Category Archives: 21st Century Marketing

28 December, 2010 · 3:13 pm

The Missing Measure of Business Strength

There are three areas that determine the strength of a business. Yet widely accepted measures have only been developed for two of them.

The overall health of a business depends on three factors:

  1. The quality of its products and services
  2. The cost/price structure
  3. The strength of customer relationships

The third area is often overlooked, but shouldn’t be. Peter Drucker distilled the issue into a fundamental truth when he said that “the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” It’s the strength of the customer relationship that makes people automatically ascribe higher levels of design and performance to Apple products.  It’s the lack of a customer relationship that feeds the high churn rates in wireless carriers. This is what CEO’s mean when they use the word “brand,” as opposed to what CMO’s often mean when they use the word brand. The CEO describes it in terms of a competitive advantage, and the CMO too often in terms of imagery and recall.

As vital as this relationship is to both the short and long-term health of the business, the measurements around it are not well-developed. There are rigorous measures and standards around quality, as evidenced by approaches like Six Sigma and third-party evaluators like J.D. Power. There are even more rigorous measures in place over the financial health of the firm, enough to employ an army of accountants at any large firm.  But measures of the customer relationship are underdeveloped. The net promoter score attempts to measure the customer relationship by likelihood to recommend to  friend. It is the closest thing we have to a standard measure of customer relationships.  As such, it has been a useful tool for many companies looking to develop a stronger customer-centered culture. Still, its critics are as numerous as its supporters because it lacks the objectivity that is standard in measurements of quality and financial performance. For example, people may be less likely to recommend something they perceive as a vice, even if they are very satisfied (e.g. high fat ice cream). Many companies have their own loyalty measures that are more sophisticated than the net promoter score. But the fact that they are proprietary means that it’s difficult to compare their measures to other competitive companies.

The day will come when savvy investors will analyze customer relationships as closely as they analyze EBITDA. That will be a good day for enlightened marketers because it will establish the best of them as mission-critical drivers of business growth.

Leave a comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Branding, Business Management

Tagged as , , , , ,

14 September, 2010 · 9:59 pm

All Media is Now Earned Media

Reach is increasingly hard to buy.

As marketers try to sort the trends between traditional and non-traditional, online and offline, global and hyperlocal, at least one trend is clear. All media is morphing into earned media.

Earned media was typically used to distinguish from paid media.  Tools like PR and grassroots marketing that depended on some viral element to reach a large audience were put in the Earned category, and things like TV, radio, and print were put in the Paid category.  They were like apples and oranges. The common wisdom held that there was a clear trade-off between these categories. Earned media was cheaper to execute, but provided little or no control over what kind or how many people you would reach. Paid media was expensive, but provided guaranteed reach and frequency numbers that ensured the message was delivered.  The categories and the trade-off are both evaporating.

Technology and the explosion of choices have undermined guaranteed delivery.  New channels like YouTube are obvious examples of a choice medium where the viewership is entirely dependent on the nature of the content. You may get 10 views or 1 million views, but it’s impossible to predict. For every Annoying Orange, there are hundreds of thousands of unwatched puppet skits. But the even the so-called mass media are becoming increasingly choice-driven.  For example,  Morpace research estimates that almost 50% of TV viewing is via DVR, online, or other on-demand alternatives.  So even if marketers try to attach themselves to a hit show, their viewers increasingly time-shift and fast-forward past the advertising that is neither relevant nor interesting to them. The previous control over who and when your message would be seen is rapidly ebbing away.  The reach of a marketing message is increasingly dependent on the inherent value of its content regardless of the channel. That’s what we mean when we say all media is now Earned media.

Less obvious but equally true is that the low-cost perception of Earned media is also fading away.  A good press release or a publicity stunt just doesn’t go as far as it used to. The rise of social media has created more avenues for memes to rise and take hold, but also a flood of information that hastens their decline.  The competition for time and attention is more intense than ever.  So the chances of rising above the noise are less. And even if your idea does breakthrough,  it’s lifespan is much shorter because of the constant flood new work competing for the same attention spans. So even if the distribution costs of some new Earned media channels are lower (e.g. Facebook page vs. TV buy), the development costs in terms of the quality of the ideas, the frequency of the ideas, and the work required to populate those ideas with key constituencies is rising.

There are at least two implication for marketers. One is that they have to think of their messaging in terms of content. It must follow the basic principles by which we earn peoples’  interest in its own right or it will be ignored or skipped over.  This is true regardless of its form or distribution channel. The second is that they have to refresh their marketing efforts more frequently if they expect to maintain any consistent share of mind with their target.

Leave a comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Innovation

Tagged as , , , , ,

28 June, 2010 · 11:26 am

Getting It: Charmin vs. Cottonelle

One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make when attempting to use social media is focusing on the channel first. Many of them have been trained that success comes from tapping into what’s hot whether that be celebrities, television shows,  or urban slang.  So they go into social media by trying to figure out  the hot place to be.  First they went rushing into Second Life, then MySpace, then Facebook, and now iPhone apps.

That mentality misses the point of social media: it is not to intercept people on their way to what interests them,  it is to engage people so you are what interests them.  The first task is not to assess the popularity of something unrelated to who you are, it’s about finding something rooted in who you are as a brand that other people find interesting. And that’s where the real challenge lies.  Before you pick any social media channel, you need to figure out what makes you interesting to somebody. Sure, it’s easy to figure out why people would want to talk to you if you’re Nike, BMW, or Maxim. Who doesn’t want to talk about sports, cars or sex?

It’s a little harder when you’re a less naturally conversational product.  Even if it’s something people use a lot of, it doesn’t mean they want to have a conversation about it.  If you make socks, table salt or toilet paper, is there anything that could make a normal person seek you out?

It turns out there is, if you are smart about it. For proof, consider what Procter & Gamble has done with their Charmin toilet paper. By owning public restrooms, they found a reason for people to talk about them and with them.  In 2002, the brand team started Potty Palooza, a portable set-up of high-end public toilets that traveled around the country to concerts, festivals, and other events.  It became an attraction in its own right, and the subject of considerable buzz. They built on that momentum with the installation of luxurious public restrooms in key venues like Times Square. Most recently  they extended their idea into the sponsorship of a mobile app, SitorSquat, that maps out public washrooms around the world.  These efforts have helped strengthen Charmin’s place as the most popular toilet paper brand, and even to have its premium line cited as a leading economic indicator. They found a way to make  people want to talk about a toilet paper brand. They started by finding something inherently interesting about the brand, and then played it out in various channels where it fit.

They did not pick a channel and then shoehorn something into it. For an example of that, you can look at Cottonelle’s Facebook page. Here’s the mission of their page in their own words:

“The Cottonelle® Brand Facebook page is intended to provide a place for fans to discuss Cottonelle® products and promotions.”

There’s  no reason to go there unless you have some pre-existing connection to the brand. I can’t say what motivated this effort, but it seems like someone simply decided Cottenelle needed to be on Facebook.  They do a nice enough job trying to keep some kind of conversation going, but you can feel the strain like small talk between people who arrived too early for an office party.  It’s hard to have a meaningful conversation without something interesting to talk about.

(credit to Bill Hague of Magid Research for related insights)

2 Comments

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Activation, Branding, Innovation

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

14 June, 2010 · 9:55 am

Getting It: Chevrolet and Volkswagen

The contrast in behavior between two car companies over the past several  months could hardly be more illuminating.  As reported by DetroitNews.com, the marketing heads of GM directed their internal staff to stop referring to cars using the Chevy nickname and instead use the more proper Chevrolet label.   It smacks of  a guy I knew named “Ox” who tried to convert everyone to calling him Alex after he graduated college and got his first job in banking.  He thought it was more fitting to help him climb the corporate ladder.  It distanced him from his old friends and made him less interesting to his new ones. After all, who would you rather have watching over your money, Alex or the Ox?  GM’s attempt to backtrack a couple days later was only slightly less baffling.  They explained that because they sell more cars internationally now than domestically, they thought it better for consumers outside the U.S. to learn their proper name first before learning the nickname.  That defies the way nicknames really work with both people and products,  if Paul David Hewson (Bono)  and Coca-Cola (Coke) are any indication.

Compare that approach to Volkswagen.  They’ve embraced the Punch Dub game that kids started around spotting a Volkswagen.  When I saw their ads shortly after my kids starting punching each other in the arm every time they saw a VW drive by, it was both endearing and smart.  It made those familiar with the game feel like insiders, and those unfamiliar with it curious. Every marketer strives to integrate their brands into the popular culture, and they handled the opportunity deftly.

The contrast comes down to a simple definition of a brand. While marketers work hard to foster brands, a true brand is ultimately owned by the consumers. It is people’s perceptions and feelings that define a brand. VW took what people were doing around the brand and embraced it, GM pushed it away. Maybe GM took their part in popular culture for granted because Chevy has been around so long.  It might have been easier for VW to see the relatively new phenomenon as a gift in a way that GM could not. Still, the fundamental mistake was in a mindset that misunderstood the fundamental nature of brands.

Leave a comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Branding, Cases, Market Strategy

Tagged as , , , , , ,

19 May, 2010 · 3:57 pm

How Markets Create the Need for Tea Parties

As the anti-incumbent story rumbles  across the mediascape, there is a familiar theme — call it the “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” movement. Congress is at its lowest approval ratings of all time, political distrust is at an all-time high, and new activist fervor is sweeping the land. Politics as we know it is about to change.

Don’t believe the hype.  Whether it’s the Know Nothings of the 1840’s, the Term Limit supporters of the 1990’s,  or today’s Tea Party, they are all a response to the fundamental structure of the American political market.

I worked on political campaigns, and it is important to learn that there is a fundamental difference between the political marketplace and the consumer marketplace.  Both are ruthlessly competitive, so it is not a difference in ethics or morality. It has to do with what I call “category effects.”  Consumer markets have them, and political markets don’t.  Here’s why.

In simple game theory terms, there are four general outcomes between two competitors in the consumer marketplace:

  • Both gain
  • Both lose
  • Competitor 1 gains, Competitor 2 loses
  • Competitor 1 loses, Competitor 2 gains

For an example where both gain, look at Adidas and Nike. Both doing well financially, both well-regarded major brands, and benefiting to a large extent from the fact that they have a major competitor helping them drive the market and mythology of athletes and athletic gear.

For an example where both lose, look at United and American Airlines. Even before the recession, the two largest US carriers were losing share to Southwest-like competitors on the discount end and Virgin on the high-end. Neither gained from the struggles of the other, and both added to each other’s  problems by pricing and service policies that soured people on the airline travel experience.

In both situations, individual players face consequences for how the whole category performs.  If companies compete in such a way that the category grows, they may both win.  If they compete in a way that the category suffers, they may both lose. It is in their self-interest to have people think well of the category.

By contrast, political competition has only two outcomes:

  • Competitor 1 gains, Competitor 2 loses
  • Competitor 1 loses, Competitor 2 gains

In a campaign, it does not matter if you have two great candidates or two terrible candidates, one person gets elected.  There is no outcome where both gain or both lose.  There are 100 Senators in the US Congress, and short of a change to the Constitution or an overthrow of the US government, that number is not going to change based on people’s approval ratings.   In other words, there are no category effects for politicians. If doesn’t matter if people love or hate the category, 50 people still win the same prize either way. There is no self-interest for politicians to make people feel better about the category.

That is why negative advertising is frowned upon in the consumer marketplace, and embraced in the political marketplace.  In politics, if people hate the category I’m in, I can still win as long as they dislike my opponent more than me.  It doesn’t matter if the population is so put off that only 3 people even bother to vote. If two of them vote for me, I win.   In the supermarket, if people hate the my category, it does not help if they hate me less.  I still lose. If two people buy my product  and only one buys my competitor’s, we both go out of business.

As long as there are no category effects in politics, there is no incentive within the system for the candidates to improve the institution.  Efforts like the Tea Party represent an external effort from outside the system,  attempting to impose category effects on a market that inherently lacks them.  If patterns are true to form, one of the political parties will absorb their key tenets into their platforms, and the system will continue to chug along as it always has.

1 Comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Branding, Market Strategy, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

13 April, 2010 · 11:03 am

The Brand – Marketing Paradox

Over the past few years, there has been two converse trends that speak to an interesting shift in the marketing landscape. On the one hand, the benefits of a strong brand have become more discussed and desired than ever before. CEOs, politicians, athletes, and entertainers are obsessed with developing and shaping their respective brand.  Numerous self-help columns promise to help people develop their individual brands. Never before has branding been perceived as such a critical success factor by so many people in so many fields.

So these should be heady days for established branding experts. Marketers from brand managers to agency directors should be enjoying unprecedented status and influence. Yet the opposite situation seems to be the case. White papers for CMOs circulate around the struggle to get a seat at the decision-making table.  Agencies are increasingly treated as commodities, set out for bid in much the same way as office supply contracts.  Major consumer marketing companies have bypassed the professionals to embrace “user-generated content” and crowdsourcing to fuel their marketing campaigns.

One explanation for these contrasting trends is that branding has become too important to be left to the marketers. Supporters of this view argue that the limited toolset and mindset of traditional marketers has made them ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of the modern marketplace.  There is some isolated truth in this, but anyone who has dealt with a large sample of CMOs can attest that as whole they are as engaged, intelligent, and creative as anyone you could hope to meet.

The more credible explanation is that branding has become bigger than marketing.  The digital era has brought an unprecendented amount of information and transparency to products and the companies who make them. As a result, people are forming brand impressions from a far greater number of inputs than ever before.  A frustrating customer service experience becomes a viral video hit, a golf outing with clients sparks national outrage,  financing from an overseas bank results in a store boycott. So brand impressions are being formed less by the things marketers control and more by the corporate culture and its day-to-day operations. 

Branding used to cover a company like frosting on a cake. It was something you added at the end to make it look good. Now the branding is baked in. For branding experts to contribute, they have to make a positive impact on what goes into the cake, not on what comes out of the oven.

Leave a comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Branding

Tagged as , , , , ,

9 April, 2010 · 11:33 am

The Wrong Analogy

With Mr. Woods back in the action, it reminds me how often I’ve heard marketers draw an analogy between what they do and the game of golf. They talk about having a clear target in mind. There’s a bag of tools that you use based on your read of the environment. There is the pressure to succeed in front of a crowd. And there by their side, is the trusted caddy – a metaphor for the agency offering counsel and practical assistance. While many of those elements seem accurate, it lacks the real character of today’s marketing environment.

If we were going to pick a sports analogy, it would be more like basketball. In basketball, you still have to have a target and line up your shot carefully, but there are no practice swings, and you have to take that shot NOW. There are five guys trying to stop you, and what you want in this situation isn’t the quiet counsel of a caddy, but someone who is going to get you the ball, set a pick or whatever else it takes to score. And that crowd? They are not impartial admirers of the game applauding fine play. They are a loud, biased, opinionated group who’s force can energize you to greater heights or intimidate you into mistakes.

One implication of the basketball analogy is that, with your team out on the floor and the clock running, you can’t be afraid to shoot. So many of the structures and processes of today’s marketing relationships are set up like it is a golf game – in that the objective is to minimize the number of missed shots. Our view is that is not how many shots you take that matter, but how many shots you make. In other words, it is better to go 3 for 5 than it is to go 2 for 2. Here is an interesting statistic from the last completed basketball season that bears that out. Of the four teams that made it to the NBA semi-finals last season, none of them was the in the top three in shooting percentage for the league.

This isn’t an argument for being inefficient. In fact, it’s just the opposite. If you spend all your resources lining up one or two shots, you’ll probably lose. The more efficient you are, the more shots you can afford to take, and the better chance you have of scoring.

 
 

Leave a comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing

Tagged as , , ,

30 March, 2010 · 10:19 am

Ten Things Your Agency Prefers You Don’t Know: #9

There is no reason for an agency of record.

With the possible exception of a media agency, the agency of record status is of no benefit to marketers. A little historical context is useful to understand the situation. Back when ad agencies did everything for their clients, including buying their media space, the agency of record designation had a legal and business purpose. It meant that a newspaper, magazine, or TV station knew that an agency was authorized to make purchases on behalf of its client. It was in keeping with the technical definition of agent in commercial law: someone authorized to negotiate and enter contracts with a third-party on behalf of the principal. An agent provided clients the convenience of not having to deal directly with hundreds of media contracts associated with a large marketing campaign. For large marketers making frequent purchases of many types of media, this role still makes sense for their chosen media agency.

But after media agencies spun off into standalone entities, the other types of agencies worked to hold on to this title. There were now creative agencies of record, promotional agencies of record, or interactive agencies of record. These designation exist to this day, but solely for the benefit of the agencies. They are the basis for long-term contracts and associated retainers that make holding companies more attractive to their investors.  In short, they provide the assurance of a more reliable revenue stream, and create a barrier to entry to competing agencies. It is a sort of corporate engagement ring jammed onto the finger of a client to ward away other suitors.

But there’s no reason for marketers to wear that ring.  These agencies don’t play the business role of agent. As with production for example, pre-production estimate approvals and other mechanisms effectively make marketers a first-party to any contracts or external agreements. In fact, an agency of record can be a detriment to marketers because it hampers their ability to seek out ideas from whoever they like.  Forrester just predicted the demise of the interactive agency of record, but why stop there? It’s true that marketers may prefer the convenience of working on an ongoing basis with a single organization that understands their business and their way of working.  There may also be some efficiencies in having multiple projects run through a single provider.  Some marketers may find their agencies so valuable that they want to ensure they have a long-term relationship. But that should be a matter of choice and not a contractual obligation. Most marketers have to earn their customers loyalty every day.  So should their agencies.

1 Comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Agency Management, Innovation

Tagged as , ,

26 February, 2010 · 1:07 pm

Earning Interest

There is a simple way to sum up all the trends around social media, viral marketing, mobile apps and other developments in marketing — we are shifting from a world in which attention is bought to one in which attention must be earned.

I recall attending an AOL conference back in the day when AOL was bigger than the Web. One panelist whose name sadly escapes me, shared some amazingly prescient wisdom over a technical discussion of how to deal with the limits of dial-up internet access. He said “I think our biggest bandwidth problem is going to be people’s attention span.” That sums up the marketer’s challenge better than anything else I can think of.

The number one question all marketers should ask themselves before launching any program is “why would this be of interest to anyone in my target?” Interest can take many forms, so not everything has to work in the same way.  A great Superbowl ad and a great customer service experience can both engage people. Our basic human motivations provide multiple ways to attract our attention. Here are five broad categories that we look at to help design marketing programs that earn interest:

  • Passion – We all have passions that bring pleasure to our lives. It may be for fashion, the Green Bay Packers,  or Broadway musicals. Whether carnal or intellectual, we seek out avenues that allow us to feed and  indulge our passions.
  • Curiosity – We are naturally attracted to mysteries and riddles. There are few things in this world more seductive than an unopened package. Once something piques our curiosity, it’s like an itch we have to scratch.
  • Entertainment – As YouTube empirically proves every day, we seem to have a bottomless desire to be entertained. Whether it’s through humor, drama or pure spectacle, there are few better ways to endear yourself to someone than to entertain them.
  • Interaction – It is deep within our species to want to connect with others of our kind. Shared experiences give us more satisfaction than solitary endeavors. Bars and online forums both owe their existence to our inherent desire to interact with others.
  • Utility – We all feel like our lives should be easier. So we embrace tools that fulfill the promise of saving time, money, or effort. 

Successful marketers are those who can earn the interest of their target. Marketing plans sometimes still refer to “paid media” (advertising) and “earned media” (PR). It’s all earned media now.

1 Comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Branding, Innovation

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

6 January, 2010 · 10:10 am

Ten Things Your Agency Prefers You Don’t Know: #7

Agencies don’t have a lot of bench strength.
That’s mostly because they can’t afford to. Clients have gotten their procurement departments more involved in agency compensation over the past decade. This procurement movement helped in several respects and hurt in others. It helped reduce some inefficiencies and pushed agencies to be more forthcoming in their fee proposals. It has failed to create a lot more value for the client. It has failed because both agencies and marketers focused on reducing the costs of the inputs rather than increasing the value of the output. In order to reduce costs, agencies have had to reduce the total compensation for their staff. The dynamic has been similar to the effect of salary caps in professional sports. Now there are only so many stars an agency can afford to keep on the roster. So you get what few stars you can afford, and fill in the rest of the team with role players, or unproven rookies who you hope will rise to the occasion. This has pushed agencies to manage their clients like the old vaudeville spinning plate routine. They try to get all the plates spinning, and only give their attention to the ones that are really starting to wobble. The A-team is dispatched to get the plate spinning again, and then as soon as that’s done, they rush to the next wobbler. So for any marketer wondering whether they have a first-rate team dedicated to their business, the answer is probably no. They can’t afford to.

Leave a comment

Filed under 21st Century Marketing, Agency Management

Tagged as , , , ,