Marketing

Plastic bags and customer journeys

Marketing, Strategy 0 Comment

Many years ago I was involved in an indie record shop.

For the benefit of younger readers we were purveyors of 12inch diameter round pieces of plastic on which a groove was etched. When activated these grooves produced music.

If you’ve seen or read High Fidelity then this will give you something of a flavour.

It was a bit of a shambolic operation at the best of times but I only got an actual bollocking once from the owner.

Post-bollocking I never made the same mistake again.

It wasn’t for ordering too much stock of some obscure Italian jazz-house oddity.

It wasn’t for not opening up until mid-day because of some hangover or other.

Nor was it for keeping the best promo’s for myself (I was also a club dj of some repute)… Read More

acquiescence

Agencies, Marketing, Strategy 0 Comment

Here’s a trap that we often find ourselves falling into.

Even when you know this it’s hard to stop yourself repeating it.

Take this example.

Your agency has just produced a new piece of work and it’s worthy of making a noise about.

So the project leader will send a company wide email asking for support via tweets and Facebook status updates from the group to help spread the word.

All good so far, except usually no-one responds and only very few comply with the request.

It’s an example of what is known ‘diffusion of responsibility’ and is closely related to what psychologists call the ‘bystander effect’. Read More

find products for your customers

Advertising, Marketing, Technology 0 Comment

I remember this story from last year about the kid who invented a doorbell which calls the householder’s mobile phone if nobody answers the door.

Laurence Rook, the 13 year old boy from Croydon in South London, said he got the idea after noticing his mother had missed several deliveries by not being in the house.

Laurence licensed his invention off to the tune of circa 250k.

At the time it struck me that the combined innovation departments of BT, Orange, T-mobile, Vodafone and goodness knows who else from the telco sector had failed to notice this simple customer insight/problem, yet a 13 year-old kid, paying attention, had come up with fantastic piece of utility using a sim card and some bits and pieces lying about the house.

Another one that the telco’s have missed cropped up on FIR: the Hobson and Holtz Report podcast that I listened to this morning in the car.

This was the first time I’d heard of Connectify, a software based router for Windows computer that shares wi-fi connections your other devices.

One of the principal benefits for the business, or otherwise, traveller being that in many hotels the wi-fi access is limited to one device at a time – Connectify solves that conundrum.

Again, one has to wonder why this had to be invented by a small start-up (the software’s development was funded via crowd-funding platform Kickstarter, by the way)
when there was a simple customer insight to be leveraged and yet none of the telco’s saw the opportunity.

I’m reminded of this simple maxim that Seth Godin is often quoted on, in regard to where businesses should look for innovation opportunities and to temper the impulses that lead them to be hellbent on acquisition of new customers.

‘Don’t just look to finding customers for your products, find products for your customers.’

Do not track

Advertising, Marketing, Technology 0 Comment

Certain unscrupulous corners of the advertising world, those on the dark side of the (other) digital divide, are not best pleased.

It appears that Microsoft are sticking to Plan A and shipping ‘Do-Not-Track’ as the default option in Internet Explorer 10.

Do Not Track is a web privacy scheme that tells online advertisers to NOT collect or use data specific to a user’s web activity.

Advertisers can still show ads, obviously, but they would not be allowed to record that a user browsed certain car websites, for example, and then proceed show car ads where ever they go.

While these advertisers were reported to be willing to put up with ‘Do-Not-Track’, they were only accepting the basis that it was certain to be something that users had to actually enable and activate for themselves. Read More

Shot by both sides

Advertising, Brand, Inspiration, Marketing, Strategy 1 Comment

In the quest for enlightenment extremes of self-indulgence on the one side and self-mortification on the other are not advised by the Buddha.

Thus the recommendation, as described by the Noble Eightfold Path, is often called the Middle Way.

Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

Notice there’s no specific mention of Right Facebooking and Right Tweeting (though these are covered as subsections of all of the above).

For the new marketing provocateur this, however, presents another problem. Read More

Will Australians pay for something that was free?

Advertising, Marketing 1 Comment

[Original post by Peter Jefferson]

The Herald Sun’s new digital pass is its first step into paid content. It will also be a test for other publications in the News stable and other traditional media globally who are attempting to monetise the digital tidal wave that is upon us. But will it succeed?

Australians have a long history of not paying for stuff that was once free. There are many examples. Tollways, parking, trips to the tip, water, pay TV. The latest bru-ha-ha is the carbon tax. Expecting those who emit CO2 to pay for it will probably bring down a government, such is the angst around paying for stuff that was once free.

The Herald Sun has adopted the age old “product trial” approach. Theirs is the digital version of a shampoo sachet arriving in the mail or being offered a small piece of cooked sausage in Coles. The aim is simple; subscribe as many as they can to a two-month digital pass prior to turning off the “free” switch. But will it work? Read More

Casanova’s secret

Advertising, Brand, Marketing, Social influence, Strategy 0 Comment

Brand X makes a good product but has what they deem to be a relatively small slice of it’s category, enough for business to tick over but should ideally be growing faster.

In addressing this issue Brand X, unfortunately, are prone to committing the number one biggest mistake in marketing.

They continually look at the problem from their own perspective, rather than their customers.

In fact, through market research and focus groups Brand X has recently discovered, the WRONG people are buying their product.

This annoys conceited Brand X because these customers that they DO have, don’t match the image the brand has of itself. Read More

Bet on Facebook or Google? Probably Google.

Advertising, Brand, Marketing, Strategy 0 Comment

Friends outside the industry have been asking me a lot recently about whether I think Facebook is over or undervalued. Now to be clear, though I have had a number of finance clients in the past, I am far from an expert on the workings of the stockmarket.

What I can tell people though, based on experience as an agency working with Facebook, and having an understanding of why brands advertise, is that Facebook is going to struggle (though even Google has some impending problems). Quick disclaimer: Google is one of our clients. Read More

Can’t/Can: talkin’ loud, sayin’ nothing

Advertising, Brand, Marketing, Strategy 2 Comments

Following its seven day ‘teaser’ run up, the ‘Can’t‘ campaign revealed itself on the weekend and – as just about everyone who was paying any attention predicted – was indeed the relaunch/rebadging of the Commonwealth Bank.

CommBank binned its longstanding agency partner, San Francisco based Goodby Silverstein & Partners, back in February and ‘Can’t/Can’ is the first major effort from M&C Saatchi Sydney who won the account back for Australia, as it were.

Whilst every man and his dog in the adland  has a view on the executional merits of the relaunch I thought it might be interesting to have a look through a brand innovation lens and chuck in a couple of other thoughts on the overall position of the thing. Read More

Have memes gone mainstream?

Advertising, Brand, Creative, Marketing, Social media 0 Comment

[Original post by Sam Harris]

Richard Dawkins invented them, but the internet super-sized them. And now the question to savvy marketers is: could the meme actually be an effective vehicle to tell their brand story?

Whilst a great idea on the face of it, advertisers might want to think twice before they attempt to set a lolcat amongst Keanu Reeves’ pigeons.

Like most social marketing plays, the obvious watch-out for marketers is audience subversion, where your message quickly gets flipped by the community.

The internet is littered with the carcasses of such ‘campaigns’. Who could forget the eco-takeover of Chevrolet’s SUV competition across YouTube, or recent Twitter fails at #QantasLuxury and #Coles. Just this February, Coke was left mopping up the spills when its invitation to create a “happy story” on Facebook through a trail of one-word comments, was hijacked by ‘fans’ with a less virtuous vocabulary. Read More

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