Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
Friday, March 12th, 2010
This week Director Matthew Harrison draws the key marketing lessons from his (now dormant) seduction techniques.
Each and every year, the month of March is a joyous occasion for me. The brutal New York winter dissipates and makes way for 8 months of glorious sun. The English football season reaches its climax, as along with the rest of the Western world I fix my attention on Nottingham Forest’s promotion challenge. Most importantly and joyously of all, the month of March marks the anniversary of my wedding, which I should highlight (just in case she’s reading) was a day of unparalleled perfection.
And so this week my mind took a surreptitious walk down memory lane to a warm September day in 1997, a lucky 13 years ago. This was the day when I targeted my now-wife and (eventually) convinced her that I would fulfil her every need. Now, as a marketer first and lady-magnet second, thoughts of this distant time got me thinking. What, if anything, could my seductive exploits of the late 90s teach me and the wider marketing community about appealing to their target audiences? If I can successfully target that most notoriously demanding of audiences, the attractive female, surely there is no limit to my marketing prowess?
That sunny day in 1997 had been an inauspicious one, at least from a professional point of view. My finest achievement had been to break the photocopier and spend 90 minutes failing to fix it. As I returned home at 5.30, I frankly needed a beer. I delicately broached the subject with my housemate Dave, who pondered my request before suggesting we go to the pub immediately.
Two hours and 5 pints of Kronenbourg later Dave and I were deep in discussion, our agile minds flitting between the meaning of life and whose turn it was to buy the next drink. I was just about to walk towards the bar when I noticed the door open and two girls in their early twenties walked in. I salivated, ordered another round and began plotting my next move. My mission: to make the blurred, dark-haired girl on the right fall in love with a drunken photocopier-wrecker. Mercifully, Dave told me a joke about Camilla Parker-Bowles, distracting me for the rest of the evening.
Several evenings later, a group of friends and I decided to meet up in the same bar. Word was that a selection of females would be present, some of whom would be more than happy to meet the man of their dreams this evening. Even better, one or two discrete enquiries amongst the local cognoscenti revealed that the blurred girl was called Caroline and would be making an appearance along with her friends.
I sensed my chance, and quickly set about polishing my shoes, getting Dave to iron my shirt, and splashing myself in enough Fahrenheit to make a cactus wilt. I donned my leather jacket and, fusing debonair cool with rugged Anglo-Saxon masculinity, unbuttoned the top 2 buttons of my shirt. It would be no exaggeration to say that I looked irresistible.
Scanning the bar as I arrived mid-way through the evening, I immediately saw Caroline, chatting with her friends in the far corner. She was tall and slender with long, dark brown hair. Her dark knee-length skirt and tailored jacket clung enticingly to her figure and her top revealed a hint of décolletage. Her outfit reminded me of the perfect hors d’oeuvre: just enough to keep the interest; not quite enough to make me feel queasy and rush for the exit. I wonder if anyone’s ever delivered a finer compliment than that to her? I do hope so.
Rather than striding confidently towards her and delivering a killer chat-up line in front of her friends, I bravely decided to wait until she was on her own and then pounce. This must have been my lucky day because a few minutes later I found myself standing next to her at the bar.
We started talking. Now when I talk to attractive ladies, I have something of a magic touch – I start talking and they immediately disappear. Strangely, however, for an apparently sane woman with all of her faculties intact, Caroline responded – and not with a restraining order. She laughed at my jokes. She nodded as I told her all about my big-shot job in the photocopying room. She gasped with relief as I finally asked her a question. She seemed to believe me when I said that it must be the man behind me that stank of vinegar.
We met up a few more times over the following week or two, each encounter becoming slightly more relaxed than the last. I took her to a restaurant and tried to show off by buying some expensive wine that I’d never heard of. We went to a football match with a group of friends. Gentlemen, I hope you are learning as you read this. After 4 or 5 ‘meetings’ we were officially an item and I was congratulating myself on my marketing expertise.
So, when I look back at the seductive marketing techniques I employed in my early 20s and reflect upon how they changed the course of my life, I am struck by how similar the art of attracting a business-to-business customer is to the seduction of a beautiful woman. I therefore leave you with my key tips on how to attract and keep the most demanding of b2b customers:
Make the first impression count – A sober, well prepared marketing approach is always likely to be more effective than an impulsive dash in the direction of the target customer. This applies to all aspects of the marketing mix, from promotional materials and interpersonal contact through to pricing and proposal preparation. By the time you get to undoing an early bad impression, the object of your desire will already be looking elsewhere.
Expect the sales process to take 4 or 5 contacts – Business-to-business buyers, like women, are complex creatures. The quick ‘hard sell’ is far less suited to their multifaceted needs and their focus on interpersonal contact than it is to the more impulsive and impersonal world of consumer marketing. It is critical to take the time over a number of conversations to understand customers’ rational and emotional needs, before providing a personalized solution built around these.
Ask lots of (intelligent) questions – Like the most boring of inebriated men, bad b2b marketers focus so much on their own offering that they forget to ask the target customer what makes them tick and what would make their lives better. This is a fatal mistake when each target customer has needs that are often technical, complex and unique.
Always leave them wanting to find out more – Successful business-to-business marketing is a long-term, dynamic process built around frequent conversation and mutual exploration. The effective b2b marketer answers every question concisely, whilst hinting at new, intriguing ideas that make the target customer want to find out more next time.
Tell a coherent, authentic story and stick to it – This is the most difficult and most critical trick of all. Just as the single man identifies an overall impression he wants to project to the fairer sex and attempts to dress, smell and speak in a way that authenticates that impression, so the successful b2b marketer must identify the story that target segment wants to hear and ensure that every customer touchpoint authenticates that story. This requires consistency, and – most fundamentally – a deep and accurate understanding of what the target market wants from you. Master these two basics and you are on your way to becoming a seductive b2b marketer.
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B2B Marketing, Business To Business, Customer Satisfaction, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Matt Harrison, Needs, Price, Pricing Strategy, Thursday Night Insight |
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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
This article by Stefan Stern in the Financial Times this week caught our eye. It makes the point that marketing services have become the butt of procurement teams who are eager to save money and feel that this fluffy subject of marketing is fair game. We know the feeling! This is, of course, a tactical move and we wonder what the effect will be in the long-term of cutting back on marketing spending.
In the article Stern leans heavily on Philip Kotler who is always good for an insight or two. Kotler believes that marketing professionals in corporates are better at tactical rather than strategic decisions. He postulates that maybe it would be better to split the marketing teams in to one working on current products (and therefore be responsible for tactics) and another team looking longer term (and therefore be responsible for strategic moves). These are interesting thoughts.
The marketing team must aim higher
By Stefan Stern
Published Financial Times 2nd March 2010
The C-suite just got bigger, again. The US advertising agency TBWA/Chiat/Day has appointed a new “chief compensation officer” to lead their negotiations on the fees they charge their clients. It is a sign that this agency has had enough of being squeezed by its clients’ procurement officers. Marketing is fighting back. The Mad Men would be proud.
It is easy to see why, of all the services that a company might buy in from outside, marketing is likely to be the most energetically haggled over. Chief executives have long bemoaned the difficulty of knowing exactly what value they have derived from their marketing spend. Out of that frustration arises a natural desire to be extra tough on the costs of marketing activity.
But it is not as though marketing has got any easier in recent times. The opposite is true. Experienced consumers in mature markets have been exposed to just about every trick in the marketing playbook. Cynicism over the claims made by businesses for their products can be deep. Unsurprisingly, marketing departments can find themselves becoming a convenient scapegoat for the leaders of struggling businesses. But in a downturn the real difficulty lies simply in selling anything to world-weary customers who may be satisfied with good-enough but unexciting products.
One person who displays no world-weariness at all is Philip Kotler, the 79-year-old “father of modern marketing”. I met Professor Kotler in London recently and, even after five decades pursuing his subject, he was eager to look ahead and consider new directions for the discipline.
While the current economic climate was not making life easy for marketers, Prof Kotler told me, the crisis had brought one refreshing development: “At least it’s the finance people who are getting blamed for a change.”
Wise-cracks aside, Prof Kotler has chosen this moment of crisis to ask some big questions about what marketing actually does. “Is marketing the enemy of sustainability?” was one of them. For years the task for marketers was to persuade customers that the latest upgrade, the newer model, was a must-buy. But it is time to challenge that orthodoxy, he said.
In a resource-deprived world, businesses cannot hurl more and more product at customers, supported by extravagant marketing budgets. Prof Kotler recalled the message of a book published three years ago, Firms of Endearment, written by Rajendra Sisodia, David Wolfe and Jagdish Sheth.
The authors found that some of the most successful companies in fact spent much less on marketing than their weaker rivals. But they used the word-of-mouth effect of unpaid advocates – loyal customers – to boost their reputation.
Marketing needed to think not just about the company’s “share of wallet”, but also its “share of heart”, these authors said. “Earn a share of the customer’s heart and she will gladly offer you a bigger share of her wallet.”
Prof Kotler plans to develop this idea in his latest book – called, perhaps inevitably, Marketing 3.0 – to be published in two months.
Another challenge for marketing is to assert itself at the heart of the company’s strategic thinking (an idea also suggested by London Business School’s Nirmalya Kumar in his book Marketing as Strategy). “If you have the right people in marketing it could become your engine for growth,” Prof Kotler told me. But while they might be quite creative on tactics, he added, not so many marketing professionals can do the strategic work.
So why not split the department in two? A larger, downstream marketing team working on current products, with a much smaller, strategic team looking at new markets and new ideas for the coming two to three years.
This could work – as long as the interests of customers do not fall between the cracks of organisational silos. As Harvard Business School’s Ranjay Gulati has shown, for all that businesses talk about being “customer-centric” (and marketing is supposed to represent “the voice of the customer”), many simply are not. “They look at customers only through the lens of existing products,” Prof Gulati says.
Right now marketing needs to aim high. That is what Prof Kotler is urging people to do. And he was happy to concede that, as so often, Peter Drucker was ahead of everyone on this topic, too. He even provided a handy mission statement. “The aim of marketing,” Drucker once said, “is to make selling unnecessary.”
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Thursday, February 18th, 2010
With many of us celebrating Valentine’s Day over the weekend, Simi Dhawan explains how, like all successful marketing, this event tries to tap into people’s fundamental needs and desires.
Across the globe, February 14th marks a special unity between individuals on numerous levels. For some, cards, flowers, chocolates and various other adornments are offered to partners and spouses as a gesture signifying their unwavering love for one another. For others, this national ‘holiday’ (which isn’t actually a holiday, let’s be honest) unites a sub-culture of individuals who would gladly take up watching paint dry as sport over entertaining this commercial frippery. So where on Earth (let’s remain within familiar parameters) was this tradition born?
Legend has it that St. Valentine (our customarily crowned patron saint of love) reacted to Roman Emperor Claudius II ruling that soldiers were to remain unmarried in a bid to keep them better focused. Our now hailed St. Valentine nobly (and romantically) defied Claudius’ demands by marrying some of the aforementioned young soldiers in secret, only to be later discovered by the emperor and imprisoned as a consequence. Whilst in prison (and clearly without much else to think about in the way of daily activity), St. Valentine fell deeply in love with his jailor’s blind daughter who often visited him there and in doing so, helped soften the ill-fate which was soon to meet him – his tragic death sentence. Shortly before this ominous moment, history was forever-changed when he sent a letter to his secret love signed ‘from your Valentine’ – the letter which would thereon be remembered as the first ‘Valentine’ in history all the way back in….wait for it….. A.D. 270….!
Today, centuries later, greetings cards have now replaced the traditional love letter, with an estimated 1 billion cards being sent each year (ranking in at second place after Christmas). Valentine’s Day is a universal event which is certainly not exclusive to one part of the world. It transcends ages and cultures. It is global consumer populations who buy into this profit-making love affair year in and year out. Country masses of devoted followers (possibly deluded under Cupid’s spell) loosen their purse-strings/wallet-chains much to the delectation of multiple industry beneficiaries. We’re not simply talking about florists, card and confectionary shops, but also restaurants, bars, cinemas, jewellers, producers and sellers of romantic goods, love songs and movies, beauty salons who pamper and preen many hopefuls (both in love and looking for love), various hotel chains and airlines who benefit from increased bookings of romantic trips away and………….well ok, you get the idea. The point is, there’s money in this and as much as the cynics (erm..us singletons) try to bury our heads in the sand and talk about ANYTHING BUT our ‘Valentine’s Plans’ (thank you colleagues, friends and family – oh and my hairdresser), it is nothing short of remarkable that love helps keep the economy going (at least momentarily)….or put another way, we ‘buy into love’.
Love it or hate it (and the theory is that there is a thin line between the two for those claiming the latter), Valentine’s Day is every marketer’s playpen. Its success is founded upon the very fact that it sells to the ultimate in people’s needs and vulnerabilities….the need for love and all the security it brings. Aptly described as a ‘Humanistic Psychologist’, Abraham Maslow knew only too well the multi-faceted emotional and physical desires that collectively make up the human condition. He clearly defined these within his ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ as shown below:
Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs
For Maslow, our basic (or intrinsic) needs at the bottom of the pyramid are the physical needs we require for survival from birth, whilst rising up his model, our needs become more emotional and sophisticated where we must successfully meet all of those listed at each level to ultimately progress to the top and reach an eventual state of happiness and fulfillment known as ‘self-actualization’.
In the same way, businesses everywhere (in fundamentally appreciating the fact that they are selling to humans not robots) do vigorously attempt to tap into the needs of both their market and the individuals which make up that market. In fact, just thinking about the nature of any business or personal relationship, there is always a rudimentary transaction which takes place – financial or emotional, and each is reliant on understanding your recipients’ needs. Taken further, we could even argue that in introducing and thus ‘selling’ us his theory, Maslow himself was a chief marketer!
Following this lesson, there is rarely a week that passes in our UK office when a colleague does not openly share a new marketing item or ‘gimmick’ that they have received from a company which seeks to promote its products or services – be it the white chocolate plaques with elegantly printed company images marked on the front (they did make for a divine mid-morning snack!) or a kick-off-2010 diary book planner (that was wasted on me – I’m personally a bigger fan of my ‘Office Outlook’, thanks very much), companies will try every which angle – the quirkier the better, to grab people’s attention. If there was a surefire way to increase profits through such ploys, then we would all be doing it. However, quite like Maslow’s slightly ambiguous pyramid journey, people’s needs and consequently market needs are always changing, and so this is a game where precise rules do not exist and cannot be learned, but one where you throw the dice and then make calculated, strategic moves based on the options available to you at any given time, in any given place (of work).
Pleasingly, this year was no exception, and whilst February 14th is usually solely ‘owned’ by the madness that is ‘Valentine’s Day’, for the first time since 1900, as many of you may have already experienced, it also shared its place with Chinese New Year (‘Kung Hei Fat Choi’ and ‘Xin Nian Kuai Le’ to all by the way!). This I learned of, much to my delight, as I strolled through Manchester city centre last Sunday morning trying frantically to avoid the endless parade of loved-up couples drifting smugly along the sun-filled streets. The sound of Chinese drums and oddly placed fairground rides – including the ‘teacups’ (how quaint) – offered some welcome respite from heart-shaped foil balloons and red rose street sellers (who smiled sympathetically), and whilst this year, Valentine’s Day – as always – ‘sold’ to the masses successfully, I was one very happy customer drawn in by an alternative market route, found ogling instead over the beautiful handcrafted Chinese lanterns which stood stationary whilst I floated away happily into my own world……………………….waiting for the postman to deliver my lost Valentine’s Day card…!
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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
It appears the jury is still out on the usefulness of social media and social networking websites from a business perspective. Two recent studies show mixed feelings from companies, ranging from SMEs through to large multinational corporations.
In the second annual Business Networking Trends Survey, conducted by WeCanDo.biz, 80% of entrepreneurs claimed to have achieved business wins through social networking sites, with 92% of respondents saying they would recommend networking professionally online to their business contacts.
Professional and business-focused networking sites – among them LinkedIn and Xing – unsurprisingly proved the most popular, with just under half of small businesses surveyed saying they utilise them for professional networking. Just under a quarter use sites such as Twitter for business networking. However, more than a third of SMEs are wary of using Facebook for business networking purposes, refusing to add business contacts as ‘friends’.
Interestingly, despite a huge rise in overall users of social networking sites in the past few years, this year’s study found there to be a fall in the number of respondents who feel online networks help them get closer to their customers.
Yet it would seem that more ‘traditional’ face-to-face networking continues to grow, with 36% of respondents questioned regularly attending networking meetings. The amount of money and time spent on networking has also increased over the past year. However, in spite of this, while half of the respondents plan to maintain the same levels of face-to-face networking in 2010, 55% intend to increase the time they spend networking online.
A second survey, this one conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau, hints at a certain amount of skepticism towards social media. This study, which included such household names as Coca-Cola and RBS, showed that only one fifth of marketers view social media as a core element of their company’s marketing strategy – with many more confused about the role it should play in their plans.
Further confusion lies in who should be responsible for any social marketing, with one third of respondents feeling some responsibility lies with the PR department, 12% believing the research department needs to be involved, and 7% adamant that the IT department should be responsible.
Further caution is demonstrated by the three-quarters of brand marketers who feel social media’s biggest challenge is proving it can deliver ROI. 64% see measurement as the most significant hurdle to investment in the channel.
Yet there can be no doubt that many companies, among them Vodafone and O2, are huge fans of the benefits and the potential of social media. I.T. giant Dell reported in June last year that it could attribute more than $3 million in sales directly to Twitter, a figure now believed to have topped $5.5m. Maybe social media shouldn’t be so easily dismissed…
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Monday, February 1st, 2010
Colleagues in our Beijing, New York and Manchester offices have all been complaining about the cold weather of late. With much of the northern hemisphere suffering its severest winter for years, most of us are just trying to grin and bear it. Yet some savvy marketers are definitely making the most of the opportunities this bad weather presents. AdAge.com’s ‘Marketers Make Most of Falling Mercury’ article below tells us all about how some marketers are using the latest weather intelligence to feed into their marketing plans:
In Alabama, the night before the Crimson Tide took on the Texas Longhorns for the National Championship, it would normally have been tough to find chips and salsa, maybe beer. But, instead, Chris Hendrix, 27, found empty shelves where the bread should have been. Bottled water was also in limited supply, as panicky residents stocked up for a forecasted inch of snow.
Unusually icy temperatures are gripping most of the U.S. — according to Accuweather, this could be the coldest winter the country’s seen since 1985 — and that’s proving a boon for opportunistic marketers who target their media around the thermometer and have the wherewithal and ability to make their marketing more flexible and nimble.
Bad weather is, of course, relative: An inch of powder in Alabama may trigger mass panic and closures, while for Minnesotans it’s just another winter day. For marketers who understand these differences and capitalize on them, there’s money to be made.
“That’s where the marketing gold that needs to be mined is,” said Scott Bernhardt, chief operating officer at Planalytics, who said 40% of his clients are using weather intelligence to inform their marketing, up from 25% to 30% 18 months ago. “Marketing into a situation that’s favorable for your product [causes] the numbers to go off the chart.”
Creature comfort
Take, for example, Campbell Soup. In addition to the company’s considerable national media advertising, the brand monitors weather patterns in 30 second-tier markets like St. Louis, Des Moines and Tampa, ramping up local radio support when an area gets particularly cold, wet or snowy.
The brand team conducts weekly meetings with media buyers to review a 30-city “misery index” that Campbell has built using an algorithm that incorporates temperature fluctuations within a given day, the year-ago difference, the week-ago difference and extra credit for snow or “nasty” rain. When an area becomes miserable, it gets a positive ranking on the index (negative ratings ironically connote a relatively happy area).
John Faulkner, director-brand communications at Campbell Soup Co., said that when an area becomes about 5% miserable, Campbell will cue up chicken-soup radio ads from BBDO, New York, that typically last three to five days. Its current campaign, which underscores the 32 feet of noodles in every can, ties in neatly with freezing conditions. Mr. Faulkner would not comment on how sales have fared since the company put the “misery” index in place, but it’s clearly worked: Not only has Campbell kept the program going, it’s added a flu-tracking system as well.
Not all advertisers are set up to take advantage of events like the weather because of institutional and technological barriers — in fact, only 40% of Planalytics clients tie that information to marketing. But over the past year there’s been a focus on becoming more nimble — not just in reacting to weather conditions or news events, but also to economic changes and consumer behavior changes.
“A booming economy hides a lot of mistakes,” Mr. Bernhardt said. “People were living in the past and thinking in old ways. Now you have to do things better, smarter.”
Boots made for selling
Zappos, for example, is doing its best to grab the attention of shoppers who may be looking for cold-weather apparel and footwear. Aaron Magness, head of business development and brand marketing, said that the company has adjusted its web presence to capitalize on the wintry conditions. “We planned on having more of a fashion story on our homepage and e-mail blast, but we’re adjusting it to keep winter products top of mind,” he said. Zappos’ homepage now features models wearing coats and the headline “Cold Weather Outfits Are Hot!”
As marketers take advantage of the cold front sweeping the nation, they turn to media that can be swiftly adjusted such as spot radio, e-mail marketing and search advertising. Dan Schock, a retail industry director at Google, said that, for companies looking to buy against newly popular search terms such as “hot chocolate,” “weather forecast” or “long underwear,” his team can launch new search campaigns in just a few hours.
In the days before Christmas, for example, Google worked with several advertisers to geo-target the Northeast and adjust creative to capitalize on the impending blizzard by encouraging consumers to shop from home.
Weather-triggered campaigns are a specialty of the Weather Channel, of course. The cable network is working with advertisers including General Motors, The Home Depot and Nationwide Insurance to do just that, and it has benefited from bigger ratings as chilled consumers stay inside and keep an eye on the forecasts. According to a spokesman, viewership was up 24% in the first five days of the year, compared with the same period a year ago. And on Jan. 7, Weather.com experienced what was likely its biggest page-view day ever, with 82.5 million views. Ironically, it was tough to get those statistics from Weather Channel last week, as its executives were stuck at home due to icy, snowy conditions in its headquarters city of Atlanta.
While some advertisers moved to crank up their buys due to cold, the marketer of Snuggie went in the opposite direction. The mercury plunge caused a run on retail that resulted in an “extreme shortage” for the blanket-with-arms, precipitating Anne Flynn, VP-marketing at Allstar Marketing Group, to halt the brand’s marketing. That notwithstanding, the cold weather is generating plenty of free publicity, be it from local newscasts or appearances of college-themed Snuggies at Bowl Games. “It’s a nice problem to have,” she said, “but when people want their Snuggies, they want them now.” The company is ramping up production.
Slight relief
Snuggie’s not the only brand benefiting. In Palm Beach County, Fla., space heaters were selling out last week, and snow blowers were out of stock in Kansas City, according to local news reports. Planalytics reported that demand for electric blankets jumped 13% in December, ice-melting products were up 12% and thermals rose by 9%.
Classic Ugg boots that retail between $140 and $180 have been moving briskly. “We are hearing good reports from our retailers all over the country, as consumers are shopping with Christmas cash and gift cards,” said Ed Goins, VP-sales at Ugg Australia. “It’s safe to say that the cold weather is certainly not hurting our business and is most likely enhancing it.”
Indeed, cold temperatures appear be helping consumers forget about the recession, at least temporarily. According to Google, searches for “snow boots” began outperforming searches for “cheap boots” in the past few weeks, the first time that’s happened in almost a year.
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