Plan Phoenix

A sense of purpose?

2011-09-29T17:58:00.001+01:00

BA's new advertising campaign claims that its motto "to fly to serve" "runs through everything we do". After several years of turbulence, it makes a lot of sense for BA to remind customers about the company's history - and the motto has stood the test of time. But is the claim true? BA's industrial relations have suggested a very different internal culture. One can only hope that the ad is some kind of sacrament - an outward sign of an inner grace, and that as much effort has been put in to building a sense of purpose among BA staff as is now being spent telling customers about it.

If so, BA would be a rare company indeed, according to a recent survey in the US. People were asked about the corporate culture of their organisation, classified into one of three basic types:

1. Blind Obedience ... command and control, top-down leadership and coercion

2. Informed Acquiescence ... Employees follow the rules, policies and procedures ... Managers rely on performance-based rewards and punishments to motivate

3. Self-Governance ... primarily values-based ... purpose and values inform decision-making and guide all employee and company behavior

Around a quarter of leaders identified their organisation as fundamentally driven by purpose and values. However, among employees it was less than 5%. Depressing. Evidence not only that a huge number of bosses haven't got a clue about the organisations they run, but also that purpose and values - the stuff of a good brand - are marginal at best, in most businesses. Dov Seidman, who devised this classification of types of corporate culture (and who commissioned the survey), has argued, convincingly and passionately, for many years, about the potential of corporate culture:

"culture as a conscious, deliberate, long-term strategy can be the key to differentiation, success and significance"

I can only concur. If brands are so important when it comes to engaging with customers, why are they neglected when engaging with employees (or shareholders, or regulators, or media, or intermediaries, for that matter)? It must be the biggest blind spot in business - lying somewhere between the briefs of the CEO, the Marketing Director and the People Director. Like Dov, I've argued for ages about the urgency of this issue. What is so frustrating is that it is easily addressed. What seems to be lacking is intent. Maybe this survey will act as a wake up call?

If your company were a stick of seaside rock, what words would be written through it? Would it be flattering? (Or unpleasant and fattening?)

(Of course, I must declare a vested interest here. Evangelism is one of Tomorrow:AM's core beliefs and I'm always looking for an opportunity to discuss solutions - for example by making brands stickier. You know where to find me.)

Flat pop

2011-09-23T16:05:00.002+01:00

I've been a Pepsi buyer ever since I was a trainee sales rep for them (many years ago). But it's harder and harder to find Pepsi on the shelf. What happened to the brand that once "won" the cola wars (when the other guy blinked)?

Pepsi has made so many mistakes:

Range mismanagement
Focusing on PepsiMax - and using it, solus, as a reason to justify stocking Pepsi - implied to retailers that there's no need to stock Pepsi or Diet Pepsi at all. Cue yards and yards of eye level Coke products, and a couple of facings of PepsiMax down the bottom, in the speciality section, near the Supermalt. A great product variant has ultimately done terrible damage to its parent brand, due to inept management.

Product failure
Even 20 years ago it was a barely concealed secret that Diet Pepsi was an inferior product. Nothing - least of all perception - has changed. Maybe that's why Diet Pepsi has only 236,362 facebook likes right now, (as a benchmark, Coke has almost 35m). Pepsi has lacked any meaningful brand architecture strategy.

Circular mis-insight (aka staring up your own fundament)
The classic mistake: define the consumer in your own image. This happens all the time - endless brands are mistakenly marketed to funky-20-somethings, by funky-20-somethings, regardless of what their real consumer base looks like (let's face it, more often than not (s)he is really fat and 40 with 3 kids, but who want to write that on the creative brief?). There can be few better examples than this...

the demographic of people who march to the beat of their own drum, who say no even when it's unpopular, who say yes even when it's an uncomfortable change, who change a hundred-year-old brand icon because the new one is simply more beautiful and fitting for our times.

If that's who you think you are trying to engage, you can hardly be surprised when you don't sell much pop.

Presentation pretension
In the now-infamous Arnell brand redesign document (if you've never seen it, but fancy a laugh, click here) Pepsi's logo was compared to the Mona Lisa and to a Nautilus shell. Yet there was not one mention of shelf standout. Pepsi wasn't even trying to win at the point of purchase.

Management panic
So many changes of leadership - a management carousel - culminating in last week's replacement of the US beverages CEO. These may, of course, be as much symptom as cause.

I was in the salesforce that launched Pepsi Blue in 1996. I remember the scepticism then. But that campaign (the blue Concorde, the blue newspaper letterheads, Pepsi in the space station, and so on) had a few of the fundamentals right - it was all about generating mass-market awareness and it was all about product standout. It may have been a bit thin on content, but these are, after all, carbonated soft drinks. Substance they are not. Whatever; compared to what has come since, Pepsi Blue was genius.

What's the secret ingredient of Coke? No secret at all. It has simply remembered who its consumer is, and what market it is in. That's the real thing.

When the going gets toxic

2011-07-18T17:19:00.002+01:00

According to Marketing Magazine it was

"pressure from advertisers [which] forced the shock closure of the UK's most-read Sunday newspaper, the News of the World"

That's to rather overclaim advertisers' influence. As the ensuing events have demonstrated, there are forces at work even more powerful than where we spend our media budgets. But the story does open up quite thorny questions about where ads are placed. I wonder to what extent marketers feel responsible for the media content they pay for? The printed press, just like its online equivalent, as well as broadcast TV, relies on advertising revenue. Every ad placement is a cash-vote in favour of that channel.

In general brands work hard to build wholesome reputations. Yet the attention to detail doesn't make it onto the media plan. Many media brands are, at best, salacious and scurrilous. The ethical brand manager would struggle to reconcile the two. One might argue that marketing decisions are purely commercial, without an ethical dimension. But even then, it's clearly far from ideal that the major channels to reach great swathes of the audience are so incongruous with the brand's own message. And in a wiki-world, where reputation is everything, such "its only business" arguments are valid only if you believe you could stand on them, even in the heat of an as-yet-unimagined crisis. Could you? I couldn't.

The truth is that, for most of us, media channels are but a means to an end, a necessary evil to be endured (as they have been for politicians). The question, of course, is just how necessary. Renault has said it will not be advertising in any News International titles for the timebeing. Is this as noble as it sounds? Does Renault believe the competition are, ultimately, a better fit for its brand, or is this just a crisis management response? Would your brand choose to be identified with the sentiments expressed on any of these covers:

Of course, the last one is a viral spoof. But what brand would freely choose to be associated with a publication that attracts such parody (even if it were undeserved)? As Marshall McLuhan observed almost 50 years ago, "the media is the message". Too often, I fear, our message is expediency. Not good enough. Unless one of your brand values is "prejudiced", of course. But it probably isn't.

And now for something completely flippant

2011-07-18T12:21:00.000+01:00

Enough of the heavyweight issues... let's talk about meerkats. What on earth are comparethemarket doing?

One can be fairly sure that the reason people go to comparison sites is to:
a) save money
b) save time
Just how does a free soft toy fit into that user experience?

Have they not seen "monkey" - effective as an advertising character selling tea, but not as a promotional "benefit" when buying digital TV.

If a free toy is enough to sway people from one comparison site to another (and I'd be surprised) then it can only mean there is no product differentiation, no proposition. Sorting that out would be a much better place to invest time and money.

I thought the initial campaign was very clever - as was the spoof website that went with it - but it needed to move on, long ago.

Accessories in greenwash?

2011-05-24T14:29:00.005+01:00

I've argued previously about the increasing importance of transparency in marketing. So what if a whole industry is being less than transparent? The electricity industry is awash with green claims – and the big companies are establishing and reinforcing their links with a range of green brands. Does it matter if there's a gap between claims and reality?

The UK government sets legal targets for renewable energy supply (called ROCs). The required % increases each year. Companies that fail it pay a financial penalty, which is redistributed in proportion to the total renewable energy produced. Poor performance is penalised, and good performance is rewarded, but – crucially – there’s a simple “cost” of missing the targets. Of the big 6, only Scottish&Southern met the ROC target for 2009/10 (which was 9.7%). The others paid penalties. ScottishPower (8.4%) were closest. EDF (7.0%), Centrica (6.8%) and Npower (6.0%) were all substantially below target, with E.on (1.4%) trailing in last (all figures from electricityinfo.org).

As a commercial decision that’s fair enough – E.on simply pays the financial penalty for their fuel mix. But despite having the lowest proportion of renewable in its fuel mix, E.on still manages to offer a “GoGreen” product, promising that: “by signing up to E.ON GoGreen, you can rest assured that the energy you’re taking from us is really making a difference to the environment. We will offset 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from your electricity usage". One wonders what GoGreen customers would make of E.on’s actual performance? E.on seems to be relying on the fact that they won’t find out – the company’s website has a nice description of how the ROCs system works, including the target %, but conveniently omits any reference to its own actual performance.

Npower is a bit more gutsy. Its “Juice” tariff promises: "electricity that is 100% matched with renewable sources at no additional cost to you". It also has a product branded “National Trust Green Energy”, making the same claim. Presumably it can make this claim if no more than 6.0% of its total supply is sold via these tariffs. But it doesn’t mean the “green” energy is any greener than the other products. Or that it is a “green” supplier.

EDF (better than average – but still more than a quarter below the ROC target), has run TV ads promoting its association with the Olympics and claiming: "we produce around half of Britain’s low carbon electricity". One imagines the claim is based on EDF’s market share and its significant move from gas-sourced to nuclear-sourced power. EDF also runs “Team Green Britain” activity in conjunction with the Eden Project. As a consequence, its website quotes Eden Project CEO Tim Smit:

“The Eden Project shares EDF Energy’s vision... Tackling climate change is about more than individual action; it’s about people working together ... The Eden Project is proud to be a founder member of Team Green Britain and is looking forward to working with EDF Energy...”

“National Trust Green Energy is electricity that is matched from 100% renewable sources and as it costs the same as our standard electricity, there’s no extra cost to you! Join the thousands of National Trust Green Energy customers already choosing to make a difference.”

A lot of green talk from companies that miss their legal obligations. And this entails significant risk. These companies’ reputations could unravel very rapidly if the mood changed – which in a socially networked world it can do very fast. Of course the electricity suppliers could withstand some reputation damage – they dominate the market, and we all need electricity. Maybe they figure they have nothing to lose?

The same is clearly not true for their “partners”. The National Trust, the Eden Project and LOCOG have presumably evaluated their reputation risk, and weighed it up against the shorter term financial incentives. But have they got their sums right? They risk being unmasked as the smily green faces fronting some very dirty business.

The wrong cut

2011-03-28T15:13:00.006+01:00

So HMV looks increasingly likely to sell Waterstones.

They would be selling the only part of the business with a potential long term future. There may (or may not) be a future in retailing books, but there surely is not one in retailing CDs and DVDs. As planned purchasing migrates online (where its easier, cheaper and there's a bigger range in stock), then the remaining opportunity is for impulse purchases. I still buy books, for example, in railway stations and airports. But books have built-in functionality that HMV's products do not. There's an HMV at the airport, but what is the point of buying a CD when I've no way, while in transit, to get it onto my iPod; or a DVD, when my netbook doesn't have a DVD drive. Far easier to simply download something (and cheaper, too).

We may eventually do most of our reading on Kindles (who knows), but even if we do, we'll still be able to pick up a book out of convenience. No such future awaits the CD. It may make sense, in the short term, to sell Waterstones - given Waterstones poor performance and HMV's losses. But you wouldn't want to be left with a stake in HMV.

Some people can't relate and others have a lot to learn

2011-03-09T15:06:00.015Z

When I worked for Britvic, the Tango brand director (who I have to thank for hiring me in to my first real job), bought all the tabloid papers each day, in an effort to know what the brand's consumers were seeing, reading and talking about. For a while in the 90s I attempted similar discipline to the internet - visiting the "big" sites that would otherwise be out of my repertoire, as an act of professional diligence. Futile, obviously. (When vinyl records were invented my grandfather decided to amass a complete set of all the 78s published - he had to abandon that plan quite quickly too).

It is no longer possible to attempt to see through others' eyes. The biggest websites each deliver a combination of search and social, so we all see them differently. (The top 10 by hits are Google, Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo, Live, Blogspot, Baidu, Wikipedia, Twitter and QQ. You are forgiven for not knowing Baidu or QQ if you don't speak Chinese). Content led sites don't feature very highly - and I suspect our choices, at that level, are as fragmented as ever (the BBC is #41, livejasmin is #44 - take your pick).

This is part of a general trend of cultural and social fragmentation. I sat today on the tube next to a guy little more than half my age, as we both listened to our mp3s. I take a little pride in my music taste, but I suspect my age is beginning to show. Mine may be the most ear-bleeding trendy guitar based music in town but, as Decca observed with much foresight when they turned down the Beatles in 1962, "guitar groups are on the way out". My neighbour was listening to Tinie Tempah, for all I know.

Aside from being an obvious problem for media planning, this is a seismic issue for brands that have made themselves "relevant" to consumers by simply mimicking the consumer's perceived interests: "You like XXXXX, so do we!" If consumers aren't into the same things, just what should a mass market brand align to? The few big unifying consumer interests (such as major sports) are not very differentiating. And in many spheres there's little to unify consumers at all. (As far as I understand, the unifying theme of fashion these last few months has been nothing more complex than "socks".)

Affinity marketing was always lazy - the "in thing" is surely an overpriced way to reach the audience. Winning brands have the confidence to carve their own groove. The trick is doing so in ways that consumers are drawn towards.

Going everywhere or nowhere?

2011-02-10T11:06:00.007Z

Announcement today of the launch of "Everything Everywhere" branded stores - the joint name of the company which owns Orange and T-mobile. Isn't brand architecture a nightmare?

The rationale behind the new brand (until now it has existed as company name, more than as consumer offer) - rather than either maintaining two completely "separate" consumer brands or consolidating into just one is, presumably, that the company is trying to have its cake and eat it. By aligning the brands they hope to, over time, streamline the marketing spend, but by keeping both product brands alive they hope to continue to occupy two places in the consumer's consideration, not just one. There's a real risk that, under one brand, their market share simply couldn't be sustained. We can dismiss the company's claimed rationale, as explained by CEO Tom Alexander last year:

"What I wanted was a company name that did not distract or confuse from two very strong brands"

This doesn't ring true. T-mobile has nowhere near as much real equity as Orange, and anyway, now they'll have to invest in, build and sustain three brands. But who's to say, this strategy might work: there are certainly no hard and fast rules in brand architecture. Still, it remains to be seen how easily the "Everything Everywhere" brand can establish a distinct meaning. As Alexander himself has observed:

"We are going through this revolutionary step in the marketplace where people are getting iPhones, getting Google devices and we have Microsoft's Phone 7 coming into the market soon. It's not just about voice and text. It's about everything else you can do on a mobile phone. People are even talking about apps down the pub"

Quite. I find restaurants using an Urbanspoon app, with Google maps, on an Apple phone, via O2 networks. Do I really have the mental bandwidth for another brand in the mix? It will be interesting to see what they do after the 6 month trial...

Update 09:31 February 15

On Friday Nokia and Microsoft finally announced their anticipated collaboration. Makes a lot of sense. As the key competency set for mobile moves decisively from hardware to software, European manufacturers look suddenly exposed. Nokia's handset market share remains at 30%+, but Apple, with just 4% of the market is making 50% of the profit. Nokia is working hard for little return. It's a good fit: Microsoft is hardly the cutting edge of Silicon Valley, but Windows 7 is their best received platform for many years and anyway, both Apple and Google have begun to take on some of the same negative perceptions of corporate monoliths. So it adds real strength to Nokia's offer. And for Microsoft it pretty much guarantees them some market share which, until now, they've been unable to capture. Crucially, there wasn't an alternative solution for Nokia that made this much sense. The smartphone war is about to get exciting: Apple-iPhone vs RIM-Blackberry vs Samsung/Google-Android vs Nokia/Microsoft-Windows. Place your bets!

Enough about you... let's talk about me

2011-02-08T10:59:00.012Z

Rowse Honey's newly launched marketing activity has a lot going for it. They asked their own staff to write and film potential TV ads which are now online (facebook.com/rowsehoney), and they're asking people to vote on their favourite. It's a really nice demonstration of employee engagement - they've clearly managed to infuse their whole workforce with the joy of marketing. And what comes across is that they are a small, family centred company - quite an attractive, yet subtle, positioning for honey. Not bad, for their first ever piece of TV advertising.

There are at least three respects, though, in which it could go much further:

1) The awareness driving kicked off with a TVC about the potential TVCs - that's quite an investment in airtime when the whole thing could instead be given a chance to bubble up through social media. And in some ways a glossy launch TVC slightly undermines the "hand-made" credentials. If this is representative of the media plan as a whole (we'll soon see) then it's probably still too "conventional".

2) If only consumers could be engaged as deeply as employees. Clicking "Like" in Facebook is at least not as passive as simply watching an ad, but there could be a lot more scope. When can we submit our own ads? Is there a Sandbox on YouTube so we can share "unauthorised" (risqué) ads? "The birds and the bees,Take 1!" Can we write Rowse slogans? (One of the employees' ads concludes "We're Rowse Honey. We're not jacks of all trades, we're masters of one", which is not bad.) And so on. Involve us, interact with us, incorporate us!

3) It takes time and effort to engage consumers in dialogue. By and large, we want that dialogue to be about our product/ service. By and large consumers want to talk about their own lives and interests. So alarm bells should ring when we come up with ideas to talk to consumers about advertising. How much better would this campaign be if these were employees' films about bees, or about flowers? Then people could talk about their own gardens, or photos from their holidays. "Happy bees make the best honey. Send us a photo of your favourite flowers and we'll make posters for our bees to enjoy"...

Only as good as the proposition

2011-01-27T09:13:00.012Z

How often do communication campaigns really deliver ROI? I'd wager it's less often than most of us like to admit. A big splash of media will certainly drive brand awareness, but that's rarely the objective.

The new Co-operative Food ad is beautifully constructed, well executed and quite witty - with a refreshing, respectful tone of voice. But does the proposition stack up? Any parent will recognise the horror of the "weekly shop" - so it clearly addresses a need, but is the Co-op really a credible solution? The proposition is: "Only buy what you want, when you want it. Great food within easy reach". But to me the ad simply cries out "online shopping!", one thing the Co-op doesn't offer. Do busy families really have the time to "save time" by shopping more often? I can't see whose behaviour would actually change as a result of seeing this campaign.

There are some technical problems too. By tapping in to a real issue the campaign has the potential to generate dialogue. What would you do with the time you could save? (Remember Pantene's Swish mistake.) It should be well set up for social media... but there doesn't appear to be any - I couldn't even find a Facebook page. One problem is the ad lacks any signposting. There's an on screen url (rather faint and only visible for 4 seconds), but it redirects to the homepage not even a campaign landing page. And the proposition doesn't provide any good keywords (sadly, the brand name itself is not much good as a keyword either) from which to search likely social content. Sure enough, embedded in the website is the option to "tell us what you'd do if you could save time". But I wonder how many people will visit. A Facebook App could have gone a long way... Top 10 ways to spend Saturday morning... Vote on how your friends should spend more free time...

I'm a fan of what Co-op offers, and of it's recent marketing: it's done a fantastic job of revitalising it's image (from Londis to M&S). It's absolutely right to set the sights, next, on taking share off Tesco et al. But the brief for this campaign was probably flawed from the start.

What about Holland and Barrett's "Buy one get one half price" campaign? The problem for H&B is almost certainly footfall/consideration. The vast majority of us simply walk past the door. An ad offering a discount on "anything" and "everything" is little incentive unless you know a bit about the product range.

This kind of promotion is pretty expensive to run, so it simply has to deliver. The money "saved" by recycling last year's creative (and indeed the effort "saved" by recycling last year's mechanic), must be justified against that. I'm very unconvinced. A few years ago H&B was telling consumers to "come in for the price, stay for the advice". That may not have been effective ("advice" may not be their USP), but at least it laddered a benefit.

H&B reported a strong December (like for like sales +2.3% when, as we know, the economy in general was going backwards). Why have they had to revert, so soon to this campaign (which has already been extended into February)? Holland and Barrett has a long, rich history but with ownership having passed from a cash and carry to a pharmacist to a supplement manufacturer to a private equity group over the last 20 years, it is hardly surprising they appear to have forgotten what their proposition is.

And without a good proposition, no campaign will succeed in doing much more than (temporarily) increasing awareness levels.

Brave New Year

2011-01-05T11:49:00.013Z

Two instant lessons from Christmas retail:

1) The move to online is accelerating.

2) Consumers are squeezing brands and retailers viciously by demanding deals and discounts.

Next's figures (a reasonable barometer of the High St) are down, blaming both "extreme weather conditions and increased competitor discounting". But its the discounting - not the snow - we have to worry about, for that's where the pressure on margins lies. The snow may come and go, but in a cut throat retail environment, with so many companies in weak positions, the discounting is sure to go on.

The move to online is the obvious root cause of HMV's woes. This is the sharp end - how much future is there, really, in high street music and video selling? Will shutting 60 stores really save their business? Does a 20% drop in share price adequately reflect the possibility of the company collapsing?

Online shopping on Christmas day itself is predicted to have reached £153m in the UK - and been a more popular pastime than attending a Christmas church service. That's where we're at, people. (A very effective piece of PR for IMRG).

So first priorities for 2011:

1) Make sure your brands' online presence is right. Invest some time reviewing Search Engine performance - and doing something to improve it. And ensure your online retail distribution is sufficiently broad.

2) Think - hard - about how to compete in a perpetually discounted world. How can you offer discounts without undermining your brand? (because simply refusing to discount is probably suicidal). And how do you demonstrate and justify the added value that will make consumers buy the premium variant when low cost alternatives exist? Time to shine a bright light on brand architecture - so often the darkest recess of marketing strategy.

Open hands marketing?

2010-12-21T15:36:00.008Z

At the end of 2009 I suggested terror, technology, celebrity and debt as a 4 word summary of the preceding decade.

What's the word for 2010? Strong candidates would be disclosure or openness.

The Wikileaks cables are one example of the power of technology to change how information works - and crucially to give us all access to more of it.

Another is the ongoing evolution of social media. I've been to a couple of gigs recently (trying, in vain, to regain my youth), and been amused by quite how many people are taking photos - many of which are promptly uploaded to Facebook or Flickr. Go online and it is very easy to find popular reviews and feedback from events that took place just hours ago, as well as stuff in anticipation of events that are coming up. Event promoters - like politicians - are no longer in control of the flow of information.

This kind of disclosure isn't going to go away. If the US government cannot shut down whistleblowers, then brands certainly can't. Courageous brands are already adopting openness as a virtue. I think the next couple of years will enforce it on us all. (And, in the end, good thing too.)

#hashalongTV

2010-11-03T15:47:00.015Z

While watching Have I Got News For You last week, I noticed that the BBC has decided to display a hashtag (#bbcHIGNFY) as the show opens. Shortly after, I spotted Question Time sporting one too (#bbcqt). I was intrigued - do the twitterati really watch Question Time? And if so, what do they say about it? So I flicked open the Twitter App on my phone. As it happened, a particularly unctuous hedge fund manager called Hugh Hendry was on the show's panel, and a lot of the #bbcqt tweeting was directed at him:

callummccrae1: Hugh Hendry is a wanker that is all. #bbcqt
markjepson: On a serious note, Hugh Hendry is an obnoxious cretin. #bbcqt

The twitterers had a point, but that's by the by. What struck me was how this totally changes the viewing experience. A passive 'slumped in front of...' moment becomes an active social one. Suddenly we're all sharing a vast virtual sofa, muttering our asides to each other.

For the time being it's rather cumbersome - and not everyone has a smartphone anyway. But one or two iterations and this stuff will be scrolling right across the screen - if we want it to. Some classifications of TV are more ripe for commentating than others - sport, soaps and reality shows are obvious contenders. And while we probably don't want to hear the whole world's commentary on our favourite movie, we may welcome contributions from our friends, so the Facebook hybrid of this will be interesting. A thousand strangers can add nothing to my enjoyment of Withnail & I, but if a friend writes "#withnail @alex - you perfumed ponce" on my wall? ... ROFLMAO

Ad breaks, let's face it, have always been fair game, so we need to work out how brands should react when ads are dissected live ("that stuff's crap"). And what about exploiting the new forum by integrating hashtags inside the campaign through an interactive creative idea? Carlton Draught in Australia has added a hashtag under the brand logo at the end of the ad, to some effect. But what about incorporating the hashtag, or some tweets, into the concept of the ad itself? You don't have to know what one of these campaigns looks like to know they exist. Write the brief.

Of course, in-programme (and indeed in-match) tweeting isn't new. What's new is merely that I have caught on. But if I've got it, then the rest of the population can't be far behind.

Wake up and smell the own label coffee

2010-10-17T19:16:00.005+01:00

The Economist this week has an article on the impact of the economic crisis on consumer goods purchases. It quotes PwC and McKinsey evidence that consumers have significantly changed their behaviour - such as by buying own-label products, by buying less, or conversely by buying bulk, or even by deciding that some things aren't as essential as they used to seem. (Air freshener, anyone?) Well, you heard it here first - six months ago, but the data goes to reinforce the point.

93% of shoppers say they have changed their behaviour as a result of the economic downturn. (PwC)
18% of packaged-goods buyers switched from a premium brand to a cheaper one during the recession, with most saying they found that the pricier brand “was not worth the money”. (McKinsey)

Even more alarming are some of the comments by the Economist's readers:

TomNightingale wrote: Oct 14th 2010 12:18 GMT
The price differences between branded goods and own brand are mainly spent on advertising, Advertising does not create value, it consumes valuable resources and returns little, if anything. The value of a brand is largely its ability to persuade people to pay a higher price than they need to to buy a product, Advertising and brands allow parasites to take good livings at the expense of others. If the recent/current economic woes leave advertisers and "branding experts" in difficulties we should all rejoice. We don't need them; they make us all worse off.

pasam wrote: Oct 14th 2010 12:47 GMT
If the recession leads to a "Needs based Society" than the present (or past?) "Advertisement Induced Society", then that is a "silver lining". Let the "shine" of parasitic advertisement be ignored and let the chemistry of needs take over.

It's not as though we haven't heard these anti-brand views before, and they aren't very well informed - they take no account of the role of brands in delivering innovation, consistency, reassurance, confidence or convenience, for example. (But then I would say that, I'm a parasitic "branding expert".) However, they do have a compelling basic thrust: products which only sustain their premium through advertising are in a precarious position.

The conclusion we must draw from recent consumer research (both quali and quanti - pretty consistent on this matter for months now) is that long term success means delivering a premium-justifying benefit. It can still be emotional - reward, status and so on - rather than rational - taste, quality, features - but it must exist. Large swathes of supermarket aisles are still filled with brands that don't truly offer a benefit. What's worse, I fear some brand managers haven't realised that the rules are changing, or have deluded themselves that their own brand has a "real" distinctiveness when all it actually has is residual market share supported by media share of voice and retail share of shelf. Wake up!

High definition optics

2010-10-15T14:53:00.012+01:00

The Chile mine rescue was a perfectly formed moment of global media. Respect due to Oakley for spotting the opportunity for a bit of product placement. As Oakley's press release explained it:

The rescue team in Chile is relying on Oakley eyewear to protect the miners’ eyes when they are brought back to the surface... Based on their requirements and full product specifications, Oakley donated 35 pairs of Oakley Radar® with Black Iridium® lenses in Path™ and Range® lens shapes

A good deed... and with it the certainty of appearing on every TV set in the world (33 times!), as well as a chance to convey their scientific credentials. I was in New York this week, and witnessed coverage of Oakley in both the US and UK - and no doubt there was coverage elsewhere round the world too.

Crucially, the mine rescue was perfect PR fodder: compelling, but with no hint of exploitation. Oakley don't seem to have invited any backlash by getting involved. In a poll on The Huffington Post, 90% of respondents thought it was a good thing for Oakley to have done. Smart stuff. I want some.

All change please

2010-09-23T14:53:00.012+01:00

Plan Phoenix had a little r’n’r over the summer, while I’ve been too engrossed in projects to look up long enough to reflect. Ah well. A moment of calm descends.

Every time recently when I talk to others in the marketing services industry, I’m struck by how much has changed in the last 2 years. Tighter budgets have made budget holders think deeply about what constitutes effectiveness (hallelujah!). And I see a lot of evidence of changing priorities. We shouldn’t be fooled by profit growth at WPP into thinking that “traditional” advertising is on the way back. I suspect the headline disguises a number of factors. For a start, the services delivered by the big agencies are changing, and anyway, the growth of consumer markets in Asia means there will be room for the traditional advertising industry to grow in size even as it declines in importance. (Presumably the global market in desktop computers will continue to grow for ages. Yet the future is mobile. This isn’t a contradiction, just a reflection of an expanding universe of consumers.)

Its 8 years since Al Ries published The fall of advertising and the rise of PR. It’s still a good read – though it was never compelling. One problem is that we use “advertising” to mean both creative content and interruption based executions (the TVC, for example). And while TVCs are palpably in retreat, we’ll continue to need more, and better, creative ideas. Another problem has proved to be that PR doesn’t seem to provide the structure or discipline to actually drive marketing plans. Inviting the PR agency to the top table is one thing, asking them to lead the whole programme is quite another. But anyway, I wouldn't be the first to announce the “death of advertising”. Google that and you’ll find articles dating back decades!

Of all the changes in play, two stand out to me:

1) Experience.
In a multi-channel, fragmented world, where the cacophony of offers gets ever louder, passive communications no longer cut through. The TVC is dead if it isn’t part of something richer, touchable, immersible. Ideally, that richer experience has some relevance to the brand – I’m no fan at all of sponsorships which simply plaster brand logos on things. Barclays Premiership is just a form of – probably overpriced – media buying. But at the same time, the experience won’t get far off the ground if it’s only about the product. The advertising campaign for Pantene, encouraging women to share your swish makes me laugh. But not for the right reasons. The better path is to find or create a property which bridges both the brand’s distinctive experience and the consumer’s existing interests. If you build your activity (advertising included) round that, you’re on the right track.
We used to argue about whether to brief creative first, then channel planning or the other way round. Answer? Media before creative (of course). But crucially, it was the wrong question. The real answer? Experience before media before creative. I shared a platform at a conference a while back with one of the marketing team at O2. I continue to admire their use of music as a platform. It’s a great way to reach consumers through something they care about. And they are able to create content – from downloads to ticket purchasing and VIP exclusives – tightly integrating the activity back to their product. There’s no earthly reason that I can see why most brands – even at the commoditised end of fmcg (yes, even shampoo) – can’t build relationships this rich with consumers. We just need to start from the right place in order to find the right connection.

2) Interaction.
The second thought builds on the first (because it’s difficult to interact without an experience). But this is a major adjustment in mindset for those of us trained in command and control marketing. We can no longer (could we ever?) dictate how brands are portrayed – just look at any social media website. I’ve worked with brands grappling to overcome negative associations, and it’s not easy. The answer, I think, is to relax a little. Brands exist in consumers minds. We may direct, manage and guide them but we cannot control them (the consumers that is, or the brands). We can continue to fight reality – encapsulating our message in a single-minded one-way campaign which we then inflict mercilessly on consumers, bringing in the lawyers when things get out of control (remember the MasterCard “Priceless” send-ups?). Or we can change our way of thinking – creating content with the intent that the audience manipulate it, and being prepared to go on a journey with them. It requires bravery because it involves real-time judgements and because it’s difficult to “sign off the brand plan” when you don’t know where it’s going. But I’m certain brands that embrace this philosophy own the future.

Well, that's the basis on which I'm planning my business. And you?

#iagreewith[insertyourbrandhere]

2010-04-20T15:06:00.007+01:00

Cleggmania shows up a couple of interesting things about the political party brands.

Firstly, it shows how brittle brand reputations can be. Despite all the obvious product performance problems the major parties have experienced in the last few years (from unpopular wars to unpopular expenses claims), they - and the pollsters - didn't see this coming. The polls over the last year or two have been misleading, showing relative share without identifying how fragile (maybe even broken) the relationship between voter and party has become. Have the polls really moved so suddenly, or have people begun to engage with the question differently? Its pretty obvious - even with only a week's hindsight - that the signs were there, but they weren't understood by strategists or commentators.

Secondly, the fevered buzz on websites shows just how far the relationship between people and media has changed, with the media now playing catch-up with popular opinion rather than leading it. Preference has spread like wildfire, fuelled by Facebook, Twitter, blogs and comments. It is the peer-peer response to what has happened that is most interesting, and that is driving events. Ironically, a digital era phenomenon has been triggered by a TV event.

Of course its entirely possible that in a few days this will all have blown over and the political parties will be doing their best to forget it as a bad dream. But it raises interesting questions:

1) What's the relative importance of tracking brand preference versus identifying emerging trends and deeper motivations? Are we sure we're not driving with our eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror?

2) In a much more volatile media environment, is there any longer a role for "incremental" marketing strategies? Are we building plans that might catch fire (+10%), or still trying to "play safe" (+3%)?

The end of the world is nigh, and other news

2010-03-12T16:37:00.008Z

My mother probably gets frustrated that when she asks me any question along the lines of “where would I find...” I roll my eyes and reply “Google it” or “look on eBay”. My mum is no slouch – and no technophobe, but it takes time to learn new habits. I noticed myself doing something strange last week. I went online to buy a light bulb. It was an unusual type and I’m fed up of trailing round B&Q/ Asda failing to find the right ones and then coming home with the wrong thing. But even so, it was a very small purchase – online has historically been perceived to be cost effective only for bigger spends.

In fact, I looked back at my online shopping over the last year and was amazed by the number of transactions of less than a fiver. Crucially, the cost of delivery has ceased to be a limiting factor – presumably because it’s less than the cost of running a physical store. I don’t think I’m alone. MasterCard’s February SpendingPulse report claims that overall online spend rose 16.7% in the last year, while average transaction value online dropped 3.7%. They attribute this to a fundamental change in habits. (It’s US data, but the UK won’t be far behind).

Once every household is online (something governments across Europe promise to facilitate even for the disadvantaged), and we’ve all learned a few new habits, what will we do with all that empty high street? Apart from clothes shops, and impulse shops will we need actual bricks and mortar retail? How many consumer goods brands are really confident they can win new shoppers solely online? Brands like Apple and Nike have had flagship stores for years – masquerading as retail but really offering a good dose of brand experience. But a lot of categories will have to work very hard to create a true brand experience (what would actually happen in Ariel-Town?)

Worrying news for many, made worse by evidence emerging that the downturn has resulted in apparently permanent changes in consumers’ attitudes to ‘value’ – i.e. the importance of price. We are more willing to shop around for a bargain (as noted by the Wall Street Journal) and we place less faith in the quality promise of brands. Marketing Magazine reports a study showing 67% of people think store label products are as good as branded ones, with the same number saying they had switched to store label brands to save money, and 64% saying they wouldn’t switch back even if the economy picks up. It was always inevitable that the economic upheaval of 2009 would change the rules forever – I think we are just beginning to see the signs of what that means.

Flaky, flakier, flakiest

2010-02-09T16:57:00.008Z

So Cadbury is no more. As the grandson of a black country confectionery wholesaler I can recite the names of great British chocolate companies - Fry's, Mackintosh, Rowntree, Trebor, Terry's... - all now subsumed by Kraft and Nestle. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

But what irked me was not Kraft's takeover bid (perfectly reasonable - business is business) but rather the plaintive argument by Cadbury's leadership that their business was worth so much more. One has to wonder about the investor relationship strategy of a company claiming to have such great prospects but unable to persuade UK insurance companies to continue to hold stakes.

Todd Stitzer argued that Kraft's leadership were not of sufficient quality to deliver on Cadbury's potential. Now we will see. The test of Cadbury's own leadership came earlier - and their share price (before the advance by Kraft) put an absolute measure on their failure to leverage their brand with one of its most important audiences. Cadbury did a lot to revitalise its consumer brand over the last few years, but evidently not enough to revitalise its investor brand. Eleventh hour protestations were much too little, much too late.

People presume that marketing is all about consumers. This should serve as a wake up call. Perceived value applies to every audience. Kraft, it transpires, is the only investor who really perceives value in Cadbury. On that basis it is a worthy winner.

The end of the year show. What was it all about? And what next?

2009-12-18T13:05:00.004Z

If like me, the end of the noughties finds you frantically trying to get things done before the break, then you probably haven’t had time to read the cascade of end-of-year reviews and lists that are pouring in to your inbox. So here is a digestion of the end-of-decade to save you some time.

100 moments – from The Telegraph
This cultural chronology is worth speed-reading, not least because the moments chosen reflect just how celebrity has dominated the decade – in broadsheets as well as tabloids. Celebrity has been with us for centuries, but a lot has changed since Big Brother first aired in July 2000, both in terms of who our celebrities are and how we interact with them. So here among the “moments that signalled a change in the cultural life of Britain and the rest of the world” the collapse of Lehmans is mentioned merely as an addendum to an entry about Damien Hirst. The article came out in October, so it tantalisingly omits the last defining celebrity moment of the decade – the fall of Tiger Woods.

20 brands – from Coolbrands
The last 10 years have seen technology not only transform lifestyles, but change the consumer landscape. Over half of Coolbrands choices for 2009/2010 are technology brands. Even more remarkable, Apple, iPhone and iPod hog 3 of their top 4. Apple was in apparently terminal decline until the 1998 launch of the iMac. The iPod launch was not instantly dramatic because it happened in November 2001, when we all had other things to worry about (no matter how good your story, you can never control the PR agenda), but it became the product story of the decade – a winning combination of usability, aesthetics and business-model.

10 consumer trends – from Trendwatching
Anyone trying to get into tomorrow’s consumer’s head should start here. Just how do we connect with, and invent for, change-adapted, city-living, connected yet fragmented, engaged yet cynical consumers – who may even be beginning to reject that classification? This picture suggests there are many opportunities to do things differently – and with it no doubt diminishing return for doing things the same. An exciting prospect – but marketers’ roles will certainly not be getting easier.

12 great ads – from The Guardian
Greatness is typically subjectively defined (for great, read personal favourite?). But the combination of memorability and favourability make reasonable proxy evaluation criteria in the absence of each campaign’s precise objectives and sales figures. The Guardian’s list captures that better than most. Bravia Balls didn’t do it for me – a beautiful film but could be any HD/LCD TV. But Levi’s Odyssey, John West’s Bear Fight, and Cadbury’s Gorilla have all made lasting impressions. Comparethemarket’s meerkats may get there too, though it’s really too soon to tell. (And I am flattered to have had a walk on part in the project that led to the gorilla.)

10 bad ads – from BNET
Sadly, there’s always more entrants for this category... this list only covers 2009! Its dangerous to pass judgement – we’ve all made mistakes. But we should all spend more time reviewing failure, for our mistakes can haunt us. YouTube may have taken down the link to the WWF World Trade Center video (in the process naming DDB as the agency), but its still easy to find on Google. In a digital world, ill-considered marketing can have lasting consequences.

In 4 words – from Plan Phoenix
The most concise summary of the last 10 years?
How about “terror, technology, celebrity and debt”.
(Book-ended by 9/11 and Lehmans, with Big Brother along the way, maybe we should be glad to say goodbye?)
And these four elements will shape the landscape ahead of us.

And 0 predictions
As thoughts turn to the teenies, uncertainty has never been so uncertain. It would be a brave business that bet its future on a single path. A secure world or an at-war world? At war with extremism or carbon? A "V", "W" or "L" shaped economy? Who will be the influential figures? What will be the breakthrough technologies? Uncharted territory. I look forward to navigating it with you.

The wrong kind of trouble

2009-11-20T14:46:00.005Z

I have quite strong opinions, but Plan Phoenix is not the platform to discuss Afghanistan or Gordon Brown's spelling or Stephen Gately's death or Jan Moir's opinions.

Still, the furore kicked up by the Sun's PM couldn't get our name right and the Mail's strange, lonely and troubling death made interesting media experiences. The dominant response to both seemed to be that each paper got it wrong. And this was in evidence even on the papers' own website comment sections - large portions of their own readership reacted quite strongly.

It is easy to get the audience wrong by taking them for granted. On the editors' desks both articles probably seemed well aligned to editorial policy and to the readership's attitudes. But many readers quickly rejected the implicit assumptions about their own prejudices. They had overstepped the mark from a conspiratorial pastiche of the consumer (like the Lynx effect) to a crude caricature.

Some of the complaining readers were not regular ones. In a user generated world there's no guarantee who is participating and strong propositions attract enemies as easily as friends. But both papers' reputations were tarnished in the process, even if some of the outrage was from people who sit well outside the brands' avowed consumer profiles.

Both brands are divisive, but at least they stand for something - demanding attention and generating loyalty. Only big incumbent brands can afford to be bland, and even then its probably a bad strategy. Most of us need to offend people from time to time. So here are two more tasks to add to the brand manager's brief:
1) Am I actively managing the boundary between complicity and condescension with my consumer?
2) Am I creating ways to proactively engage rejectors, even if I do not want to win them over?

Perception is all

2009-10-28T13:13:00.009Z

Here's an interesting fact. Between 2001 and 2006 the proportion of new drugs beating placebos in “Phase II” trials (sometimes called the “futility test”) fell by 20%. Only 24 first-of-a-kind drugs were approved by the US FDA in 2008. In 2007, only 19 were approved, the lowest number for 25 years. We might conclude that drug R&D is failing. Yet even some drugs which passed this test previously, are now failing it (Prozac is one example), leading to suggestions that the problem is not the new drugs, but that the placebo effect is getting stronger. The placebo effect bears striking resemblance to the brand effect. Both are the power of perception to influence our actual experience of something. And so the drug companies investigations into placebos reveal some truths for marketers too.

Expectation: The power of the placebo is dependent on the ability to anticipate. Those who expect an effect are far more likely to get it. Alzheimer's sufferers, who can't anticipate the impact of painkillers, need much higher doses.
Competitive set: Different communities react differently to the same placebo, and the impact seems to depend on background culture. For example, in Germany low blood pressure is a widely perceived medical condition (17% of people self report as suffering from it). Brits and Americans, by contrast, are a lot more worried about high blood pressure. In trials of drugs for patients with high blood pressure, Brits and Americans gain far more benefit from the placebo than Germans.
The 4Ps: Packaging and presentation of the placebo play a role too. Studies have shown that antidepressants work better if they're yellow, while red pills are more stimulating and green ones better at reducing anxiety. This hard science is unnervingly similar to the "meanings" of colours ascribed by crystal healers, for whom yellow is optimism/ happiness, red is action/ courage/ vitality and green is life/ well-being. I don't believe in crystals, but I do believe in perception (the fourth law).

Drug companies are desperate to understand this issue so they can design “better” trials (presumably where drugs efficacy will show through). There is also the chance that the trials are right – that many of the drugs on the market are little better than a well presented placebo. The right name, colour, size, shape and packaging in the right environment for the right people may be what is delivering most of the quality of experience. I'm always cautious about the value of consumer research. When we get the results we want, everything is fine (the confirmation bias). When we don't, its tempting to question the methodology. We cannot be sure what hidden factors underlie the results (and most marketing research is a lot less rigorous than drug trials).

But if we view the placebo not as the problem, but part of the solution, things look much more optimistic. From this perspective, brands – even advertising – are integral parts of the product or service itself, helping to reinforce the user experience. And any element that doesn't live up to the core proposition – whether its a tawdry piece of packaging or a mis-aligned piece of creative or PR - doesn't just undermine the ability to charge a premium, it actually diminishes the user benefit.

Next time you're faced with a cynical view about the value (or lack) of marketing, respond with a truly consumer centric justification for brands, rather than the typical brand centric justifications we're so used to. Fact: the brand may, in many instances, be more effective than the product itself.

And in the mean time, now might be a good moment to audit every detail of the brand's user experience, and weed out the bad ones.

Space oddity - in the long run we're all dead

2009-10-07T20:36:00.009+01:00

I have less sympathy for GM than for Blacks. Some crimes of strategy are less forgivable than others. The latest part of GM to break is Saturn which is closing down. My original impression of Saturn was formed not as a car buyer, but as a marketing case study - an example of a skunkworks project, which were rather trendy at the time (10+ years ago). Turns out not to have been such a smart idea in this case since not only were the cars not awfully good, they sold at a loss.

There's a very simple lesson here. It may (or may not) be smart to isolate little groups of innovators in order to break the corporate cultural assumptions about what might or should be done. The jury's out, but my judgement tells me there are times this is very smart indeed. What is clearly - inexcusably - dumb is to build a completely parallel production capability (so sacrificing all your efficiencies of scale), and to stick the new products out in a separate brand so that if there's any equity to be gained, you fail to capture it where you need it. The threat from Japan was to GM itself. A retailation brand (which is all Saturn was) was doomed. The arrival of Japanese manufacturers was the first big unheeded warning that the whole of Detroit needed to revamp its capabilities and its offer.

This mistake took so long to play out that Roger Smith, on whose watch it happened, didn't live to see the wheels finally come off. A small personal mercy. I hope I die too, before my mistakes get found out.

Media before message?

2009-09-30T11:17:00.007+01:00

The IAB reports today that internet advertising spend has overtaken TV.

What a long journey it has been to get to this point. Personally, I think the final destination is much further (which tells us a lot about the future of TV - it will become a primarily on-demand medium, with broadcast merely a loss leading way to market its own content).

Of course, we don't spend as much time online as we do watching TV. But that's not the point. As a connection moment - in particular the ability to target and to engage - the internet is a superior medium.

Interestingly Nielsen data in the US shows that we increasingly consume several media at once - such as watching TV while online. That's certainly how most of the grocery shopping happens in my household. On those moments a relevant click is going to be far more effective than a haphazard TVC, no matter how great its production values.

But if we're making the right decisions with our investment of media time, are we getting the creative we deserve? How many ideas are still born as scripts? I bet it is more than 50%.

Newsflash 20:35, October 7
Three little updates hot on the heels of publishing this.
1) On 2nd October the Evening Standard announced it is to become a freesheet
2) Over the weekend it was confirmed that no-one is wants the TV rights to the England-Ukraine game, so it will be offered on internet pay per view only.
3) Yesterday the Economist told readers that it is to raise its 'paywall' - i.e. to restrict online access further in favour of paying subscribers.

The game is inconsequential and its a fire sale after the collapse of Setanta, so we should read little in to that: but its a precedent regardless. The Evening Standard's move (there's a whole backstory around London freesheets) is more interesting. They believe increased circulation is worth more in ad revenue than the loss in cover sales. I wonder, from an advertiser's perspective, whether this is true. More eyeballs may not be better eyeballs, so I'm not sure how much more I'd be willing to pay for them. Or maybe its just about increasing the number of advertisers, which merely dilutes the impact for each one. What's really fascinating is that this happens in the same week the Economist moves the opposite direction. All 3 moves are not entirely voluntary, but driven by financial pressures from the economic crisis. Strange, unpredictable, contrary forces.

Into the Black

2009-09-25T12:24:00.008+01:00

Blacks, the outdoor store, has placed its O'Neill stores in administration and confirmed it will default on its debts. I would be sad to see Blacks go bankrupt. I've spent a lot of time there, planning treks and adventures. And I don't think there's an obvious alternative to them on the high street.

What can we learn from their predicament? Their website describes their portfolio thus:

The Outdoor Group comprises Millets and Blacks, the largest outdoor retailers in the UK, and Freespirit and Mambo, the leading retail chains in the newly emerging UK boardwear market

With the benefit of hindsight, this 'newly emerging' market (acquired with the Millets stores in 1999) was a bad punt for Blacks, for two reasons:

Blacks was vulnerable to economic downturn (they struggled very badly in the 1980s). Boardwear, more fashion/fad conscious and with a younger target market, exaggerated that risk. Blacks needed an anti-cyclical arm. It should have been well placed to develop one, but instead it has let brands such as Argos and Go Outdoor open up share in the 'value' end of the camping market.

Secondly, despite appearing to be a logical stretch, boardwear was maybe a step too far from the core - different product and different consumer simultaneously. Was there ever sufficient (real) capability leverage to give Blacks a robust advantage there?

Either vanity, or the promise of a fast buck, led them in the wrong direction. How many of us can claim we wouldn't do the same? For the sake of all our vanities, I hope Blacks survives.

More than mere meerkats

2009-09-04T17:01:00.011+01:00

Its nice to come out of the 'holiday season' (here’s hoping you enjoyed yours) with so many positive column inches in the business press. Though September’s historic track record is not good. As if to remind us of that, the month began with a textbook lesson in collateral damage. When even the growing and profitable lowcost airlines easyJet and Ryanair are feeling the squeeze, it was little surprise that a flick of the travel industry tail knocked Samsonite’s retail operation into Chapter 11. But it’s more timely to focus on winners. Even the good people of Lymington are embracing pound stores – much to the surprise of the Telegraph. Though as I walked the less affluent areas of Manchester this week (a bit of informal consumer research), it was noticeable that empty retail units are not snapped up so quickly when discount stores and pawnbrokers already dominate the street. The rise of the discounter may be a little over-hyped?

Another winner, on a more creative note, is the meerkat campaign for comparethemarket.com which has put the comparison sites into a panic. It’s a great campaign because it lodges the brand name firmly in the mind. All the more impressive because it is such an unprepossessing url when compared to uswitch.com or confused.com. It reminds me of the creatively great ads for outpost.com in the original dotcom boom. Though the end of that tale was that outpost.com was sold and eventually the name was dropped. A great campaign can only temporarily cover up for lack of a good strategy. I wonder if the comparison sites have learnt anything from that?

comparethemarket should be focused on turning their 15 minutes of fame into a property that is not just dependent on the quality of the next execution. Even good ideas wear out, and the most recent meerkat ad already feels as though it is going in that direction. Aleksandr Orlov has a Facebook page and YouTube bloopers (but then, don’t we all) – but they need to take this much, much further. Sponsor the zoo… Get Aleksandr a column in the Sunday Money section… They’ve probably got less time than they realise in which to do it. Googling ‘meerkat’ already returns links for both moneysupermarket and confused.

The whole category urgently need to address the challenge of establishing distinctive propositions. At the moment there’s only really a category proposition. Compare (when in Rome!) the headers of their various websites:

Compare the Market - Cheap Car Insurance
Let Compare the Market search a range of car insurance policies, to make sure you get the best deal possible.

MoneySupermarket
Compare cheap loans, mortgages and credit cards and apply online. Home & car insurance quotes.

Confused.com
Cheap car insurance, home insurance and utilities quote comparison service. Search major providers and compare quotations to find the deal for you.

uSwitch - Cheap Gas & Electricity, Car Insurance, Loans & Mortgages
Save Money on Gas & Electricity, Car Insurance, Loans, Mortgages, Broadband Providers & Credit Cards. Free & Impartial, Search Switch & Save with uSwitch.

Cost? Convenience? Features? What is it, and why is your site substantively better at it? I despair if, as seems likely, the collective response of the competitors is to re-pitch their creative work. Expecting the agency to answer the fundamental question? A step backwards to the old arms race. (Though the Peter Jones ads for moneysupermarket are certainly bad enough to warrant dropping them immediately). I’ve read several financial columns in the last week lamenting that, despite all the talk a few months back of remodelling the global financial system, the upcoming Pittsburgh G20 will basically offer us more of the same. Now the panic is subsiding, it's so much less difficult to revert to the old ways and harder to change. If that happens, the politicians and economists will have failed. If marketing continues with the old shout-and-promote model, we will have failed too.

The b team: Time to get structural?

2009-06-17T17:27:00.006+01:00

Radio silence for a few weeks. I - like everyone else I suspect - have been in busy doing mode. Taking care of business. Running. Focusing on tangible deliverables, and getting them in place, on time (and, hopefully, above quality). The current market is no place to be playing catch-up. Even if we know we are not getting ahead, we certainly don't want to get behind.

On the other hand the current market demands us to seek new ways to wire up the business model. And that doesn't show any sign of easing up at all. Businesses and industries facing potentially lethal challenges need to make time for the lateral planning to find new ways through the maze.

The leisure industry is taking the latest pounding: airlines, casinos, theme parks and pubcos. Who next? It seems self evident now that the squeeze is not going to remit, and I'm not sure there are any 'safe' industries that won't feel it.

Is it time that we addressed the issue structurally? What would happen if we divided the marketing department in two with half responsible for immediate doing, the other half for strategic planning. Not the classic 'brands' vs 'innovations' split, because this is more likely to be about new routes to market, profitability structures, partnerships and consumer segments than it is about new products and brands.

It would mean reducing the headcount activating each brand - probably doubling up responsibilities to (at least) a category level. But this is the only logical way to liberate resources to design the post-squeeze corporation.

If Tomorrow:AM had anyone to delegate to, we'd be doing it that way. Would you? Or have you already? I'd be interested (as ever) in your views.

Street media: Beauty over ugliness

2009-04-21T10:53:00.005+01:00

As part of the media mix for The Heineken Cup about 10 years ago, we painted advertisements on garage doors along the route from railway stations to rugby grounds. It was a tactical element of the mix: fun and low cost. Garage doors are not inherently beautiful. I like to think there was social, as well as commercial, value!

Many high streets are currently blighted by shuttered shop fronts. Streetskins are doing us all a favour by providing the opportunity to turn them into advertising space.

Of course, what will turn this from a cost opportunity (pulling down the price of outdoor) in to something more will be the ability of ad agencies to develop some knock-out creative to bestow on them.

Over to you...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

2009-04-16T18:55:00.002+01:00

Optimists and pessimists are trading blows daily. Is the worst over? Or is more to come? The markets are still volatile (optimism was the spirit of today, with the FTSE100 up 2.1%).

We can't wait much longer for an answer! The last two quarters have involved black-outs in hiring, capital spend, even in ongoing marketing investment. CFO magazine's Global Business Outlook survey suggests that as many as 2 in 3 firms have implemented hiring freezes (almost as many are actually reducing headcount), and that firms will, on average, cut capital expenditure 10-15% this year, and marketing expenditure 7-10%. Short term necessities maybe, but with long term consequences for both brand equity and the innovation pipeline.

At least some clarity seems to be emerging about the legacies that this period will leave behind. and so some clues about the battlegrounds of tomorrow. Here are two which strike me.... coming from completely different ends of the spectrum.

The local battleground: the Emotional Competitive Set

Consumers' wallets are going to be under more pressure tomorrow than they were yesterday. Even if (if!) access to credit becomes easier again, people will be more wary of it. Living within your means is going to be a bit more fashionable. And on top of that, the tax burden is almost certain to rise.

So, expect bargain/ promotion hunting and 'trading down' within categories, but also expect trading off between categories (less “I need a new dress because I'm going out for dinner”, more “I'll steer clear of the shops today because I'm going out for dinner tonight”.) It becomes ever more important to consider the competitive set, not just category peers. In particular, this means understanding implicit emotional benefits (such as reward, release or recognition) far beyond functional attributes. Where else can consumers get these emotional benefits? What emotional market are you in?

What does it really mean to compete in the indulgence market? Or the light relief market? Or the togetherness market?

The global battleground: Rebalancing Consumption and Production

For ten years consumers in the US and UK borrowed (against rocketing nominal property prices) and spent it on imported goods, while others (most notably China) did not spend the profits of exports but instead invested them in bonds (and so provided the liquidity and low cost credit to sustain the spending binge). This drove the global economy. It also shaped industries: keeping manufactured goods cheap, incentivsing out-sourcing and off-shoring, permitting 'cash-cow' Western markets to fund (loss-making) investments in Asia. These imbalances are collapsing.

When the recession is over Asia will account for a greater proportion of total consumer spending. Expect the battle to win in China (and subsequently in India) to get even hotter, exacerbated by the fact that profits made in Europe or America will not stretch so far (whether because profits are lower, Chinese costs are higher or exchange rates have moved). Despite current woes, now is a critical time for emerging market plans.

In reverse, alarm bells for any business overly dependent on cheap imports to keep costs down. It feels a little premature to declare the rebirth of British manufacturing (!), but now is surely a prudent time to diversify the cost base, and to look for ways to bring production and consumption (of products or services) closer together. What until now looked like a 'nice to have' part of the sustainability agenda suddenly looks like a commercial imperative.

So... Competition will get fiercer... Asia will be the growth priority... Sustainability issues will be business critical.

Tomorrow's battles are rather similar to yesterday's – but many companies are in less robust shape to fight them.

Falling trees. Shaping contingency strategies.

2009-03-30T18:30:00.010+01:00

After a short lull (the media even rallied with a few 'green shoots' stories), another cascade of financial awfulness. It seems unlikely that the car makers will all survive without massive subsidy - which governments appear unwilling (probably wisely) to provide.

Detroit's problems are multi-fold. Cars are expensive capital investments, not an appealing idea for worried consumers. And most car purchases in markets such as the UK are really discretionary - product performance means that the old one probably still works (mine just sailed its 7year MOT). On top of that the big 3 made some truly terrible strategic choices, such as too much emphasis on Chelsea Tractors, and being distracted by vanity brand acquisitions (Jaguar, Volvo...) when they should have been more worried about their own failing product development capabilities. Not to mention the lack of stakeholder insight demonstrated by the infamous private jet trip to Washington. (The day which surely sealed Richard Wagoner's fate?)

But not all of their problems are unique. For example, other industries depend on purchase finance loans ('buy now pay later') to close the sale - and these are now both less appealing and less easily provided. It can be little more fun right now selling sofas than it is selling the apartments to put them in.

And there are plenty of other ways consumer spending behaviour is changing - as any fashion retailer will tell.

It is not even necessary to be a failing company. Being a supplier to, or customer of, one may be enough. Zavvi were undone by their dependency on Woolworth's logistics. Bad news for sheet metal suppliers today is bad news for the customers of sheet metal suppliers tomorrow.

It isn't always possible to avoid falling trees. But a little contingency planning could mitigate some risks - such as reducing dependency weaknesses through diversified supply chains. It could even create opportunities. Where might gaps in the canopy open near you? What are your competitors' weaknesses? And how could you exploit them?

Lessons learnt. The real motivation is personal

2009-03-15T17:26:00.005Z

I bought my first property - a 2 bedroom flat - in 1997. It didn't take long before I was aware that rampant property price inflation meant it was seemingly earning more than I was - and it was doing it without any effort, and without paying any tax. I found this discovery demotivating - undermining the value of any effort I might put in to my career. (It took me several years to overtake that flat.)

And now, by strange coincidence, the FTSE indicates there's been almost no increase in the value of the economy since... 1997. This too is demotivating. Where, I wonder, is the evidence of all our collective effort? Have other (anonymous) people perfectly counter-acted it with their incompetence, or was it all simply less value-adding than we thought at the time?

There is a lesson here about the root of motivation, and the limit of benchmarks. The last 12 years have seen fortunes made, as well as lost (and I'm still a few paces ahead of that flat). Benchmarks, like economic forecasts, are substantially imperfect. They tell us what may happen (not what will) based on what has happened (not what might have happened).

Accretive objectives and KPIs (+2%, +3%) can only work so far. They need to be complemented by transformational objectives (milestones, category breaks, innovations). On a personal level these kinds of achievements, which cannot be taken away, can be far more motivating and rewarding. And on a business level they are the only true route to successfully serving shareholders - building platforms to capitalise performance as new businesses and markets, not just a little more ephemeral share.

When the only motivation for many is the fear of losing their job, extra thought needs to be given to targets. And when company valuations are based on extreme bearish assumptions about the overall market, there is more need, not less, for bold visions.

Are we brave enough, and bold enough, to have them?

Any good news? The lowering PR barrier.

2009-02-28T01:02:00.002Z

Sitting recently in the lounge at Chicago airport, watching 'The Situation Room' on TV was not a joyeous experience. Statistics crashed down relentlessly on screen. This is, for example, we were told, the first time on record when all 50 states have seen simultaneous rises in unemployment. And, to get the point home it was backed up with voxpops of the recently redundant from across the country. The unavoidable conclusions was simple: there's nowhere to run to.

But, equally, there's plenty to run from. The front page in St Louis announced that a million people in Missouri alone received food stamps in January - the highest number ever, and Missourians make up only 6m of the 300m in the US.

The same story is true in every 'developed' market I visit - horrific headlines, often with the added implication that the situation is at its most acute just where you, the reader/viewer, are sitting.

The problem with PR plans has always been that no-one wants to publish what brands want to broadcast - or at least, not on the news pages. This is, clearly, the moment to challenge that wisdom. A deftly delivered brand-good-news story (maybe linked with the CSR agenda to give something back in hard times), could capture disproportionate column inches and airtime.

Is PR planning the driving cog of 2009 marketing?

Budgets - the cut that dare not speak its name?

2009-02-16T16:28:00.007Z

I know half my marketing is wasted - this year, I really wish I knew which half.

There's incredible pressure on budgets. Its only February and yet budget 'revisions' are already hot topics. Kneejerk responses are to cut the peripheral (out goes the loyalty programme) or the long term (out goes the training budget) in favour of the big, predictable and immediate.

These are almost certainly bad prioritisations if they rob the future and eliminate chances to innovate. But any other path requires leadership - and if the top isn't sending out the right messages, what hope for the rest.

Paul Walsh of Diageo speaking on 13th Feb confirmed a cost cutting exercise involving redundancies and a headcount freeze. Yet when asked about media cutbacks he was quick to respond "We're actually not cutting back, but we are benefitting from real media deflation". A very odd position - what makes media spend sacrosanct, and puts it beyond question?

Companies that have invested in their brands through previous recessions have performed well in the longer term. But that is not necessarily the same as simply continuing to spend the media budget regardless. When savings must be made there is good argument for doing the opposite.

For many established brands, a single deep cut - taking brand advertising completely out of the mix for 2009 - could be used to ringfence all budgets for innovation, new launches and promotions. The gradual dilution in equity that is the typical product of a period of time off air may be a lot easier to address in the future than a lack of talent, or an empty pipeline.

Do you agree? And will anyone be brave enough to take this path?

Back story - Keep Out The Cold

2009-02-01T08:10:00.001Z

A few thoughts already shared with Tomorrow:AM's friends and clients can be downloaded here
Keep out the cold. Disruptive strategies for economic winter

Phoenix Manifesto

2009-02-01T08:00:00.005Z

Plan Phoenix is born of recession. Businesses face urgent and complex decisions and choices. This is no longer business as usual (if it ever was). New realities require new strategies, but if previous answers are obsolete, what price experience? Especially as risk and fear tend to stifle the debate - creating a conspiracy of silence. We need more opportunities to ask difficult questions.

Plan Phoenix is a response to deafening silence. An attempt to provoke, interrogate and debate the emerging economic realities and their impact on marketing.

Alex Bicknell
Ready for Tomorrow:AM?
www.tomorrowam.co.uk