Trust me, I'm in advertising...

10 years ago when I started my own agency, an account director mate left the industry to become a real-estate agent. I remember thinking it was the only place he could go that had a lower standard of trust than we advertising types. 

Last week he told me it was a great move financially, he reckons 99% of people in advertising are really smart, whereas he’s happy competing with the 99% of real estate agents he’s found to be really ordinary. If we are that smart, why can’t we lift our own profile, beyond the bottom of the heap for trusted professions?

Trust in advertising? This is not an oxymoron.

Unfortunately, the perception of our industry is on a par with used car salesmen, yet our legal obligations, indeed our personal liability, dictate our practices are squeaky-clean. 

In Australia, like most things, our industry is regulated and kept on the honest path by a series of laws and regulatory bodies. You wouldn’t know it. 

The 2011 senate inquiry into outdoor advertising standards found only 0.01% of ads were found to be bad, i.e. sexist, likely to offend or straight out untruthful. Yet when prompted on ABC radio, the senator leading the inquiry said that if we don’t clean up our act under self regulation, he’ll "pull out the big stick and regulate" us. 

Would you trust a politician to decide whether marketers are trustworthy? 

In Europe, clergy are experiencing a decline in confidence levels and politicians are in last place. Our peers don’t rate much better than we do here, with over half of Europeans surveyed* saying they don’t like journalists, marketing specialists or advertising experts.
*Source: GfK Trust Index in spring 2010 

I can understand why journalists are suddenly on the nose – the phone hacking scandal at Rupert's tabloid News of the World has in the words of one shareholders action group "laid bare a striking lack of stewardship and failure of independence." The board had been unable to set a "strong tone-at-the-top" about unethical business practices. 

Australians generally are a trusting lot. When it comes to believing what our fellow citizens say, Australia on a trust index score of 92 ranks ahead of the U.S. (78.8) and U.K (61), just behind New Zealand (102) and way behind China on 120.9. 

Source: ASEP/JDS data bank 2011

So where do Australia’s “ad people” sit on the trust index today?

Who we really trust is no real surprise:
1. Paramedics
2. Firefighters
3. Pilots
4. Rescue volunteers
5. Nurses

At the bottom of the pile are
41. Taxi drivers
42. Real estate agents
43. Car salesmen
44. Politicians
45. Tele-marketers

Source: Readers Digest Austrlalia’s most trusted professions poll 2011

Before you think ad madmen aren’t so bad after all, the only reason they’re not last on this list is because they aren’t included in the survey. Tele-marketers are the closest category, so let’s just accept advertising and marketing guys are way down there. How did we end up down at the bottom with pollies, and what do we need to do to elevate our role to a similar level of respect as other service providers like engineers, doctors and architects?

Advertising first took off in America in 1800s when snake oil makers discovered the return on investment of promoting something of little value with amazing claims in the press. In Australia last year the most damage to our credibility was the public complaints about the posters advertising Advanced Medical Institute’s cure for under performance in bed. It was bad enough they were bad ads, the real breach of trust was the pitch was a fraud. Most of those with a desire to last longer in bed were overcharged for a treatment that generally didn’t deliver on the promise.

As a professional I feel we would be better off refusing to work for these types of people. It didn’t harm Bill Bernbach’s career when he told prospects he wouldn’t accept their business if their product didn’t live up to his standards.

(Glenn Mabbott would like to declare his interest as a sitting member of The Communications Council’s Policy Committee, which aims to raise industry standards through the Accreditation Scheme. UNOmarcomms was one of the first independent agencies in Australia to gain accreditation.)               

Are today’s retail ads bland, bland, bland?

Are today’s retail ads bland, bland, bland? This was the question posed by AdNews last week after Dick Smith launched a new brand style ad campaign. If you missed it, here is a cut down of my contribution to the debate.          

Dick Smith was an innovator

He built a new category with advertising and brochus that gave Australia’s cardigan wearing tinkerers access to an Alladin’s cave of electronics stuff to play with in their garages. What proved Dick really clever was his ability to sell his growing challenger brand to Woolworths and then go on to innovate time and again. With Australian Geographic and then his Australian Made products, Dick was a natural at creating marketing campaigns that resonated with the public mood of those times.

Contrast this with another retail innovator of Smith’s era, Gerry Harvey. Gerry also made his first million in his early twenties with ads for whitegoods and appliances that yelled, “Why pay more?

Is Gerry a clever Dick?

Gerry didn’t sell his business and continues to be the biggest retail advertiser in the country with ads that follow the same tired formula of thirty years ago. We all know the pitch: yell loud enough and people will rush in to grab a bargain. Except increasingly we’ve learnt to treat those ads as repetitious nagging. We’ve moved on to better retail experiences, which are likely to be online.

It’s time the majority of retailers looked at the current crop of retail innovators, like Net-a-Porter that has just released a new magazine iPad app that makes shopping an exciting, contemporary experience. Or this great campaign in Korea for Tesco’s challenger brand, Home Depot.

This article first appeared in AdNews, 21/10/11

A lateral way to increase retail shelf space: use a billboard

Watch this short video of how Tesco challenged the number 1 retailer in Korea by creating a virtual store.

What’s the next killer app?

The latest stats show Australians are the number 2 adopters of smartphones. And this year, Tablets and iPads are set to outsell mobiles, Australians will buy 1.2 million of them*. In the last couple of years the fastest increase in marketing online has been with using video, so we believe the next big thing for marketers will be video over smart mobile devices.

Ask us about the app factory that will let you make the most of video content. (Soon to be launched by UNO with our partners at Mass Media Solutions.)

*Telsyte mobile device update 2011.

73% of CEOs think marketers "Lack Business Credibility"

According to damning research by the Fournaise Marketing Group, marketers are not the business growth generators they should be.*

The gist of the findings of an Asia wide survey of CEOs is that management believe their own marketing departments are in a world of their own. They believe marketers speak in jargon and are not contributing any value to the business. From my experience you can’t blame most business owners for thinking this way, especially in Australia. Too few businesses have ever had a good marketer sitting round the table at board level, championing the power of marketing to generate wealth.

Marketers need to talk the language of business outcomes

As in “how can marketing get a better return on investment”. Otherwise marketing will remain a misunderstood black art not worthy of the attention of three quarters of CEOs. The vast majority of businesses will thus miss out on the huge opportunities that insightful marketing can deliver when it is woven through the entire business process.

Meanwhile there are a handful of businesses doing better than the rest because they have value-adding marketers on the team. These marketers, obsessed with return on investment, are recognised as an integral part of the senior management team. They are helping their businesses punch above their weight in the following ways…

• Overcome competition based purely on price
• Prevent decline of sales
• Hold on to existing customers
• Build qualified sales leads
• Change the perceived quality of a product
• Revitalise tired brands
• Boost staff morale
• Speed the development of new markets
• Speed product trial and acceptance
• Help businesses raise capital more easily
• Build the value of a business for sale

ROI marketing works

For 100 years Coke has proven it, people from first world countries to third choose Alabama’s black sugar syrup even though it doesn’t taste as good as Pepsi’s. That’s the power of consistent marketing. Perrier taught us to pay more for mineral water than petrol. Branson has convinced Australians to fly Virgin despite having a deplorable record of taking off late, (and you still have to pay for your sandwiches). And thanks to marketing Apple has built a brand that is hugely profitable, marketing has enabled them to sell often inferior spec’d products at a premium to specialist manufacturers like Nokia and HP.

CEOs needn’t fear marketing speak. Business decision makers who embrace marketing with an open mind can still enjoy a sense of control by implementing a test and learn approach. Any marketer worth listening to understands the value of having the results of their work tracked. If it isn’t measured, it isn’t managed. A marketing program that IS managed WILL deliver better results than mindlessly sticking to what the company has always done, or jumping blindly into the latest thing.

ROI Marketing can make a big difference to any sized business, in any category

So what can ROI marketing do for you? My experience has shown me whatever the category, from Watties baked beans to Brita water, Splash Clinic cosmedical treatments to City Index CFDs, a test and learn marketing program can turn good businesses into category leaders.

Two thirds of Australians are using social media. Two thirds of those use it to decide what to buy.*

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is growing, the latest figures show Social Media is becoming a mainstream influence in the purchase decision process. UNO are members of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association. Together with Sensis, AIMIA surveyed 803 Australian consumers and 1,944 Australian businesses to determine how social media channels are being used. 50% of corporations now have a social media presence, the majority on facebook. Just 14% of small businesses use social media.               

Proportion who have Social Media presence

Proportion who have Social Media presence

Social networking site usage by age and gender

Here are 10 ways you can make more of Social Media in your marketing communications mix:

1. Start now for free. If your business is consumer facing, get a facebook page, it’s free.
2. For B to B, skip facebook. Focus where business decision makers are active. Join LinkedIn. Follow relevant associations and groups, join industry forums and post comments on articles.
3. Share your knowledge. Your business is your passion; tell it how you see it where you can add value to a conversation. No need to sell, just build your credibility as an expert and you’ll be increasing the standing of your businesses.
4. Don’t post as anonymous. Out yourself. The CEO of a solar hot water manufacturing company follows chatrooms where plumbers share advice. His comments to tradies‘ questions demonstrate he’s in touch with his market. I suspect his competitors are unaware such forums even exist.
5. Put someone in charge of your Social Media. Empower a person within your business who is passionate and keen to have a dialogue with customers. If you don’t have anyone internally, outsource.
6. Tweet. Reinforce your position as an industry expert by tweeting and re-tweeting about relevant content that others have shared.
7. Blog. Blogs and reviews have a big influence on buying decisions, with 63% of social media users reading reviews before making a purchase decision.
8. Be regular. Respond quickly.
9. Integrate social media. Integrate content with your promotions and product campaigns. Measure. Track.
10. Video is the future. It’s the fastest growing area online because it’s easy to share. It’s not enough to post a television commercial on YouTube because no-one will look for it. Be creative, film an interview with an expert, or shoot a behind the scenes glimpse that showcases something you do well.

Social Media can deliver a measurable ROI. No wonder businesses are spending 5% of their marketing budgets managing and creating content for social media.               

Did you know it’s 20 times easier to sell to an existing customer than a new prospect?

The good news is that any business that has collected data on their customers is sitting on their own potential gold mine. Rather than spend money trying to appeal to new prospects by running press or even online ads, you will get a much better return on investment by adding some intelligence to the way you manage your data.

Give your CRM some Data Intelligence

Most data is in such a mess it offers little insight to business owners. To turn it into a powerful tool to enable you to communicate with your customers requires a clean, intelligently organised database.

The place to start to release the value from the mountain of data you already have is to give it to an expert to wash it.

You’d be surprised how many emails and addresses are wrong, repeated or out of date. You can’t begin to measure response rates until you know the data you have is clean. It’s better to measure the response from 10,000 real customers than to assume you’re sending offers out to say 30,000 on a dirty list.

Once you have a clean list, your data then needs to be structured and categorized with the aim of maximising its usefulness for marketing purposes. There are then some things you can do straight away to not only deliver quick profits today, but also set you on the path to delivering what customers will want in the future.

Fast profits can come from testing and tailoring offers to:

• up-sell, getting customers to buy more valuable products from you
• cross-sell, encouraging them to add something else to what they usually buy from you
• increase purchase frequency, by building loyalty and giving them more reasons not to be tempted by your competitors

So get the experts in quick smart to professionally clean your data so you can secure the future of your business. Let those who continue to spend big to tempt new prospects pay the price.

You built a website. You embraced e-commerce. So where is the massive lift in sales?

What will it take for retailers to stay in business in this rapidly changing global economy? Futurist Ross Dawson commented in a recent blog that if you expect your business to look the same in 10 years as it does today, expect to be out of business.

Who’d have thought ten years ago that Woolworths would be the biggest owner of pubs and bottle shops today? Constant change is the only way to stay competitive, which explains why Woolworths just bought Cellarmasters for $340million. Kevin Luscombe recognises the future includes database marketing, Cellarmasters “will enable us to serve a whole new customer segment in terms of the direct marketing channel.”

eCRM drives online sales

Cellarmasters has the largest databases of drinkers of premium wines in Australia. For any competitor to stay in the premium wine business they’ll need to at the very least match the way they apply an eCRM program to their database.

Once a database has been professionally cleaned, you can start to mine your database and build a series of profiles of your customers. Using that intelligence will deliver a better ROI on your marketing. You’ll get a better result cross selling Pinot Gris to customers who are heavy purchases of Sauvignon Blanc. With profiles of your customers it becomes practical to promote a 20 case limited offer Coonawarra cleanskin, you simply email your regular purchasers of Cabernet. With data intelligence, while you offer a bonus with purchase of single malt to spirits drinkers, beer drinkers automatically receive a different offer.

Very few customers want to be constantly bombarded with promotions that are obviously being sent to the masses. They will reward targeted offers that demonstrate you understand them as an individual with stronger loyalty.

Your customers know what they like and will actually tell you what they want if you bother to track their behaviour, or quite simply ask them. Every marketing activity, from a mailer or catalogue to a visit to your store, each phone enquiry and every online order is an opportunity for you to measure what works and what can be improved.

ROI marketing will drive e-commerce

Every dollar you spend on marketing should and can be measurable. You don’t actually have to be a futurist to stay in business, with data intelligence you can keep track of where your customers’ needs are leading and continuously adjust and improve to keep up with them.               

You can be tomorrow’s business success story. Just add Bernard Salt

Bernard Salt earns a living as a demographer. That’s the art of taking research data and painting a picture of who we are and what we think and do. Before you tune out thinking he’s just another propeller head making money off the back of lies, damn lies and statistics, consider for a moment what you’d give as a business to know where the next big opportunity for making money is, before it happens.

How do entrepreneurs know where to invest today in what will be the sweet spot tomorrow? What did the savvy few who bought franchises in McDonalds in the eighties know? Or the food services that were ready to be part of café culture as we left tea drinking behind?

If you were a tea manufacturer in the 70s Australia’s demographics could have predicted that your volumes were about to decline. The move from a society of tea drinkers to the blossoming of café culture at the turn of this century was a consequence of something that happened in the 1950s. The wave of immigrants from Italy and Greece post war had kids, grew wealthy and infused our Anglo society with a Mediterranean café culture which saw Australians move onto the footpaths and embrace machiattos and cappuccino with biscotti in preference to sitting indoors with a cuppa Bushells and an iced Vovo.

At a Family Business Australia breakfast, Bernard explained the simple truth that the composition of Australia is what drives business growth. And decline. Seems obvious, yet even the high fliers at BHP and the big four banks pay Bernard to keep them abreast of what should be self evident. It’s easier to grow a business and be profitable in a category of growing demand than to compete for a share of a shrinking one. 

Change managment – there's money in tea

Follow the demographic trends that will shape what Australians will look like in the next decade and consequently what consumers will be asking for. Today there is a shift away from European immigration to Asian as these stats on fastest growth and loss by place of birth show.

Prediction: Start thinking about tea and noodles not coffee and pasta.

Super was yesterday’s money maker

In the last decade the biggest growth in financial services has been in superannuation. The SMSF category has doubled its share to be the largest segment at huge cost to growth of retail funds as boomers take more interest in their money in super. Industry funds have also grown share with a low fee proposition and the locked in stream of contributions via the super guarantee levy from a membership base that traditionally wasn’t saving much. But that’s today’s boom business, tomorrow it will change, again because of a shift in demographics. 

The makeup of working Australia is about to fall off a cliff, as the boomers retire and are replaced by… no-one:

The age at which boomers will retire, now on average 58, as well as the length they can expect to live has also profoundly changed in just a generation:

Prediction: Cashed up retirees who will live for 20+ years will want to travel, eat out, be entertained, live in a city apartment or by the sea and to pay for it all need a retirement pension plan that will last the distance. They’ll be looking at ETFs and annuities. 

Bernard Salt has a pretty good idea of what tomorrow looks like. It’s up to you to see how you can position your business today to be ready to reap the rewards of a growing market category before it’s the next big thing.

Does your business have a brand policeman?

When did you last check your brand imagery and how consistently you are projecting your business to customers and stakeholders? Have you done a complete audit of all your “touch points”? Who in your company has the authority to enforce standards?

Large corporations have entire departments looking after how the image they present visually. They have realised the value created by consistent repetition of the company brand marks alongside the product or service it delivers.

Most businesses fail to present themselves as professionally as big brands and end up with a brand “look” that has more in common with a camel than a racehorse. This occurs organically, by allowing too many people to make piecemeal decisions every time something is needed.

There are so many pieces that make up the complete picture of your brand, from a new business card to printing a brochure or sending an email offer. Each is an opportunity to build brand “credits”, or a risk for someone to go off on a tangent.

A complete audit of all your brand “touch points” would cover:

• Internal signage
• Building signage
• Banners
• Vehicle signage
• Advertising
• Email signatures
• Website
• eNewsletter templates
• Fax formats
• Letterhead
• Business cards
• Presentation folders
• Flyers
• Sales force and sales kits
• Product sheets, warranty forms
• Order forms
• Invoices
• Branding on your products
• Point of sale
• Price tickets and notices

Setting brand standards with a professionally developed Style Guide

Brand guidelines (also called a Style Guide) should cover all of the things in the list, and have specific rules for each element. For instance, how your logo is used would cover these specifications:

Colours
• Print: CMYK or Pantone reference 
• Digital: RGB 
• Mono, reverse, 
• Vector files for artwork production. 

Size guidelines - how small can it still reproduce?

Usage guidelines - clear space, location on the page, hierarchy with other symbols.

A Graphic Designer with credentials in this area can produce your Style Guide.

Enforcing your brand style

Your creative agency can act as your deputy and arm you with a password protected online archive of logos, images, artwork formats and templates.

Many businesses also find having a professionally developed Style Guide available, as a reference document for staff and suppliers, helps enforce brand rules making it easier to keep the company image under control.

Finally, someone qualified within your company needs the power to enforce the Brand guidelines. It is possible to mandate that all work using the company brand mark is approved by this person before it goes into production.

Success through consistency

Every business can benefit from designing formal brand “rules” so they can weave simple and consistent imagery through the company’s everyday operations. If you have a good product your customers will come to associate that product with your consistently delivered brand mark.               

Does your strategy need to include e-commerce? What would Gerry Harvey know?

There’s more to ecommerce than GST

Funny how Harvey Norman and other retailers are running to the regulator with the sob story that they are losing sales to overseas online providers who don’t pay GST. Time for a reality check, they are losing sales because they are slow in changing their business models to keep up with consumer behaviour. 6 months ago I flagged the stats showing how quickly online sales were growing and the failure of our retailers to keep up with the trend.

Consumers reward innovation

It’s how Gerry Harvey made his first millions when, in his twenties, he founded the first category killer electrical discount store, Norman Ross. You don’t have to be young to be innovative; you just have to give consumers what they want in new and exciting ways. Today consumers increasingly are researching and shopping online. In a few years what they want will be something most of us have yet conceived, and more than likely Apple’s Steve Jobs, aged 55, already has in development. 

Facebook keeps growing. So how can you make the most of it?

Facebook has broken through the 10 million barrier of active users in Australia*

While this will prompt many to jump in and increase advertising on Facebook from the current $12million a year, content is the cost-effective way any marketer can gain exposure to this increasingly significant audience. Best make sure it's the right kind of content.

Online content is King

When publishers and marketers say content is king, what exactly do they mean? Here’s an example close to my home. When I was 20 I played occasionally in a punk band called The Coathangers. Most nights we were lucky to get paid in free beer, the cover charge might be a couple of bucks. One night we had 6 bands for 69c. It was accepted that routine you played for little or no immediate return to build up an audience. Later you would then sell records to them, which was where the money was. Your loyal following paid for content.

Today you can’t expect to sell many CDs when everyone can download your content for free. My 21 year old son has a new band, The Psychonaughts. They hardly ever play live, they are busy recording, creating content that will more than likely be given away. In the not too recent past a band would build a website that fans would visit to purchase songs and buy merchandise. Not any more, people expect everything online to be free.

So what’s the value of giving away content online?

In the case of music, the content gets passed around and builds an audience, who then pay to see you perform live. Technology has turned the model upside down.

The ease with which people can share content across social media is a lesson for brands – we are now in an era where you have to produce content of value to your target audience, making it available for free. It then requires like-minded prospects to share it by whatever medium they choose: YouTube, mobile-to-mobile, email, or increasingly, Facebook.

According to Facebook regional vice-president A/NZ Paul Borrud, globally two-fifths of the more than 500 million Facebook users are accessing the site through their mobile. And Australians spend longer on the site than anyone else.

Unlike marketing via your brand site, or Google adwords, or banner ads or traditional mass media advertising and PR, the consumer isn’t being paid to publish your message. For content to be spread it isn’t enough to post brochure copy or press releases, content needs to be engaging stuff that your customer sees value in. And by aligning this free content with your brand story you can build a relationship with prospects stronger than an advertising approach could ever achieve.

So the art is producing content that is worthy of the attention of your audience, something they want to share.

* SMH.com.au 10/12/10

Why use social media when your business has a website? The stats say it all

One of my clients attended a Social Media Marketing forum at Deakin University recently. He was surprised just how out of touch most marketing and business managers are with this medium as a means for promoting a business. The questions being asked were about how to control staff access to social media or how to post their brands’ advertising and collateral across the newer platforms.

This top down approach where management dictates the agenda no longer cuts it.

In the same way the Internet has empowered the public to access their news, music and entertainment whenever they want, not when the distributers choose to roll it out, Social Media is taking the online quest for information about products and services away from publishing and brand sites. Social Media is creating a vibrant forum for conversation about products, services and brands beyond the direct control of a company’s sales and marketing force.

The statistics show the rapid pace of change of where people are going online in search of information of all kinds.

Trend away from website visitation to Social Web

Google trends show over the last 2 years a significant decline in visitors to brand and media sites.

Boom in Social Media and content sharing

More people are seeking and sharing what they want online.               

It’s no longer enough to have a brochure style website, you can no longer sit back while your salesforce distributes your marketing collateral and your marketing department runs ads telling the masses how good you are.

Everyone in your organisation and every one of your customers is now a prospective advocate for your business. Or they might be saying your competitors are better. You can’t control the conversation, but to compete today you need to formulate a social media strategy, coach your staff, create content of use to customers and prospects and contribute to the conversation in an open and honest way.               

Small can succeed in retail against big budget incumbents

Growing up in sixties suburban Sydney the most exotic cuisine my family was familiar with was cabanossi on Jatz crackers. Father felt like a Tooheys or two and good on my mum, she knew Tip Top was the one. Fortunately, forty years of immigrant mothers from around the globe have helped expand Australians’ culinary horizons.

Family businesses show how to be a challenger brand

At the Food and Wine Expo held by Family Business Australia in Sydney in November, the influence of Nonnas was evident as third generation business owners showcased their gourmet products. Their time has come, statistics show the trend to gourmetisation of the Australian shopping basket has now reached beyond the specialist deli and ethnic store to the Supermarket.

Unlike most trade shows, what struck me at the FBA event was the friendly atmosphere, no hard sell, just an infectious enthusiasm for the products these families have been creating for years and a desire to share business stories. From the small catering company making their first tentative step into retail, through to a food service business that gave up on retail in the 70s, one story is common: the bigger challenge isn’t getting onto the shelves of Coles and Woolworths, it’s how to stay there and make a profit.

Two family businesses, Taylors Wines and Coopers Brewery, are testament to the magic ingredient for success in the retail market – the power of building a brand. Branding is what puts the power in your hands, not the channel’s. Building a brand takes more than one-off promotions, or advertising that simply says you are in store now, or paying for inclusion in catalogues with discount offers. To build a brand you need to invest in marketing over time to establish the brand story and your values.

Brand marketing delivers these benefits over a me-to sales approach: 

Product

Easy to copy
A commodity
No special distinguishing features
What a factory produces
Shorter life cycle
Addresses functional needs
No identity
Products compete on price 

Brand

Hard to copy 
What consumers buy 
Emotional fit with consumers
Level of confidence and trust 
Longer life cycle 
Addresses emotional needs 
Have personalities 

Brand can demand a premium

Fosters Group has destroyed shareholder value to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade by mismanaging the marketing of some icon wine brands, from Lindemans and Penfolds to Seppelt and Tollana. Meanwhile, family business Taylors Wines has stayed true to its five decade history with consistent product, packaging and promotion.

Nick Levy, the marketing manager at Taylors, wouldn’t dream of throwing out the heritage of this family business, whereas corporations time and again allow each new brand manager to make their mark by changing the label their customers know and love to chase a fleeting fashion. Often the new look comes at the expense of long won recognition. Similarly, downgrading a product’s quality to maintain margin or constantly price-cutting to gain share ultimately destroys brands.

Yes, we live in a time where the pace of change is so much faster, yet taking the time to establish what you stand for, developing a dialogue with your customers and creating a sense of authenticity are increasingly valuable tools in a world where global producers can pitch to your retailer with a cheaper knock off product as soon as you leave the buyer’s office.

If you value what you have to sell, it pays to remind your customers as often as you can of why they should love you. Now you can afford to. New technologies, data intelligence and eCommunications now enable challenger brands to compete successfully with the large advertising budgets of corporations.

So find the true benefit of your offer and actively market it. As Revlon said, having built an empire with brand marketing, “we don’t sell cosmetics, we sell hope.” Worked on my mum.  

This article first appeared in Business Insight

Leave traditional marketing to your competition... Now there are smarter ways to connect

To make the most of a marketing budget there are now smarter ways to integrate social media and search optimisation.

Many struggle to keep abreast of the changing landscape, while companies that take advantage of 'eCommunication' will benefit from increased efficiencies, decreased costs and improved customer engagement.

Traditional marketing funnel view of prospects...

Medium and message is aligned to where the audience is in the funnel, information is controlled by the brand.

The decision making process in an e-connected era...

Time to replace the old touchpoints with a new mix

The journey is no longer simply linear, the customer now has control over what they see and read on any subject. The audience enters, leaves and re-enters the decision making process more often, with more access to information from more sources when they want it. 

Your eCommunications checklist

Whether your business is B2B or B2C, it’s no longer enough to think in the linear way of out of home, in store (channel), at home. Here is a new set of options which UNO utilise to supersede or integrate with existing programs:

Are you a retailer or publisher, advertiser or educator? The Internet has blurred the lines.

There used to be clear delineations between product manufacturer/creator, channel/distributor, retailer and end consumer.

Enabling this traditional marketing model there was mass media. Advertising mad men then helped consumers to embrace the products and services they hadn’t heard of and didn’t know they needed. Now the interconnections of the Internet have transformed the sequence of commerce and marketing.

Customers are now researching every category online

People have a need? They research online for themselves in the safety of their own home, avoiding the charms of advertisers and brand collateral, packaging and point of sale merchandising. The empowered consumer accessing product knowledge on the web via forums, chatrooms and reviews is beyond the charms of the seasoned salesman on the shop floor.

Even more disconcerting for the traditional retailer of a product or service is the emergence of the medium no longer just being the message, but now a vertically integrated marketing model.

From books to money management, every category has been turned inside out and upside down. What was linear, is now a 3D demand and supply freeform organism.

Consider books. A hard back would come out, early adopters would pay a hefty premium, soft cover would follow, trends would be noted, popular titles would have second and third editions printed and distributed, blockbusters would be advertised and the retailers would rake in the cash and the publishers would cover the costs of the many failures by most of their authors.

Then Amazon cut out the middleman, and now with the Kindle is changing the distance from content to delivery even further, you can now download and store a library of 3500 “books” on a device that is close to the price of a couple of hardbacks. So if there is no need to print and distribute, does the author deal direct with Amazon, seeing the retailer become the publisher?

Even services aren’t untouched by the digital revolution

Take for example Superannuation Funds. If you work you have one, no wonder there are thousands of funds competing for a share of 9% of your salary.

For Australian investors there used to be 3 Clayton’s choices, the choice you have when you don’t get a choice. If you were a blue-collar worker your employer put you into the Industry Super Fund that was created for your industry. If you were a public servant, you were automatically in your government fund. White-collar workers had a modicum of choice, the local Insurance salesman would flog a retail fund and benefit from the handsome commission and trailing fees.

Not any more. Super Choice means most can now choose their fund. Those who are motivated research online, in fact 50.6% do, whereas only 12% turn to newspapers and a mere 3% magazines. So while all those funds are spending hundreds of millions advertising in mass media, savvy investors that are shopping around are stumbling upon a vertically integrated model. Fairfax Digital owns InvestSmart, a licensed financial services business that bought Direct Access, which was a discount retailer of funds. Fairfax in its wealth and business sections publishes articles on super and investment. On the same pages are links and comparison tools branded InvestSmart. These tools and tips and comparison lists educate the Super Shopper. Then when they are ready to buy, fulfillment is just one click away for a fee a fraction of the traditional adviser model. So the publisher becomes the retailer.

So does all of this mean consumers are better off? The fastest growing and the biggest segment by value of the 1.4 trillion dollar Super category is DIY. Self Managed Super offers investors the allure of control. Pity the average SMSF underperforms the average Industry Fund and has higher costs, until someone challenges the model that is.

Whether you are a retailer or a service provider, a financial services business or a manufacturer, it’s now time to reappraise your marketing model before your competition beats you to it.

Time for Australian retailers to sell online or be left behind

Marketers have spent the last decade watching Woolworths maintain dominance in grocery while Coles failed to focus on customer needs and treated suppliers with disdain. Under Wesfarmers things are starting to change, yet the biggest fight in retail over the next decade is more likely to be driven by a huge shift to buying online.

While Australia’s Westfield has over 30 years fine-tuned a profitable model to encourage a visit to the Mall, as therapy for the modern empty soul, the Internet is on the cusp of changing the behaviour of society in an equally profound way.

It’s already happening. In 2009 Australians spent $24billion on retail online according to research commissioned by eBay and predicts a 40 percent increase to $32.8billion in 2012.

Australia’s retailers are falling behind the rest of the world in grabbing a share of the online retail spend. "As Australian retailers struggle to build effective online presence, overseas competitors are taking advantage of the gap in the Australian market and are currently taking around 40 per cent of Australia's online retail spend," according to PayPal MD Paul Feller.

"There is a huge opportunity for retailers to capitalise on the growing online marketplace in Australia. In the last six months alone the average consumer spent $1,223 on online shopping, an increase of $130 from the second half of 2009."

So Westfield has to balance an online strategy with keeping footfall high in the malls to keep those retail tenants in biz. No easy task, now that broadband speeds and speed and reliability of delivery through the mail are narrowing the gap between online purchase and the wardrobe.

Who shops online?

My daughter buys most of her clothes online from the US and UK for a fraction of local prices, my son buys his music and sound gear from all corners of the world and Amazon keeps my partner well read. Online purchases of all sorts of items will become the norm, especially as the ways to enhance the shopping experience online grow.

In the past you would see the latest fashions in a magazine spread, be exposed to an ad on TV with Megan Gale for David Jones and go the mall to try it on. Now the whole experience can be completed online. The Ceros platform is being used by the likes of Sears, Tesco, Virgin and IKEA to show product and close a sale using a rich media eMagazine. Have a look. We’re already using it to help our challenger brand clients leave their competition behind.

Marketing tips for fund managers

Fund managers can make more money by marketing. The trick is to know what marketing is exactly...

I have a passion for following fund managers’ performance and comparing how they stack up against their investment philosophies. There are a handful of fund managers who stick by their principles and deliver above average results through the ups and downs of the markets. What surprises many managers is that investment doesn’t always come flooding their way when they are doing better than the index. There are plenty of examples where poor performing funds continue to dominate in the competition for FUM.

It’s not enough to rely on BDMs and the distribution and sales channels; every fund is out there building relationships with the instos and advisers. The commercial reality is rooted in human nature; ultimately the salesmen who managers are relying on to recommend a fund will go for the easy sell. And as we’ve seen, performance can’t be the only draw card or there wouldn’t be 19,500 funds on the market where the biggest generally aren’t the best. It would be a mistake to think the end of commissions will result in a rush to quality, inertia and confusion will see to that.

It’s time the better managers tried something new to most in the industry. It’s what’s been honed and crafted by the world’s most successful companies, from Apple to Armani, Mercedes to Mars: it’s marketing. In a world of multiple choices, marketing is one of the few tools that can make a significant contribution to the success of a business.

The financial services industry still confuses sales and distribution for marketing

It isn’t. Marketing takes the ball the first fifty metres and sales kick the goal. Then it’s marketing that continues to remind investors why they made the right decision choosing your fund, so they’ll stick by you through the inevitable bumps and falls. And invest with you again and again.

In the words of Wikipedia, marketing is the process by which companies determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It is an integrated process through which companies create value for customers and build strong customer relationships in order to capture value from customers in return.

Manage the image you create for your brand and how you promote it

From product design and the language you use, your logo and stationery, the look and imagery in brochures and PDSs, the content and design of e-newsletters, what is on your website and how it is presented, to advertising and sales collateral. When every part is working together in a co-ordinated fashion the whole adds far more value to the business than the investment in the parts. And just like investments, managed well marketing delivers compound returns.

Over the years I’ve found integrated marketing works just as well for financial institutions as it does for baked beans. Research by the School of Management and Finance, University of Nottingham showed back in 1998 the similarities emerging even then between consumers’ responses to financial services ads which featured the same cues as ads for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and the influence on subsequent purchase decisions.

Put simply, when it comes to proven ways to make money, fund managers can get a healthy ROI from marketing. For evidence, they just have to ask about the results of my many marketing experiences of 30 years, from banks to baked beans.

Signs of the times... who has the time?

Outdoor advertising is diminishing in effectiveness, like many traditional mediums

Not surprising when you think about the increasing clutter advertising billboards have to compete with for attention.

In the Drive section of the SMH the other day one motoring journo observed: “I went to a suburban shopping district and counted 19 road signs clustered around the first intersection. There were 55 road information messages in about 100 metres. Even when travelling at 40km/h you are left with just nine seconds to read them". In the book Traffic, Tom Vanderbilt states the average driver must process 1340 pieces of information every minute.

So recently when a client asked UNO to review their annual advertising media budget we weren’t too keen to recommend continuing to spend several hundred thousand dollars for one poster above the M4.

Old habits die-hard, the CEO drives to work each day and passes that one sign. We couldn’t convince management that for about 20% of the cost of that one sign they could develop an ongoing relationship with their customers using the latest Web2.0 technologies and build a valuable database for future use.

While traditional media companies like Eye Corp continue to sell posters, a medium that hasn’t changed for a couple of centuries, newer more effective alternatives are emerging. (When the price is right.) ROI marketing starts with understanding the real stats.

Innovation in signage

Recently Ryan Simpson of Val Morgan showed me the latest research on their innovative take on signage, large video screens in shopping centres.

While I always take statistics with a grain of salt, the figures reflect the relationship between clutter and proximity to where the purchase can be made. Despite the amount of billboards, busbacks and taxibacks that shoppers must have passed on their way to the shops, almost 50% say they didn’t notice any advertising. 30% remembered noticing billboards, whereas this new moving screen medium within shopping centres was noticed by over 70% of the 1,000 people surveyed by Nielsen research.

Pity I didn’t have those sorts of stats on hand when I tried to talk that client out of spending a large chunk of their budget on that one sign.               

Bigger ad budgets usually mean greater waste

Marketers don't always get what they pay for. I recently met with the new regional head of one to one marketing of a world leading brand. One to one is their fancy term for online. This new manager has been brought in from the USA to determine how the millions of dollars they spend annually in this region can deliver a better return.

Mid size companies can learn from the mistakes of larger marketers with larger budgets. Some of the areas of waste this expert has identified in just a few months are listed here:

Marketing budgets managed within silos is inefficient

Some products have budgets too small to make any impact, while others spend more than necessary because they have a larger allocation. Simply by adding an overview of expenditure across the portfolio would deliver a win win result.

Too many contracts with too many large agencies can drive a big spending approach. Marketing managers with little experience are often given average strategic advice and average creative executions. Large agencies are inclined to overspend on media exposure, (with commissions it's an easy earn).

Set marketing KPIs upfront

Smarter marketers know investing in more management time upfront determining objectives and KPIs, with strategic intellect and strong creative can mean a much smaller media spend can deliver greater impact, more leads and higher conversion rates. There is also an inevitable diminishing return factor from spending more, if someone sees your ad two or three times and still hasn't bought, spending more to show them the same proposition four or five times is simply a waste of money.

There is value in retained knowledge

Years of collected data, research results, campaign learnings and customer databases are often ignored with each new project. Every campaign can and should add incremental value to the next. Take a test and learn approach, rather than a big spending one-off hit. This is one of the fastest ways to implement ROI marketing.

Fortunately for my mid sized clients, I've found over the years insight led creative marketing can punch above it's media weight time and again.

GM a victim of launch and leave

For General Motors, big has not proven to be better. From 50% market share to 20% and bankruptcy in just 40 years has partly been blamed on an inability of management to move with the shift from big gas guzzlers to smaller cars. The disastrous purchase of Hummer in 1999 showed how recently GM thought big still had a big future. Time has proven there were only a few big spenders like Renee Rivkin who bought these massive buckets of bolts, obviously not enough to pay the massive borrowing costs.

Less obvious to the public, and of more interest to marketers, are the views being expressed that a lack of advertising support has played a very significant role in the rapid market share loss to the Japanese car makers.

One example was the surprisingly upbeat statements by the head of marketing of GM, he is excited by the prospect of having less brands to support with his marketing budget. With the jettisoning of divisions like Pontiac, he'll be left with just four brands to promote, including Chevrolette and Cadillac. This he trumpets will give him a chance to compete with the same ad budget as Toyota.

In an obituary of the once market leading General Motors, The New York Times blames management for a failure to support it's product with advertising.

Advertising works, The New York Times says so

It points out GM finance staff wrestled with product developers and marketers, thus causing GM to fall victim to a practice called launch and leave - that is, putting product on the market, then failing to support them with advertising.

As someone who has played a part in helping numerous businesses grow share by using smart, creative advertising, this is a particularly public example of the consequences of not believing in the power of marketing. If you ever have to justify to management the wisdom of investing in advertising, when so many accountants seem to view it as a discretionary cost, use this following quote from a past executive of GM who was part of the team that created the successful Pontiac GTO in the 60s and wrote the book about it Glory Days...

Image is everything in building brand equity

Nobody gave any respect to this thing called image, because it wasn't in the business plan. It was about "when is it going to earn a profit?"

As the New York Times points out, over the years the marketing skeptics at GM became practiced at the art of explaining their problems, attributing blame to everyone but themselves.

It pays to trust people with passion

In the last week a visit from a chimney sweep and a conversation with a successful Australian manufacturer reminded me of the value of passion in business.

I was surprised when the chimney sweep asked when was the last time my chimney had been cleaned. Annually didn’t make sense to him judging by what he saw with his fancy mirror... unless I burn 20 tonnes of wood a year, which I don’t. I was quickly impressed by his enthusiastic run down on the finer points of proper chimney maintenance. This man has been cleaning chimneys for 27 years and was still getting a buzz from helping people solve their dirty flue problems, he described the joy solving more difficult challenges and leaving customers with fires that draw like new. His fee was no more than the company that has under serviced us over the last few years.

Whatever service you need, find a practitioner who is passionate about what they do

One of my long standing clients, going on nine years now, makes plantation shutters. Marion Mikkelsen of Open Shutters is passionate about her product, and has built a brand over this time that has proven resilient against the onslaught of cheap Chinese imports. She is so passionate every aspect of her business is constantly reviewed with the objective of constant improvement. She refuses to compromise, so instead of cutting corners to save costs this business runs on a successful program of creative thinking, R&D, staff training and manufacturing innovation.

This passion shows in her product, which my wife thought was the best when she did her pre-purchase research for our home. It was only a few years later I coincidentally won Marion as a client... it is great to be able to market a product you’ve bought yourself.

Why do so many business people mistrust each other?  

Over 20 years this pioneer of timber shutters in Australia has led with product innovation and with UNO’s marketing help driven the growth of the category. Yet Marion lamented this week how it’s only after many years her distributors are beginning to trust what she says about her product and her overarching belief in the necessity to fulfill the expectations of consumers. How could so many small business owners not recognise the genuine passion displayed by Marion?

I shouldn’t be surprised, I often find business prospects are cynical of what I have to say about how smart marketing can help their businesses succeed. I’m passionate about what I can do to help people, however it’s even harder to be believed when I work in an industry that the public constantly ranks at the bottom of the trust table alongside used car sales and real estate agents.