environmentally responsible manner.
On the brighter side, a majority of Americans are actively doing their part to engage in behaviors that are good for the environment. More than 60% of Americans agree that they make a strong effort to recycle everything they possibly can and state that they always separate the recyclables from the rest of the trash. Moreover, more than half of Americans claim to use a refillable water bottle and use recyclable grocery bags as much as possible.
DDB suspects that there is greater participation when it comes to the aforementioned "green" behaviors because it is relatively easy to do them. The prevalence of recycling programs in most communities, and the broad availability of reusable water bottles and bags, enable people to do the right thing. However, the fact remains that people's sustainable practices prescribe to a moral relativism whereby they are sustainable up to a point, until it becomes inconvenient or inopportune to do so.
The DDB's Life Style Study® is the nation's largest and longest-running annual consumer survey. It was fielded in the fall of 2011 with 7,608 consumers nationwide.
DDB Life Style Study® Reveals Nature of Tax Cheats
In the midst of tax season and intensified political campaigning, news headlines are dominated by contentious and partisan issues surrounding income taxes--who is responsible for what percentage, whether the rates are justified, and if the tax code should be revisited. No matter how much most Americans complain about the burden of taxes, the majority of Americans claim honesty when it comes to filing their taxes. A recent DDB Life Style Study survey uncovered that while only 7% of Americans concede that they are likely to cheat on their taxes, the "tax cheats" share some disconcerting overall characteristics.
Demographically, the biggest difference between cheats and noncheats this year is still gender. Of admitted cheats, 72% are men. While 55% of tax cheats are under 45, somewhat surprisingly there are no other significant demographic differences between cheats and noncheats.
Based on the data from the DDB Life Style Study, the dishonesty that characterizes those who are tax cheats is, however, evident across many other chronic wanton behaviors, illustrating a skewed moral compass and an inflated sense of entitlement. For example, tax cheats are more likely than noncheats to keep the wrong change given to them by a cashier, take money from their child's piggy bank that they don't intend to return, and value their own happiness over that of others.
The behavioral patterns of those who evade their taxes illustrate that tax cheats also have an inflated sense of entitlement compared to those who dutifully obey the law and pay their taxes in full. Tax cheats are more likely to consider themselves as 'better' and 'more attractive' than most people, and tend to value their own happiness ahead of others including their own children.
Tax cheats are more likely than their noncheating counterparts to engage in dishonest or unethical behavior such as:
The article delineates five obstacles marketers face and then poses a solution to these problems. Below are some snippets from the piece:
Problem 1: Prominent Branding Puts Off Viewers Solution 1: Utilize "brand pulsing" that unobtrusively weaves the brand image throughout the ad
Experiments have shown that this can increase viewership by as much as 20%. A good question to ask when conceiving an ad is: If I removed the brand image, would the content still be intrinsically interesting? If the answer is yes, viewers are more likely to keep watching.
Problem 2: People Get Bored Right Away Solution 2: Create joy or surprise right away
To maximize viewership, it's important to generate at least one of these responses early on. Traditionally, though, advertisers have constructed narratives that escalate toward a dramatic climax or a surprise ending. Such commercials may have worked on TV decades ago, but today's online viewers need to be hooked in the opening seconds.
DDB's Bud Light "Swear Jar" ad opens up a jar that workers must pay into as a penalty for profanity, one employee immediately curses because he knows the money will be used to buy Bud Light.
Problem 3: People Watch for a While But Then Stop Solution 3: Build an emotional roller coaster
Ads that produce stable emotional states generally aren't as effective at engaging viewers for very long. Viewers are more likely to continue watching a video ad if they experience emotional ups and downs.
The "Swear Jar" video makes skillful use of the roller coaster technique. The opening scene, which sets up the ad's conceit, lasts just 15 seconds. The remainder of the 60-second spot consists of seven scenes with bleeped-out profanities, each conveying its own surprise and humor. By delivering a fresh dose of these elements every six seconds or so, the ad holds on to its viewers.
Problem 4: People Like an Ad but Won't Share It Solution 4: Surprise but don't shock
Even though people may enjoy an ad themselves, they won't always send it to others. In particular, though shock may get people to watch an ad privately, it often works against their desire to share the spot.
DDB's Bud Light "Clothing Drive" ad uses the same cast, setting, and general structure as "Swear Jar." Here, an office worker tries to create enthusiasm for a charity drive by offering a Bud Light for every article of used clothing donated. The characters respond by removing clothes they're wearing, and the scenes that ensue contain increasing amounts of nudity. Like "Swear Jar," "Clothing Drive" garnered high viewership. But unlike "Swear Jar," it was not widely shared. The nudity was too shocking.
Problem 5: People Still Won't Share the Ad Solution 5: Target the viewers who will
Even when an ad has been perfectly tailored to go viral, only a subset of those who watch it will share it. Research shows, whether or not an ad is shared depends as much on personality types of viewers as on the ad itself. There are two attributes of people who frequently share ads: Extroversion and egocentricity. In many cases, egocentric people are inclined to share because they are looking to increase their social status.
As viewers gain increasing control over which ads they sit through, advertisers will have to become more consumer-centric. They'll need to think harder about the value a video offers to the viewer, instead of considering primarily how well the video serves the brand. The result will be ads that are both more effective and more enjoyable.
Who needs stores anymore when you can get exactly what you need, at the cheapest price, with a flexible return policy, delivered right to your front door? Or, delivered to your office--if you are trying to avoid conspicuous consumption on the home front.
The answer to this rhetorical question resides in the future transformation of the retail experience. This is not just an issue brought on by the emergence and success (finally!) of online retail. Retail as we knew it has been in decline for the better part of this decade. A large factor of that has to do with the steady decline of the in-store experience and customer service. Even if there were no good alternative, the industry is in a state of flux, pain, identity crisis (add your own description here).
Compounded by the economy and online alternatives, retailers have been able to hide behind external factors and pressures to place blame and explain their loss in sales, foot traffic, and affinity with the shopper. Asked if there is a future for physical retail--even decades from now--most people would agree that there remains a vital need. But we have lost sight of both the "vital" and the "need" that retail serves.
To get a clue of what might drive "vital" and fill a consumer need in this changing marketplace, let's look at retail moving in the opposite direction. An example of this is when a store opened to sell mobile apps. Where else but in Boulder, Colorado, app developer Openspace opened a brick-and-mortar location to help consumers browse through app collections while an "app guru" is on hand to offer suggestions and advice based on your interests and needs. Just as almost every retailer has now figured out that it needs some kind of online presence, so too are the e-commerce companies discovering the value of living in the physical world.
This Openspace example is particularly interesting because it points to a critical component missing from the majority of retail today, a customer service "guru." At the center of many abandoned purchases is the lack of sales associates or associates who are there for customer service. By contrast, the Openspace store experience is designated with this guru experience at the heart. It is part of its mission and seems to get an important insight: that the beauty and benefit of a physical location is to address online barriers to purchase.
Its purpose and value come from the ability to have a live person present to interact with the customer and personalize the sales experience in real time. Wow, has this been lost from most of today's shopping experiences! Whether shopping a low- involvement category or for a higher-involvement product like a television, the involvement of a sales associate is most often absent.
Whether shopping luxury or discount, the lack of positive human interaction is now the norm. What's worse, our expectations have shifted accordingly, leaving a generation of shoppers vulnerable to the benefits of online. Nothing threatens the livelihood and survival of physical retail more than this. In fact, those retailers who have reduced the number of associates to save cost are paying dearly.
So, does retail best-practice mean stores are filled with gurus, geeks and geniuses? We are certainly discovering, when deployed correctly, this can be a critical ingredient for going from barely surviving to thriving. But the role of these types of turbo-charged customer-service people and how it fits with the overall brand proposition is key.
The DDB Life Style Study®, the nation's largest and longest-running annual consumer survey, has revealed insights on the differences between men and women's perspectives about the significance of Valentine's Day.
When asked 'what would upset you more on Valentine's Day? from a list of choices ranging from receiving a gift you didn't like, receiving the same gift as last year, receiving a gift card, or receiving just a card, women were far more likely than men to say they would be upset if their spouse or romantic partner did not do anything to acknowledge the day. Women were almost twice as likely to dwell on this as 51% of female respondents said they would be dismayed compared to only 26% of male respondents.
Moreover, the Life Style Study® reveals that this gender difference in attitude also prevails regardless of marital or dating status. However, it appears that if you are married, acknowledging the day is not nearly as tantamount as it is if you are dating someone.
22% of married men vs. 32% of men living with someone in a relationship vs. 39% of men dating somebody but not living with them would be upset if their partner did not acknowledge the day at all.
47% of married women vs. 63% of women living with someone in a relationship vs. 66% of women dating somebody but not living with them would be upset if their partner did not acknowledge the day at all.
These statistics not only corroborate the finding that women place a greater emphasis on the significance of acknowledging Valentine's day than men, but also that both genders view acknowledging the day as an important barometer of how their romantic partner feels about them. Therefore, people in committed, long-term relationships view the holiday differently than those in newer, more casual relationships.
The Life Style Study® also confirms that a similar sentiment holds true even for women who are not currently dating someone. 51% of non-dating women vs. 28% of non-dating men still feel that they would be upset if their future spouse or romantic partner didn't do anything to acknowledge the day.
"I actually feel like I'm part of a bigger thing when I'm playing."
-Gamer respondent
I'm back from the sixth annual Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games in Madrid, and the trip was amazing. The conference was packed with so many great presenters, and I left feeling delightfully bewildered and intellectually stimulated. The three days of presentations found us in an old slaughterhouse that has since been turned into the beautiful home of INTERMEDIÆ, and at the Medialab-Prado.
This year's meeting of the conference focused on what it means to be a videogame player, and there was no shortage of great ideas. The members of the conference were incredibly kind and receptive to my argument, so my paper, entitled "Believe and Be Live: Entangled Experience in Halo," which focuses on the cultural implications of the digital revolution, will only need marginal revisions.
Besides the exceptionally helpful feedback I received on my own work, the greatest takeaway was a keynote delivered by Dr. Gordon Calleja, an Associate Professor at IT University of Copenhagen. In his presentation, Gordon detailed the backbone of his new book In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation, in which he develops a theory of why games grab hold of us in such an interactive and all encompassing way. Gordon's work is very approachable, and has a lot to offer any advertiser involved in developing interactive content. I'd recommend that anyone interested pick up a copy of his book ASAP. Mine is already in the mail!
Social media is undeniably a hot topic in marketing. Yet, with all of the interest and activity, there are amazingly few standout examples to draw on and learn from. This is because social media gets tangled up in the technology when its essence is in human behavior. It has so quickly become a part of our society because it has recognized the fact that people love to share.
Through the centuries, anywhere people gathered, they shared ideas, opinions, and beliefs. Now the Internet and social media allow us to share more, more often, to more people, and at faster speeds than ever before.
All of this and more are explored in a new DDB Yellow Paper called We Love to Share: Social Media Means Business. It covers how social media mirrors (mostly) normal human behavior and how trust and influence are both primal and primary factors in social media marketing success. The paper features five interesting cases that demonstrate the theory through practical application. And it provides a framework on how to implement social media marketing efforts.
To be sure, these efforts require creativity and innovation. And this means experimentation. We hope that this paper will provide tangible guidance but at the end of the day, social media marketing demands that you be bold and take some chances.
You've just spent the past six hours killing dragons and zombies with spells and enchanted swords. Now it's time to do the laundry. We all know that videogames have swiftly become an incredibly important part of our media landscape. These digital media allow us to visit places without walking out the door, and to experience things that don't exist offline. The potential of this medium seems boundless. But as advertisers and cultural critics, it is very hard to know what to make of games. They are frustratingly difficult to define, pin down, and relate to other, more familiar media. Videogames are simultaneously movies, puzzles, narratives, and above all else, they are interactive. Despite all of this complexity, we do know one thing. Videogames games are incredibly important to their players. Don't believe me, than just watch this (head to 1:15 to see the carnage). Convinced? Thought so.
As advertisers, we should care about games a great deal. Not only because they are lucrative, not only because they have exceptionally high rates of engagement, and not only because they a relevant to their players, but because videogames, along with many digital technologies, are changing what counts as real. Take this example, in which gamers helped some scientists in the fight against AIDS. Seriously crazy stuff, that shows how much games can matter, how real they can be.
In a few days, I'll be shipping off to Madrid for the sixth annual Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games. This year, the conference will address what it means to be a videogame player. I will be presenting a paper there entitled Believe and Be Live: Entangled Experience in Halo. The paper jumps off from this ad campaign, and focuses on what happens when the experiences of playing a game become entwined with real world experiences, challenging the idea that experience in the digital world isn't as important as experience in the real world.
Intel Corporation recently premiered its new, streamlined, YouTube channel platform on www.YouTube.com/Intel in which videos encourage visitors to experience Intel products and events, and to discuss the brand. Featured video reviews let the consumer see new products through the lens of a real consumer.
Intel, Tribal DDB and Google developed the global video strategy to organize Intel's global YouTube presence into a fully customized, branded interface that considers overall structure, content organization and governance. Moreover, this implementation illustrates Intel's new leadership role on YouTube and in the social media and digital space.
Matthew Nelson, Director of Social Strategy at Tribal DDB San Fancisco emphasized the necessity of helping Intel consolidate a scattered, visually inconsistent, global YouTube presence into a fully customized interface. With the objectives of housing all Intel's video content and simplifying the consumers' ability to discover and share videos of interest, Tribal DDB re-architected Intel's content hierarchy to create a consistently branded user experience.
The new channel layout, navigation and functionality are primarily focused on consumer experience and streamlining the processes of discovering, consuming and sharing content of interest. Specifically, Intel's new YouTube presence features simplified navigation, the capability to play select, user-generated content, promotion of in-market campaigns, and an integration of Intel's master-brand Facebook and Twitter feeds.
Speaking on behalf of Intel, Ekaterina Walkter, Social Media Strategist explained,"For a brand, a united clear presence on any network is critical. Moreover, it is important to have a global strategy and direction that the company can follow as it engages with its customers on that particular network. The benefits include increased organic discoverability, better content creation and optimization, more options to share videos across your network, and integrated social presence across multiple networks."
Intel stands to significantly alter the perception of its brand by exemplifying an online presence that exhibits content organization strategy, technical implementation and a governance plan. Tribal DDB looks forward to continuing to work with Intel to evolve its YouTube presence, positioning it as a leader in the social media space.
Les Binet and Sarah Carter get a little bit angry about some of the nonsense they hear around them... like the idea that brainstorming works.
You may not have heard of Alex Osborn, one of the 1950's Mad Men . But you will almost certainly have taken part in something which he has bequeathed to the world of marketing and advertising. For it is Mr Osborne who is attributed with originating the business use of the term and technique of "brainstorming". Frustrated by the way that typical group decision making processes in his opinion tended to inhibit rather than encourage creative thinking, he argued that this new technique increased both the quality and quantity of ideas generated. With its "rules" of no censoring of ideas, quantity over quality and an informal, fun atmosphere, the brainstorm was supposed to unleash the creative in all of us. Many Post-It notes and hours holed up in hotel conference rooms later, the technique in one guise or another lives on today.
But does "brainstorming actually work?". We both must have spent hundreds of hours in these sessions over the years, but we can honestly not recall a single great idea that emanated from all that expensively choreographed management time. And, in fact, it seems we are right. Academic research over the years has demonstrated unequivocally that brainstorming groups produce fewer and poorer quality ideas than the same number of individuals working alone. You are much more likely to come up with a great idea in your bath than in a Holiday Inn meeting room.
Research shows that there are a number of powerful psychological processes at work which together severely limit the effectiveness of brainstorming; "Social Loafing" whereby the group situation encourages and allows individuals to slack off, "Evaluation Apprehension" where we are nervous of being judged by our colleagues or looking stupid, and "Production Blocking," the idea that because only one person can speak at a time in a group, others can forget or reject their ideas while they have to wait. We are also learning more and more about the power of our "herd" tendencies. As humans we have strong innate desires to conform to others with only the slightest encouragement. When asked to think creatively, these implicit norms are invisible, but extremely powerful shackles on our ability to think differently. No wonder not many ideas come out of those hours of well intentioned brainstorming.
So why on earth do people keep doing these brainstorms? Even if they are not aware if the damning research on their effectiveness, the lack of good creative ideas emanating from them should be pretty obvious to everyone. The answer is probably that holding a brainstorm is fulfilling other, largely unarticulated needs which, in some sense, compensate for the lack of creativity- time out of the office maybe? A chance to do some team bonding? And getting a brainstorm in the diary can feel like something very tangible is being done to tackle a tricky issue.
Luckily there is also useful research which points to ways in which we can make brainstorming sessions more productive. Experiments using electronic brainstorming found that when people typed their ideas online at the same time as seeing other people's ideas displayed, more and higher quality ideas were generated. This neatly got round those psychological processes blocking effectiveness of the face to face session. So here it seems are some clues as to how to offer the best of both worlds. If you want a face to face brainstorm to work, ask people to come up with and list ideas on their own in the bath or wherever before coming to the session. And monitor the number of ideas produced by each person. Then use the group to evaluate the ideas generated - because psychological research does show that whilst groups may not be great at coming up with ideas ,they are very good at evaluation of these ideas.
My dictionary describes a brainstorm as "a sudden disturbance of the mind!" If you want your experience of them to be a bit more positive than this, then hopefully you now have some research evidence to help.
Les Binet and Sarah Carter get a little bit angry about some of the nonsense they hear around them... like the idea that brands have life cycles.
Recently, we found ourselves talking to a group of institutional investors about the effects of advertising spend on the bottom line. At the end of our presentation, one of them asked a question. Yes, he understood the need for marketing support when launching a brand, but surely it is less important in the later stages of the brand life cycle?
Grrr... Brands do not have "life cycles". This myth of the brand life cycle is a dangerous and destructive one that regularly damages the interests of brand owners and investors like our City friend.
Products certainly do have life cycles. The iPhone 3G was "hot" two years ago, but the market has moved on. Rival smartphones like Google Nexus or Apple's own iPhone 4 have appeared. No-one expects the old 3G be around much longer.
And product categories as a whole can have life cycles too. Type-writers, fax machines, cassette players... all made obsolete by the relentless march of technology.
But brands are quite different from products. A brand is a collective mental construct - a network of shared feelings and associations. Those associations can change over time, and attach themselves to an array of different products. So actually there is no inherent reason why a brand should have a fixed shelf life at all. Many of today's top grocery brands (Heinz, Kelloggs, Hovis ) are centenarians.
There are two keys to brand longevity. The brand must receive sustained marketing support.. Andrex for example has benefited from years of nurturing by its puppy advertising.
And then it must evolve and grow to reflect changing market conditions. As an extreme example, Nokia famously started life in 1865 as Swedish wood pulp company. Well-managed brands can often last longer than the companies that own them - Dulux has outlived ICI for example.
Of course, as with biological evolution, extinctions do occur. Market conditions can change suddenly, leaving all brands in a category in a vulnerable position. But sadly, poor management is much more frequently the culprit. If there is a "life cycle," it's a brand management cycle.
In the first exciting phase of this cycle, the brand is launched with strong marketing support. All graphs are trending upwards, effects of marketing are easy to see, and budgets are easy to justify.
But however well managed, eventually sales will plateau for a while. This is phase two. Marketing is still working, but now its job is to maintain the brand's hard-earned market share and defend it against competitive threats. Unfortunately, this maintenance job is nowhere near as sexy as phase one, so tends to get less management attention. Furthermore, the effects of marketing are harder to see, so sooner or later budgets come under attack. And that leads to phase three.
Here, cuts in the marketing budget cause sales to decline. Brand owners then panic and try to restore volumes with price promotions. These deliver short term sales, but damage brand image and worsen the long term sales decline. This makes marketing expenditure even harder to justify, leading to a vicious circle of budget cuts and plummeting sales. The brand often just withers away.
The term "brand life cycle" makes all this seem inevitable. Indeed, this disastrous cycle of poor management even gained a kind of respectability through the enthusiastic adoption by marketers of the famous Boston Matrix (whereby analysis identified "cash cows" which generated funds to put behind "stars"). But the matrix was meant to be applied to categories-not brands. The result? Labeling a brand a" cash cow" was the first step to an inevitable lingering death.
Recessions are a dangerous time for brands - they're one of those periods when "mass extinctions" tend to occur. But by debunking the myth of the brand life cycle, we can at least avoid making things worse. Just remember; death is optional for brands - if unfortunately not for the rest of us.
The marketing world has finally discovered that honest and valuable content makes a difference in interacting with consumers. Not surprisingly, marketers had to name and define this activity. It is referred to as "Content Marketing" and definitions abound but it is meant encompasses all marketing formats involving the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumers.
The intent is to provide high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers to drive brand awareness, consideration, and purchase. Content Marketing can take many forms such as custom magazines, print or online newsletters, digital content, websites or microsites, white papers, webcasts and webinars, podcasts, roadshows, roundtables, interactive online, e-mail, and events.
The big difference between Content Marketing and historic or traditional marketing is that it shares proprietary information with specific audiences. If the content is not valuable, relevant, and tailored - it is the equivalent of a mass-market sales brochure.
I have practiced Content Marketing for two decades. I recognized early on that marketing had to be focused and specific, that it had to provide something that captured attention, that gave people information they could use to change their behavior and make informed decisions. Content Marketing is premised on the belief that educating the customer and engaging them in dialogue results in the brand's recognition as a thought leader, expert, and provider of value.
For the organizations I have worked for and consulted to, the benefits include: brand awareness, thought leadership, lead generation, increased sales, and improving customer retention. It can also help attract and retain talent and improve public relations by gaining media attention.
There are two prerequisites to successful Content Marketing and those are authenticity and credibility. Established brands should already have permission to engage consumers, however, the actual content has to be completely factual, transparent, and the language and aims of the communication entirely honest. Consumers are incredibly sophisticated and can identify a thinly veiled sales pitch.
I get incredibly turned off if I read a company's white paper and find it is nothing more than a brochure versus the educational piece it was promised to be. The same goes for attending a conference. I attend to learn and to network. I do not go to hear a speaker deliver a sixty-minute sales pitch.
Social media has given rise to increased activity and interest in Content Marketing. Tweets are 140-character point-of-views, Facebook enables quick and influential brand critiques in trusted circles, YouTube enables videos of consumer experiences, and blogs have given rise to over 200 million critics and quasi-journalists.
On that note, just last week a case in Oregon a legal case explored the question of whether a blogger fits the definition of a journalist. According to the news report, "Crystal Cox, a Montanan who calls herself an investigative blogger and produces several blogs about the law, was sued in January by the investment firm Obsidian Finance Group over several opinionated blog posts that were highly critical of Obsidian and its co-founder Kevin Padrick. The firm sought $10 million in damages. Although the judge threw out several of the firm's claims, he ruled against her on a single post and ordered her to pay $2.5 million in damages." One post = $2.5 million.
The lesson from this is that authenticity and credibility are critical to Content Marketing. I pay no credence when I read comments submitted online to news stories if the commenter does not provide their real name. It is analogous to protestors who wear masks and goggles - if you are not willing to identify yourself - you have zero credibility.
Back in the world of marketing, social media has produced incredible means to share information. We now share more, more often, to more people, and at faster speeds than ever before. We share our lives, interests, biases, beliefs, attitudes and ... our opinion of brands - good, bad, and sometimes, inaccurate.
New technologies have given voice to many but this does not mean there is value or truth in everything being said. In the next decade there will be an increasing focus on the quality of content and the credibility of its source. We will listen and be influenced by like-minded peers but we will train ourselves to screen, edit, and aggregate information as never before. So much so, that the most important metric in the coming years will be how many messages consumers choose NOT to engage with on a daily basis.
I believe in Content Marketing but only if it shares proprietary thinking, comes from a credible source, and is open and authentic. In the short term, we will all be inundated with more communications but it will be quantity over quality. With time, we will come to know the credible sources - whether they are individuals or brands, and we will ultimately engage with them for their ideas, creativity, and value.
Les Binet and Sarah Carter get a little bit angry about some of the nonsense they hear around them... like the idea that price promotions are a good way to build sales.
Well, one industry at least has had a bumper recession. The promotions and incentives market has exploded. We've all been deluged by straight discounts, two for one deals and the like. And the rise of websites such as VoucherCodes means we're all well versed now in the game of never paying full price. Will we ever need to pay for both pizzas in a restaurant again?
But actually this is a trend that pre-dates the economic problems we've experienced over the past couple of years. We were alarmed to see recently a chart showing an unrelenting increase in the share of communications budgets going to price-related promotions over many years - not just in recent history. In many sectors that we come across now, trade spend dwarfs other communications spend.
Of course, there's a very seductive charm in all these price offers. But there are dangers that lurk beneath the superficial allure of short-term sales increases. And people tend not to stop to analyze or think much about these.
So let's start with the short-term good-looking news. Analysis of EPOS data often suggests price- related promotions increase short terms sales by 30%-70%. That sounds very impressive. But the true effects may well be much smaller than this. Many of these apparently "incremental" sales are not. Some may be cannibalised from other pack sizes of the same brand. Others may well be diverted from stores where the brand is not on promotion. And others could be just future sales that have been brought forward by the offer. In fact, an analysis by IRI suggests that 84% of promotions are unprofitable in even the short term.
Things start to look even worse when we look just beyond the immediate effect. Because promotions tend to encourage people to stockpile (buying one pack for now and one for the freezer is typical supermarket promotional behaviour), sales often slump once the promotion ends. Once this is taken into account, the net effect on sales over the short term is often close to zero.
But what about the longer term? Surely brands do all this to encourage new users to give them a try, or to keep users buying again and again? Well actually, research has failed to find much evidence of any long-term benefit of price promoting either. Promotions do little to encourage trial (most people who buy on promotion have already tried the brand) or our old friend, "loyalty" (people who buy on promotion tend to be less brand loyal - they buy by the voucher not the brand). In fact, promotions are a pretty inefficient way to make contact with potential new buyers overall - only 5% of potential buyers are likely to be exposed to any promotional offer in any one week.
The result of all this? Evidence suggests that promotions can be damaging in the long run, tarnishing a brand's image, increasing price sensitivity, and reducing brand loyalty. This explains why brands and companies that rely heavily on promotions tend to be less profitable than those that choose an advertising-led approach. This is particularly true for big brands in mature markets.
Les Binet and Sarah Carter get a little bit angry about some of the nonsense they hear around them... like the myth that messages matter.
During last year's UK General Election, there was a new element to campaigning: a series of three "Leaders' Debates", billed as an historic opportunity for the British Public to watch the three potential leaders debate policy head-to-head. As a result of this, we were all supposed to have a much clearer idea of the candidates' messages, and much more policy information on which to base our voting decisions.
So it's interesting to note how the commentary and analysis about these debates hardly focused on the candidates' messages or policies at all. Instead, the most "persuasive" bits, the "reasons to believe" in one man rather than another seemed to have much more to do with the way one man addressed members of the audience by their first name, or how another man stood, or how another seemed to make viewers feel they were being addressed personally by the way he talked straight into the camera. In other words, the "soft", non-verbal communication people were receiving from the candidates seemed to be much more influential in their decision making than the "hard", verbal messages.
For anyone familiar with the work of Watzlawick (and if you are working in any field of communication, you should be) this should come as no surprise. Watzlawick argued that "meta- communication" (non-verbal things like tone of voice, body language , and facial expressions) are much more influential in relationship-building than "communication" (messages and supporting evidence). In other words, what you say matters much less than how you say it.
The TV debates between Nixon and Kennedy proved the power of meta-communication to politicians fifty years ago. Voters who heard the 1960 debates on radio were sure that Nixon had the best arguments, but those who saw it on TV were more swayed by the contrast between Kennedy's healthy tan and Nixon's sweaty pallor. And it was TV that decided the election.
But in the commercial world, we are still in thrall to the message myth. The creative briefs, concept tests, pre-tests and tracking research we work with every day all assume that a message is vital to the task of "persuading" people to buy one brand rather than another. And so we spend vast amounts of time and money testing propositions, and researching message cut-through and recall.
Yet research based on the IPA databank suggests that our obsession with product messages may be completely misguided. Campaigns that contain little or no product message, but that instead work by appealing to our emotions or our herd instincts (the two usually go together) turn out to be twice as effective as conventional "message" advertising. It seems that, in marketing just as in politics, meta-communication is what really matters.
Les Binet and Sarah Carter get a little bit angry about some of the nonsense they hear around them... like the myth that thinking drives brand choice.
A few months ago, at a conference, we were approached by a marketer responsible for a huge global brand. She had a dilemma she wanted to discuss with us. What is the "functional hierarchy" that consumers use when choosing a soft drink? For instance, do they start by deciding what size can they want, then decide on a flavour, and then choose a brand? Or do they do it in a different order? What other factors do they consider?
Grrrrrr... Why do marketing professionals talk like this about "consumers"? Consumers are just ordinary people like ourselves, and a moment's reflection makes it blindingly obvious that none of us makes decisions in such a rational, sequential way.
Try it. Go to the supermarket, stand in front of the soft drinks, and try to choose between them in the way that our marketing friend suggests. Weigh up the different factors, and work your way through them, one by one. How long did that take you? Now, imagine doing that for every single item on your shopping list. How long do you think your weekly trip to Sainsbury's would take? Decision-making flow charts and functional hierarchies may look nice and tidy on a Powerpoint chart, but real life decisions just ain't made like that.
Anyone who has any understanding of real people knows that the way we make decisions is usually illogical, contradictory, and messy. We are guided by feelings, intuitions, hunches and habits. We say one thing, then do another. We're more Homer Simpson than Mr Spock.
Now, finally, academia is giving us hard evidence of all this. Psychologists and economists are beginning to paint a very different picture of how people make choices. It is becoming increasingly obvious that most of the mental processing that guides our actions is associative rather than logical, emotional rather than rational. Conscious, verbal thinking seems to play a fairly minor role most of the time. And the parallel processing architecture of the brain makes a mockery of sequential flow-charts like the one our friend described.
About seven years ago a colleague from Interbrand Argentina produced a short film of his infant son that had many of us assume parental coaching. In it, the boy is multi-tasking. He is playing while his father shows him various logos. With stunning accuracy, this young lad rattles off McDonald's, Nike, and others. It was an amazing experiment and one subsequently proven by various studies.
A BBC report states, "Psychologists confirm a theory that Ray Kroc and Walt Disney traded upon, that 'brand loyalty' can be established by the age of two." And further, "Market research has found that children can recognize a brand logo before they can recognize their own name."
A study from 2010 found that the preschool set has gone further by developing the ability to identify and distinguish among different corporate products.
"Young children are ready learners and are learning about their brand environment just about everywhere," said T. Bettina Cornwell, a professor of marketing and sports management at the University of Michigan and co-author of "Children's Brand Symbolism Understanding".
Tongue-in-cheek Alphabet Graphic from Stock Logos
The study involved preschool children ages 3 to nearly 5 years old and found that while the children were not yet able to read, they often knew exactly which logo corresponded with which brand. Fast food chains (McDonald's), entertainment companies (Disney, Warner Brothers) and cars (Toyota) proved especially recognizable. The latter was a surprise as the carmaker's marketing is not directed towards kids. Yet, Toyota was recognized by 80 percent of the study's participants. McDonald's was the most recognized brand, with nearly 93 percent of children correctly identifying the restaurant chain by its golden arches.
Even more interesting is the fact that some children were able to demonstrate not just why they personally liked or disliked a brand but also what the brand might mean to others. "Kids this young are using brands as indicators of popularity or success," Anna R. McAlister, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin and co-author said.
While this may concern many, the two researchers point out that "the power of communication is not lost on (young children)," and "It can be used to forward public policy aims."
Also from a developmental standpoint, the kids who were best at understanding the brands were those with more advanced social skills and a particular type of cognitive development. The kids with brand know-how also showed a higher level of executive function, which is a cognitive ability that has to do partly with categorization and grouping things together.
The world is flat according to Simon Higby at DDB Stockholm, the creative hothouse for clients such as Volkswagen, McDonald's and the Swedish Armed Forces. Or at least the corporate hierarchy is flat. Other than having a Managing Director and Creative Director, DDB Stockholm keeps its ecosystem as level as possible. And the creatives are very much, as Simon says, "the pivotal people." They are so crucial that it's routine to see two senior creatives and one business director take the lead on clients. After the core team come the essential competencies, but all members of the team are allowed direct contact with a client-- who is also a part of the team. The upshot: ownership of problems and a team mentality that begets great work and great results for the clients and the agency. And there's at least one other outcome as well: proof that creativity is the most powerful force in business when the flora and fauna of ideas are in the right environment to grow.
-Pat Sloan, Corporate Director of Public Affairs
One of the greatest compliments I have ever received for any piece of work was seeing our campaign, the Fun Theory, on the wall of our head office in New York, alongside a picture of Bill Bernbach accompanied by one of his famous quotes -"The future, as always, belongs to the brave."
If the future belongs to the brave, then doesn't it follow that the future of creativity is about being brave? Brave in the ideas we present, brave in how we present them, brave in the way we execute them. Isn't the future about helping our clients to be brave, holding their hand while we take the leap together?
I think the answer to all of the above is yes, it always has been. But to be brave you need an environment in which to do it. I think we have created that environment at DDB Stockholm. A unique creative environment, which combines the traditional Swedish working values with more modern aspirations. So what is our recipe for success, our "brave potion" so to speak?
Confidence from the leadership - We have a structure where the leadership show faith in their employees across all departments, backing them in tough situations when needed. We always know that whatever happens, within reason of course, that our decisions and willingness to be brave won't end up in us losing our jobs. For they have a belief that the best work, and the most profitable work is the stuff that sticks out, that dares to be different.
Think long term - We've all jumped from a diving board. Starting from the lowest, then working our way to the highest when we get the courage to do so. It's the same with clients and brands. We have to go one step at a time. Each time becoming a little braver, taking one little step up to a higher creative level.
Hiring the right minds - its not only creative's that make brave campaigns. That might sound simple but it's about so many more people than that. It's about having a team confident enough to try something new. From technical guys willing to program the impossible, to account directors ready to go over the marketing dept to the managing director to make an idea happen. It's always easier to be brave when people have belief, so hire minds with belief.
Small teams & close client relations - We work with smaller teams responsible for individual clients. This enables those people to build trust and belief with the client decision makers and vice versa. The ultimate aim is for everyone from account director to studio designer to be on first name terms with the clients. If we have trust, if we have a team unity then a client is far more likely to have the ability to be brave and we are far more likely to be able to have the confidence to present the brave idea.
But before I go deeper into detail on this I would first explain that unlike other areas of the world, we in Sweden don't deal in too many job titles. We have an MD and a CD but we purposely try to keep the system as flat as is ultimately possible. We operate in a culture of responsibility and respect where who you are and what you do is worth a lot more than words after your name. Nobody works for anyone else; we work for each other, helping each other help the client.
It's important at DDB Stockholm that creative people are very much the pivotal people. We truly believe that creativity is the most powerful force in business and in order to live by that mantra we need to let creativity drive that business and drive DDB Stockholm.
If I were to take a classic example of client team structure from our office I would say it's most common to find two senior creative's and a business director taking the lead on a client. The core team is then surrounded by other competences. From graphic designers, to web designers, to producers, to technical experts. Please note the lack of any titles relating to anything other than that person's job function. I say again, nobody works for anybody; we work together as teams of superbly competent people with one aim - to do great work that gets great results.
What's even more important to emphasize is this. Yes we have a core team, the "go to people" for any client - that's important of course. But we purposely allow all other members of the team direct contact with the client. That way, as I said earlier in this piece, you end up with a dedicated team that feels ownership of problems and has a total understanding of any piece of business. Gone are the days of hiding behind anyone else. We all stand up to be counted and take responsibility. Responsibility for any problem, but also importantly, responsibility for any success, which we celebrate together.
That's just a few of the things we do in Stockholm to help the brave ideas come to the top. I don't know if it's the right or wrong answer, it certainly isn't the only answer, but it seems to work for us and it may work for others.
You see ideas have never been the problem, they will always exist. It's about having the right conditions in which to help them grow. Having the right conditions in which people feel they can truly be brave. The future of advertising belongs to those ideas that make us sit up and watch, that make us shut up and listen. And those ideas only come from a team of people, both agency and client together, that have enough confidence to dare to think of them, dare to sell them and have the guts to buy them. Bill Bernbach spoke about the future all those years ago, that time is now. So let me leave you with these words:
The world's top marketing executives acknowledge two incredible failings: their organization's ability to capitalize on changes and challenges in marketing and their own skills in making things happen.
The IBM Global CMO Study is their first study of CMOs and is based on face-to-face interviews with over 1,700 CMOs between February and June of this year. Respondents represent 19 industries and 64 countries and included marketers from 48 of the top 100 brands listed in Interbrand's 2010 rankings.
The study shows that CMOs are aware of changing trends but their organizations are not responding with speed, accuracy, and arguably, creativity.
"Approximately 90 per cent of all the real-time information being created today is unstructured data. CMOs who successfully harness this new source of insight will be in a strong position to increase revenues, reinvent their customer relationships and build new brand value," said Carolyn Heller Baird, CRM research lead for the IBM Institute for Business Value and the global director of the study.
The report notes that as customers increasingly share their experiences online, they are gain more control and influence over brands. And this while most CMOs admit that they remain mired in the last century when it comes to marketing.
The study also emphasizes the continued challenges of analytics and ROI - these have never been adequately addressed in my twenty years in marketing. Of course, one would expect data and analytics to be emphasized in a study from IBM - that is where they will make their consulting revenue rather from pure marketing strategy and creative execution. However, the overriding findings are extremely valuable and when viewed in the aggregate, tell more about CMO's skills than anything else.
"The success of my role is far more about analytics and technology than it is about hanging out with my ad agency, coming up with great creative campaigns. We must increase campaign ROI," noted Rob Colwell, executive manager - commercial and marketing, Qantas Frequent Flyer, in the study. This requires CMOs to improve their own digital, technological and financial proficiency. But according to the study, this is not happening.
The study points to four key challenges facing CMOs (that they are not well armed to deal with):
Explosion of Data: Incredibly, the past two years have accounted for 90% of the world's data. Volume, variety and velocity of data available has marketers struggling to sort through and find differentiating, relevant insights.
Social Platforms: The size and perceived influences of social networking marketing is overwhelming. As Campaign magazine summarizes, "If Facebook were a country, it would be the world's third largest. With 800 million users it's only smaller than China and India. And users aren't sitting idley - the average one posts 90 items a month. Twitter users send about 140 million tweets a day. And YouTube's 490 million users upload more video content in a 60-day period than the three major U.S. television networks created in 60 years."
Choices, Choices: Even the most unengaged consumer recognizes the proliferating marketing channels and devices now available. Both the Mobile and Tablet marketing require examination by CMO's (Mobile commerce is forecasted to reach US$31 billion by 2016. The tablet market is forecasted to reach nearly 70 million units worldwide by 2012 and may grow to 294 million units by 2015).
Who is Who: Marketers are also challenged by rapidly changing demographics. As Campaign magazine points out, "In India, as one example, the middle class is expected to soar from roughly 5 per cent of the population to more than 40 per cent in the next two decades. Marketers who have historically focused on affluent Indian consumers must adapt their strategies to market to this emerging middle class."
DDB Paris in collaboration with Opinionway have released a new social data study on Facebook, probing the extent of consumer engagement on the platform and questioning whether Google+ will, in fact, trump Facebook in providing feedback to marketers and galvanizing consumer followings. The quantitative online survey drew its findings from as many as 1,528 Facebook users ranging in age from 18-60 years old in six countries including France, Germany, Malaysia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As Google+ ads a social layer to its display advertising, many are skeptical of Facebook's capacity to ensure comparable consumer engagement for marketers.
DDB's study reveals that more than half of the Facebook users polled across six different countries were fans of at least one brand. Simultaneously, in spite of the introduction of Google+, Neilsen and Comscore reports indicate that Facebook's following is burgeoning here in the U.S. However, overall, fewer brands are being followed and there are fewer recommendations to Facebook friends, both of which would indicate valuable engagement for the brand. Therefore, the study is a larger interrogation into how marketers should gauge consumers' responsiveness and receptivity to their brands on social media and whether volume, engagement, or both are the most valuable indicators of a successful social media marketing initiative.
Other findings in "The Evolution of Facebook Brand Fans" include:
Geo-location programs such as Facebook Places can create privacy concerns but when geo-location is about exclusive offers or special discounts, the negative perception of geo-location diminishes dramatically.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's often stated belief that privacy is not a social norm today is a major problem for countries that question the legality of automatic facial recognition and tagging.
Seventy-five percent of those surveyed said they are concerned about how Facebook may use their personal data.
Facebook is more effective at driving brand sales via a brand's website than on Facebook itself.
Fifty percent of respondents said they might make a purchase directly on Facebook. But about 50 percent also do not trust Facebook enough to leave their credit card details.
"We need to grow the brand by increasing loyalty"
"We need to change the brand image so as to improve brand loyalty"
Grrr. It is pretty rare nowadays for us to come across marketing documents not containing these sorts of objectives. Why is marketing so obsessed by loyalty? A survey by LBS showed that company boards regard loyalty as the single most important measure of brand health. Data from the IPA dataMINE suggests that campaigns that aim to improve brand loyalty outnumber those with a penetration objective 2:1. The blind pursuit of loyalty seems so embedded in marketing orthodoxy these days that its merit seems beyond questioning. But we do question it. And research backs us up.
According to dataMINE, most advertising campaigns that aim to improve brand loyalty don't work. And on the rare occasions when they do, they nearly always work by increasing penetration, not loyalty. Shockingly, there are hardly any examples of effective ad campaigns that worked primarily through improvements in loyalty. Unpick famous "loyalty" cases, like Tesco or O2, and the story usually turns out to be about penetration, not loyalty. And the failure to improve brand loyalty is not just an advertising problem. It has been estimated that two thirds of all CRM programs fail too.
In fact, this should not be a surprise to anyone familiar with the marketing literature. Professor Andrew Ehrenberg and his followers have been reporting similar findings for over 50 years. In market after market, they have found that brands all have remarkably similar (and very low) levels of "loyalty" - as measured by things like share of category requirement. And most importantly, loyalty in this sense is very resistant to change. When brands do grow, the growth is nearly always driven by penetration.
Ehrenberg's wise words should be pinned over every marketer's desk: "Most of your brand's users use other brands most of the time", to which we would add: "and there's not much you can do as a marketer to change this."
But the marketing community has largely ignored Ehrenberg, preferring instead to listen to management consultancies such as Bain, which claimed to have "proved" the importance of loyalty. Unfortunately, their research seems to have been largely based on thought experiments, rather than empirical data. Bain showed that, if companies could improve loyalty amongst existing customers, then they would generate fantastic profits. But they didn't actually show that loyalty strategies could be successful in the real world. As Peter Field has pointed out, that's a bit like saying that, if you could turn lead into gold, then you would get rich.
Why did the fool's gold of loyalty prove so irresistible? Perhaps partly because Bain's research appeared at a time of recession, in the early '90s, when marketers were already in a mood of "keep what you have". And the myth found support from an army of direct marketing companies, interested in new income streams from CRM and loyalty programmes. But perhaps the simplest explanation lies in the word itself. "Loyalty" just sounds like something you can't get enough of, doesn't it?
So are we saying that loyalty is irrelevant? That depends on what you mean by "loyalty". If you mean getting people to form a strong emotional attachment to and relationship with a brand, then of course loyalty matters. Strengthening this relationship is a central role for brand communication.
But frequency-of-purchase metrics don't really get anywhere near measuring this closeness, and marketers who mistake them for measures of true brand loyalty tend to end up wasting lots of money - on the wrong messages, in the wrong channels, to the wrong people.
If you want to maximize growth and profitability, talking to your existing customers is not enough. You need to talk to everyone in your category, customers and potential customers, and you need to do this with communication that builds people's strength of relationship with your brand and their willingness to pay for it. That's true loyalty, and that's where the gold lies.
Joel Lim takes us through narrative and systematic brand communications. The goal is finding the best way to create communications with impact.
Narrative
Ad agencies are traditionally excellent at narrative aspects of brand communication. Everything they do tells and furthers a brand story. TV, newspapers, billboards, other unidirectional media, are regarded as a means to say something to people. One grand story,a meta-narrative, is expressed through several versions of it; also known as an ad campaign.
The creative challenge is to cut through the clutter of competing ad narratives. Media folks choose the best mediumsto push the stories to a target group of "audiences" and "readers".
Narrative thinking stems from a single-minded proposition. It is built on a highly distilled, reductive thought process.
That singular insight or proposition is believed to be able to persuade people to do something. Buy a car. Waste less electricity. Give money to charity. Brand guardians ensure that that one message is played out consistently on all forms of media. A brand cannot have more than one key message, it is argued, because people don't have the time nor mental capacity to remember more than one.
Narrative thinking is generally linear. Like any good story, all ads have a beginning (headline), middle (copy), and end (call to action). Ad campaigns have a preset media flight: teaser, launch, maintenance, end.
Systemic
Systemic thinking looks for relationships between discrete touchpoints in an ecosystem. It tries to determine how users flow from the use of medium to another. They try to figure out the best way to engage them at each touchpoint in the system. Digital agencies,by and large, think this way.
Systemic thinking is also interested in how well digital objects, code, and procedures work. They want to know how and how well people use and experience things. Processes are reviewed intensively. Metrics are scrutinised. Optimisation is a non-stop affair.
Systemic thinking is largely non-linear in direction and time. An interaction between a user and a digital object or service can happen anytime, anywhere, in any order or direction between touchpoints. Multiple interactions can happen almost simultaneously. Not just that, users can carry on interacting with a digital idea years after its public release, it lives on cyberspace as long as users want it to.
In contrast to reductive thinking, systemic thinking is expansive. It is relatively complex. But the complexity is derived from the notion that (a) they must locate relevant touchpoints (b) they must make individual touchpoints work well (c) each touchpoint must work well in harmony with others.
Narrative & Systemic
While narrative thinkers want to say something to people, systemic thinkers want people to enjoy experiencing or using something.
Here's an example from theatre.
Narrative types want to write the play, design the props, rehearse the orchestra, cast and direct the characters. Systemic types want to select the theatre, arrange the chairs, programme the lights, man the ticket booth, appoint security, plan the night's itinerary, arrange for air conditioning or heating. The best performances are a sublime combination of both.
Creative agencies from mainstream and digital need to employ or at least understand both ways of thinking in order to stay culture current or relevant, and to do the most engaging work in the world.
Think of narrative thinking as the soul of a person. It's the realm of emotions, intellect, logic, desire, motivation. Think of systemic thinking as the body of a person. The framework in which everything works in harmony.
Narrative thinkers need to be reminded that we are not all soul. We are bone, organs, five senses, infinitely complex, a hyper-connected Internet unto ourselves. A poorly functioning body is a sick one. And a sick body affects the soul.
Conversely, systemic thinkers must appreciate that we are not all body. We need the soul or else our intricate, clockwork-precision, supremely-designed body is meaningless, very much dead.
Complementary Parts With Bespoke Messages in Each One
Nike Chalkbot is a machine/vehicle plugged into the Web that writes positive messages on roads for pro cyclists, and the world, to read.
The soul or message: you can express yourself any way you like; you can show the world you are fighting cancer with everything you've got; you have the power to spread optimism. Be like Armstrong.Just do it.
The body or system: all the parts that go into making it work well. Server. Website. Chalking mechanism. Social media links. Publicity. So much complexity and integration happens in the background. But to people, the experience is seamless, fast, easy.
Nike+ is another example of fused narrative and systemic thinking. It extends the Nike story - in fact you are anessential ongoing part of it. It integrates highly relevant touchpoints (running shoe, iPod, social media circle) flawlessly. Each touchpoint lets you do something different.
Nike+ is here for the long run. The recently launched Nike+ GPS is opening up new spaces of engagement, taking the storyand experience further. Where are the boundaries of digital, branding, advertising and activation? Does it even matter to its fans?
Takeaway
The next chance you get to do something "360", think more broadly.
See the narrative perspective if you're used to thinking systemically. What do you need to say? Do you have a strong story or idea? Is it something that will move people? Can you improve the production quality of the story? Can you tell several versions of the storyyet stay true to its theme?
Think systemically if you usually think narratively. What do you want people to experience? Can you make something tangible or digital that people will want to interact with? Are there touchpoints you haven't thought of yet? How can you link everything together seamlessly for people? How can you tell small stories in each touchpoint? How could your creations take on a life of their own, beyond a typical time frame?
Do this and more complete, memorable, relevant, innovative engagement will be the result.
"There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking."
Jean de la Bruyere
I am closing in on my one hundredth business conference presentation. This milestone does not include client pitches and presentations, guest lectures at high schools and colleges, and media appearances. There has also been a large number of webinars, seminars, and panels.
Along the way I have witnessed thousands of presentations representing the absolutely brilliant to the unbearably bad.
Every business conference provides new lessons in public speaking or reinforces what works best. Whether these events are valuable, necessary evils, boondoggles, idea stimulators, fiascos, ego-fests, networking opportunities, money grabs, or highly entertaining - one can take away something to apply when your turn to present comes up.
Given the experiences accumulated, I have compiled some ideas and lessons. In so doing, I have avoided a few of the obvious and well-stated ones and have naturally not captured everything a speaker needs to be successful. Yet, what follows should be extremely helpful when your turn at the podium comes up.
Why Do It?
"The problem with speeches isn't so much not knowing when to stop, as knowing when not to begin."
Frances Rodman
Before even saying "yes" to an offer to present, one has to ask themself, "why do it?" And I am not talking about the age-old question of comfort as a speaker but rather about motivation and value. I speak because I love to inform, entertain, and educate. A huge benefit to me personally is improving based on feedback and not just my presenting style but the content of the presentation. It makes me better in my profession. So here are additional considerations when contemplating a speaking opportunity:
Are you doing it because you feel you must or because you enjoy it? If you enjoy it, the audience should enjoy you. Either way you can do it and perhaps do it well but if you truly enjoy doing it then you will more successful.
Speaking means you are a thought leader so is your content and skill in presenting top notch? Expectations are set long before the day arrives, make sure you can at least meet or, better yet, surpass them.
Can you commit to the entire event? From my experience it is best to be there for the entire conference or event to demonstrate commitment, network, and to see the content before and following your presentation. Attendees are disappointed when a speaker appears for only their time slot.
How do you fit with the overall conference and the speaker line up? Make sure the event is of quality (organizer, location, fellow speakers, audience). Also ensure your time slot makes sense for flow of content.
How sophisticated is the audience? Regardless, your content should err on the side of more complex. An attendee will appreciate being challenged versus being condescended to.
Two reports that survey marketers lay bare two festering issues in the profession. The reports are The State of Marketing: Unica's Annual Survey of Marketers and The 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from the Social Media Examiner. Both are well done and provide some interesting statistics, yet, the findings are disappointing.
The top findings are shared by both studies and just happen to be the same ones that were identified as critical when I entered marketing over twenty years ago. The enduring issues are measurement and integration. "Marketers Seem Ready to Bridge the Gap Between Analysis and Action" is Unica's chief finding and "Measurement and integration are top areas marketers want to master" is identified by the Social Media Examiner.
Of course, my disappointment is not with the survey results, it is with the profession's lack of progress. In marketing we often speak of trends, arguably the biggest trend in the profession is remaining stumped about measurement and integration. I have not been to a conference where these two issues are not referenced (or are the subjects for the entire event) or a client meeting where they are not raised in some form or another.
So what to do? From my perspective, measurement is a constant experiment and must be specific to each brand, campaign, and initiative. The secret is to stay focused and have all stakeholders agree on manageable set of metrics that contribute to sales. Take my word, do not make sales one of them. By monitoring and adjusting metrics that contribute to sales, the team is addressing strategy and tactics simultaneously.
When the issue of integration is raised it is often described as the lack of connectivity between communications channels. This is a misdirection, it is really about organization and process. Marketing exists to answer three fundamental questions:
1. What do you have that is unique?
2. Who wants or needs it?
3. How do they like to to be engaged?
The answer to number three is the 'marketing mix' and these days it can be broad and complex. But if the questions are answered thoroughly, no one will debate the channels that make sense. The real challenge is coordinating the various skill-sets that deliver the communications across the different channels.
When I was in management consulting, I kept organizational design specialists on my speed dial. This is because I knew that when my clients complained about the lack of integration in their communications, it more often than not came down to dysfunction within their own organizational structure and the processes within it.
I am not suggesting we can eradicate the complexities of marketing measurement and integration. I am advocating actions we can take to improve results and advance the profession's capabilities. Marketing must be accountable through measurement and efficient through organizational effectiveness so we can move onto fresher challenges.
A new study by Interbrand puts a stake in the ground: Retail must learn to become more human and know that the future of the retail brand is multichannel, authentic and global. And all hinges on the remarkable growth and innovation happening in the digital world.
There is a lot of buzz around decision science. About why people buy. About their irrational behavior and their subconscious decision making. But beyond understanding "why they buy" are perhaps bigger questions of how they feel about the decisions they make and how brands can help consumers make better decisions.
To begin exploring the issue, we engaged approximately 550 women in a discussion about their recent purchase decisions via two of our private online communities*. We wanted to see how consumers characterized a "good" vs. a "bad" purchase decision and then work backward to understand how "good" vs. "bad" processes of decision making compared.
At a high level, we found the more engaged a consumer was with a choice, the better she felt about it. This is to say, the more attention she paid, the more involved she was in the purchase, the better she felt about the choices she made. She was in control...of herself as much as in control of any other factor of the purchase.
Following are a few themes that emerged from consumers' stories.
A good decision starts with her pride in the price she paid
Price is a fairly obvious starting point with consumers. When consumers talk about good purchases they almost always start at a place of how much they paid for the item(s) they purchased. However, as we read consumers' stories we were surprised at the degree of emotion expressed - specifically the amount of pride they took in the bargains they found...or rather, the bargains they created, pieced together or "worked the system" to get. Holli W. commented, "Shopping is like a game for me seeing how far I can stretch a dollar."
But stretching a dollar doesn't mean she is spending less necessarily. We saw consumers continually justify more net spend if they could combine offers and get more...for the feeling of spending less. Pam M. said, "One of the best decisions I made was having a $10 off coupon, some Kohl's bucks and 30% off so I bought two pair of jeans, an exercise outfit, 2 tops, a sweater, 3 panties and a shirt...Loved that!"
Pam and others like her made a game of the process that delivered an emotional satisfaction within her rational justification for her purchases. She loved her justification for the purchase perhaps more than the items she bought.
Good decisions take longer
Amber C. commented, "My smartest purchases have been the ones I have researched, waited on or saved for. My worst decisions have been those that were impulses." Amber's was a common refrain voiced by the women. Engaging in a brand felt better than impulsively choosing it.
These women were going online, reading reviews, asking friends, reading labels, clipping coupons - doing their homework - to feel better about the choices they would make.
The process of coming to a good decision for these women took longer than the process to make a bad decision. Women talked about this as a fairly new phenomenon in their lives as the result of the recession combined with the increasing accessibility of information. Launett L. commented, "Over the past few years, I have become more informed, less spontaneous and non-impulsive."
When they do buy on impulse the time saved by not engaging with a brand in advance of a decision often resulted in more time, energy and money wasted on the back end. Cindy C. commented on some sausages she bought on impulse, "I end up pitching the food because no one would eat it. So it ends up to be a big waste of money!"
Walk into any retail store today and it quickly becomes apparent that mobile devices are changing the way we shop. Even as recently as 2006 we saw shoppers using cellphones to call or text friends and family, checking prices and preferences, trying to determine if a potential purchase was the best value. The person at home would probably be citing a price in another competing store by paging through a circular.
Fast forward a scant five years and the process of getting the best possible deal has become far more advanced and precise. Now we can routinely query our social networks, read reviews, scan barcodes, and, most importantly, find coupons, all from the latest generation of mobile devices.
Mobile - or more specifically, the Smartphone - is irrevocably changing the way we shop.
Through the use of apps, smartphones are enabling consumers to become smarter and savvier shoppers. With smartphone penetration expected to top 50% by the end of the year 1, we'll see these emerging mobile behaviors become mainstream habits sooner than you might think.
According to a recent study released earlier this month, 66% of respondents use their smartphone to compare prices of a product or service 2. Apps like The Find, ShopSavvy, and Google Shopper allow people to scan barcodes on products and find out if they are getting the best price, whether that be online or at another store down the road.
That same study also showed that 58% of smartphone owners used their phone to find the nearest store location. Smartphones allow apps to utilize the GPS technology (when granted permission) and provide directions for specific locations or venues.
Clearly, mobile has the capacity to position the retailer as the consumer's partner in the pursuit of value. The potential benefits in terms of driving trial and repeat business are significant -- provided retailers keep the following points in mind as they develop a mobile strategy:
• If You Build It, They Will Buy
According to Luth Research 3, 51% of consumers are more likely to purchase from retailers that have mobile-optimized sites. Too often we visit websites that are not optimized for mobile devices. This causes frustration and ultimately pushes the user away from using that site again. Retailers need to be sure that they are providing the ideal user experience for shoppers in mobile, because no one wants to waste time.
• Not Everyone Is Smart
We can't forget that the majority of the world is still using feature phones. Therefore we need to make sure that mobile WAP sites are optimized for each and every mobile device, so that every customer feels valued and can find information quickly and easily.
• To Each His App
Retailers must consider developing utility based apps that aid the consumer in every aspect of shopping. They need to be thinking about their consumer and how he/she typically approaches shopping. Do their customers create shopping lists? Do they like to read reviews before making a purchase? Do they look to share information with their social networks? Finding out the answers to these questions and then building those functions into apps will lead to success.
• The WIIFM Rule Still Applies
Retailers need to answer the critical question behind any consumer action: "What's In It For Me?" and that means delivering incentives for using a branded app. That could mean developing specials only available through the app: linking the app loyalty cards and providing personalized discounts based upon purchase history; providing barcode scanning technology to offer more information products or to up sell complimentary products; and even helping consumers locate items in the store with an 'aisle assistant'.
1 The Nielsen Company, U.S. Smartphone Penetration and Projections, March 2010 2 Chadwick Martin Bailey, "How Smartphones Are Changing the Retail Shopping Experience," March 2011 3 Luth Research, Supply & Demand of the Mobile Web for Retail, Nov. 2010
Formed in 1990, PHD is a media and communications agency with over 60 offices globally. PHD, a part of the Omnicom Media Group, is a media business that has been built on a culture of thought leadership, creativity and innovation. At our core is a strong belief that great media ideas matter. In our hearts is a commitment to lead the industry with thought provoking opinion and pioneering thinking. The PHD network in the US was created in 2002 by bringing together best-in-class media specialist companies built on a foundation of strategic, brand-based media services.
Advertisers are finding it increasingly difficult to attract the attention of consumers in a media saturated world. As far as the impact of advertising goes, relevance is a factor which is gaining importance. Location based services is an area of communications which is attracting more and more attention. In the mobile marketing context, these services provide valuable information about people's current location and what they are doing, enabling product-related target groups to be addressed with a high degree of accuracy. But in addition to targeting, location based services have much more to offer, at least if the current trend is anything to go by.
Generally speaking, location based services, LBS in short, are virtual services which are typically provided on users' devices according to their current location. But if you are talking about location based services today, this usually refers to check-in services and platforms such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Friendticker or the current challenger Facebook Places.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes the added value for users as follows:
"It supports users in sharing with their friends where they are, who is in their vicinity and what is going on in their immediate surroundings."
Details about their current location are communicated using the so-called check-in and can be shared via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition to pin-pointing their location, and in doing so lending it their credibility, users can post tips and recommendations about the location they are visiting and benefit from the experience of others.
Many established platforms are also implementing a game system based on achievements. Take Foursquare, which rewards its users' activities with so-called badges. These digital pins can be collected by checking in at specific locations, frequently posting tips or uploading pictures. This motivational element is reminiscent of the principles popular in the gaming sector and plays with the hunter and gatherer mentality as well as just-for-fun competition among friends.
The fact that location based services comprise sales instruments in addition to social and exploratory elements is all the more apparent if you change sides and view things from a business and point-of-sale angle. Thanks to check-in portals, brands, companies and location owners can offer loyal customers promotions and specials tailored to their specific locale.
Dr. Leonard Berry, is known as the disciple of service. He has examined what good service means for such brands as Mayo Clinic, Charles Schwab, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Midwest Express Airlines. The author of "Discovering the Soul of Service: The Nine Drivers of Sustainable Business Success," Dr. Berry talks here with DDB's Pat Sloan about what makes for a long and strong customer journey.
Q: What role has the recession played in companies' attention to service quality?
A: The recession has caused many managers to disproportionately focus on reducing costs and prices. This is a natural reaction but also a missed opportunity. A recession is the perfect time for a firm to recommit to service improvement because competitors are likely going in the opposite direction. Excellent service creates value for customers, and superior value - the best way to compete at any time - is the only way to compete in tough economic times.
Q: Doesn't lower price equate to value?
A: Not necessarily. Price is part of value but not its equivalent. The true meaning of value is benefits received for burdens endured. In determining what to buy and where to buy it prospective customers ask: "What am I going to get and what am I going to have to endure to get it?" Burdens have a monetary component (price) and a non-monetary component (for example, inconvenience, mistake-prone service, rude service personnel). Excellent service plays a central role in increasing benefits and reducing burdens.
Make a quick list of highly successful organizations over time (Target Stores, Singapore Airlines, Netflix, The Container Store, Wegmans, FedEx, Mayo Clinic, SAS Institute) and they all have far more to offer than price. Price, after all, is the most easily imitated element of the marketing mix. Companies that compete strictly on price rather than overall value have a shaky future, recession or not.
Q: Won't service improvement increase costs?
A: In the short term, yes. In the longer term excellent service is a profit strategy because it is likely to reduce the hidden costs of poor quality and increase market share. Let me explain. Whereas the investments required to improve service are largely transparent, such as the costs of better technology, the costs of poor service are not. Reperforming services to correct errors, extra supervision due to a lack of confidence in the preparation and capabilities of service personnel, and poor employee morale (and high turnover) due in part to dealing with many dissatisfied customers, illustrate hidden costs of poor quality. In terms of market share, there are only three ways for a company to increase it: attract more new customers, do more business with existing customers, and lose fewer customers. Excellent service helps a company do all three.
Q: You've written about the need to manage the customer experience as a way to frame service improvement. What does this mean?
A: Customers actual experiences in using services evoke a perception of value that determines brand preference and loyalty. Actual experiences of customers trump all else and these experiences need to be managed. Customers always have an experience when they interact with a service organization. They do not necessarily have a positive one, however. In using a service, customers filter a series of "clues" and organize them into sets of impressions about the service. Anything perceived or sensed by the customer - or apparent by its absence - is an experience clue. Collectively, the clues in the experience tell a story of the service's quality - or lack of quality. Focusing on improving the clues customers perceive in using the service guides the improvement journey.
With the rapid growth of mobile technology, consumer behavior is shifting in ways never seen before. The mobile Internet is promising to exceed and even eclipse its desktop counterpart. It is already outpacing Internet adoption of the mid-nineties. For marketers, the implications are only beginning to emerge. The mobile phone provides direct access to consumers, which during path to purchase allows brands to influence behavior in new and powerful ways.
An important part of this new reality is the fact that the Internet is no longer tethered. With smartphones, we are joined by the pervasive connectivity of the World Wide Web. But it doesn't stop there. Through these devices, the Internet has been turned inside out and spread throughout the world. Mobile tagging technologies, such as 2D barcodes, SMS, image recognition, and location-based services (LBS), promise to link the digital to the physical plane. For retailers, bits and bricks are no longer separate. Digital strategies can be brought to physical locations, as these "mobile paths" generate product information, multimedia content, personalized coupons, and more.
Much of today's mobile behavior rises organically and is rooted in longstanding consumer needs. According to eMarketer, 66 percent of those using a smartphone while shopping are using it to compare prices of a product or service. Mobile search now empowers shoppers with more information than that of a retailer's own sales force. Barcode scanning apps like eBay's RedLaser and ShopSavvy provide comparison shoppers an increasingly seamless experience.
Through mobile paths, retailers are able to encourage or incentivize certain search behaviors. In addition to providing access to and engagement in the world's largest target market, custom short code campaigns have proven to be more effective than traditional marketing methods such as email or banner ads. For example, SMS-based campaigns achieve over a 90 percent opt-in rate, compared to 22.1 percent for email. This is important; according to Microsoft, 70 percent of mobile searches result in action within an hour. It's clear that mobile users are trying to get things done.
The mobile phone has always been a social device. Today it presents this function in new form and in ways that are especially relevant for retailers. Social shopping presents an opportunity for shoppers to immediately connect with friends around the places they shop and things they buy. One app, Fashism, lets users pose crowd style questions, offer advice, and receive real-time feedback on fashion purchase decisions. It brings individual's social network with them to the mall, which is especially important, as friends and family are central to personal identity and decisions.
James Heskett is Baker Foundation Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and author of the upcoming book "Why Your Organization's Culture Matters." Co-author of The Value Profit Chain, Heskett has been a member of the faculty of the Harvard Business School since 1965, teaching courses in marketing, business logistics, the management of service operations, business policy, service management and general management. Here he discusses the client agency relationship and journey with DDB's Craig Lonnee.
Lonnee: What is it not only employees and managers, but also clients and service firms want today?
Jim: We're all being judged as managers by the people who work for us. Frequency of recognition is becoming an increasingly important element of employee satisfaction and loyalty, particularly with younger generations of talent. And the same is true for personal development. People who join our organizations today want to know where they can expect to be in the future. They like to work with winners, winners like to work with winners, losers like to work with winners, winners don't like to work with losers, and to the extent that we fail to weed out the non-performers in our organizations, they will drive out the performers. And if you think of it in that way, I think that carries a certain degree of urgency.
Further down the list, reasonable compensation certainly is something they consider, but is not Number One. Most important of all, I think, starting with people that we bring into the organization and how we staff our teams, is that we select for attitude and train for skills, not the other way around. If you have two people reasonably similar in skills, always take the one with the more positive attitude, the person who buys into the beliefs and the activities of the organization. Following that, we can provide outstanding support systems, and then we begin to broaden the latitude of front line decision making: rewarding people, recognizing performance, promoting from within--all the other things we're organizing around-- results-oriented teams, and probably measuring and rewarding on the balanced score-card system.
Lonnee: I was just reflecting on the Omnicom University Service Profit Chain Yellow Page that you published a short while back--you said that like other important concepts, this one is intuitively obvious. So why do you think on occasion we don't necessarily heed your sage advice and follow the Service Profit Chain?
Jim: First of all, it seems to me it's a lot more interesting, obvious and explicit to turn to the business, the business that is primarily our client relations, our outward-facing elements of the business. You know we get so caught up in pitching and executing on our promises to clients. But we don't always think sufficiently about which clients we should be pitching, and what kinds of business we should be thinking about. Or determining the internal workings of the Service Profit Chain, what we should be doing with regard to our people in terms of selection and training, support systems and the like.
A technological singularity is a hypothetical event occurring when technological progress becomes so rapid that it makes the future after the singularity qualitatively different and harder to predict.
Though Claude Shannon made inroads, in general we've found that it's incredibly difficult to teach robots how to learn. The process involves numerous factors: recognising mistakes, deciding what parts of an experience are worth incorporating into the refinement of a method, recognising the real-time value of a factor whose value may change from one situation to the next, etc.
But we've also discovered that the best way to teach a robot how to learn is to expose it to as many humans as possible - humans willing to teach it how to be better by giving it naked insight into their behaviour.
The rock-paper-scissors-playing computer that The New York Times recently built is a perfect example. Instead of randomly generating moves, it gathers data based on your decisions, the better to "exploit a person's tendencies and patterns to gain an advantage over its opponent." Throughout the game, the computer will tell you what it is "learning."
Even if you don't want to play ro-sham-bo with a machine whose goal is to be better than you are and will ever be (if it isn't already), you participate in the intelligence-building of machines all the time. It's become part of the daily clockwork of digital life. Every time you run a Google search or browse on Chrome, you are teaching Google's "smart" algorithms what you like, what you don't, and how to serve you results faster and more efficiently. You teach them your interests, your compulsive shopping habits. You teach them how you operate in private.
These machines are already smarter than we are if you judge solely by specialisation. (Could you serve search results efficiently and quickly to your best friend? She'd probably have you out on your fanny after 8 minutes of your faffing.) The trick is making that intelligence more comprehensive. It is only natural that this challenges us; one of the ideas behind the technological singularity legend is that technology will no longer be able to advance at its given pace without artificial means that are stronger than organic human minds alone, at which point we won't be able to predict what happens next.
But sometimes mythology becomes reality in a way that is so banal we don't even realise it's happened. At Le Web '10, Salim Ismael asserted the singularity has already occurred. Every time man built something to advance beyond the limits of his mind or body (the wheel, harnessing fire, telescopes, graphing calculators), he gave himself superhuman capabilities in the purest sense of the definition.
A supporting anecdote claims our standard of living is equivalent to that of a medieval inhabitant presiding over 200+ servants. If you had servants to begin with, your iPhone alone would probably have robbed them of most of their jobs.
We are already part machine, now more than ever. Which makes it important to take both new technology and human habits into account when producing work that will be culturally resonant, online and off.
Examples include Unilever's augmented reality ice cream machine, which dispenses desserts in exchange for a smile. In a time of financial austerity and general doldrums, it brought unexpected joy to users at the Cannes Lions in 2010. Considering that the topic of facial recognition often brings out the public's fear reflex, this was an apt way to take them by (pleasant) surprise, supporting a brand's commitment to making consumers happier, while teaching other brands that there is a constructive place in our society for this kind of technology.
The online space, particularly social media, present other ripe opportunities to slip into psyches and ride the tailcoats of mutating human rituals. You shouldn't just dive in without an idea of what you want to accomplish and how. A proper strategy, tailored to the medium and its merits, can go viral simply by making people want to behave in ways the brand wishes them to. IKEA's Facebook showroom motivated users to tag themselves on furniture showrooms on Facebook with the promise of winning whatever they tagged (provided they were first). This resulted in plenty of enthusiastic engagement, exposure and press for IKEA with minimal expense (not counting the effort taken to conceptualize the idea).
These are solid offline and online cases, respectively. But you can also go the extra mile by using digital connectivity to make immense offline impact, extending the real power of what people can do. Recently, with help from DDB Paris, Greenpeace launched the Rainbow Warrior website. The idea is simple but resonant: users can use the site to literally buy parts of environmental watchdog ship The Rainbow Warrior, currently under (re)construction in Germany. "Purchase" anything from shower heads to scuba gear to zodiac boats. You'll receive a certificate for your portion and have your name added to the dedication wall on the boat's interior.
Participants can also survey the remainder of the construction (31% complete!) through a live webcam, or review its architectural plans. That lends an impression of real power, right from where you're sitting.
The way I see it, the technological singularity isn't about becoming "one" with technology. We are and always have been: technology functions in our service. If it doesn't, it isn't sustained. This is really about making our lives not only easier but more satisfying: our reach wider, our contributions more impactful.
The singularity is, in effect, about us becoming one with one another: helping each other with our respective goals, passing one another's intentions along until the intent is achieved. Brands who find a way to facilitate that, without breaking the harmony by shoehorning in an awkward agenda, are rewarded ... and incorporated into the machine.
It may or may not have been Lord Leverhulme who started it, but whoever who it was, the demon of "wastage" has long stalked media and budget discussions. But never more so than now, it seems to us.
More and more, our old friend "wastage" crops up - usually in breathless support of the efficiency of on-line activity, compared with TV. To quote from a recent contributor to Admap; "online media, pound for pound, is cheaper and more cost effective than traditional media models based on largesse, waste and inefficiency."
This is one of those dangerous situations we often come across, where choice of word puts an instant, but erroneous, value judgement on a fact.... how can wastage be a good thing?
But there is plenty of evidence to show that wastage in advertising is often the bit that works.
Narrowly targeted media have a seductive illusion of cost efficiency. But trying to reduce "wastage" can actually make marketing less efficient. Consider a concrete example. A while back, a client questioned why we were using TV advertising to support his brand when only half the audience were in the target market. Surely it would be better to use a more targeted medium, like direct mail? Well, no it wouldn't, on simple cost grounds. In that particular case, we found that it cost 92p to talk to a member of our target audience with DM, whereas it only cost 3p to talk them on TV,even though half of our TV advertising was "wasted".
And sometimes this apparent wastage isn't wastage at all. The effects of advertising aren't always immediate, and they aren't always direct. When Volkswagen run a TV ad, they know that most of the audience are not about to buy a new car. But many will buy one in the future, and research shows that it's a good investment to start talking to them now. And if they like "the one with the singing dog", talk about it or pass it onto their friends online - that's not wasted money either.
Great ads create ripple effects that go way beyond the original audience. Really great ads go even further - they change the way a whole society feels about a brand or an issue.
This matters because, in most categories, people's brand choices are hugely influenced by what people around them think. If you're buying nasal hair removers, you probably don't much care what other people think about the brand you choose. But publicly bought and used brands (clothes, beer, newspapers, cars, credit cards, baby food... most brands, in fact) derive much of their value and meaning from what people outside the category think about them. People who buy Mercedes and Prada do so because everyone knows what those brands stand for - even if they are not "target market" themselves. To create these shared cultural meanings, we need people outside our target to overhear our communication. We need wastage, in other words.
Finally, conspicuous wastage itself can be a sign of quality. Biologists find that apparently "wasteful" displays - elaborate antlers or extravagant tail feathers - can lead to evolutionary success, by sending out signals of health and strength to potential mates (Zahavi's "Handicap Principle".) Similarly, apparently "wasteful" communication ( high comparative spend on media or production values, or minimal product focus like in Cadburys chocolate groundbreaking Gorilla ad) has been shown to lead to business success by signalling quality and credibility to potential customers. And this is especially true when there is little functional difference between brands.
As Professor Tim Ambler puts it, "Conspicuous waste....promotes an inclination to purchase a product by reinforcing - quite apart from the advertisement's informational content - impressions of a brand's quality". Or put more simply by a customer when Barclaycard credit card started using famous comedian Rowan Atkinson "they must be doing well to use him"
So let's hear it for waste. Let alarm bells ring when you next hear it unquestioningly dismissed.
"Whatever the state of American culture, all signs are that advertising will always be a conspicuously visible part of it." So it was written in the October 12, 1962 edition of Time Magazine. This amazing article covers the decades long debate on the profession and practice of advertising. While advertising has been said to hold a mirror up to society it is also a recurring theme for the industry to hold a mirror up to itself. In reading this piece, I was struck by how relevant so much of it still is: increasing sophistication in consumer behavior, pervasive and intrusive marketing messages, furious plagiarism of good ideas, trust and authenticity, the proper application of research, and, most importantly, the huge responsibility the industry has in society. I am sure it is a source-piece for Matthew Weiner and his team at the show MadMen but it is also instructive for the industry today because as Shakespeare said, "What is past is prologue."
Advertising: The Mammoth Mirror
Nothing except the Mint can make money without advertising.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Madison Avenue," the all-purpose handle for the advertising business, is a street named Desire that starts in Manhattan and wends into every household in the land. Americans are seeing more advertisements now--an average of 1,600 per person per day--and whether they are enjoying them less is a matter of argument. But the inescapable fact is that the pleas and promises of Madison Avenue dance before the eyes of the ordinary American whenever he reads, rides, watches television, strolls down the street or strikes a match. The $12 billion that U.S. business will spend on advertising this year exceeds the gross national products of Austria and Norway combined.
Behind this vast expenditure lies one truth that both critics and practitioners of advertising agree upon: advertising is an aggressively creative force that makes music at the cash registers by stimulating the public's desire to acquire goods. This is an overriding consideration for the nation's businessmen at a time when the U.S. is geared to produce more than it consumes and when nothing would help the economy more than a surge in consumer spending. As the U.S. economy grows in size and complexity and the cost of labor increases, advertising is an indispensable substitute for the personal salesmanship of times past. The genial clerk who used to sell undecided customers with the assurance that "my own family uses it" is steadily giving way to the self-service shopping cart. Today, advertising is the magnet that draws customers into the nation's supermarkets and department stores, and the prime mover of human inventiveness. Emerson notwithstanding, a man has small inspiration to build a better mousetrap unless he can mass-produce it and shout to the world about it.
The use of advertising as the strongest force in moving goods is a uniquely American contribution to economic life--and like most things American, constantly in flux. Born as a big business with the rise of national magazines around the turn of the century, advertising has changed bewilderingly since then, and today is changing faster than ever, with far-reaching implications for all of U.S. society. It is destined to become even more omnipresent: in dollar volume, advertising in the U.S. has doubled since 1950, is expected to double again in the decade to come. And as it grows bigger and more complicated, it is also becoming costlier. The average U.S. business now spends $1 on advertising for every $70 in sales, v. $1 for every $100 in 1947.
Our world is moving faster and changing more than ever before. Consumer habits and new means of social engagement are driving fundamental shifts in how brands are marketed. So much so, that it is now the job of advertisers and marketers to not only connect people and brands but also to connect people to people.
Arguably, the most effective communications are rooted in personal connections. Winning brands give people what they really want, when they really want it, let them interpret and influence it, and allow them to pass it on to their connections.
The current fascination with Social Media fails to recognize that underlying the technology are longstanding human behaviors. Fundamentally, we all desire to connect and be part of a group of like-minded people who hold certain values. Social Media may have turbo-charged this desire and process but it did not invent it.
Nor has Social Media simplified our lives or improved purchase decision-making. I recognize it has become an important influence with over 500 billion impressions of brands shared annually online and 60% of those happening on Facebook. But in reality it is an additional factor in the decision-making process adding, not reducing, complexity.
However, the good news is branding will always be a democratic process that is based on consumers ultimately having the power of choice. The continued role of marketing is to help people make that choice without them feeling manipulated, overwhelmed, or belittled in the process.
A recent survey commissioned by Men's Wearhouse and carried out by Kelton Research shows a great opportunity to further differentiate apparel retailing. A great deal of the findings demonstrate how important it is for a man to dress well:
91% of Americans think dressing well can make a man appear to be more physically attractive than he really is
75% of Americans think well-dressed men are more successful in the workplace than their casual colleagues
22% of men actually believe they would earn more money if only they dressed better than they currently do
85% of women think a guy who dresses well is sexier than one who has a lot of money
80% of women would give up something in their lives - such as going out to dinner, using their cell phone, or even having sex for an entire year - for a better-dressed partner
And while this is interesting (and supportive of Men's Wearhouse's business), the most intriguing finding is the pain both men and women have when shopping for clothes. The survey asked the question, "Going clothes shopping for myself is something I don't look forward to." For men, 56% of them agreed with this statement and for women, 49% agreed. So let's generalize for a moment and say that approximately half of all women and men dislike shopping for clothes. That it is a huge market holding onto their cash while looking bad.
Why do so many people not look forward to clothes shopping? The commonly stated issues include: a lack of a plan; overwhelming array of options; intimidating sales staff; workable budget; and lack of time. Like that sage advice when grocery shopping - never do it on an empty stomach - so holds the rule for apparel shopping - never do it on an empty closet.
So what is the big opportunity? Wharton research from 2009 found that 35% of shoppers had had an extraordinary -- or wow -- retail experience in the previous six months. In an online survey, 1,006 shoppers in the United States and Canada were asked: "Can you think of a shopping experience that you had in the past six months or so that was especially great, in that the experience created delight and surprise for you in any way?" The report pointed to five major areas that contribute to a great shopping experience:
Engagement: staff that are polite, genuinely caring and interested in helping, acknowledging and listening
Executional excellence: staff patiently explain and advise, check stock, help to find products, possess product knowledge and provide unexpected product quality
Brand Experience: exciting store design and atmosphere, consistently great product quality, making customers feel they're special and that they always get a deal
Expediting: being sensitive to customers' time on long check-out lines, being proactive in helping speed the shopping process
Problem Recovery: helping resolve and compensate for problems, upgrading quality and ensuring complete satisfaction
In all, respondents mentioned 28 related elements of a great experience, such as salespeople who "immediately acknowledged you" or "could easily explain a product to you" or "seemed genuine."
We all know from our own experience that there is a fine line between a helpful salesperson and one who stalks and annoys. But this is where the differentiation in retail lies. We tend to look upon apparel retail staff as transient teen employees who are poorly trained and disengaged. That is why it is a surprise on those rare occasions when we click with the salesperson who helps us navigate their store, understands our needs and tastes, and works at our pace. Chemistry is critical in the relationship but even that component is predicated on the professionalism of the salesperson.
So we have 50% of the population who fear clothes shopping for themselves - this is a fantastic opportunity for retailers to retrain their staff based on this fact, change store design, leverage signage and product information, and solicit feedback from this incredibly important community. Retailers may want to rethink the current trend of reducing in-store sales staff and eliminating commission-based models. Research from McKinsey & Co. indicates that "40% of customers remain open to persuasion once they enter a store, despite undertaking extensive product research, reading online reviews, and comparing prices on their own. Retailers that fail to have knowledgeable staff on hand to help customers make decisions, or even to create arresting in-store visual marketing materials, are losing sale after potential sale. More than ever, retailers need a sales-driven mind-set focused on having the right number of sales staff; ensuring those staff are knowledgeable, well-trained, and motivated to sell; and providing the right in-store experience for customers."
Of course, there are the burgeoning technologies for researching and shopping digitally including Stratacache, a Dayton company that makes digital mannequins. A vertical LCD screen with a motion sensor lets a customer make gestures to swap out different apparel items on a virtual mannequin. Then there is Christie Digital Systems which sells displays of LED panels called MicroTiles that customers can touch and serve as interactive displays around products. The potential impact of a virtual fitting room or customized interactive experience in a store is a new frontier that may reduce the fear of shopping for clothes but will never replace a professional salesperson who connects on a personal level.
Editor's note:This article was originally published at DMNews.com, where Tribal DDB contributes content for the Direct by Design blog.
"The end of an era," a colleague of mine tweeted during the recent CES conference. Amidst the promises for 2011, which include advances in tablet computing, connected cars, Internet-enabled television and next-gen smartphones, one thing was made clear: desktop computing is giving way to new forms of digital interactivity.
Next generation services are built across contexts, colonizing an emerging ecosystem of screens. Startups like Netflix and Hulu stream video across mobile phone, tablet, and TV. Pandora replaces radio online and in-car. Last.fm supports Kinect and Instapaper does iPad. Depending on where I am, social search engine Aardvark decides whether to ping me via Google Chat or iOS app. These are all examples of ubiquitous service in action.
Supporting this reality is the emergence of reliable touch, voice and gesture-controlled interfaces. In the past two months, Microsoft sold eight million Kinect controllers. Consumer expectations have been reset. This is just the beginning, as application designers are beginning to take into account contextual shifts between interfaces. A mobile navigation app could be designed for touch, but automatically switch to voice-based input if operated while driving.
For those hoping to better serve consumers, understanding this new reality is mandatory. Mapping out user behavior within this ecosystem will reveal opportunities for meaningful engagement. Implementing the most effective interface for emerging "post-desktop" behavior will be rewarded.
There is always an amazing deluge of business lists at the start of a new year: top marketing trends, what worked the previous year, best campaigns, hottest industries, most anticipated new product launches. And if you are on Twitter - you will have received more of these, more often. They are fun, they are interesting and eminently sharable but like the Futurist who headlined the last conference you attended - no one holds them accountable for accuracy or actual relevance.
So here is a different spin as we take on the challenges and opportunities of 2011. I prefer to pose a handful of questions to foster dialogue with your colleagues, team, and customers to help shape your business and brand strategy.
What have your customers given you permission to do?
Apple has an amazing "agreement" with their customers - permission to fail. Apple acolytes want the company to push the boundaries of innovation and provide cool stuff. Apple takes this permission and produces products and services that make people's lives fun and easier. And it does not always work out as planned, however, that is fine with Apple customers as long as the intent was sound, honest and showed promise.
So what do your customers give you permission to do? If it is limiting then you need to work on the trust that exists or doesn't exist in the brand relationship. If it is extensive, are you taking advantage of it? This question forces you to examine the agreement between you and your customers and you may find it is either time to reconstitute the relationship or look for new ones.
What is the purpose of your marketing?
If the answer is awareness or drive sales you may want to close that old marketing textbook. While 'awareness, trial, repeat' sounds good in theory, the purpose of marketing today is to change the way people think and the way they behave. Being everywhere is not a marketing strategy nor is an app for app sake or having a Facebook page - it is all about action and impact.
Marketing with impact requires a brand to challenge the way things have always been done by exploring relevance and differentiation. The standout campaigns that produced real change in sales for brands recently are all underpinned by messaging questioning the status quo. And this requires increased creativity given the communications clutter in our society. As George Lois said, "Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."
What are you really going to change from last year?
It scares me to think how many marketing departments start the new year with a budgeting process rather than a strategy process. Too many start with, "O.k. we have a 3% decrease/increase in our budget over last year so what should we do?" The real jumping off point is the business strategy - think: "brand strategy brings business strategy to life". So what is the biggest change in the strategic direction of the business, how can marketing support it, how can marketing take the lead? This is not the economy for status quo. Marketing has always been about taking chances and trying something new - what are you going to change and what is new for you in 2011?
What is your big idea?
The pressure is on for marketers. There are economic constraints, unending new technologies and channels, and increasingly lower barriers to entry in almost every product and service. But if there is one thing that history has taught it is that with challenge and change there is opportunity. But there is a profound difference between history and our current day. People are now relatively comfortable with change. In fact, more and more consumers are actively seeking it out, if not, demanding change. And this is the real opportunity to reach them.
To provide more context, the average American supermarket now carries 48,750 items, according to the Food Marketing Institute, more than five times the number in 1975. Britain's Tesco stocks 91 different shampoos, 93 varieties of toothpaste and 115 of household cleaner. On top of this range of choice, consumers receive over 5,000 media message a day made up of 100,564 words. So the most important metric this year will be how many messages consumers choose NOT to see on a daily basis.
Marketers are creating consumers with such thick skins and blinders that messages bounce off them - they are being trained to ignore and disengage which is exactly the opposite of the objective. So what is your big idea recognizing these factors? What do you want people say about your brand? And what do you want them to do - differently?
If you recognize the need to have your consumers change their behavior - how will you change yours?
Brand messages have bombarded and surrounded consumers for decades. We wake up to clock radios playing ads, check the weather on television and there is another, clear overnight e-mail and texts, sort through online promotions and offers, find the quickest way to our meeting online and have to cut through more messaging to get what we really need. And all of this happens before we leave the house.
Commonly held statistics say the average consumer is subjected to over 5,000 messages a day. I have not attended a marketing conference where this is not cited. In fact, we mention it so much in our industry that we have become inured to the statistic itself let alone its implications. So while consumers have accepted the reality that they must run a daily gauntlet of brand messages, the fact remains, that only a small percentage of those messages are relevant to them as individuals.
In my opinion, the more important statistic is how many messages consumers choose NOT to see on a daily basis. Think just of surfing on your computer. This tool is either incredibly valuable or a terrible time waster. But it has taught the vast majority of us to be instant aggregators, so-so multi-taskers, and reckless information editors. Otherwise, people would quite simply overload.
Yet, we continue to produce ever more messages, shorter in detail and substance, at greater speeds and frequency. It is analogous to being out for a walk and you are hit by one raindrop, then ten, then more than you can count so by the time you have found shelter, you are soaked.
It easy to cast blame on technology, social media, texting, and other gizmos and practices. But even the traditional newspaper carries more information in one day than our ancestors would have been exposed to in their entire lives in the mid-19th century.
I am not smart enough to predict where this all may end but I do lament one impact. We are now spoon-fed bite-size pieces of information without doing any real work ourselves in attaining, absorbing, and forming an opinion. T.S. Eliot once wrote, "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" He died in 1965 so one could only imagine his reaction to what we are currently experiencing and perpetuating.
And then there is my fellow Canadian, Marshall McLuhan, educator, philosopher, and scholar. He was a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. Credited with laying one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory, he was dually a proponent and critic of advertising. Among his many timeless quotes are, "One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with."
McLuhan would have a field day with social media. In fact, I know that he is required reading among the ranks of Facebook employees.
Though I am hesitant, and incapable, of predicting a future based on our actions today, I have to advocate a reversal of sorts before we completely desensitize ourselves. We are creating consumers with such thick skins and blinders that messages bounce off them - we are training them to ignore and disengage which is exactly the opposite of our objective. And the only response to the consumer's increasing skill as ignorers of communications is to create even more communications.
We need to create fewer, better, more entertaining, educational, and meaningful messages. And we need to do so in concert with those we are seeking to connect with. The number of messages consumers choose not to see on a given day requires us to change.
The irony is advertising originated to educate and inform and brands evolved to assist in choice. Yet now, so many aspects of our world do not allow us the time to be meaningful in our choices. The societal consequences of speed and immediacy have not been articulated though clearly in communications we must return to the notion that less is more. This would give us all a bit more time to truly inform ourselves and make better decisions rather than be driven by overload and expediency.
Has your organization ventured into social media marketing? Have you set up a Twitter account? A Facebook fan page for your offering? Or have you posted some YouTube videos?
Are you brainstorming ways to add new fans? Tweeting "exclusive offers"? Shifting your staff around in order to support these new efforts?
And do your social media efforts feel like an "add-on" -- yet another time-intensive activity on your already overwhelming marketing task list?
Our advice is to STOP. Stop and rethink your approach to social media with a new perspective. Rather than focusing on being on more sites, on adding fans or getting comments, instead zero in on ideas for engagement, influence and activation -- and that all-important lever, trust.
We believe in a strategic, six step approach to develop social programs that are more integrated, more interesting and more impactful to your bottom line. Read more in my DDB Yellow Paper: Are you publishing using social media? Just STOP.
This guest post was written by Stuart Harris, an analyst, writer and consultant providing trend spotting insights and market analysis. A multilinguist, Stuart has lived around the globe, following a career path that took him to countries such as France, Italy, Malaysia, and the Netherlands, before returning to the UK. He worked in the '80s as a journalist with the Reuters News Agency covering general news and sports, and later specialized in financial markets. Moving into market research and advertising planning, Stuart conducted projects throughout Europe, Latin America, West Africa and Asia for multinational clients. He is co-author of Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending.
Several of the 2009 words of the year came from social media ("unfriend", "Twitter", "Tweetup") and so it has continued into 2010, even before Aaron Sorkin's hot 2010 movie about Facebook "The Social Network". But what about the real world of ordinary middle class consumers more concerned about jobs and other down-to-earth concerns? Do they care or even notice? Anyone tempted to think that social media is just a nichey fad for kids, geeks and media commentators should bear in mind a couple of figures that show how social media are Main Street and mall in the United States and beyond:
The Sorkin movie has grossed $150 million worldwide since it was released on October 1st.
Facebook has grown from 1 million active users in 2004 to over 500 million in mid-2010.
Secondary market trading in Facebook indicates a cap of over $33 billion, although it's still a private company and is not expected to go IPO before 2012.
However, as the title of this piece promises, our intention is not to talk about Facebook; there are plenty of people already doing that. Rather we are aiming to look beyond that 800 pound gorilla and beyond the froth and hype that accompanies a lot of talk about social media (aka SoMe). To that end, in separate telephone interviews, we sought the perspectives of two very different SoMe veterans: Australian Bill Liao, now based in Europe, and American tech insider Louis Gray, based in Silicon Valley.
Among many other things, Bill Liao is the wealthy co-founder of social network Xing (formerly "openBC/Open Business Club", founded in 2003 by Lars Hinrichs) who is now busy with global philanthropic initiatives including WeForest.org and Neo.org. Louis Gray is one of the Silicon Valley tech community's must-read bloggers who is now also VP marketing of Israel-based technology company My6sense. Both have been around long enough to have seen cycles of hype and crash on the Internet and in social networking platforms. They regard the cycles as part of the process as people experiment with new technologies, adjust their expectations and learn how to use them.
Bill Liao went from IT support employee to millionaire in four years during the 1990s. He sees the current social media frenzy as a familiar process: "If you look at where perception shifts - you're going to have a boom-bust mentality as you explore any new thing. It's happened with the Internet and it's happened with social media. People forget that social media has already had its bust. Look at all the big sites that were around when we were starting Xing - many have failed."
Of the hundreds of millions of people now using social media, most have been at it for three or four years at most. Yet early adopters may recall the first big social networking site, SixDegrees, which lasted from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s and had over three million members at its peak. Then there was Friendster that launched in 2003 but has foundered with management problems , . And no timeline of the field can overlook MySpace, also launched in 2003. MySpace was the hottest social media property for a while, which prompted News Corporation to buy it for US$580 million in 2005, yet it's now threatened with closure by its owners as visitor numbers fall and losses mount.
So is social media just a hyped-up fad? Will the current crop of big-name social media brands suffer the same fate as SixDegrees, drawing in millions of visitors while they bleed investor cash?
In a study of more than 1,600 consumers in Europe, the U.S., Latin America and Asia Pacific, DDB Worldwide's Paris agency teamed with Opinonway, a leading research institute, to examine the curious relationship between Facebook and brands which with 500 million users and an array of advertising tools represents fertile ground for clients. Click here for an excerpt of the study
Chile was chosen due to the high penetration of Facebook in the country ( 44%) and turned out to be the country where users interacted the most with brands (liking in average 13 brands).
The study showed that Facebook users who like a brand's page on the social networking site use its products regularly or occasionally and, after following the brand on Facebook, more than a third of the respondents "want to buy this brand's product more."
Brand page fans on Facebook also recommend the brand to friends, with 49 percent of the respondents saying they would "certainly" do so and 43 percent saying they "probably" would. Collectively, that's a whopping 92 percent who qualify as brand advocates.
The survey sample skewed female (54 percent) and had an average age of 31 in Chile. Most of the respondents are very active on Facebook, with 89 percent visiting the site either once or several times a day.
The survey found that ads are the primary driver to brand pages, followed by invitations from friends and Web searches . And once there, fans expect more than downloadable coupons. Rather, they want to feel more like a VIP who can access exclusive content, information about new products and yes, promotional offers, before the general public can.
When ranking the most important reasons why they follow brands on Facebook, respondents cited promotional benefits first, followed by liking the brand, wanting to know about new products, gaining access to exclusive information and being able to provide opinions about the brand. So, to keep fans on Facebook, brands should consider them loyal customers and apply the principles of classic customer relationship marketing.
Even brand advocates, such as those who participated in the survey, will reject a dull or irrelevant page. Fifty-six percent of Chilean respondents said they've unsubscribed from a brand page. Why? Because they lost interest in the brand, the page's content came too frequently and it wasn't particularly interesting, the survey found.
Chile's favorite brands on Facebook
What are the most liked brands on Facebook? It varied from country to country, with U.S. respondents identifying Nike as their favorite brand, Chilean respondents picking Adidas and Italian respondents choosing Nutella. The top five among the full sample were Nike, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Nutella and Sony.
Chuck Brymer, CEO of DDB Worldwide, speaks with Meet the Boss TV, a candid interview program that hones in on business challenges, management's agendas, and competitive strategies in today's constantly changing business landscape.
Highlighting the importance of creativity to culture and successful business, Chuck explains that even more important than the most cutting-edge, digitally-savvy campaign is the ability to uncover the universal truths that inspire consumers and entice them to engage with your brands or products. Chuck also addresses the importance of digital advancements and interactive marketing, pointing out that consumers aren't necessarily thinking about how they receive a message, but rather whether the advertisement resonates with them and creates something of value for them. In other words, no matter the medium, the importance of a given campaign still lies in the how effectively a message engages its intended audience.
Tune in to see Chuck speak about the importance of a global company culture, the digitalization and socialization of advertising, the ways in which technology is fundamentally changing the industry, the new importance of speed, the creative process, the heightened consumer engagement with brands, and the three most important questions to ask when approaching your marketing, no matter the executional approach.
Today's shopper is both better informed and more empowered and, in response, both consumer packaged goods retailers and manufacturers need to change the way they communicate with them.
Mark A. Shapiro, President & CEO of Gladson sheds new light on this transformation in shopper behavior in their Gladson Industry Leadership Whitepaper: Information Retailing - Serving Empowered Shoppers in the New Economy.
For more information, visit www.gladson.com or contact Steve Cole, Gladson chief marketing officer at 630-435-2281 or via e-mail at steve.cole@gladson.com
The Future of Marketing & Media: Data Is the New Oil
This guest post was written by media futurist Gerd Leonard. Named "one of the leading Media Futurists in the World" by The Wall Street Journal, Gerd works as a futurist in the media, telecom, technology and communication industries. He is also an author, blogger, keynote speaker and strategist and is the CEO of TheFuturesAgency and a visiting professor at the Fundacao Dom Cabral in Sao Paulo / Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
With the explosive growth of the Internet, mobile devices and social networking, a connected world is indeed a very different world. Just witness the meteoric rise of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and the demise of the recorded music industry as we knew it. I would go so far as to argue the only reason advertising in its pre-Web 2.0 form (a global business worth approx. $400 billion per year) ever existed was simply because we were not yet truly connected as today's mobile, social and real-time Internet did not yet exist.
Now that it exists, most of us will no longer tolerate interruptions, meaningless pitches, garish popups, Las Vegas-style skyscraper ads or junk email. We are looking for truly personalized offers, real meaning, solid relevance, timeliness, and yes, transparency and truthfulness. In other words, we will be looking for merit and values that are geared 100% towards us, not to everybody else, or someone else. Think micro-sprinkler systems, not fire hoses; droplets of expression, not spigots of noise exploding off empowered consumers (many of which in fact loath that very term).
Clearly, if brands and their marketers, ads and messages do not provide real value (remember: only time is a truly scarce value now), we will quickly lock them out of our lives and put them on the 'infinitely ignored' list.
One might therefore argue that advertising is indeed becoming content (contvertising, anyone?), since relevant and desired, opted-in and followed content is usually quite valuable to us as we spend time on it, while irrelevant messages that encourage us to purchase items we don't even need are just noise. And the Internet has been so fabulously great at increasing the noise level that the time has come to turn that noise into meaning, to take the firehose of data and turn it into a clever sprinkler system.
The key question for marketers, as ever, is: how can you cut the noise, how can you be relevant, be truly wanted, make a better match, and benefit from meaningful connections? How can you turn the act of selling into content, into engagement, into mutual appreciation? Is that even possible?
When marketing professionals refer to "predictive analytics", they generally mean one of two types of statistical models that are based on historical data:
Scoring models: These identify a particular behavior that a marketer wants to predict (e.g., response to a campaign, repeat purchase, failure to pay a bill, etc.) and look for the characteristics (or "profile") of consumers that tend to exhibit this behavior. A numerical combination (or model) of these characteristics creates a score for each individual consumer. The higher the score, the more the individual "looks like" other consumers who have exhibited the behavior in the past.
Time series models: These identify a particular event that a marketer wants to predict (e.g., a peak in weekly revenue, a spike in website visits, an increase in online buzz) and look for the preceding events that led up to it. A numerical combination of these events creates a score for each point in time. The higher the score, the more that point in time "looks like" other points in time when the event of interest occurred in the past.
Both types of models are constructed by looking at how well they would have worked in the past (when the consumer behavior or event of interest is known). The more they align, the better the model is said to "fit" and the more confident the marketer is that the model can be applied to future behavior or future events. The key phrase in the above description is "in the past". With few exceptions (most notably new product forecasting models like BASES and Assessor), predictive analytics are based on the premise that past behavior or past events are the best predictor of future behavior or future events.
You don't have to be a professional marketer (and certainly not a rocket scientist) to know that today's consumer behavior is unlike anything we have seen in the past. Unemployment is at an all time high, unique consumer products and service models are emerging, media fragmentation continues at an amazing rate and new channels of distribution are created every day. If there was ever a time when I would not want to stake my marketing budget on what has occurred in the past, it would be today.
At the Asian Marketing Effectiveness Festival this year in Shanghai, DDB Group hosted one of the world's leading branding experts, Martin Lindstrom, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal's bestselling author of Buyology and Brand Sense. Martin was also named one of the world's 100 most influential people by TIME magazine in 2009.
Over coffee, I had the chance to talk to him about his neuromarketing research project and his thoughts on the industry.
Karen See: Your latest book is called "Buyology, how everything we believe about why we buy is wrong". What does that really mean?
Martin Lindstrom: The entire book is based on neuromarketing - what I call the intriguing marriage of marketing and science. What I realized a few years back is that we really had no idea why we choose to buy one product over another. As a branding advisor, this nagged at me to the point of obsession. I wanted to know why people were drawn to a particular type of shaving cream, a certain make of car, or chocolate bar. As consumers we can't ask ourselves these questions, because most of the time we don't know the answer hence the reason why traditional research methods weren't working.
KS: So you invested in neuromarketing to find out what really made consumers tick?
ML: I believed that the answer of brand choice lay somewhere in the brain. And I believed if I could uncover it, it would not only help sculpt the future of advertising, it would also revolutionize the way all of us think and behave as consumers - turned out to be a three-year-long, multimillion-dollar journey into the worlds of consumers, brand and science.
KS: Did your research reveal what you had hoped for?
ML: Neuromarketing is the key to unlocking what I call our Buyology - the subconscious thoughts, feelings, and desires that drive the purchasing decisions we make each and every day of our lives. I believe the more companies know about our subconscious needs and desires, the more useful, meaningful products they will bring to the market.
Mountain Dew is the First to Leverage Facebook 'Like' Function in its Advertisements
Last week, Mountain Dew, Tribal DDB, OMD and MediaMind seized upon the latest innovation in social media to make Mountain Dew the first brand to bring the Facebook 'Like' functionality to online advertising outside of the Facebook platform.
Through the display ads, users who click the "like" button are added to the Mountain Dew fan base on Facebook (if they're logged into Facebook) all while they are viewing the content on their destination site. An announcement also appears in the fan's Facebook news feed, announcing their "liking" of the brand, and users are able to see within the banner which of their Facebook friends are fans of Mountain Dew, creating a new online community around the advertisement itself.
This is a pivotal development in the evolution of social advertising. Marketers who can take full advantage of this feature are clearly gaining added visibility on Facebook and creating a deeper engagement with consumers in the social space. But perhaps more importantly, the Facebook 'Like' button provides a key metric by which advertisers can gauge the success of their campaign, demand for their product or service, and/or, more generally speaking, cultivate brand loyalty.
Liking a brand on Facebook creates a database of consumers opting to receive ongoing messages from and about the brand. This is of major importance because it is a long term relationship, not just a quick handshake. Many forecast that the trend toward integrating social networking and advertising will soon be seen in other advertisements, videos, and even offline content.
As revealed in the DDB Worldwide and Opinionway Research study on Facebook, 75% of consumers from ages 18 to 60 years old "liked" a brand on Facebook as a result of advertisements and other direct approaches. This deeper integration of the "like" function into advertising is an indication that we've only just scratched the surface of engagement in this space. It highlights the importance of continually embracing innovative concepts, emerging platforms and new technologies in order to create content that consumers want to play with, participate in and pass along.
"Reputations aren't drunk-proof": The Other Hangover
Colleges and universities have historically managed two disparate images. There are the obvious associations with learning, excellence, and improvement. However, that gilded appearance has been balanced with the reputation of drinking, partying, and risky behavior. Over the past five to ten years, many of these institutions have themselves been tested by the practice of binge drinking. This involves consuming a great deal of alcohol in a short period of time and has resulted in some horrific episodes while prompting a debate on its ubiquity and overall impact.
A team from the University of Minnesota acted on the issue and developed an innovative campaign. It centers on a simple insight that beyond the physical hangover there can be significant consequences to the binge drinker's reputation. The campaign defines this "Other Hangover" as, "The regrettable social after-effects of over-consumption, such as embarrassment, shame, or guilt. While it usually goes unnoticed until the next morning, the consequences can last a lifetime."
It was the University's entry in the National Student Advertising Competition which was sponsored by The Century Council: Distillers Fighting Drunk Driving & Underage Drinking. Though not a winner, the campaign took a clear point-of-view that a message regarding reputation would be more effective than one focused on health and potential death. Nathan Gilkerson, a PhD student in the University's School of Journalism and Mass Communications, who has helped guide the work shared with me that a message of "moderation not abstinence" was more realistic and relevant given the audience.
This was supported by research, focus groups, and by the team's own self-reflection on their actions and behaviors as students. This must have resonated with The Century Council who following the competition provided a $75,000 grant to execute the campaign. The advisors and student team chose a mix of media employing billboards, print, sidewalk clings, coasters, mirror clings, along with a Facebook page and Twitter account.
This provides a broad canvass for its direct messages. These include "Just because you were drunk doesn't mean it didn't happen." and "You can de-tag a photo but you cannot erase a memory." One may associate a campus closely with social media but Nathan explained that the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities is a "walking campus" which prompted many of the media choices. The team is measuring awareness, attitudes, and behavior through a series of e-mail surveys to six hundred undergraduates. In addition, they are tracking buzz and media attention.
Lucy Jameson, DDB's Global Strategy Director, on the science of social creativity
DDB has always believed that creativity is the most powerful force in business and that at the heart of an effective creative philosophy is the belief that nothing is more compelling than an insight into human nature.
Recent developments in science are shedding new light on how people connect and the nature of human behavior. In today's new hyper-connected world, we need to be even more creative than ever and to apply our creativity in new ways.
Read more in our yellow paper series The Power of Six Degrees and Introducing Social Creativity.
How to Use Social Media: 5 Lessons From the PR World
You're at a party with friends, having a wonderful time. There are lewd jokes, quality banter, knowing winks, laughter, and sly references that only years of bonding together can bring.
A stranger awkwardly stands behind you, as if wanting to be part of the conversation.
He seems familiar - you think you know him from somewhere, but have never met until now. You invite him into your circle of friends and strike up a chat.
He doesn't seem to be interested in answering any of your questions though, nor listening to a word you say. To your horror, all he does is talk about himself.
I recently conducted a survey amongst our Managing Directors and Creative Directors to ask them what they believed Trust and Value to mean.
Our industry is 10 years old, and we've been charged with building the future. Digital is now at the centre of everything and our specialists, our innovators and our quirky mavericks have been asked to grow up and be more business like. This talent is rare and needs to be cherished. These are our impact players. They change businesses, they have changed ours, so what do they believe Trust and Value to mean? Let me share a few of their thoughts with you.
"Trust and Value are intrinsically linked. You can not be valued unless you have trust and you can not grow value (revenue) without your clients' trust."
A March, 2010 online survey from The Nielsen Company of more than 27,000 consumers in 55 markets from Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, North America and the Middle East/Africa (consisting of countries from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and South Africa) reveals that spending habits have definitely changed and mat reflect a new ongoing frugality. Of course, given the recession this is hardly earth-shattering but what this study uniquely shows is that these changes are now universally underway. Every country and consumer has been impacted and that has us all using a number of tactics for making our money work harder.
Nielsen makes a bold stand stating, "Regardless, one thing remains clear: habits picked up during the recession are likely to survive even after economic recovery is in full-swing." This means marketers must ensure that their offer, pricing, messaging, guarantees, and other value associations meet the new reality. The study shows that there has been a shift towards private label products along with these other tactics for saving money:
Buying items on sale (a 57% global average)
Using coupons (40%)
Shopping at value retailers (37%), such as supercenters and dollar stores
Purchasing value packs (35%)
Shopping close to home/work (25%)
Stocking up (22%)
Switching to cheaper health and beauty products (18%)
Purchasing smaller packs with a lower unit price (17%)
Interestingly, one in ten of respondents reported no change in their spending habits which may aid luxury brands. It will be very interesting to see if luxury returns to a more elitist segment. In the past twenty years we have seen a democratization of luxury which, in essence, is ironic so that designer items, spa treatments, high-end vehicles, exotic vacations, and the like were more readily available to the masses. This is one of the harshest realities for many consumers - not all can afford to do or own everything and this is as much a cultural shift as it is an economic.
It reminds me of a CNN report at the height of the crisis on a couple from Seattle whose income was collectively below US$100,000 but owned/mortgaged a US$800,000 home and stated other significant (unrealistic) economic expectations for how they would live. It seems astonishing now but the crisis we are still grappling with stems from that historic conflict of wants versus needs. Consumers are in a new economic reality and marketers must continue to adjust to it. However, as DDB featured in its two Yellow Papers on the impact of the recession, every economy brings opportunity but that can only be achieved with a deep connection and understanding of the consumer.
I was listening to a recent HBR IdeaCast titled, Strange-But-True Insights that was an amazing collection of groundbreaking research across industries and situations. One piece of research by Leif D. Nelson, a Hass School of Business professor at Berkeley, was particularly fascinating as it challenged a commonly held assumption in human behavior. Professor Nelson has spent the past few years looking into "consumer adaptation" which deals with how we react to certain stimuli including marketing messaging. One of his earlier works was titled, Interrupted Consumption: Adaptation and the Disruption of the Hedonic Experience. Not surprisingly in this study, he and fellow researchers, found that people tend to choose breaks in negative experiences and avoid breaks in positive ones.
Basically, we humans naturally attempt to intensify our positive experiences and mitigate the negative - really no big surprise. However, Nelson and colleagues argue that "consumers should insert breaks into positive experiences, but not in negative ones". They explain this counterintuitive rationale with the following, "we argue that consumers will often fail to anticipate adaptation and the intensifying effect of breaks. We propose that consumers instead assume that breaks actually weaken the intensity of the experience. In other words, we argue that consumer's preferences for breaking up experiences are often in direct opposition to the strategies that would maximize their enjoyment or minimize their suffering."
In simple terms, they are saying - insert breaks into positive experiences because each 'start-up' of that experience actually mirrors and intensifies the original emotions and impact. These are positive adaptations. Further, we should as people and consumers not insert breaks in negative experiences as it just causes us to relive it over and over rather that dealing with it directly and in total.
Where Nelson and his colleagues work really engages is in a piece published in the Journal of Consumer Research in January, 2009 (Download). The essay is titled, Enhancing the Television-Viewing Experience Through Commercial Interruptions. Here is a verbatim summary whose insights are very counterintuitive:
"Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers' extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television-viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their enjoyment diminishes over time. Commercial interruptions can disrupt this adaptation process and restore the intensity of consumers' enjoyment. Six studies demonstrate that, although people prefer to avoid commercial interruptions, these interruptions actually made the programs more enjoyable (study 1), regardless of the quality of the commercial (study 2), even when controlling for the mere presence of the ads (study 3), and regardless of the nature of the interruption (study 4). However, this effect was eliminated for people who are less likely to adapt (study 5), and for programs that do not lead to adaptation (study 6), confirming the disruption of adaptation account and identifying crucial boundaries for the effect."
Lots of academic language, I know. But in short, the authors are saying that consumers actually benefit by changes that challenge our adaptation processes so we are more stimulated. In effect, commercials break a pattern that contributes to overall pleasure and value of television-viewing. While I contend that consumers would prefer to watch an informative, entertaining and quality advertisement over one that does not deliver the same value, I cannot dispute Nelson and colleagues' primary finding regarding the benefits of interruption. Very cool stuff and worthy of further research.
It is an understatement to say that the advertising and communications industry has experienced a great deal of change in the last five years. Economic conditions, consumer engagement, social media, digital technologies, tangible metrics and much more, are changing how we do business. Clearly the industry needs to be fluid and adaptive while leaders within the industry need to be bold, take a stand, and lead the change. The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival has not been immune to these forces and is doing its best to be increasing relevant within these new dynamics.
This year entries are up 7% and attendance has risen 35% which is comparable to pre-recession levels. This indicates a general restoration in faith in the economy but more importantly it signals a need to invest in the future and celebrate the strategic and creative accomplishments of the industry. Since arriving in Cannes, I have noted a refreshing seriousness amongst those in attendance. People are here to learn and to challenge themselves. I have never seen such active note-taking at the sessions and more earnest, intense discussions at the breaks.
If you check out the homepage of the Festival, you will see a section, "Creative Advertising = Business Success." This section features a report that purports to prove that creative advertising equates to business success. This is incredibly relevant to clients who, by the way, are back in force this year representing approximately ten percent of attendees. This is a good thing. Client participation can only result in more relevant and rewarding work from their agencies.
Another growing segment of attendees are what can be called "tech companies." Over the last few years, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have become a staple and a force (this year Yahoo scored a minor coup by sponsoring the infamous Gutter Bar). Now these companies are joined by Adobe, Nokia, and HP. Global consulting firms are relatively new entrants with ones such as PwC joining session discussions on the changed marketing landscape. Hollywood too is increasing its presence supporting the theory that communications and entertainment are a natural combination.
The Festival will always be a great time, a great place to network, and a time to celebrate great work. Increasingly, it needs to be synonymous with effectiveness and results. By what I have observed, this transformation is underway.
Budweiser is the official beer sponsor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and as part of the Bud United sponsorship platform, DDB Worldwide is debuting Bud House - the first reality show tied to a global sporting event.
At Bud House, we have gathered 32 football "fanatics" -- one from each country in the World Cup draw -- to live together in South Africa, under one roof, during the entirety of the World Cup. The fans will watch all the matches together and share the ups and downs of the world's most global, and highly anticipated, sporting event. Naturally, they will also represent their country through a series of competitive, charitable and sure-to-be-entertaining activities. In short, Bud House is the perfect physical manifestation of the way Budweiser brings people together.
As each team is eliminated from the World Cup, the corresponding fanatic will be eliminated from the competition and lose their chance at the ultimate grand prize - awarding in-person the Budweiser Man of the Match Trophy on the pitch after the final championship game. This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime prize on the largest global stage possible.
Bud House is a product of collaboration between DDB Chicago and Tribal DDB Amsterdam and our clients on the Budweiser Global Team at Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Check it out, follow the fanatics on Facebook and Twitter, tune in to the episodes, and share it with your friends:
I recently spoke on webinar covering Mobile Marketing. Given that marketing has moved from broadcast to engagement to involvement, mobile has a tremendous role to play. At DDB we are fond of saying, "speed is the new big" and since mobile is immediate it can position a brand in a very unique way.
And uniqueness is more critical than ever. We continue to be faced with staggering choices as consumers. There are roughly 450 new consumer products launched monthly, over 30,000 products in the average grocery store, and I recently counted 73 different "bars" (chocolate, granola, energy) in my local average convenience store. Another factor that requires brands to be unique is the increasingly frugal consumer who has been hit economically. A recent study from Booz & Co. of 2,000 consumers showed that 58% had reduced their spending on eating out and when good times return only 19% of those intend to go back to previous spending levels. So more choice and less volume are putting pressure on brands.
And of course we are seeing incredible changes in behavior in society due in significant part to technology. A recent study from AOL shows that teens and young adults spend $2200 per year with $864 of that going to mobile phones. This group now is occupied forty hours a week plugged into a combination of computer, tv, video games, and radio. This proves that media has shifted to "ME-dia" signaling that it is individuals who carry brand messages and marketers must know who those key players are to influence their brand positively. A study from Nielsen in July, 2009 shows that the most trusted source for consumers is now "recommendations from people I know". These are all game changers.
As a consumer, I am playing a relatively new role in marketing. I am a big fan of reading and enjoy reviewing books on Amazon. Personally I am influenced more by my fellow reviewer's opinions than The New York Times book reviews. I will not buy a book rated below three stars and I take pride in the quality of my own reviews as these are scrutinized. Reviewers are ranked based on how the helpfulness of their reviews. So in essence, I am contributing to the entire publishing industry and influencing choice - very heady stuff.
The link between emotive power and business growth is clear. Science tells us that emotion, not rational thought is the gatekeeper to consumer behaviour: this month's issue of Wired magazine features an article on this very topic, and our more avid followers may have seen Paul Price's Yellow Paper titled Unleashing Emotions for Business Growth.
It seems strange that despite the clear value of emotive power, very little of the debate surrounding digital marketing is about how it can be made more emotive.
That's why my second DDB Yellow Paper is about humour in the digital age of marketing: its renewed benefits; a glimpse at a brand that manages to be funny on the web; an investigation into how social technologies are impacting on the way that we joke; and finally a few pointers on how to ensure that your brand is in a position to take advantage of it.
It has been some time since I read Aristotle or should I say forced to read Aristotle in school. But since doing so voluntarily and willingly I have been struck by the lessons he provides to marketers. One of his most interesting discussion threads in Poetics is the notion that cleverness precludes depth. Of course, he was examining poetry but there are clear lessons given the connection between storytelling and brand building. And cleverness trumping depth has been one of the historic criticisms of marketing and advertising. So I thought it would be interesting to relate ten of Aristotle thoughts to current communications practices.
"A friend to all is a friend to none. "
By trying to please everyone, you end up pleasing none says Aristotle and this is certainly true today in business communications. Brands are sorting devices. Their stories must convey to consumers who the brand is meant for in terms of practical application and emotional appeal. A brand runs a significant risk when engaging the masses without first understanding who is the ideal consumer.
Will consumers still connect with luxury mobiles when the recession is over?
This article explores the impact of the "Great Recession" on luxury mobile phones. Apparently one would expect that, like all things luxury, mobile phones would have suffered too but this is not the case. It all comes down to what we mean by luxury. One thing is for sure, the days of simple badge value is long gone. If a luxury brand is to survive in this era they need to deliver something truly extraordinary and the same is true with mobile phones. The "sea of sapphire" on the surface of the Vertu "Signature" range for example goes through a two-week treatment in a hot furnace at 2,000C°. This material gives the case of the phone an astonishing hardness, making it scratch proof against any material except diamond. Now that's the kind of story a real luxury brand would tell.
Thanks to strategy+business for their annual review of the year's business books. The forty-four page report is a great read itself. The editors point out that in May, 2009 year-to-date sales of professional books were down 6.8% in the U.S. The recession is the prime suspect for the decline and it is that event that fueled quite a few of the books on their list. It is not a ranking but rather a sorting of the cream within eight categories. True to the story of the year, the first category is The Meltdown. Seven books are suggested as worthy of reading with In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernake's War on the Great Panic from David Wessel, The Wall Street Journal's economics editor, as the top pick. It provides context, content and a compelling examination of the key players including Bernake, Geithner, and Paulson. The six other books include Fool's Gold and House of Cards, both of which I have read, the latter being a must in my opinion.
Insights that Incite argues that the most effective and enduring communications are those born from single, simple insights into human behavior. Or more specifically human consumer behavior. Insights so simple that once revealed people react by saying, "that must already exist" or "why didn't I think of that". Insights require communicators to look at situations from new angles, examine problems from other perspectives, seek inspiration from other industries, from the animal kingdom, from science, from science fiction. The paper asks...How insightful are you? and How insightful are you?. Does your marketing and communications prompt new thinking? Will it change the way people think? Is it created solely for creative sake or does it solve a real business problem? Does it help sell more, more often, to more people, at a higher price? Does it improve our world?
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." This piece of wisdom comes from Warren Buffett, the entrepreneur, investor and, according to Forbes, the world's second richest man with $37 billion and an ingenious talent for communications. His every word, every move, is carefully calculated for and watched by the market.
A precious attribute like reputation is not a hard asset; however, it is measurable. While reputation can help build more tangible resources and enhance shareholder value, reputation is staked on what companies do and say. Similarly, reputation is damaged by a combination of actions and words. Leaders at any level should not delegate their responsibility for communications. Communication is just as much their job as brand stewardship. Whether you are a managing director of an office, president of a division, or chairman and CEO of a corporate behemoth, communication is within your purview and you need to own it, internally and externally, while working in concert with your public relations directors, marketing officers and senior executive team.
The U.S. has become an urban youth dominated Pan-Latin force.
While we were sleeping, it happened. A whole new demographic of young, reasonably affluent Hispanics entered the world of marketing as incredibly important and valuable consumers, but just not quite the way mainstream America thought they would in the '80s.
Instead of a Gringo Nation with subtle flavors of Hispanic culture - reflected mostly in the food courts of an ever-expanding empire of suburban malls - the U.S. of A. has become an urban youth dominated Pan-Latin force.
The economic crisis appears to be abating as indicators suggest the worst may be past. Yet with each new release of data, the market is subject to impacts which produce varying opinion of the health of the global economy. It is widely agreed that the recovery will be long and trying. In the fall of 2008 when the severity of the downturn was being realized, DDB published a paper called, Capturing Opportunities in Challenging Times. The response was overwhelming with the paper downloaded over 50,000 times and referenced in numerous articles online and offline.
Given the recession's obvious impacts, we decided to produce a follow-up paper that examines how marketers and advertisers have responded to the economy in their communications. What has been the response in terms of strategy, creativity, messaging and spend? And how have consumers reacted both to the crisis and the communications they have received during this dramatic and behavioral altering downturn? It includes examples from McDonald's, Harvey Nichols, Brita, Select Recipes, Sunpower and Volkswagen along with supporting data from Nielsen, eMarketer, comScore, and Datamonitor.
There is a certain amount of 'irrational exuberance' around the introduction and maturing of social media. It has been widely and rapidly adopted as a means of both personal and commercial communications. It has spawned numerous platforms including Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Digg, MySpace, etc., prompting the question of how much intelligence and value have we lost in all this communication? Arguably, much of the content is re-purposed and subtly changed to fit the seemingly slight differences in platform and audience. And, in the case of Twitter, its very existence is questioned entirely.
It just seems to be a "land-grab" of sorts with the real estate actually being a relatively small group of online/digital influencers. And that is where the fundamental flaw exists in social media. Even though the medium and its technology promise the ability to reach a specific person or group (e.g., close friends or brand advocates), most users (individuals and companies/brands) are using it to gain a large audience. This is because most marketers are wielding social media as they have historically done with traditional advertising and communications. These extremely nifty tools exist yet most brands employ them like a television campaign masterminded by 1960's Sterling Cooper of Mad Men fame.
Think about your own Facebook and Linkedin accounts. Do more connections really equal more? Or are you beginning to sort your more valuable contacts in these platforms from all the others? The goal is not to have a huge network, it is to have a deeper, more meaningful one (think how we mature through life and come to value fewer, closer relationships). We learned this with blogs. They proliferated like wildfire when the technology was made available. Now most people follow a handful of bloggers because they are trusted, valuable and consistent. The same is happening with Twitter as roughly two-thirds of accounts go dormant in three months.
And this is supported by recent research from Nielsen based on a survey of 25,000 people (Trust, Value and Engagement in Advertising). It probed respondents on their trusted sources in various forms of advertising. "Recommendations from people known" is by far the most trusted. This is a radical behavioral change, laying out the fact that people treasure belonging to different groups as a means of personal identity and expression but at the end of the day we only really trust a small group of friends and influencers. Why? Because we know them. We have come to rely on them and them on us. They represent authenticity, honesty, and reliability because of shared values. This connection to influencers and peers is driving consumer behavior and the technology exists to leverage it but only if marketers adopt a very different mindset in how they conduct business.
It is like the old business school adage, "I would rather have one customer who represents $1,000 in revenue than 10 who represent $100 each". Social media can reach millions and that is exciting and interesting but how many actually purchase the associated brand? Social media's promise and proof will not be in mass connection it is in meaningful connection.
Those who make only safe bets in the area of products and communications lose. Instead of figures, managers should trust their intuition.
Tonio Kröger and Amir Kassaei
Germany's economy is presently being given a good shaking. As diverse as the analyses of the situation are the ways in which different companies are handling the situation: some with increased trepidation and a fixation on numbers, others rushing toward mergers or acquisitions (no panacea there) and, fortunately, a few with pragmatic audacity. These few company managers, who resist the temptation to turn the financial screws and run for cover behind expert situation plans, instead focus on what is really important: their products and their market. In so doing they bestow a sense of calm and purpose within their organizations and set up a framework for success instead of failure.
Still, the fear of making the wrong decision, especially prevalent in middle management levels, prevents most from seeing crisis as an opportunity for reorientation and innovation. And in the area of communications, companies bet on what has been tried and tested and that in itself is a huge risk. Look at the annals of any successful company and quite notable is that from the beginning each has always had an appetite for risk, and an understanding of the market and their own product.
There was a time when an average product and a high advertising budget could be successful on the market. Consumers were passive, their media and purchasing behavior predictable. This has changed rapidly in the past ten years. Today consumers painstakingly consider whether they need a product, what potential additional value it actually contributes to their lives ,and if it does add value which brand is the right choice. The Internet provides the tools to do so in depth: It creates transparency and direct possibilities of comparison. For telecommunication products every third consumer opinion and in the area of nutrition every second consumer opinion is a purchasing recommendation, or not..
Looking back at the winners from past crises it is clear that some companies have managed to prepare for future success during economically difficult times with new products that make people's lives easier. While, for example, the Internet was regarded as off limits in the new economy crisis, the gigantic rise of Google and eBay began during this time. From the point of view of market communication their success is based on the courage to make two decisions.
On one hand it is about showing a distinct profile during difficult times. Those who know what they can do and what they stand for should utilize the lethargy of others to develop new markets. Because even if all are striving to position themselves, most lack the power and courage to take a clear position and to stick with it.
The limits of market research
On the other hand, it requires courage to base the decision about communications or a product not only on market research. Polls can only show what is already known. Innovation, on the other hand, results from the ability to think in new ways. It is not about following a trend, but rather about creating one. A market research analyst could hardly have predicted that we would ever have the need to coordinate our lives via cellular phone. Marketing managers must thus be like compass needles and must not lose their grip on the strategic direction of their product.
A good brand and company manager require creativity and space to develop it. Those who are only driven by investor relations and compliance are missing the chance of positioning their company for the future. Now, more than ever, there is a need for analysts who are still pragmatic but less driven by figures and inhabit the world of their customers.
We are in the midst of a Retro Revolution. Twister, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and Candyland are flying off shelves. Forgotten characters - G.I. Joe, The Terminator, Captain Kirk - have taken over the box office. And once-gone fashion brands - L.A. Gear, Lacoste, Z. Cavaricci - are being stocked again in retail stores. Add to these the re-emergence of muscle cars, old-school arcade games, retro candies - the list goes on.
A brand represents the relationship between a company and a consumer. And any solid relationship requires trust to allow it to begin, mature and grow. Of course, this is nothing new. Hollow brands or those that over promise and under-deliver are found out and will suffer economic consequences. The difference now is the speed in which this is happening. Social media, technology, proliferation of sources and other factors mean we have more information than ever before. And this brings a certain risk, as T.S. Eliot pointed out when she said, "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
At one point in the last couple of years, blogs were materializing at an incredible rate. Now they have slowed and readers are favoring blogs that are credible and valuable. The same will happen with Twitter. This brings to mind Facebook - how many friends does the average person have? Or more importantly, how many do we actually follow with interest and regularity. The fact is, we humans treasure belonging to different groups but at the end of the day we only really trust a small group of friends and influencers. Why? Because we really know them. We have come to rely on them and they on us. They are authentic, believable, reliable and share our values.
This is certainly supported by recent research by Nielsen based on a survey of 25,000 people online. "Recommendations from people known" is by far the most trusted form of advertising. Decades ago Bill Bernbach said, "Word of mouth is the best medium of all". True then, truer it seems today.
Have a look at Tess Alps' "Plouffe of effectiveness" on Brand Republic. Maybe it's the heat, she begins, "but some recent commentary has got a bit carried away when interpreting what certain wins at Cannes portend for TV. The successes of the fantastic Obama campaign and Tribal DDB's brilliant 'Carousel' - an online film for Philips TVs - have got some a little over-excited. There is a small but noisy contingent desperate to prolong a TV versus internet polemic; so when what is effectively an online TV ad wins at Cannes they absurdly pronounce the death of TV advertising, much as they announced that online advertising can't be working when Google started using TV to promote Chrome."
In the UK, Alps, the CEO of Thinkbox, is in the business of marketing the TV industry regardless of the screen it inhabits, be it large or tiny, internet or cable and she frames the TV vs Internet discussion dead on, dispensing with polemics and agreeing with what Barack Obama campaign strategist David Plouffe said in Cannes: In terms of media, this is not a case of "either or." There's a need for both in any successful campaign. Just as there is a need for authenticity and innovation on the part of any brand if it's to succeed.
Personally, I am looking forward to the day when everything is all in one box and we can dispense with this discussion for good. When, who knows, maybe even film and cyber blend into one awards category.
Six Opportunities for Enhancing your Business and Brand
Many businesses regardless of industry now emulate the practices of professional services. The business reasons for this include enhancing differentiation and establishing consultative revenue streams. This paper covers six challenges in professional services branding and marketing that can be turned to opportunities by marketers willing to experiment, invest and show patience.
Take a look at James Lou, EVP and U.S. Chief Strategist weighing in on Oprah's consumer influence on an upcoming CNBC special The Oprah Effect airing May 28, 2009: Oprah's Consumer Influence
A day does not go by without a raft of articles on how people are adjusting (correcting) their purchase behavior and decisions in this recession. Big purchases are on hold or deeply scrutinized. We are vacationing at home, driving less, and connecting more with family. Needs and wants are now extremely well defined. However, some behavior is hard to eradicate. We still need our downtime (in a downturn). That is why some businesses have historically performed well in poor economic conditions.
Pet Observation Porthole
If you read our paper on recession marketing, you will see that people tend to flock to movies, alcohol and tobacco, and in this particular recession chocolate is hugely popular (I forecast huge strains on healthcare in the coming years). But there is another trend seemingly unique to this current climate, what I call, "comfort hard goods". Just look at the performance of the Snuggie (or backward robe or ripped sleeping bag). Everyone has had fun making fun of it but it is selling. It represents comfort, nesting, cocooning and relaxation. Sure it is using advertising reminiscent of Phil Kives' K-Tel International (the originator of the info-commercial from Winnipeg) but it works.
Edge Baking Pan
A recent article in the New York Times by Sarah Kershaw on SkyMall, the catalogue in the seat pocket on many US airlines, does a great job in further illustrating this trend. SkyMall has a circulation of 20 million, features over 2,000 products, and reaches 688 million bored travelers annually. "If there is any piece of writing that defines our culture, I submit it's the SkyMall catalog," the author Bill McKibben wrote in a 2006 essay in Orion magazine. "To browse its pages is to understand the essential secret of American consumer life: That we've officially run out not only of things we need, but even of things we might plausibly desire."
Keep Your Distance Bug Vacuum
Consider some of the product offering: the Pet Observation Porthole ($29.95), a clear plastic dome mounted in a fence, the Keep Your Distance Bug Vacuum ($49.95), which can suction up the creepy crawlies from a relatively safe distance, and the Edge Baking Pan so the whole brownie is soft and delicious. The recession has had influence on the SkyMall line-up as Ms. Kershaw's article points out, "With fewer people flying or spending money, the economic downturn may have tilted the catalog's sales slightly more toward utilitarian items -- the No. 1 best seller this year is a 10-by-22-foot square of polyvinyl floor covering for the garage ($359), and the first truly frivolous item, the Giant Cupcake Pan, comes in at No. 17."
Christine A. Aguilera of SkyMall
Christina A. Aguilera, SkyMall's President is quoted in the article, "Even when times are tough, I think Americans are still optimistic about the future and interested in products that can make their lives a little easier. There is no secret category or line of goods that are recession-proof. What is recession resistant is innovation." Interestingly, Sky Mall is into its own marketing innovation having hired an official corporate Twitterer this January. According to Ms. Aguilera, the tweets generated enough interest in the Wonder Woman Cuff bracelet ($24.95) that sales of the item more than doubled - a questionable purchase in a recession but then again it may allow women to fend off negative economic forces.
The New York Times article quotes Kit Yarrow, a professor of psychology and marketing at Golden Gate University, "Their audience is really looking for relief, not just something to alleviate boredom, but also a little bit of fantasy," she said. "If you look at the products in there, they are lifestyle and gadget-oriented, both the sort of thing that transports you in a way."
Zombie of Montclaire Moors
I am a long time business traveler and have constantly shook my head when I perused SkyMall. Initially when I pick it up I am excited and expect that I will be placing a significant order. By the time we touchdown, rationale behavior has won out (I have never purchased from SkyMall but Brookstone has got some business from me). I recognize the need for escaping the day-to-day and that some purchases may have either fleeting or lasting benefits. It will be of ongoing interest to document what people choose to buy in this recession. But I must confess on my last flight on American Airlines, I almost made my first Sky Mall purchase: the Zombie of Montclaire Moors, at $89.95, a ghoulish,13-pound lawn sculpture. However, it was not the recession that ultimately stopped me, it was anticipating the reaction of my wife.
This economic downturn has been sudden, gone deeper and may last longer than first forecast. In terms of your own buying behavior, what are the primary criteria you now use to complete a purchase? How does this differ from a year ago and how has it affected your life?
I am embarking on a new paper that is to explore the power of language in engaging consumers with a brand. I would love any examples, information and thoughts people have on the subject. Just think of the longevity of taglines like "Just Do It" or phrases that enter our social consciousness, "Think global, act local" which then became "Glocal". There is some controversy over who should be credited with the latter example. This is all fascinating stuff and we must never lose sight of how words and the dialogue they inform can influence and move us. Post your comments and thoughts!
In the early hours of this morning Shanghai time - I watched as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America. I have followed his progress with keen interest over the last 18 months. Taking his dream of being the first African American President of the US, and making it a reality is nothing short of incredible. And the way he went about it is even more impressive.
He was named "Best Marketer of the Year 2008" by Advertising Age magazine. And this is what I would like to focus on today. Obama is an example for all of us in the advertising industry. You can just imagine the Brief: "Get an African American elected to the White House." So just how did he go about it?
Firstly - his message to the people was simple and consistent - Obama is Change. This conviction was at the essence of the campaign. The campaign's creativity lies in how he mobilized the digital world to his advantage, in a way that no one has ever done before. His message echoes the views of Marshall McLuhan, who is seen as the first prophet of the electronic age that "the medium is the message". Obama's campaign was all about change: change in approaching the 'consumer' (voter) and the 'trade' (campaign contributions), and also change in distribution: micro vs wholesale.
No campaign has been more aggressive in tapping into social networks - Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, you name it, Barack was there. Most importantly the campaign was flexible and constantly adapted to a world where communication channels are always in flux. This is "the Swarm theory" in action showing us how marketing can harness the power of modern human communities and the power of influence. It is people grouping together and moving together without being told what to do.
He got the people behind him from the bottom up. These "brand" advocates were an integral part in building his success. He leveraged the financial power of thousands of small donors via the internet; people could give just a few dollars, or a few thousand. He realized that donating online is cheap and quick, and far less intimidating than writing a cheque. Though the majority of contributions were made online and were for US$100 or less, adding it all up was the big difference. And most important, via this he gave people a voice and involvement, with a one-2-one feeling. This is crucial especially when you position yourself as representing 'the voice of the people'.
Mainstream media followed this innovative path too. For example CNN teamed up with Facebook so that people could watch the inauguration live whilst interacting with their Facebook community and friends. Over 21 million people watched this way! This demonstrates brand involvement in 3 levels: Obama, CNN and Facebook - which is a win/win situation and shows category leadership.
Watching him yesterday was the embodiment of a successful campaign. Innovation and fantastic ROI are something that we try to practice everyday in our work, as well as always asking ourselves: "Why Not"?
One management lever brand owners have in tough economic times is to look at brand portfolio rationalization. Of course, that is already on the table for the US auto industry. Between them, General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler sell 112 different car and truck models through 15 brands in the United States. While the top three Japanese automakers -- Toyota, Honda and Nissan -- offer 58 models combined sold through seven brands. Brand rationalization will be a key part of any auto bailout plan - up there with executive compensation and union concessions. Retail brand formats, consumer product extensions will be examined, the latter because of production, packaging, and shipping costs. Value will trump variety in the majority of categories and that will mean making smart decisions in the portfolio not only short-term but for when the economic cycle reverses itself.
On June 9th of this year, I posted a note to this blog on being a Marketing Contrarian. This was in response to economic signs and how historically marketers have reacted to downturns. I must admit that when the global economy really got hit this autumn, I had not been so clairvoyant to see the extent, depth and pace of the impact. It did prompt us at DDB to write a paper called Capturing Opportunities in Challenging Times covering in detail marketing and advertising in a recession (available for download from this site). The response to the paper has been overwhelming. Readers have enjoyed the papers four main sections: cut versus invest, brands as long-term assets, consumer price/value equation, and steps to take when managing brands in a downturn. One comment among many received was from a Vice-President of Marketing at a consumer products company, who shared, "This is my second recession and the primary lesson I have from the first one is to think of my business as a hot dog stand - view it as a much simpler business. Do I react by selling lower quality hot dogs, cut back on condiments, stop smiling and chatting with customers, raise or lower prices willy nilly, take away napkins? No I do not. I leverage equities I have built up over time, be prudent in my own purchasing and other processes, and offer value, value, value."
The statistics are in. The National Retail Federation (NRF) estimated that U.S. consumers spent $372.57 on average, an increase from 7.2% from a year ago. Which at first glance seems positive, however, come Saturday most retailers were reporting a significant drop in traffic. People pursued gate crasher specials, bargains, expansive sales and then stayed home. This fits with DDB's view of the economic crisis - consumers are changing their definition of value on an almost daily basis as they react to economic news and the state of their own wallets and purses. Going forward, the NRF is predicting a 2.2% increase in holiday shopping sales this year, the smallest increase since 2002. Companies that know their consumers and prospective consumers can still do better in their category than their competitors if they chart the consumer price/value equation outlined in DDB's paper, Capturing Opportunities in Challenging Times. Two for one sweaters, heavily discounted flat screens, 50% off sales cannot sustain a company or brand for a prolonged period of time. The motivation to reduce inventory, generate flat or some sales growth while reacting to consumer confidence cannot be ignored but neither can the long-term impact on the health of the brand.
Mobile Connectivity has been redefined. Long gone are the days when the only novelty of the mobile phone was being able to talk or message while on the go. Today mobile telecommunications are offering an integrated lifestyle combining work and play, social and professional in ways never experienced by any generation ever before. What are such examples of convergence that you are experiencing in your part of the world? How is the use of mobile phones being redefined?
Picture this example - A typical day in a converged world! Checking emails without a laptop, PC or an internet café. Making gift buying decisions on the go by taking pictures from the mobile phone camera and sharing them as MMS messages instantly. Watching streaming videos on YouTube or better yet, watching Live TV over DVB-h. Capturing something unusual instantly and sharing it with the world using flickr on the mobile phone, geotagging them with GPS coordinates for added perspective. Meeting new people through Bluedating whereby a Bluetooth enabled network (Scatternet) matches and connects people in the vicinity based on preset preferences. Downloading RSS feeds onto your mobile and catching up with the latest on the web from hot new music, to stock market updates, to favorite blogs. Instantly micro-blogging and updating your boss, your friends or family on whatever you are doing now using Twitter or Facebook, from being stuck in a traffic jam to making a stop for coffee, updates can be instant and continuous. Traveling to new places and navigating through voice assisted GPS on the go be in a car or on foot. Sitting on a beach apparently alone but connected through fring IMing away or better yet playing a multiplayer game like "Call of the Pharaoh" with a bunch of friends. Downloading and listening to music as you soon as you hear about it on FM using the built-in mobile phone radio. Tracking miles walked or run using an in-built Pedometer. Using Location Based Services to locate ATM's or restaurants or simply keeping a track of friends. If that is not enough using services like EDY (Euro, Dollar and Yen) to make transactions at select stores, activating vending machines or buying train tickets, all using a mobile phone replacing the need to carry cash or all kinds of credit/debit cards.
Wait a minute! Are we forgetting something? Using mobile phones to make voice calls of course! Please let me know your thoughts?
Having now accumulated over 20 years of experience in global marketing, I have witnessed and participated in a few business cycles that have had significant impact on the efficacy of marketing. One that is unbelievably predictable occurs whenever the economy slows. The first reaction from the lionshare of companies is to cut marketing, advertising and business development budgets.
Lets think about that for a moment. Sales are down so lets reduce the spending on activities that are primarily responsible for sales! Imagine companies that actually maintain or even increase their spend in these areas during a slowdown. Their voice would be louder as many competitors would be less vocal. As well, their spend may be more efficient if suppliers and partners work with them to maximize their impact during the downturn.
So why do companies continue to cut these activities – because it is easy. What is harder is to capture the opportunity a slow down provides. Tom Peters has said, "Progress is mostly the product of rogues". Rogues or contrarians, these companies and leaders may prosper much more by making brave and intelligent decisions to invest and rise above the clutter rather than join their competitors in the same predictable and stagnant strategy.
We have had such fun with the Business Communications blog and have been extremely pleased with the visits and comments since launch. We want to keep the content fresh and frequent so are taking a new approach. I will be inviting more experts within DDB to provide their insights and points of view. This will give you exposure to a greater range of thought while covering regional and industry trends. Keep coming back because the content will be great.
--Jeff Swystun
Producing a music CD may seem like the last thing a company that manufacturers bleach would ever do, but if you listen to Clorox consumers it makes perfect sense.
And that is exactly what DDB San Francisco did. Postings on You Tube, multiple blogs, and an unprecedented number of emails from consumers asking where they could get the music from Clorox commercials, was enough to convince us to approach the client with the idea of creating a CD. And it took Tarang Amin, VP of Clorox Global Franchise about two seconds to agree to do it.
Entering the music business for the first time, The Clorox Company ventured into un-chartered territory, but together we were able to navigate the terrain. Our team collaborated with music houses to extend original tracks from various thirty second commercials, named the CD "The Blue Sky Project" and designed the original album cover art. Both agency and client agreed that half of the profits from the CD should be given to a charity. Seeing that the Clorox Brand was focused on healthier lives and specifically the well-being of children, we identified the perfect beneficiary: MuST (Music In Schools Today), a nonprofit organization that supports music programs in low income public schools (mustcreate.org).
The Blue Sky Project was released in early March and is now available for purchase on iTunes� and 50+ other online retailers for $6.93. In addition to the original compositions, the CD includes recordings from independent ,artists featured in commercials. A cool story that further proves that consumers today are both channel and audience for marketing messages.
We currently have a question on our homepage asking that when you have a great brand experience, do you tell others about it.
No real surprise that approximately 80% say that they do. It is kind of funny that we are largely surprised these days when something truly surpasses our expectations in the use of products and services. For the most part, it seems we get what we expect and only that. And in some highly emotional cases we can be deeply disappointed.
The "brand experience" has been talked about for years. It is identified as the key differentiator, yet, most experiences are of the "me too" variety. With precious few standing out when that is the aim of branding — what is going wrong? Why do organizations have such a difficult time consistently delivering differentiation and a brand experience that creates advocates?
A recent ANA study on marketing re-organizations demonstrates that all that activity might reflect a lot of busy work.
Centralization and integration seemed to be the main pursuit, most probably for cost savings and messaging consistency. However, only 13% of senior marketers say they're "very satisfied" with their companies' marketing structures. Here are some key stats from it:
29% of marketers are undergoing reorganization and another 39% having done so within the past two years (sample size 132)
Fewer than half (48%) of respondents said structural changes to marketing had actually improved their companies' marketing abilities during the past two years. Another 17% said restructuring had worsened abilities, and 36% saw no change
49% of respondents believe marketing has become more centralized the past two years, and 52% described their companies as centralized vs. 30% decentralized and 18% as a hybrid
I have a theory on the lack of payback. Having consulted to dozens of businesses on their brand, marketing and sales effectiveness, I often saw re-organizations initiated for the wrong reasons and/or done too often, and mostly with no change in measurement. All three are individually killers but much of the time, businesses are guilty of all three in unison. The best reason to re-organize is based on market performance and customer responsiveness. Re-organizing every 2-3 years is analogous to the life span of a CMO and that frequency of disruption does not allow customers intimacy with the brand. Finally, if new metrics are not applied to organizational change, you are simply shuffling the deck to play the same game.
The more successful re-organizations are initiated and driven by customer demands both present and future.
I learned years ago in traditional management consulting at Price Waterhouse, that you solve problems by listening.
This is so true in communications. I know the most impressive communicators are great listeners, aggregators of information, makers of relevance, and of course, entertaining when they do communicate. The more challenged someone is in communications the more the root cause may be poor listening skills. These people do not listen because:
they "know" what they are going to hear
they seek confirmation, not information
what's being said gets in the way of what needs be said
In effect, they have already made their conclusions and have run to a solution that may not be helpful. Communication professionals need to be constantly aware of their own biases and perceptions (control your biases and validate your assumptions). These days in a time of speed and overwhelming communication clutter, we need to slow down and listen to attain the nuance and real issues faced by customers, colleagues and others. Before you just react (ready, shoot, aim), think about the following to help you listen better:
put yourself in the other person's shoes
keep the conversation on what the speaker says, not on what interests you
spend more time listening than talking
pay attention, never become preoccupied with your own thoughts when others talk, take brief notes to concentrate on what is being said
do not finish the sentence of others
ask questions, but do not answer questions with questions
plan responses after the other person has finished speaking, not while they are speaking
summarize - walk the person through your analysis
The result is you will be better communicators. In fact, the applications are endless. Being a better listener can improve customer service, new product and service development, media relations, social responsibility efforts, etc. Do you have any examples to share?
I was asked for a cheat sheet on what makes for engaging communications. I am looking to build the definitive list. Among my current notables are engaging communications must be relevant to the target audience, different from competing communications, creatively delivered in channels that the target audience uses, etc. Can you help me build the list?
At a conference I recently attended on Corporate Image, a representative of Harley-Davidson spoke about the success and ongoing challenges of that brand.
It occurred to me as the material was presented that Harley-Davidson still carries the spirit of a rebellious challenger brand. Its influence is indisputable within its category. The speaker, Joanne Bischmann, attributed this to "block and tackle" branding and communications. It was not specific strategies that have built the brand but day-to-day simple messaging that is understood inside and outside the company and that is applied consistently. This supports an observation that I have long held - much of marketing is not sexy. Sure there are exciting advertising campaigns, viral and guerilla promotions, celebrity endorser situations and many more tools and strategies that project sexy elements. However, when you get right down to it, marketing is also repetition, database management, copy review, budget debates, ROI struggles. Harley-Davidson has embraced this fact and are successful because they undertake the sexy and unsexy with equal energy.
As a former and passionate member of the Interbrand team, I am well aware of the value of branding. I was recently thinking of the traits and behaviors of a company's leader and how much that drives brand. We are constantly bombarded with the charismatic and capable examples of Richard Branson at Virgin, Steve Jobs at Apple, (the return of) Howard Schultz at Starbucks and there are many more. If the leader is so integral to brand and motivating their employees to live the brand then perhaps there is another equation or metric to be explored - "the brand value or contribution to brand value of the CEO". Thoughts?
I am confident that I have read almost every paper and article on the plight of the CMO. Partly because I occupy a similar responsibility, but more because I could not understand why public failures dominate any successes in the role. It is almost if we are all attempting to eradicate the title of Chief Marketing Officer. The press love to dump on CMOs, CEO's love to fire them to buy themselves time, clients are largely unimpressed, and staff reject their czar-like status.
Try to find a generic CMO job description and that will be a clue as to the challenges such a role faces. It seems that those who take on the job must possess an incredible bundle of talents and personality.
CMOs must have the ability to craft and deliver messages and experiences that engage employees, markets and other stakeholders. They must be fantastic storytellers. Their formal and informal networks must grease the channels of communications.
They must stretch from (traditional) advertising and brand development to a rare combination of leadership, creative, analytical and financial skills. At the same time they are wholly comfortable with media alternatives, emerging markets, fragmentation, social networking, digital and other technologies. They are the trend spotters
CMOs are more like "Chief Coordination Officers" with great intuition and ability to convince many on everything. Their natural curiosity makes them a strategic aggregator and magical disseminator (the dot connector). They lead cultural change efforts while being the voice of the customer so engage all company functions not just communications.
They must boost returns on marketing investment while possessing P&L savvy and ensure that top-line revenue growth is consistent. All the while being fresh, innovative and unconventional.
Anyone who occupies the role has to be a team player, be well respected and credible, avoid and abhor star status, balance the left and right brains, be confident, intelligent, smart, streetwise, well educated. Self deprecation and self effacement are good too. Their power of persuasion allows them to reject command and control - they exude influence.
In other words, they must be nuts to take on the job.
With these excessive expectations how can one succeed? Yet 47% of the Fortune 1000 have CMOs according to Booz Allen Hamilton. At the same time, Spencer Stuart informs the world that individual CMO tenure is in no danger of exceeding 24 months. That means there are approximately 235 vacancies per year for top tier CMOs (good business for those in executive search).
One has to wonder what the talent pool is like for filling this position even if the crazy expectations were reduced. It is no wonder the CMO attempts to justify their existence by firing the incumbent ad agency and marketing consultants, drives knee-jerk tactical course corrections, contributes to messaging and positioning confusion, and makes excuses to the CEO who wonders why performance is not through the roof.
I recently learned that Vodafone uses an internal mantra of "Red, Rock Solid, Restless".
Red refers to its corporate color and the passion and spirit that drives their employees. Rock Solid is meant to convey that Vodafone is dependable and trustworthy. And finally, Restless is a challenge to be vigilant and constantly improve. I wanted to canvass you to get your opinion on the need, effectiveness and any examples of other internal taglines or mantras that have impressed you. Let's talk about if they truly work and how they should be related to external communications.
'Tis the season for top ten lists of trends in communications we can supposedly look forward to in 2008.
I do enjoy these lists though they dumb-down the complex a bit too much. I am also curious about whether the authors of these lists ever evaluate their accuracy year to year? I have been scanning a few of these already and they include: customers as your brand, increases in consumer generated content, a focus on authenticity in communications, the further decline of loyalty, and more and more branded entertainment. As you can see there is no big leap of faith when drawing up these lists (kind of like making a planning forecast of a 2% climb in revenue based on historic numbers). What happened to all the Futurists of the 1997 to 2001 era? That was a time when you could not attend a corporate function, seminar, or conference without a Futurist headlining it. One Futurist I saw in 1999 at a University function told us we would be watching first-run movies shown on the inside lens of our sunglasses by 2001 (where are you now Mr. Futurist?).
Trends like brands have to be relevant and credible. They have to make tangible impact to the performance of a business. And they have to motivate us to pursue the purported benefits. How about you folks - what will be important for you in business communications in 2008?
I was recently asked for a marketing plan template.
Now these do exist as my hard drive will attest to, however, the idea of templatting a marketing plan still bugs me. The essence of marketing is to set one's self apart - so to then use a template employed by others seems ironic or worse. This request by a well intentioned colleague (who had to listen to my rant) initiated a discussion around plans and planning. The discussion included:
- the loss of differentiation in templates
- the questionable value in ever changing plans
- obscuring fundamental questions with copious detail
- losing insights in data
- time and effort in planning versus doing
My definition of a plan is a unique, appropriately detailed and artfully articulate communication of one's intent to accomplish something. Unfortunately, the word "plan" now conjures up images of door stopping, boring, and fill-in-the-blanks documents. Corporations, businesses, departments, brand managers - have lost sight of the fact that a plan is a call to arms, a compelling communication, and a path that calls for progress not perfection. I am an advocate of plans and planning - I am sufficiently anal that way. However, a plan (and especially a marketing plan) must be an incitement not solely text on paper. Your thoughts?
Thanks for the feedback on our most recent Yellow Paper - Brand Consistency Redefined.
I have learned it has been distributed to the marketing group at a global quick service restaurant and a leading MBA program has asked permission to make it part of their required reading. This makes us want to write and share more! A few topics we are contemplating include: DDB's View of the Role of the Chief Marketing Officer; Effective Brand Positioning in a Time of Channel Explosion; Real Difference - Testing, Owning and Communicating Brand Claims, and How Brands Help to Recruit and Retain the Best Talent. Tell us if any of these topics appeal or if you have other subjects that should be explored. What is keeping you up at night (in business communications)?
Following up on our latest discussion, I wanted to make you aware that we have published a new DDB Yellow Paper called Brand Consistency Redefined. The survey on our site and comments on this blog helped shape the thinking and content of the paper. Visit the What We Think section of this website and look under Yellow Papers to download it. Would love to get your comments and please share the paper with colleagues and friends.
First off, thanks for checking out this blog - keep coming back and comment at will. In this post I want to take a look at consistency in branding and communications. As you may have noticed on the home page of our site we are running a little survey regarding consistency. Basically we are asking if it is any more or any less important in branding. At time of writing this, approximately 2/3 thirds of the 175+ respondents think consistency is more important.
What I found in my work at Interbrand and now at DDB is that consistency is still integral to creating and building great brands, however, it no longer means 100% compliance to confining guidelines. In fact, I coined the term "The 70/30 Rule" in an attempt to capture a new definition of brand consistency. Applied more for context than numerical accuracy, 70/30 concerns the relative weighting given to the elements that must remain true to the brand's original intent, strategy, and design versus flexibility granted to its managers (70% locked-down and 30% flexible).
This flexibility includes language and cultural differences, target market variances, buying behavior nuances, and other strategic imperatives when managing a brand. Take McDonalds. Their restaurants and locations are very much tailored to local markets, yet, remain true to the global brand. Menu items, uniforms, promotions, and hours of operation are subject to regional conditions in order to attain utmost relevance. This does not mean McDonalds is inconsistent, in fact, it is more successful as it allows freedom within form.
This is a topic that really intrigues me and I am setting out to write a paper on it. I would love to hear your views and to have you share any interesting examples of this new consistency in branding.
Wow, do we overcomplicate business communications!
I learned long ago that it can be boiled down to three key questions: What do we have that no one else has? Who would be interested in it? What are the best ways of getting to them? You can challenge me on oversimplifying but that is the basic framework for branding and marketing. What makes us unique? Who is are target audience? What channels should make up our marketing mix?
I know it gets much more complicated when you drill into each. There is no longer a single point of differentiation now it is a bundle of things that work in concert with each other to make a company, product or service truly different (so the brand becomes an experience competing on emotional not just functional attributes). Also now target audiences are no longer significant homogenous groups (remember suburban families with 2.4 children?) but rather a myriad of micro segments each with increasingly harder to find shared attitudes, beliefs, and values. And channels and how they play off each other are proliferating and are harder to track for effectiveness - they have become a veritable Rubik's Cube of communications.
Hhhhm so maybe we haven't overcomplicated business communications - maybe it is complicated and that is the fun and challenge - you decide. This blog exists to delve into the trends and best practices in business communications. It is also here to closely follow the business of communications - what is happening in the communications industry. So share with us your latest thinking, ask questions because plenty of experienced people will be joining, and stay with the conversations as they take us different directions in business communications. Lastly enjoy this quote attributed to a chap named Frank Outlaw:
"Watch your thoughts;
They become words.
Watch your words;
They become actions.
Watch your actions;
They become habits.
Watch your habits;
They become character.
Watch your character;
It becomes your destiny."
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Several of the 2009 words of the year came from social media ("unfriend", "Twitter", "Tweetup") and so it has continued into 2010, even before Aaron Sorkin's hot 2010 movie about Facebook "The Social Network". But what about the real world of ordinary middle class consumers more concerned about jobs and other down-to-earth concerns? Do they care or even notice? Anyone tempted to think that social media is just a nichey fad for kids, geeks and media commentators should bear in mind a couple of figures that show how social media are Main Street and mall in the United States and beyond:
With the explosive growth of the Internet, mobile devices and social networking, a connected world is indeed a very different world. Just witness the meteoric rise of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and the demise of the recorded music industry as we knew it. I would go so far as to argue the only reason advertising in its pre-Web 2.0 form (a global business worth approx. $400 billion per year) ever existed was simply because we were not yet truly connected as today's mobile, social and real-time Internet did not yet exist. 
Karen See: Your latest book is called "Buyology, how everything we believe about why we buy is wrong". What does that really mean?
