For this week’s Thursday Night Insight, Oliver Truman kicks off with B2B’s first World Cup-related blog post of the summer.

Well, it’s almost here. And don’t we know about it.

The 2010 Football World Cup is upon us, and everyone’s got their knickers in a twist. Cue endless speculation about who’ll be in each nation’s team. Cue furious flag waving and shows of unbridled patriotism that would otherwise cause a diplomatic incident. Cue four weeks of shouting at the television. Cue the inevitable Thursday Night Insight analysis of what this all means.

I’m sorry to go all “grumpy old man” on you here, but is it me, or does the run up to the tournament feel like it’s been over-done this time around? Like Christmas, the speculation and hype around the competition (and England’s ritual, quadrennial shaming in a penalty shootout) seems to begin earlier and earlier every time. The adverts get brasher, longer and more stomach-churningly jingoistic, and this year appears to be no exception.

I am perhaps in danger of exaggerating my ennui at the situation, however. From a cultural and marketing point of view, events like the World Cup are fascinating insights into what advertisers try to do to switch us on.

At least from a UK perspective, the theme in this year’s World Cup advertising – like Maradonna in the late 1990s – appears to involve an excess of everything. The recipe for a successful commercial, it would seem, is as follows:

• Feature celebrities and other well-loved national figures in barrow-loads: There’s no better example than the current Carlsberg advert. Beefy Botham, Phil “The Power” Taylor, Jeff Stelling and Ranulph Feinnes are but a few of the luminaries spouting words of wisdom in what the lager brand describes as “probably the greatest team talk in the world”. Burger King are even running a promotion where the first “prize” is to “Watch the final with Jimmy Greaves” with three of your friends and a Whopper.
  
• Find any way of making your product patriotic, no matter how tenuous. A play on words helps: KitKat have done this by suggesting that England fans should “cross their fingers” and hope for the best. Get it? “Cross your fingers”… Like you’d cross fingers of chocolate-covered biscuit. Here’s a picture just in case you’re struggling to understand the duality of meaning here:

  

• Make it viral: Plaster the thing on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter before you put it on television. Nike did this with their global “Write the Future” campaign and 12 million (and counting) views on YouTube is testament to the interest and awareness levels that social media can generate.

  Also critical is incorporating some interactive element to the campaign – For instance, both Nike and Carlsberg encourage fans to upload films of themselves playing or giving a team talk.

• Make it really, really long: The premiere of the campaign is the big chance to show the full, unexpurgated version of the advert. Appropriately, the musical backing to the Nike ad is Hocus Pocus by Dutch progressive rock stalwarts Focus – a genre noted for its temporal excesses.

• Make it meta: “Self referencing”, “Post modern”, “Reflexive” – call it what you will. There must be a snarky, clever, knowing element to your campaign. In the case of the Nike ad, the premise appears to be “Look what the modern media has done to us! Our idols can be built up, only to be knocked down and crushed in an instant by a moment of misfortune on the pitch! How fickle we all are!”. Even so, we all know that marketing like this is part that very-same building up and knocking down process.

• Don’t forget the oldies: Some brands have actively chosen to stand aside from the thrusting, testosterone-fuelled frenzy of it all, and have taken a folksier, down-to-earth approach. Think former managers Terry Venables and Graham Taylor depicted in an old people’s home, or England’s legends of 1966 flogging suits.

At its heart, all of this jostling for position comes down to achieving awareness and interest in brands during a key time in the calendar for advertising. When all around you are shouting, shouting louder, longer and with bigger laughs is central to securing a share of voice.

Of course, investment of this sort in marketing cannot come without accountability. Marketers must use research to understand the impact that advertising has had – Not just in terms of whether more beer, trainers or televisions have been sold, but also whether people’s longer term disposition to brands have been enhanced or damaged.

Pre and post-campaign studies are one way of tracking brand health, but so too is tapping into what wags in the blogosphere, in forums and on Twitter have to say (not Wives and Girlfriends, by the way – the other meaning). Mining this publicly-available seam of insight is an emerging technique in consumer markets, and the world of business-to-business could well follow.

Like a World Cup advert, I think I’ve gone on long enough, but I’ll leave you with a prediction for the tournament. We can all then come back here in a month’s time and guffaw at how wrong I was. Argentina to win it – not least because they’re my selection in the office sweepstake.

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has found that two-thirds of marketers have, in response to the current economic environment, shifted their emphasis to more short-term strategies.  These were some of the findings of a Brand-Building study of 129 marketers, which took the form of an online survey.

Yet in spite of the short-term tactics, marketers are already planning increased activities for when the recession ends.  68% will be increasing their media budgets, 41% increasing social networking/word-of-mouth, and 40% allocating more money to innovation and testing/learning.  Almost three-quarters of respondents admitted that they would ideally like to implement these additional marketing activities three to six months before the recession ends.

The survey found that few marketing initiatives had been postponed or cancelled outright, but many had suffered from reduced budgets.  Those activities that are being maintained during the recession include:

• Research and development (47%)
• Public relations (42%)
• Innovation/test/learn budgets (33%)
• Promotion activities (33%).

A number of activities have been increased over recent months, including:

• Pricing deals (47%)
• Social networking/word-of-mouth (26%)
• Public relations efforts (23%)

When compared to the results of previous surveys, many traditional media channels have suffered:

• Television (down from 80% in February 2007 to 64% in April 2009)
• Magazines (down from 67% to 51%)
• Radio (down from 36% to 30%)
• Outdoor (down from 35% to 26%)
• Newspapers (down from 36% to 19%)

These results are fairly representative of current sentiment in the wider marketing community.  Many organizations are shying away from traditional media and focusing on online opportunities.  Indeed, a recent survey by B2B International showed around half of marketers planning to increase their e-marketing spend in 2009, with many stating that online marketing had already proven itself to be a successful strategy in the face of recessionary pressures.  More than a quarter were planning increases in their PR activity.  On the flip side, around half planned to cut expenditure in the more traditional areas of tradeshows/events and magazine advertising.

Click here to read our white paper on Marketing Strategies in a Recession.

What do a cassette tape, a boomerang, and a 1980′s electro-pop song have in common?  In Matt Powell’s latest Thursday Night Insight entry this week, he looks at the impact of ‘thinking outside the box’ and standing apart from the competition, and the lasting impression that it can make.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve come into contact with a few advertising campaigns that have, in one way or another, caused me to devote at least some part of my day to thinking about them.  By that, I mean more time than just taking a glance at a glossy piece of direct mail that goes straight into the recycle bin after couple of seconds.  These pieces of marketing have really engaged me – either through getting me to think, causing me a great deal of intrigue, or just appealing to my inner child. 

The first was a cassette tape that arrived in the post in a brown padded envelope, in a Mission Impossible-esque manner.  On the cassette was a label with a personalised web address for me to visit.  I was not the only one of my in the office to receive one of these tapes, so there was some discussion as to what they were for.  A quick visit to the website, showed that it was a campaign from E-Rewards that centred around constant evolution – the cassette tape being one of the evolutionary step in the personal music player.  The campaign certainly stood out from everything else that landed on my desk that day, it created discussion around the office, caused me to visit the website, and now the cassette is adorning my desk-top.  Certainly more interaction and longevity than standard direct mail would have been afforded.

My second encounter with out-of-the ordinary marketing was on a lunch break whilst in the local supermarket/convenience store.  Whilst I was perusing the assortment of soups on offer, I – and my fellow shoppers – were treated to short minute-long blasts of a very familiar 80′s electro pop song.  I first dismissed it as the slipping standards of the store, probably allowing staff to play their own music through the store music system.  Still, the familiar music was annoying me – I couldn’t remember where I knew it from.  After a few more minute-long blasts it dawned on me why the dated music was so familiar – it was the music that backs Dairy Milk’s latest advertising campaign (with the boy and girl and the dancing eyebrows).  Once I realised that, it evoked the amusing images from the TV advert – by coincidence I was stood at the counter waiting to pay – with an assortment of Dairy Milk products on display in front of me.  Very clever.  Plus, I was feeling slightly jubilant that I had remembered where I knew the music from – something that would have irritated me throughout the day if I hadn’t have figured it out.  Again, slightly different approach to getting the message across, but a memorable impact.

The third piece of marketing that I found particularly engaging is in fact B2B’s latest mailer – not that I’m blowing our own trumpet – it could be a mailer from any company and I would still be writing about it.  It is, as the first sentence of this article has probably given away, a boomerang.   The boomerang is a play on the theme of ‘getting a return on your investment’.  The boomerang has instructions of how to use it on its reverse.  This piece of marketing is now sat on my desk awaiting the day when I can finally find somewhere large enough, and unpopulated enough to throw it without posing a threat to the public.  Indeed, over the past week, whenever I have come off the phone, I usually find that the boomerang has moved from my desk into my hand.

Of course, there are many, many more examples that could be added to the three I have outlined above, but the message is the same.  In order to stand out from the crowd and make a lasting impression, we need to somehow differentiate our offering.   This applies not just to direct mail and advertising, but to business as well – and is even more important in times such as these.  There is no harm in sitting with the pack – but thinking outside the box or offering something different to the competition, can really make the difference in setting a product or company aside from the rest, and create lasting success.

For more information on how to differentiate your offering, why not cast your eyes over the following white paper: Differentiation: Are Product, Brand and Service Still Enough?

As the furore surrounding this week’s Super Bowl commercials begins to subside, Caroline Harrison reflects on the advertising world’s most important annual ‘event’.

Where would we be without a blog article on advertising this week?  After all, Super Bowl Sunday is, for some people, more about the ads than the game.  According to one recent poll, 21 percent of those who expected to tune in last Sunday said they would watch "exclusively or predominantly for the commercials."  A further 34 percent said they would be as interested in the commercials as in the game itself.

The Super Bowl, the year’s most watched television event with an audience of 90 million viewers, is America’s premier ad showcase.  Not surprisingly, advertising spots are highly sought after.  A record $206 million of advertising revenue was generated by broadcaster NBC this year for its 69 Super Bowl spots.

After a thrilling game in which the Pittsburgh Steelers snatched a late victory over the Arizona Cardinals, I fully expected to be seeing re-run after re-run of the game’s highlights for days afterwards.  Yet, to my surprise, breakfast TV on Monday morning seemed oblivious to the previous day’s sporting achievements, and instead had panels of ‘experts’ analyzing the Super Bowl’s commercials.  Indeed, in the days leading up to the game, before the much-anticipated commercials were even aired, the viewing public was being treated to sneak previews of the adverts on television shows and news broadcasts, and many of the advertisers were using pre-game website efforts to generate anticipatory interest in their commercials.

Advertising Age has very kindly given us a link to all the Super Bowl ads so we can watch and re-watch them at our leisure.

I guess the point is that nowadays, if you fork out to be one of the big Super Bowl advertisers, you’re not just paying for the advertising slot alone. For one thing, any commercial usually forms part of a wider integrated campaign, and is not just a one-off.  In addition to appearing in other media, you are guaranteed to benefit from all the hype and publicity this high-profile position generates; your advert is seen around the world, discussed on TV shows, dissected in newspapers, posted on blogs and discussed in online forums…  All of which must make the outlay – of up to $3 million per 30-second slot – a little easier to swallow.  After all, even if your ad isn’t deemed ‘the best’, they do say that no publicity is bad publicity.

Of course, you would hope that no commercial is deemed a total disaster, as no advertising campaign should ever be launched without thorough pre-testing to check it’s suitable and hits the mark.  Even after launch, post-campaign research should be used to monitor awareness of a campaign and track its effectiveness over time.

The other thing to bear in mind is that everyone has their own opinion on which commercials they do or don’t like; which would inspire them to make a purchase or otherwise.

I came across this online review of all the adverts, which I read with interest.  Personally, Sunday’s most memorable adverts, those which had stood out for making me laugh or smile, were not particularly well received by this blogger.  Yet the debates that are raging just serve to highlight that one man’s meat is another man’s poison; what some people will love, others will hate, or at the very least may be indifferent to.

To some extent this doesn’t matter.  Companies can never satisfy everyone, nor do they try.  Through customer profiling and careful segmentation, they try to identify groups of like-minded individuals who have similar characteristics or needs, and who they can satisfy in a profitable way.  So, for example, if I don’t like a beer commercial, it’s of no particular consequence to the beer manufacturer.  I don’t drink beer, don’t buy beer, and I don’t even influence anyone else’s purchase of beer; I am, therefore, not the brewer’s target market and I was not front of mind when the campaign was conceived.

As time goes by, it will probably become clearer which companies are adjudged to have been the biggest winners and biggest losers of this latest bout of advertising.  But no amount of debating or criticism will deter companies from snapping up advertising spots at next year’s Super Bowl, nor will it stop the general public’s intense anticipation and subsequent examination all over again.  Only 360 more days to go!