Starship Articles
I’m at a friend’s beach house – half a dozen families doing the BBQ thing. The smell of Savvy Blanc mixes with sushi, burnt animal and a soft ocean breeze, making the air almost edible. The sound of kids pushing each other off trampolines and cracking heads mixes just as well with the clinking of glasses and the rabid conversation of half-pissed, sun and salt encrusted parents. It’s all very noice.
The cameras come out – snaps get taken of people, who crowd together to fit into the frame, smiling. Kids make faces to ‘ruin’ the shot and grandmother’s get grumpy and make the kids do it again. Almost everyone has a camera, either on their phone, or a ‘real’ one. I pick up a camera the size of two fists from the table. It has a lens on it about 10 cms long and thick like your arm. I ask the owner “what’s with this cannon?” and she says ‘it’s a Panasonic’. Her 13 year old, monosybilic son says ‘No Mum, he means like a gun, you know?
She has this cannon because it can take in the whole backyard in one shot, and can just as easily take micro-shots of the surface of an orange – making it possible to see the warts and troughs on its oily, rough surface. Why you ask? So did I, but was ignored as one of the kids threw a stick that cleared most of the glasses on the table.
Later that evening they plug the cameras into a mac and blast their contents onto the wall in the living room. We see a half-hour show of hundreds of photos of our kids as they were, only an hour earlier.
This is not something you could have done ten years ago. Then you would have had to go down to the chemist, wait around for a couple of hours, if not come back the next day, and then flick through the 14 or so photos finding a few good shots. To put together a show like that night’s with 200 photos would have taken you weeks and hundreds of dollars. This has taken a few minutes and cost basically zero.
This is what digital is doing to the world. It’s saving us all time and money and making life much more creative. Digital is doing to our society what digital cameras did to photography; changing it’s very structure, making everything faster, more fun, more user friendly, more marketing oriented.
We marketers are embracing it like every other aspect of society, but the fact is we are much more likely to benefit from it than almost any other profession. To us marketers the digitisation of modern life allows us to be proven relevant, to be proven potent, to be proven absolutely essential.
I love the fact we can interact with customers, almost one-on-one. That we can contact them when they are doing things relevant to our products, services. That we can test their attitudes, test ads, pricing, product designs, retail layouts, anything.
With this regular contact and trackable useful data at our fingertips, and a deeper understanding of the psychology and behaviour of our customers, and above everything, the means to change it, we are on the verge of a massive growth phase for marketing as a profession. You who are reading this in your 20’s or 30’s, will look back at 2009-2012 as the greatest single period of growth for your profession in your entire career.
What is Digital?
My definition is anything not of the ‘old’ world; that didn’t exist before the web. The millions of sites, banners, links. Messages via your phone, interactive outdoor, the 15 new free to air digital TV channels, (in an attempt to slow the encroaching power of Rupert’s pay TV and to keep Television relevant in this fragmented world). Skype, Myspace, Facebook. Those great little web movies you can buy space on….the list goes on.
Growing like Pot at Brunswick Heads
Digital is already possibly the largest media in the world, bigger than TV, and is growing faster than anything else. Rates of growth vary according to sources, but most estimates are 15-20% per annum. Digital media spend by advertisers is projected to increase to 40 percent of all media within the next 5 years according to The Australian Digital Marketing Trends survey of May 08.
But, negative bastard as I am, there are things about the digitisation of our known universe that worry me and these are some of them, in no particular order.
The wild west
In the wild west were snake-oil salesmen – they’d ride to townships and sell bottles of stuff made from snake-oil, or peppermint or whatever, and it was supposed to cure all ills. More often than not the product wouldn’t work at all, or would kill the person drinking it. The snake-oil sales men were famous for how they sold. They’d stand on the side of their painted caravan and remind the audience of the things that scared them. Measles. Hooping Cough. Headaches. How awful it would be to lose their little ones to these terrible diseases. Then they’d extol the virtues of their magical elixir – there’s was the answer to all your troubles and for only $2.00 you could be cured of all of them.
There are thousands of people flapping around claiming to solve your digital problems. (especially in SEO, web site structure, back-end guff etc.) The all know all the answers and they all speak a strange language designed to confuse you. They often have no relevant qualifications and could not keep a job in a business that requires effective work/results, so they end up selling digital cures on a retainer until you realise, many months later, a) they are full of shit and b) you could have downloaded it free from a German website, if you’d only known.
Measurability
The measurability of digital campaigns is nothing short of brilliant what made direct mail powerful during the 1990’s was the fact you could prove the campaign had made X amount of money for the effort. Companies don’t like investing in gambles, regardless of how successful they are. Most companies (read here: Accountants) would rather invest $100,000 in a DM campaign to get back $120,000, than ‘gamble’ $100,000 on a TV or radio campaign that may well generate ten times that income, but can’t be directly proven to have done so. Digital gets around all of that psychological angst. You can prove in a blink what worked, how and where, and can usually do it again. Instant science-based marketing. Instant power for a marketer.
Google is not all
I love Google, but it has it’s limitations and most of them relate to the sheer numbers that come back at you to any search, and the irrelevancy of many ads to what you are looking for. Yes, it’s the greatest single natural ad machine ever invented, but is it going to last as the key driver of all things? I’m not sure. I see Google as a welcome phase for marketers, but not a concrete, long-term media solution. It’s like a bus. OK to get you from A to B when there’s a couple of you in it. But it gets uncomfortable when there’s a hundred or more crammed in, and others hanging on the sides. While it’s still brilliant for advertisers, sadly Google is starting to become unworkable from the public’s perspective because it’s getting harder and harder to find stuff that’s useful. It’s just too successful.
Twitter/facebook etc.
The social networking sites, and there are hundreds of them, create great opportunities for marketers, but also can be huge time and money wasters. A phenomenon like twitter (massive growth, could be as big as Google) is an interesting trend for society, but it’s tricky for marketers to utilise it cost effectively. It may be nice to be discussed on twitter, but as it’s hard to do much more without being seen as manipulative/interfering or God Help Us, ‘commercial’. While CRM may be a key goal of big companies, it only works when your wages for staff are lower than the money they are generating. How a sales person chatting on line one-on-one with a punter (who might only buy a widget every few months) can make it profitable, is a big challenge.
They are really great spaces to advertise on and learn from, but social media, like all things, will have product lifecycles. How many times have I heard someone say ‘I’ve just erased myself completely – too many people were getting in touch with me’ And it’s often too hard, too intense. A young marketer said to me the other day “I’m too stressed and busy to be interesting and witty every three days”. And honestly, what sort of dweeb cares if you’re washing your dog today?
Digital can be a minefield of irrelevancies. Of great sounding ideas that don’t pay off. Always ask ‘What is this going to do for us? How does this fit with our core strategy? Has it worked before? Why will it now?
You are on show
With all-connected digital, all secrecy is questionable. Why is it your on-line bank account is so often down That people can get into your server/ main frame and muck around with your files is just raw fact. If you want secrecy, write it long-hand on a piece of paper and lock it in a drawer. Don’t send it via email.
Accept that if you type it, shoot it or scan it, someone, somewhere will be able to see it. And if they think it’s interesting enough, it will be on You-tube.
This goes both ways. You can find out anything you want if you know who to ask. Go on twitter on your i-phone if you need a good hacker/drug dealer/biscuit baker in the next few minutes. The i-phone’s GPS will give you those within walking distance.
The myth of viral
Less than one in a hundred ‘viral’ campaigns work. Basically cause the public only passes things around the public finds entertaining. If they are to work they must be either sex-based, violence-based, hopelessly mushy, or make fun of people who you might not wish to be made fun of, like Sol if you’re at Telstra. They are also not necessarily cheap. They can be, but many of the successful virals have been very expensive ads to start with, just launched virally first, which as you know, is standard policy today. Many think we’ll just ‘do viral’ without the knowledge or organisational backing to make it work. Who in their right mind would put out a viral campaign, spend heaps on it and not put their name, logo or link on it? But they do, all the time.
Digital versus Traditional Advertising Agency
All agencies I know of do digital creative. It’s only ‘digital’ agencies who claim they are doing anything different. This is just self-serving, competitive wank. However, calling yourself a ‘digital expert’ may add tens of thousands to your salary in this or the next job, so please go ahead and live the hype.
Protect your brand
I’m a believer in having one agency responsible for the brand, who may or may not use sub-suppliers for non-core elements, like the java behind a bar-code inserted into your latest You-Tube performance. But many groups who are either naïve or simply unsure, go for ‘expert’ companies offering supposedly unique services.
The biggest danger of dealing with several ‘expert’ companies instead of a creative group who use a range of media, is you lose control of your brand. The various players pushing one aspect or another have their own agenda. They all want to stand out for their creative and their clever (and often self-educative) use of your money. So the people working on your brand often have little understanding of your brand’s personality and make a mess of it at the detail level. You end up with many voices, many directions and no focus. You could easily lose your brand’s raison dete.
Better to have one key creative director over-seeing the brand or you’ll end up needing to be a ‘creative focus’ expert as well as the media expert, the research expert and every other expert you have to be every day of the week as a professional marketer.
If you must use more than one supplier across campaigns (I know most of you will have a separate PR agency doing blogs, a media buying house placing banners etc.) get the parties together in one room and divide up responsibilities. Make them promise to communicate with each other and ensure you are CC’d into every email. Set KPI’s based on co-operation as well as results. And track who has the good ideas and who implements them well. They are gold.
Integration is key
Total, time-synched integration is essential. Making sure the same message (more or less) is being delivered across the spectrum of media you are using. In the coming years, only those who have the balls to stick to basic, smart marketing disciplines will stand out. The rest will go into the ether – there is so much information in the mix now, you simply become invisible unless you consistently stand for something solid.
Map out media and game plans
The best thing to do is to draw up a map of which media you are using for what aspect of the campaign over time, and how the creative may need to be tweaked in each format. When you’re combining TV with a viral launch, with bar-coded outdoor, with PR, with a promotion on pack, with a dealership promotion, (insert your own combinations of media here please) there’s a lot of stuff to get right and a lot of bodies to bring into line. It ain’t easy to do this, but most marketers do it every day of the week. Easier if you can look at a spread-sheet on the wall to keep reminding yourself of what you’re trying to do by when.
The I.T. dept is not the Marketing dept
The I.T. department may be a good place to have a cup of coffee and sure is more fun than the accounts department, cause at least they have quality games on their screens, but they are not marketers. They are boys /girls who elected to spend their lives in a fake world hiding from real people, instead of getting out there and touching, feeling the species homo sapien. As a marketer it’s vital to make sure any management above you does not confuse I.T. with marketing. They are distinctly different disciplines. You’re not trying to fix the bug in their computers. They shouldn’t make decisions relating to customers. Always ask ‘Relevant discipline?’
Since when did I.T. departments become creative agencies? The number of companies I see who have allowed their I.T. people to make their own ads for everything from outbound emails to web sites and everything else staggers me. No wonder the public think Australian advertising is crap. You can’t have untrained people doing critical work. Do you do your own eye-surgery? No. You get the best bloody eye-surgeon you can find.
Repeat your messages, patiently
Because you’re often dealing with stuff that’s new to people, you must take them through it lots of times. It helps to use visuals and to be patient, like a good school-teacher. I’m a big believer in white boards. It’s handy to keep a list of how many times you’ve explained something to certain people, in case a salary or budget review is in the offing.
Make em smile
With fractionalised media, we have fewer opportunities to build brands via storylines, to give our brands complex, appealing personalities. We are instead often trying to cram a whole brand’s ethos into a ten-second ad on an i-touch. So be slow and simple and quirky – entertainment is everything.
While every brand has life cycles, once invented, the media itself lives on. Artists thought the camera would destroy art. That video would kill the radio star. Nothing except the death of electricity itself will kill digital, it is beyond all.
The publishers of this magazine do not share, nor take any responsibility for the expressed or implied opinions of the writer. The publishers seek to portray fair, open and mature discussion of marketing and related subjects and seek to distance themselves from the potentially juvenile or destructive attitudes, opinions and purported facts expressed by the writer. This publication is merely a communication vehicle for this writer’s ego and his/her desire to bang on about anything he/she feels may be interesting for the reader. Information published in this article is no way a reflection of the opinions, either expressed or denied of the management of Niche Media, it’s employees, owners, commercial partners or distributors.
That’s a good way to start any article in this magazine according to several lawyers I’ve spoken with and by their very behavior, I’d have to say absolutely each and every lawyer, middle level executive, probationary staff member and even the contractual cleaners working for the ACCC.
They are nice, well-meaning people (God knows I’ve met enough of them over the years) who are simply trying to do their job to the best of their abilities, but they are hamstrung, like almost all lawyers, by a depressing lack of imagination and a distinct inability to see the consequences of their actions beyond the next ten minutes.
The ACCC keeps forcing upon the brow-beaten Australian business scene practices that are out-dated, boring and plain economically inefficient. It never seems to ask if there is an alternative – if they could achieve things in a simpler, easier, more human –friendly way.
This article I’m going to discuss one of them. My enemy of the month. Bleeding disclaimers. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop there. I’m looking forward to more articles about the ACCC. (The main reason is that I spent months thinking about whether I had the guts to have a go at the ACCC and my eventual, chicken-shitted conclusion was that I was scared to. Then I thought to myself, why should any Australian institution (apart from the Army, and those guys in black riot gear who jump out of pot plants if you whisper ‘bomb’ at Tullamarine Airport) scare the writers/readers of Marketing Magazine? Why should someone like me be fearful of putting their nose out of joint? What sort of big ugly bully can run around the school-yard threatening everybody and no-one blinks an eye-lid? And I thought, fuck it, this is supposed to be a democracy and we should have the right to free speech even if it’s not welded into our constitution like the Bill Of Rights is in America.)
So if you happen to have something to tell me about an annoying practice of our leading corporate regulator, please forward it to me and I’ll knock up another couple of articles. I reckon given they are fully funded by me and the rest (sadly not many of us) tax-paying public, they are fair game in the only publication in the country that has the balls, and arguably the professional cudos, to have a real shot at them.
‘What’s wrong with disclaimers?’ I hear your in-house corporate lawyer say over her morning cup of Chai Tea? “They are designed to ensure those evil marketing people don’t go off making promises our operations and manufacturing departments cannot fulfill. Disclaimers allow us to be forthright with the public – we must meet the letter of the law and if we don’t supply batteries, or if this competition is not legal in South Australia or if we’re not actually going to make you look younger, sexier, then we should not claim that in an ad.” She goes back to her Chai Tea. You fall over, pole-axed, and lie on the floor, crying, convulsing and vomiting your breakfast all over your $2,000 suit.
Let me speak for you, while you are still gasping for air and spitting out bits of egg and stale coffee and trying to focus on the office kitchen’s linoleum. The reasons disclaimers cause angst amongst marketers are many, but I’m going to have a shot at summarizing the main ones below:
NB. For the purposes of this I’m mainly talking mainstream media – radio, TV, outdoor, magazines, major websites, but the issues typically relate to anything the ACCC gets involved with.
They take away the magic of the ad
Having a pathetic, garbled, usually rushed disclaimer that says exactly the reverse of what your ad was promising, straight after the ad, destroys the creative entirely. Whatever theatre of the mind you were able to produce in the proceeding 25 seconds has been well and truly destroyed by the ending. If there’s one thing an ad should be able to do is take the punter into another mind-set and deliver the message ‘contact us this way’ at the end, so the punter goes and does just that. And that’s exactly where the disclaimers are usually placed. So the end game is the punter has forgotten the idea and message of the ad by the time the next ad starts. Waste of money.
They bore us to death
Disclaimers are almost never funny. Occasionally someone has the merit to run them in a chip-monk voice or similar for a ha ha ha, but then they are often told off by the ACCC for not taking this stuff seriously enough, as if to be serious is to be right. Regardless of how right or wrong I may be about whether you can be serious and also be funny, which of course you can, it does not excuse bad manners and bad manners to me is boring the public to death.
The public, love em or hate em, still deserve to spend their day listening or seeing entertaining ads. Other wise, they’ll simply switch off and entertain themselves – just like they are now doing in droves via face-book/you-tube, cause they are bored with conventional media.
They ruin our work
Nobody writes with the desire of finishing their great ads with a crap ending. People like me and the rest of the hard-working advertising fraternity sweat hours trying to think of entertaining ways to win over the ever dizzy public to do our client’s bidding and sell more widgets. The disclaimers simply ruin the entire effect like your fresh vomit has ruined your new Italian suit. No matter how much you try to create another impression, they end anything badly.
If you run them at the start, you are instantly apologizing before you begin. It’s worth trying sometimes, but it’s not the answer. And writing ads that don’t push the envelope, while they accomplish the job by definition, (the say 2/3 of ads that do not carry a disclaimer) does not make them any better. They are invariably just safer. More wishy-washy. Less creative. Less effective. Or their industry simply does not presently have the microscope of the ACCC bearing down on it’s back ….
They are destroying main-stream media
The ever tightening grip of legal paranoia and disclaimers makes mainstream media a more boring place to go and makes alternative (read digital) media so much more interesting. It’s easy to control radio – you can take away the license of the broadcaster. Same with TV. Magazines, outdoor, you can hunt down the advertisers easily. But given they can’t control/regulate/influence much in the digital sphere, by ruining free to air, the ACCC are effectively shitting in their own nest.
They are not applied much to new media
Yeh, the occasional action brought against a banner ad on Yahoo Seven or similar, but the bulk of digital? Not a peek. When are they going to get to this sort of heavy police-action on the web? Can you imagine a 5 second banner ad on your favorite site with a two second message and a three second disclaimer? I can. Help me….
They make the company look deceitful
Most of the companies I know/have dealt with over the hundreds of years I have been in marketing are not dishonest, are not trying to rip off the public. They are simply trying to provide a product or a service in an efficient manner and get paid a fair dollar for their efforts. They are not charlatans. Not crooks. They are here to sell stuff. Yes, they put a positive spin on the story, like obviously. Or we’d all starve. It’s the entire basis of our society, trade. Otherwise we’d be living in caves and growing potatoes and corn in a subsistence existence.
If it’s your job to sell holidays to Lizard Island, then you have to say things that are positive about the place. That it may not be the absolute best holiday you could ever take cause it’s the rainy season and you could die if you go near the water in the stinking hot weather because the box-jellyfish (100 m long essentially invisible tendrils that kill you in 2 minutes through the sheer shock of the pain) are swarming, does not mean you have to run an ad that says ‘you’ll hate the holiday’. Some people might love it. What if you just wanted to go somewhere and drink yourself to death watching TV and eating chips in an air-conditioned room? That’s the sort of holiday I could relate to sometimes…
They insult the intelligence of the public
We are not stupid. We either know that Lizard Island in the summer time is not a good idea, or we find out about it by talking to our peers ‘Hey, I was thinking of going up north to Lizard Island for a few nights next January – what do you reckon?’ You might twitter to 200 of your closest friends. 199 of them would probably send back a tweet saying ‘Box jellyfish, crocs and 40 degrees. Do it in July’ or similar. We don’t need to be nannied all the time. We can make up our own minds, Mr ACCC.
They make no real difference to the behavior of punters
Disclaimers are so jumbled up and so boring the public doesn’t listen to them. I’m prepared to bet the public hate them so much they mentally turn off, so it wouldn’t matter what you put into them, they are simply not being heard. They are not being comprehended. They just waft over our heads like goobeldegook.
They weaken the brand significantly
We spend years and millions of dollars building up the credibility of brands. Making the decision to grab the Omo instead of the house-brand as I waltz down the aisle, absolutely automatic. Making the actual cost of the sale lower by burning into the sub-concious of the punter the compelling reasons why they should grab that Omo instead of the alternative. That’s our business as marketers. Efficiency of sale. Disclaimers mess all that up. They ruin our brand’s credibility to no useful effect, except that of brand destruction. If you’ve just heard a disclaimer about Omo’s competition at the end of the Omo ad as you get out of the car on your way to do the grocery shopping, it may slow you down a tad. You might not buy that Omo. You might stand there, hesitating for 10 seconds wondering if the house brand will work as well. Holding up all the other Mum’s and Dad’s charging along Coles’s cleaning product’s aisle on a Saturday morning. Disaster.
They line the pockets of lawyers
I have a lot of lawyers in my family, so I better be careful here. Oh, fuck it. None of them speak to me at Christmas drinks anyway. The only people who truly benefit from disclaimers are the idiot lawyers who either negotiate them, write them, approve them or insist on slapping them on the ends of otherwise decent ads. Lining their pockets along the way. If they were decent lawyers they’d be doing something more useful like defending the freedoms of Australian marketing writers, keeping peadophiles away from schools, druggies off our roads and scum-bags out of our corporate boardrooms.
They are beginning to make the ACCC a laughing stock
I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t feel I have the vast majority of marketing land on my side. The fact that the Siren Council’s radio ad of the year for 2008 (Written by Paul Readon and Julian Schrieber of Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne) was for a RACV ad that was almost totally a disclaimer, run as a joke, should also tell you something; it’s gone too far.
They are usually completely unnecessary
There is a disclaimer on the back of quite a few Christmas Cards warning the reader that kids under 3 could cut themselves on the sharp corners….. I ask you?
They waste valuable media time
Let’s do a few rubbery sums here. Let’s assume that every 3rd ad has a disclaimer on it. That there’s about 15 ads an hour, every day of the week and the average ad, when we take into account TV, radio etc. is about say $300 a pop, over say 15 stations (10 radio/5 TV) in the average city. (This is ignoring outdoor, DM, web site banners and all the other media I could include here.) Just given the radio/TV scenario, we go 15 stations x 5 cities x $300 x 5 ads an hour (1/3), x 24 hours, x 365 days a year. That gives us $985.5 million. Assuming the ads run for 30 seconds and the disclaimer runs for 5 seconds (1/6), that means the media time just on TV and radio is about $164.2 million WASTED. I’m guessing if you included outdoor, web, newspapers etc. you’d be up to $300 million or more.
They don’t bloody work
When did a disclaimer actually put off a dumb punter? I’m open to reading the deep, statistically valid, scientific analysis that the ACCC has done on this vexing issue and I look forward to receiving their 150 page report on it next Monday morning. But what if they’ve never thought to test if they have any effect? What would you think of them then, dear reader? Please advise us ACCC. Have you done said analysis before wasting $300 million a year of our media money?
Formal Apology
As the ancient Greeks used to say ‘They always kill the messenger’. So in the tradition of other naughty organizations, who have flaunted the ACCC’s rules, here’s my formal, written apology.
“I’m sorry for being nasty. The dudes at ACCC work like blue-heelers chasing wild cattle. They don’t deserve my wrath. They are simply trying to keep bucking, swerving corporate Australia in line. Frankly, the blame lies with the external legal profession suffocating their best intentions in over-blown court actions on behalf of usually obviously miss-behaving corporate clients. So I’m sorry if I’ve upset you ACCC guys sitting around the office coffee table reading this article. Please don’t beat me to a pulp with your big legal gavel. How about we all go to lunch, my shout?”
Checking the Pulse –
I wasted almost an hour of my time the other day with a grumpy guy who works in the yellow fats market (butter/margarine). He talked about the various ‘segments’ of his market. He talked about what the ads we showed him meant. To him. He debated the ‘premise’. The ‘brand values’. The ‘take-out’ of the ads. He didn’t get the ads or the strategy at all. Funnily enough, he was not the target market.
This is why people often commission market research. To get around an individual who’s influencing their organisation, who’s ego is flying in the face of logic or ethics. Who may have a hidden agenda, or is just plain dogmatically driving down the wrong road fast. You have a professional obligation to do the right thing by your company and it’s brands. You have a right, no a responsibility, to undertake research when you think it’s appropriate. And it’s your responsibility to make sure the board acts on the results.
I have spent about 20 years of my life asking people why they do one thing or another. After a while a pattern develops. You can slot them into boxes and draw conclusions. If you have brains, you can use those conclusions to make (dare I say it) recommendations. That’s market research. It ain’t complicated. Don’t let people con you that it is.
The theory behind market research is that if you know how your customers feel about your widgets, or even who they are, you’re somewhat better off than if you sail blindly into the sunset making the same mistakes over and over again. I’m not so sure even this basic premise is achieved very often.
The problem with a lot of market research is that while it is probably the most vital thing you can do, it is also inherently inaccurate and over-done. It’s usually practiced by people with little knowledge of customer behavior or the workings of the commercial world, (anyone with an English accent and a Masters in Psychology has to be looked at with suspicion) and most of the time it’s a snap shot, so it’s not as relevant a few months later and the results are almost never repeatable, like real ‘science’ is supposed to be.
Keep this in mind. A board can only act on a total of about five recommendations from any market research exercise. It’s only the indisputable, obvious stuff they will do. This is not to say an extra bit of information isn’t useful sometimes, it’s just that most of the time it’s a red herring, and inexperienced researchers or marketing managers get held up on these herrings and miss out on the main issues. The big fish.
It’s the interpretation of the findings relating to the big issues that you should pay for. It’s the researcher who will say to you, look, the results say X, Y and Z, but I think you should read them with a touch of salt and do A, B and C instead, who’s really worth their fees.
Like any commercial exercise, you don’t want to deal with someone who comes back with a 90% fit from the brief. It may be a good pass at school, but it’s a bad failure in life. You want to get a much better return on your investment. You want someone who adds an extra 50% on top. You want insight, and art, not a photograph. Any dickhead can take a ‘photograph’ of a market. What you’re really looking for is the interesting, useful fact that you can actually act on, that will translate into much higher sales or a better customer retention rate etc.
How to do effective market research
Most people commission research because they don’t trust the information they are getting from their field teams or they’re unsure about what their ad agency is trying to push them into. Below I’ve assumed that you want to do it cost effectively and that you may consider doing some of it internally. I’m all for companies who pick and choose what they out source and what they’ll get their own people to do.
Quantitative vs. Qualitative
Quant research, relates to large numbers of interviews or Quantity. Qual research relates to usually small numbers of respondents from whom you get real depth of information or Quality. Use either or both according to what you need to know.
Qual Methods
Focus groups
Focus groups are the quick, dirty method favored by lots of marketers for simple answers to issues. They are a mainstay of ad-land for testing creative, attitudes etc. as it’s pretty easy to argue with the results if you need to, and you can do a group and still squeeze in an hour or so with the bit on the side before you have to get home to the spouse.
They are usually 8-10 people in a room discussing a subject for about 70-100 minutes. For most problems, you’d do one or two groups per market segment. Older women, younger men, Sydney versus Melbourne or whatever. So most serious studies are of say 6-10 groups. To test an ad, you might only do 2-4. Focus Groups will set you back about $4,000 bucks a piece if done by someone credible.
Focus Groups are great for medium-depth understanding and can be run to cover a wide variety of issues relating to a subject. They must be run by someone who can control the participants (you must not let one leader type force the others to change their own opinion) and work them to get the answers you need. As a client, you usually sit behind a big two-way mirror and watch the exercise. A good ‘moderator’ will come into your room a couple of times during the session and ask you what additional issues/aspects you want to explore.
It’s felt that you get more depth about a subject in a focus group as versus an individual interview, because people debate/argue a point. This is true. If you want really effective focus groups, do them, if at all possible, where the purchase decision is made. Say a supermarket. It’s very hard on the researcher, but the results are dramatically more accurate.
As they are almost always video taped, it’s a nice trick to get the good bits on the tapes edited together into a 10 minute presentation. It’s pretty hard for people to argue with strangers saying something on the box, regardless of how statistically accurate those findings may be.
Affinity Groups
Small focus groups, usually with people from the same family or work team. At almost the same money, definitely not cheap. (They take the same amount of researcher’s time.) But good for occasions where you have complicated purchases or attitudinal circumstances etc. Like say those in the company who get involved in buying a new phone system…
One on One
The original and most flexible of all research methods. At the going rate of at least $300 per interview, expensive per respondent. Used mainly for industrial research where you’d have only a few (20-200?) to interview, or for complicated purchase decisions where you need to get to the bottom of an issue. I’m a big believer in using one-on-ones in small numbers just to hone directions before venturing into another methodology, especially when you’re polishing a questionnaire for a big survey.
Quant Methods
Except for some small studies in industrial markets, this is usually not an area to do yourself. Get some serious help from a quant company, at least for designing the questionnaire and the cross analysis (How did the males 20-25, with kids, who did not have credit cards, but had bought a car in the last 12 months, respond to the issue of …) or you’ll find yourself going nuts trying to analyse the data.
When you get the telephone book sized report back, have your own people to wade through the data. You’d be amazed at how much extra information you can get.
GOOD QUESTIONNAIRES
- are short/user friendly
- set up the respondent for the issues in a positive, friendly way
- don’t manipulate the results
- cover the critical basics
- kill off uncertainty – by cross checking questions
- give you detail
- are easy to analyse
- allow you to assess results by useful respondent categories
GOOD REPORTS
- are short, accurate, definite
- can be used by your organisation to make a financial change to your group
- have results that should have been picked up by your other systems
- add something no-one guessed
- make sense to the reader
Door to Door
Some pimply kid with a I.D. on their shirt knocks on the front door to ask the resident a couple of questions. Most of the time they have the door slammed in their face. Not an easy market research area. Hardly anyone does it anymore. Shame. It’s quite cost effective and a pretty accurate way of gathering quantitative data. If you’re doing it yourself (and most market research can be done by your own people if they are well managed) you’ll need to make sure the team have convincing looking I.D. and lots of gumption.
Shopping Centres/Strips
One of my favorites. You can interview hundreds of people a day in the right location, such as Southland (who do tend to sting for ‘short term leases’ something chronic.) No, you can’t get a lot of depth out of a person if they don’t have the time, but you can show ads, get feed-back on new product designs or what it is you need, in a better manner than many of the more traditional research methods. You usually get a little market research booth, power and the right to roam freely around grabbing people with an offer like “If you just answer these questions, I’ll give you a chocolate (or a $20.00 voucher for Sanity Records)” etc.
Telephone
You’re half way through the carbonara and the phone rings. “It’ll only take 2 minutes”. 20 minutes later, your dinner’s cold, you’re severely pissed off and you’ve spent half of the phone call making up numbers or quotes just to throw the researcher. So does everyone else. Phone research may be the basis of much of the political and other quantitative research, but I’ve got to tell you, unless it’s well worded, quick and intelligent, you are almost guaranteeing much of the information is completely inaccurate because the method has put off the participants. How to get around that? Don’t force the telestaff to use a standard opening line. Tell the truth when they ask how long. well, And if it’s too, long, shorten it. Better to run three short studies that get decent results, than one long survey where you suspect most of the latter answers are bullshit.
Snail Mail
Occasionally done by government departments, the census is an example, but have tended to be over-run by more modern forms, such as on-line research. Big juicy surveys can give you lots of data if managed well, but they are very expensive to run as someone has to key in the data and they are deadly slow for obvious reasons. But worth it if you have a handy data-base and can give people a real incentive to fill out the questions, like say a hefty fine, in the case of the census.
Paperwork – Application Forms/Warranty Cards
The best time of all to get data on people and their attitudes is when they have a logical reason to give you the info, such as when filling out a warranty form or their details to make a claim etc. Mad not to use the opportunity when it presents itself. Can even be very useful to stick questions on products and ask them to send in comments without any other incentive. You’d be surprised how many people don’t mind helping out a company if you’re just plain honest about why you need it.
Fantastic. Fast. I mean you’ll know the answer in minutes or hours. Can touch on all sorts of subjects. With PDF’s of brands or movie player versions of ads, it can be wildly effective ad testing. Often can be a bit weak on detail. Sometimes can’t get at the real reasons behind an attitude, and hard to get a truly representative survey, given there’s only people with computers writing back, but at almost zilch cost, who cares if the information isn’t absolutely perfect?
Online
Online is the Eldorado (Mountain of Gold) of market research. It’s quick and easy to change questions. You can show different images, different deals, to different people. Can be cut into little surveys and run almost constantly. The only things to watch for are decent numbers of respondents to keep the survey reasonably statistically accurate and to check where the answers come from. There’s little point in looking at survey results for a women’s product when half the answers have come from men who felt like responding so they could win the telly.
Choosing a method (s)
As you can see from the above, there’s plenty of options to gather data. Some are more accurate , some are cheaper. Most people selling research will be comfortable with only one or two methods. These are the ones they’ll suggest. Knowing this doesn’t make the decision any easier, but it does get you past the issue of whether you can trust their advice. You can’t. Just like anyone else in marketing.
Cheaper Options
Many of the above methods can be bought in an ‘omnibus’ form, where your questions are put in with other companies in a big survey, or ‘syndicated’ where most of the switched-on players in a market pool the costs and results of a study.
How to do accurate
Unfortunately accuracy depends on one basic issue. Numbers. And usually numbers mean money. If you get enough people to answer a question and make sure you have a few cross-checking questions slipped in to weed out the liars, all you need to do is make sure you’ve hit say 700 people in the right demographic to give you iron-clad results.
Get the basics right
Almost nothing in marketing is as vital as knowing who you’re talking to, what to say and what they think of you. Virtually none of the market research in this country addresses these fundamentals. Why? Because often as not, everyone assumes companies already know it. Including the company themselves. If you get the 20 or 30 simple things that all businesses need to know right, you’ll be doing better than the 90% of marketing managers who can’t answer the basic questions.
Commissioning Researchers
Decide what it is you need to know, how accurate you need the answer to be, how best to find it out, brief two or three research firms and sit down when they give you an estimate of cost. Choose the firm who sends you the shortest, easiest to understand quote and the most likeable executives. I personally like people if they suggest useful ideas.
Please note a PHD (Dr. in front of their name) does not mean a thing to you. For a start, they got their PHD for a very close analysis of a usually pretty obscure subject. If their area of study is not highly relevant, you may as well be talking to a three year old for all they know about your business. Fine to get them to do the maths. Mad to listen to their recommendations.
Ask them about relevant experience. What they found out and how was it used. If they flop around, pick up the Yellow Pages and get another mob in.
Move the goal posts
Market research is expensive. When it becomes bloody obvious you have found out what you need, it’s quite smart to cut the number of groups, or to change the focus of the research. Say you’re doing phone research, you’ve already done 200 interviews and 80% of the respondents think X. There’s little point doing another 500 interviews to confirm X. If you’re committed to the budget, find out Why X, How X and what else you can sell with X etc.
Send the Report Back
If they send you a bunch of numbers strewn across the page you can’t understand, send the report back and ask them to produce something you can use. And if they send you a phone book sized report with no information you can use in it, tell them you won’t pay the bill until they’ve done it in a way you can get useful data from. Don ‘t take that bullshit about ‘that’s how the industry does things’ or whatever other patronising crap they come out with. Researcher’s have the same obligation to be user-friendly as every other profession in the country.
Give them less, not more
Let’s assume you’ve got a report you can understand, you’ve had a good think about it and worked out what the findings really mean to the company. When you’re presenting your market research findings to the board, cut them down to only about 10 key findings, with only about 5 simple recommendations. And make them absolutely inarguable.
That way, you’ll get the respect of the board for your ability to treat their time as valuable. Then you just have to live in vain hope their old, male, soggy, accountant brains can process the information . . . and you may even get what you want.
Market research is often plain wrong
There’s the old story of the micro-wave study where the respondents loved the idea of blue, green, pink etc. microwaves. When they ended the interviews and gave them a choice of what color to take home, they all chose white. Happens all the time.
How would the bugger ad have researched? You can see it, can’t you? “What’s your understanding of the ad?” “Oh, if you buy a Toyota, you’re always saying bugger. And it’s the car that rips cows heads off…” That’s why I say use people with brains to interpret your research. There’s a time when you listen to the public, there’s a time when you hear what they say, but your experience tells you what they’ll really do. A reseacher who has the balls (sorry, ovaries?) to argue with own findings is worth paying serious money for.
I’m sitting here, 6 am. On the kitchen table. It’s raining. Well, it is Melbourne. In my Adidas Runners, Bonds Boxers, Hanes T-Shirt, Yarra Trail Pants, Louitt Bay Windcheater, wearing a Swatch watch that’s been the best lucky watch I’ve ever owned. I’m working on a G4 Mac Laptop, carried around in a beaten-up Targus bag. Eating Vegemite on Dairy Soft on toasted Vogels multigrain and drinking Coffex with Rev and Bundaberg sugar. It’s all brands isn’t it? Big ones, small ones. Anyone who tells you brands don’t matter is completely out of touch with modern life.
What can you buy that doesn’t have a brand connection? Water? No. My water comes from Yarra City water, but I could have Origin Water. From the same tap? From the same reservoir? You’d have to question whether the concept of the brand has gone past logic, wouldn’t you? It’s heaven for ad agencies, creating differences out of nothing; building brands.
Which is why ad guys like me always push ‘brand development’ because it means awareness of products, because that awareness creates demand and hence gives clout to companies where they had none. And brands can be sold, for millions. And can be translated across markets. Virgin was a record shop. It’s now an airline, a credit card….it’s about confidence in the quality of the brand itself. The brand matters because that awareness and confidence can make a huge difference to the financial power of a company who owns them and that’s nice for us, because brand marketing means lots of ads and other bits and pieces to make ad agencies busy and hopefully rich. And brands have lots of theories attached to them. Magazines like this are groaning with them. I’ll bet half the articles in this edition (I don’t know, I don’t get to vet other contributors work, more’s the pity) talk brand theory.
The king of all brand theory is the concept of brand loyalty. That someone will remain loyal to a particular make or model come hell or high water. That they’ll keep trundling down to the supermarket from the age of 7 to 77 to fork out their hard earned cash for your Milo or Coke. Stick with your Bank’s saving account their whole life to pay for that Coke.
I kid myself I’m a regular brand experimenter. That I try lots of new things. But in reality I don’t. I experiment with a few. I might try a new type of tooth brush, because the technology seems very sensible, or I might try a new kind of loo paper, cause it seems much softer and thicker and you don’t want the stuff to break and have to wash your hands out of real necessity. But I’m not really a brand slut. I’m more the kind of guy who wonders what it would be like, than the one who goes out and tries every bloody new brand all the time, cause his life isn’t exciting enough. (My life is exciting enough. I can’t keep up with it as it is. Perhaps it’s Alzheimer’s cutting in early.)
Why do I stick with a series of tried brands and only occasionally experiment with a few? Because I’m so damn normal I may as well be the statistic. I get that opinion not from my usual procedure of staring at the ceiling (painted with Dulux paint, by an Oldfield’s Brush) and wondering, but by that old stand-by when you can’t think of anything clever, research. Yes, hours of scanning the web and trolling through old reports lead me to one inescapable conclusion. The population is becoming more brand centric, more loyal, rather than less.
According to a recent British study, over half of consumers now stick to their regular brands. Nearly half of them like to know what they’re getting by buying well-known brands, so they can avoid an over load of information and choice. Brand loyalty has risen since 2001, despite continuous influx of new products. With some 57% of people remaining brand loyal in 2004, up from 47% in 2001.
The public (me included and probably you too) are slowly pulling themselves back into their collective shells and hiding from the noise. All the ads on the streets, the pages and pages of magazine ads, the cars floating around the shopping centers with slogans on them. The web, with pop-ups, draw downs and flash front ends racing at you, trying not to amuse you, not to charm you, not to inform you, but just to beat you up. We don’t want to be yelled at. We’re sick of it. We got enough of that from our Mums when we were kids. We want to be in control, after all, it’s our life. And it’s our money. And so we are exercising our right to privacy. We’re walking.
The public, God bless their collective, sensible soul, is turning off. The public is seeking solace in the safe brand. It cuts down the thinking time, saves energy for other things. We have other things to do and we just don’t care so much about newness, about benefits, about change. We have too many decisions to make already, without bothering with more of them.
If you regularly went through the supermarket and experimented with new brands, you’d have to be mad. You’d need to read every bloody pack. You’d spend say a minute a pack. That might be another 60 minutes onto an already time-intensive experience, taking the total time to do the shopping to 2 hours. A couple of times a week? In a time-strapped world? You’re kidding.
So we just buy the safe. We experiment a bit, to keep our hand in, but we are tending to go closer and closer towards the known world.
What does this mean to you, New Marketing Manager? Good news? Well, actually, yes. (All news has a two edged sword to it, it depends how you view it.)
If you are new to the job, your task is so much harder. You need more funds. You need a new approach etc. Great – months of briefing agencies, having meetings, generating mind-blowing insights and generally not being judged, because you’ve got such a tough job ahead of you. The most exciting bit of any marketing career.
If you’re old to the job, in a decent company with a fair few big brands, you can feel the warm glow of quiet security. Rest assured you’re probably far less vulnerable than the agency or the market researchers would have you believe. You can relax a bit, knowing that brand loyalty is increasing as fast as global warming – slowly strangling the life out of the little guys by sheer public exhaustion. All you have to do is leave your foot on the heads of your competition by telling the agency to keep beating the drum. If you pick the right company you could almost go on a holiday during the working week.
How does product category matter?
It matters heaps. Low involvements, like washing powder for males or petrol for women, weave between no loyalty, bought just on price, or can be highly brand loyal because the person just doesn’t care to think about it. High involvement purchases, same dichotomy; many people are brand loyal say to their car, while others are the reverse only because they spend all day thinking about it and move according to facts and brand influences.
Who we marketers usually fight for are those in the community who are not brand loyal to that product category at that life stage….
How does age group affect loyalty?
Loyalty does increase with age. Older people are more likely to have certain aspects of their lives off limits. Where experimentation is a necessity, say with mobile phones or internet providers, they may still experiment. But where their purchase patterns can be set and safe, (so they can get on with their lives) they will continue to buy that which is trusted. Not because they want to trust, out of fear, but because they can’t be bothered to waste more time and they don’t give a shit about marketing twaddle. A Daniel Yankelovich (DY) Group survey of 1,299 consumers, 2003 found 70% of consumers in the age segments 39-39 and 55+ place a high significance in brand loyalty.
Interestingly (with the growth of the spending power of baby boomers and their constant drive for ‘self actualization’) the aged-end of the market is actually becoming slightly less brand loyal than it’s predecessors (trying new things, re-inventing themselves) so the pendulum is swinging back a touch, but generally, the older, the more set.
A good experience with a brand at an early stage can last a whole life time.
There is a large proportion of consumers who will stick to the same brand for their entire lives – especially with their choice of newspaper. Up to 43% of consumers will knowingly or coincidentally read the same as their parents.
For example, Australians are less inclined to change banks. ING Direct worked around this because customers don’t need to change their existing banks, their consumers are growing at a rate of 15,000-20,000 per month in all age groups.
(McNair Ingenuity Research, B&T 27, Nov, 2003). ING knew there was resistance, decided not to fight it, but work with it, and bingo.
It’s not just when they leave home, it’s more when they hit 30
When a consumer hit their 30’s, they become brand loyal. As consumers grow older they break away from brands they grew up with and re evaluate their shopping choices. Most interestingly, it’s when they move in with somebody else who they like a lot more than themselves, that they really change brands. “Which soap do you prefer, darling? (As they walk down the super market aisle.) Get the Dove please honey, I want my skin silky smooth for you this evening.. ho ho ho, and get some new razors will you, my legs are feeling prickly…”
It’s not just the kids changing, it’s often the parents
Another brand switching key milestone is when children leave home and parents become empty nesters. The oldies are suddenly free to choose their brands. Do you know how many Dads are happy realizing they don’t need to buy more Sultana Bran cause their son’s gone to live with his girlfriend?
Do you copy your parents?
There is a very strong causal link between a child’s buying behavior and brand loyalty, and their parents. Toothpaste, banks and coffee hold strong brand loyalty- 30% of respondents (to that DY study) used the same as their parents. Nearly one in five people drive the same car as their parents. For most brand loyal students, their parents introduced them to the products.
16-24 year old consumers in particular look for authenticity. They have been brought up by media and as a result have good filters, they let in authentic and ignore everything else. Also word of mouth for this younger segment is very important. 80% of respondents in that survey relied on new product information from their peers. 72% of 16-24 year olds surveyed were likely to try new products, in some categories. This propensity for youth to try, is the key reason most marketers target younger markets. But it’s folly in a strategic sense.
Most of us aim at the wrong segment
The theory is that by targeting younger people, you can still communicate with older people. Because everyone wants to be young and young is hip, cool. That younger people are more switchable, on the basis of price and more experimental and faddish. That younger consumers have a higher lifetime value. Hey, they’ll live longer, so they’ll buy for longer. Here’s the old two edged sword again. If they are more experimental, they are more inclined not to be loyal, so you’re spending all that effort to win them and so is the next company. They’ll race off to the next deal sooner anyway. You’re buying consumers who by definition are not loyal. It’s like having a drug habit – nice feeling for a few hours, but you’ll need to pump in more and more money to get that high; very similar game targeting high churn young customers for mobile phones etc. with call your friends for free the month of October type offers…I’d rather target Dentists or Mothers, but I’m in the business of keeping clients profitable, what would I know?
It’s far better economics to target older more set in their ways customers. Older customers show strong alliance with long-established brands. Over 65’s -65% stick to familiar brands, compared to 47% in the 20-24 age group. Spending in most categories peaks at age 45 to 54. The market who matter is the baby boomers. And they are getting older and richer, with more free time to spend it. And they will spend it how they like, cause they can. While they may be harder to win, as they are less likely to switch and everyone else is targeting youth, they remain much longer as loyalists. I switched from Suzuki to Land Rover 8 years ago and I’ll probably be still driving one in another 10 years. Especially if they offer me say a 50 plus life-time guaranteed discount…
The arguments above are all well and good, but the real reason marketers target youth is cause that’s all most of you are given in creative. Ad agencies are dominated by groovy young people who haven’t gone off yet to a real job in sales or marketing. These kids write ads and aim their thought patterns in the main at their own age group. They just can’t help it.
How to work with existing brand loyalties
Use themes that transcend age
We all age. But certain content themes are ageless and some aren’t. Eg. Poker and gambling can be aimed at 24 and 44 year old markets. Almost everyone likes the idea of surfing, even if they don’t do it, because it’s been a cool thing to do since the 1950’s. If you’re aiming at people over 60 though, use old footage of big ‘Malibu’ boards or current footage of oldies doing it. But bowls? Or Golf? Some things are just automatically associated with old age. If you want to hit a wide audience, avoid them.
Make appeals to general brand values
Way too much focus is placed on whether a brand is marketed to the right age group, rather than worrying about whether the right values are being acknowledged. It’s much better to identify your core brand values – why the customers really buy your product or service, then focus on that in your ads.
Confirm to core loyalists why they are loyalists
Make sure your ads re-enforce why they started buying your product in the first place – especially with older loyalists.
Target personality types and bond
It’s much better for a brand to reflect how its customers see themselves. If they are conservative, give them sensible sounding arguments, clichéd images and steady-as-she-goes copy. If they are friendly types, show family, meeting people. If they are loners, show individuals in meaningful places like the beach, a mountain top… If you don’t know who they are, do the research. If you must target just by age, gender etc., do it with sympathy for their values and relevance to their situation, while maintaining your brand’s key messages and reason to be. It’s not that hard. Westpac’s current illustrative campaign, while kind of low-key, balances all those things. That flatness you feel, is because most of us prefer more edgy stuff that appeals to our particular personality types, but not everyone’s.
Ensure media buys really reflect target market
Choose appropriate media by factors other than age ie. Interests, education, occupation, gender. This will be hard to explain to most media reps, so don’t bother. They work on the figures given them on demographics and cost per thousand – you’ll only end up having an argument. But you should consider environment and editorial style, it makes a big difference. A Sex in the City viewer is thinking clothes, shoes. She’s highly switchable to new brands of them, according to what she sees on the show. She’s in brand switching mode. She’s also likely to be receptive to other new brands at the same time, say for lipsticks, computers (how many Macs have Apple sold because Carrie writes on one?) or even breakfast cereals? How would sales go for Special K if we saw Amanda eating a bowlful, the morning after?
Niche if you dare
Where you know only a select few will ever want your product, you can throw out bits of the above. But many is the novice who thinks only one group decide things. Almost all purchase decisions, bar magazines and some fashion items, have a number of decision makers. Think about toothpaste say, or a family car.
Attract new loyalists by giving incentives to become so
No-body buys anything without trial, obviously. If you have to get them over the line, do deals, promotions, but make especially sure they really reflect the core brand values you know your customers want, not just silly discounts or two for one deals etc. In food and other HVPG’s, sample when you can.
Aim at the older, better heeled customers – not young experimenters
In general, its better to target the older segment of the public than the younger because not only do they have more money, once you’ve won them over they are more likely to stay as customers, This doesn’t help if your in the youth clothing market, but if you’re in supermarkets, white goods, banking ….
CRM
The great, unplumbed promise of the words Customer Relationship Management is to hold onto them – giving you brand loyalty. Ask your supplier of that ‘service’ how they intend to do it, please.
To B or not 2 B. That is the question. Whether it is nobler to suffer the pain of outrageous slings and arrows… Doesn’t even sound like the Baird, (No classical education in my shabby past.) but here I am. Naked. Pot belly. Bald. Double chin. Charming as a blow-fly. All person. Too real. Too close. B2B is me. It’s what I do. All day. I dare say it’s what most of us do. And it ain’t rocket science. It’s the most basic of marketing.
The vegie farmer who sells her carrots to the pig farmer who’s bacon she’s buying, so her spouse can whip up a few egg and bacon pies for the next market day…. Is a business to business practitioner. So’s IBM selling ‘data management solutions’ to NAB.
Dumb & basic – people
Not for us B2Bers is the delicate cut and thrust of the competing shelf space or the psycho-graphically targeted TVC. Not for us the complex multi-faceted, statistically accurate market research. For us, it’s often shoe leather. Often drinks with your mates and those they bring along. It’s pressing sweaty hands in crowded conferences. Or making phone calls until your ear hurts, your voice wears thin and your confidence dissolves.
Business to business, on a large or small scale, is just selling to people. All I do is talk to people about their business. ‘How’s it going Johnno? Shit, they’re doing that to us too…’
Your world
Most of us have more to do with this form of marketing than any other. That’s cause we work in a business. Most of the marketers/sales people we meet are in B2B during our working day. And because other humans are better at selling than anything else I’ve heard of, it must remain a people business.
Business to business marketing in this country is often seen as a weird magic to the amateurs. They think it’s complicated. They think it’s about brilliant new ways of contacting customers, of sophisticated systems. Of hi-tech video streamed conferences and wearing just the right suit and being trained to say just the right thing. It’s not. It’s mostly just a hard slog.
Push the barrow, not the envelope
The people who succeed are often not very creative. They get there because they do the hard yards. Most of the successful business to business marketers – the bosses – have almost no redeeming features except the dogged determination to get up every morning and push the machine forward. To contact people. Yes, they may try new things, but to them the bottom line is the bottom line. It’s about sales. And sales are about people and interacting with people.
We are all consumers, especially B2B.
It’s not like we only don the mantle of a consumer when we go home. We consume at the office, the factory. We don’t know that much about each purchase. The fact that you may buy 10,000 widgets every month doesn’t mean you’ve put anymore thought into them than the person in accounts who buys her family 10 Breakfast Bars on her way home.
Customers are rare
The only significant difference, from a behavioral aspect, is numbers. There are usually far fewer customers, so each one counts for a much higher percentage of your turnover. Think about a supplier of auto-parts. How many customers do they have? What, three manufacturers? Ten assemblers? Say four major chains of retailers and a couple of hundred small players who aren’t worth dealing with, but who think they are important too.
Small numbers of decent customers means one thing. You can’t rip-off. You have to develop relationships that work for both parties; you can’t churn through too many customers, or you’ll end up with none. B2B at it’s core is about give and take. About small communities and being a gentleman (lady) instead of a jerk. It’s about doing the right thing.
Small numbers of decent customers means one other thing. They are stuck with you, too. If you come up with a product or deal that’s good, and your prospective customer won’t see you about it, cause they happen to hate your guts, and their boss finds out, they are in big trouble.
What to use
Research
Ask your potential customers what they are looking for. You won’t need huge numbers for accuracy, as it’s possible there are only 10 or 20 players who matter anyway. Recognize they are business people, so don’t take everything they say seriously, especially their comments about whether a new player is needed or whether the pricing has to be so low etc. They will often be manipulating the information they are giving you to suit their own ends. But if you don’t research, you are guaranteed to stuff up.
Segment/Qualify
Target key accounts. Work the large juicy ones. Where you can’t avoid the small fiddly players, make it pleasant and efficient for both of you.
Branding
Corporate branding, (from a cute or important sounding name, logo and business cards to cars and uniforms, ties or a full suit) makes or breaks how you are received. Especially when you are dealing with new people or you are setting up a new division/ enterprise.
In B2B branding goes beyond mere appearances. It comes down to how you talk and whether you seem to give a shit. So keep your human hat on and don’t talk a lot of clichés. Talk real benefits. And have a sense of humor. Who wants to deal with a drip?
Brochures
People will ask you to ‘send something’ before a meeting. Have something to send. Decisions are often made after you’ve left. Leaving a brochure that sells itself well gets your story to the other 3 or 4 people sitting around the boardroom /office kitchen table. Make sure it rings bells with your targets. Try the rough out on your favorite customers. If they don’t say ‘That’s great. It’s exactly how I see you guys.’, change it.
Direct Mail
The weapon of choice for many B2B operations, DM is used extensively, often in dramatic ways. From cards to pizzas, to pens to singing telegrams, I’ve had them all. And the exotic ones do make your morning more fun than just the usual invoices and job applications. Do DM regularly – say every 6-12 weeks to your key contacts. If there’s any merit in your operation, eventually they’ll give you a shot at their account.
Post Office Drops
Millions of P.O. Boxes, almost all of them businesses. $50.00 a thousand to deliver. Do the sums.
Leaflets
Stick them in the Post Office Boxes. You could also post them, hand them out at conferences etc.
Emails
A good email as an opener or after a phone call, can be as effective as other direct mail. A PDF makes a great brochure on their PC. Yes, it doesn’t stay on my desk, cluttering up space and shouting look at me. I can just click it away. …But I can keep it too for months, it’s filed better than most of my other stuff and as they cost very little to send to lots of people, they have to be seen as a damn fine fishing tool.
A decent web site
You’ll be amazed at the number of people who check your site before calling you. We are. (Check out www.starship.com.au.) And it’s fantastic to be able to say – ‘Go to that page – there see? Like that? What color do you want?’ While you’re on the phone to the prospect….
Promotional Pieces
Anything useful that gets their attention and fits your branding. Even pens still work.
Telemarketing
Outbound calls to prospective clients are the key contact maker. But make the scripts original, pleaaaaaase. I hear “How are you today?” And I hang up.
Trade Rags
A major player always goes in their industry trade magazine. But try to do it with the same charm, wit/art direction as you’d do for the public. B2B is the public. They are just at work.
Sales People
Are what most companies spend most of their B2B marketing dollars on. At the end of the day, nothing works like a sales girl/guy in your face asking when you’d like it delivered…
Training
Well trained B2B sales people seem sincere when they are lying, concerned when they couldn’t give a shit and friendly when they’d rather stab you in the back and bottle your blood. I’d like to know who trains them, but I fear it just comes top-down from the board.
Sales Tools
Arm the troops with brochures, flip charts, proposals, power point shows, uniforms, order forms, business cards, cars etc. Almost nothing spent here is a waste of money.
Call Backs
Follow-up sales calls. So few do it. So many opportunities wasted. Not everyone is able to buy at the first visit, for God’s sake.
Drink parties
The promotional weapons of choice for many major companies are the footy tickets, the launches etc. The usual guilt trip, ‘So are you having a nice time? We haven’t seen you guys lately, How’s tricks?’ (Code for ‘I’m paying for that drink. You never ring us anymore. When are we getting back the business?’) Mind you, if you’re at a function run by someone you don’t do much business with, it’s a strong indication to them that you’re considering getting into bed again. … Or don’t go.
PR
Nothing better for your credibility than the occasional article in the right publication. The one you’re reading is a doosy if you target Marketing Managers, GM’s, CEO’s etc.
Bonuses/rebates/bribes
Corruption is alive and kicking in Australia. But instead of being a quick 100 rupee shoved in the hand of a traffic cop in Jackarta, it’s a $1,000 discount/cash-back given to a tractor dealer.
Referrals
If Sally tells Cathy that Maria’s company makes better widgets than John’s, and she’s nicer to deal with, Maria’s got the gig.
What to do
Respect the seller
Miss Professional Marketer, next month/career you too could be flogging phones, computers or ads.
Build the baby
Don’t shove pre-packaged deals on bright people. Have them work with you on what sounds best to them.
Cover them all
Most sales involve several people within companies. You must make sure all of them either like you or their concerns are neutralized by your brochure/sample/deal etc.
Engender Confidence
Confidence is usually conveyed/ created by the person who doesn’t try as hard, only answers the questions asked, knows when to leave and calls casually, at exactly the right time.
Contact Regularly/be nice
If your brand is not a household name, the only way you’ll guarantee confidence is familiarity. Don’t wear your welcome out, but call every month or two and stay pleasant and undemanding. No one wants to be pressured.
Work the numbers
Contact all your target market, and keep it up. In our case a company appoints a new agency every 3-4 years. They take about 4-6 weeks to decide. So if you call, you’ve got (3.5 yrs x 6/52 = approx. 30) or about 1 in 30 chance of getting a hot customer.
Go to them
Visit the factory. You learn so much more. You become part of the family.
Do what you said you would
I know it seems obvious, but so few people keep to their word. If you say you’ll ring on Tuesday, do it.
What to look out for?
Fads
Re-naming anything to make it sound highly pertinent works. Many a dumb board is sold on a silly idea by sharp branding and a fair bit of PR. Does the millennium bug ring any bells? Did any of our major Accounting groups, who should have known better, sell it’s cure?
Lousy Lists
If they are not the right size, not the right industry, not the right person in the company, they are not going to buy. Buy a small sample of the list and test them.
Costs
A salesman who doesn’t get the deals. A brochure that looks like everyone else’s.
Changing the goal posts
An invoice that comes in way over the quote is very bad. So’s changing the brief half-way through the job and expecting the other guy to wear the wasted time. Think things through before-hand, or be prepared to pay.
Why spend your time in B2B?
Business to Business is the most rewarding area of marketing in Australia. Because most of the time you’re dealing with fellow Australians, at close quarters. And I like Australians. They are open, intelligent, funny …..
Marketing Mag. So far you’ve half-read three or four articles, found out a bit about design or telemarketing, noticed a couple of ads, taken in a few jokes. Now you’re at the end where they shove the chewy stuff. Nothing smart here. If you want to improve your IQ, move on McDuff. This bit’s bog basic – it’s about money and what you do 7 days a week.
What’s Marketing anyway? What is this magazine about? One minute it’s talking high-brow branding and debating the psychological impact of colour and speed of movement, next moment it’s about stuff no-one would dream was important except the person reading it, who happens to be a marketer.
What do people really do in Marketing? Where do you draw the line in calling them marketers or Journalists, marketers or shop-keepers? Or wine-makers? Are we humans all marketers, except stressed stay-at-home Mums or the blokes changing the tyres at Bob Jane’s T-Mart?
This article is about the roles which dominate the world of marketing – I’ve tried to list all the standard ones I’ve come across over the last few decades. I’ve avoided listing the hundreds of jobs where you simply constantly use marketing, like general manager or politician.
Account Managers
You live or die on your relationships with only a few key companies/characters. In some cases, only one company. There are many depressed persons whose sole job is to carry bags and sell creative to a single group like say a Ford or BMW. They are known as the desert wastelands of account service. You go there when you have given up all hope of real life. Most account managers get into the job via being either a product manager or have been a sales person who’s job evolved into a more specialised role. And a few become an account manager having grown into the position from within the company – you started as a receptionist, were brilliant with clients and someone says, hey, why don’t you come along to the next meeting at their factory? …and off you go. The stresses on account managers are immense. It’s your fault if anything happens, regardless if the client gets bought by a big multi-national or sales drop 50%, whatever happens, it’s you who is to blame. Did I mention trust? The client rarely really trusts you because it’s your job to sell them stuff and they know it, and the business, regardless of whether you work for an agency, a manufacturer or a law firm for that matter, knows you have a close relationship with the customer so they are always scared you’ll run of with the contract.
Ad Agencies / Designers / Consultants
Let’s break this down a tad. There’s essentially four types of people in ‘creative’ land. I’ll start with suits.
Suits – deal with clients all day long and chase them when they are not within phone call/meeting range. They are called suits for obvious reasons, but many don’t wear them and neither should they. It’s actually handy to wear casual and be formal, rather than try to be the other. Marketers make great suits but there’s still not many of us in agency land. There should be more.
Creatives – do the ads. They could be writers (many great marketers work in this field – coming up with good ideas) art directors, web designers. Marketers who move into these roles do so with much more depth to the work they do than those who come here from other disciplines, like music or drawing. Creative can pay extremely well, but you often have to watch as someone else, way dumber than you, sells your baby down the tube by agreeing to double the logo size.
Management – Still not enough professional marketers in senior positions in creative agencies. Many is the agency, like the rest of Australian companies, run by an accountant who thinks he/she is a businessman. They are worse than the snobby old intellectual who did an arts degree majoring in French history who thinks because they own a few ties they are somehow qualified to make management decisions. Marketers are the only people with an appropriate qualification to run an ad agency and anyone who says different ought to be shot by the AMI. Given your work is OK, your people skills are good and you can add up, if you’re an anyway decent marketer this is where you should end up, making great ads and changing people’s lives for the better. Hope you apply.
Media Buy – You thought I was going to say sells media, but I like media sales people. They take shit from Marketing Managers and ad agencies & media buyers all day long. But they know that eventually we have to buy from them so it’s just a waiting game and doesn’t matter what sort of a bitch you feel like being today, tomorrow they’ll have their revenge. As a marketer, being a media sales person or a buyer is a great job. You get to use your training and experience and good judgement gets demonstrable results. You can ask all sorts of questions and no-one thinks you are anything other than cluey. As a buyer, that you have behaved like a shit all day to a bunch of people who’s job it is to sell to you is neither here nor there. They make more money than you, so they can put up with your shit.
Assistant Marketing
Entry role for many people, this is the job that puts the rest of your career into perspective or permanently scratches your glasses. Get a good, open, caring, intelligent boss and your career will blossom. An idiot and it’s back to the drawing board and even dentistry is looking attractive. To get in, ring the company up instead of just answering the ad on seek or mycareer. Go see the personnel officer or the HR manager, even if you don’t have an appointment. Drop off your CV with a hand-written note (no-one can hand write today, it’s really powerful) put a photo on your CV, yes, it sounds naff, but if they see a face they mentally bond much better than if they don’t. Follow-up and insist on an appointment. When you get into the meeting, very politely find out what they are really looking for, (then tell they why you are perfect) what the process will be, who else you may have to meet, and ask when they’ll be getting back to you. Take whatever salary they have in mind, you can always get a raise.
CMO’s and MD’s
Chief Marketing Officers and Marketing Directors are essentially the same beast, just one is more pretentious. This is the best role of all to get as a professional marketer and the hardest to win. You’ll need a great track record in go-ahead companies and an iron-clad back ’cause every accountant on the board (and there are usually 6-8 of them) will be trying to knife you all of the time. With clever negotiations at the front end regarding share price and company turnover, you can make millions a year.
Entrepreneur
My favourite of all people. You get into entrepreneurship by having an idea or stealing someone else’s and then telling everyone about it for years. In Australia, many of the great entrepreneurs went travelling overseas, saw an idea and stole it. Like Craig Kimberly, who stopped at an all-jeans shop in San Francisco and said, ‘why don’t I open a chain of stores called Just Jeans’? All Entrepreneurs are professional marketers, whether they have a degree and 20 years experience or not. They just are. Marketers are usually the best at becoming entrepreneurs, mainly because we can spot the opportunities in an idea way before the other types of people. You need real tenacity and a preparedness to go without and to take big risks, which is why most entrepreneurs start out young. The biggest difficulty is always getting your hands on enough money fast enough to make the thing work before you run out of enthusiasm. This requires a business plan and months trudging the alley ways of big cities trying to talk investment bankers into backing you, or getting yourself a rich uncle. In Australia, as all the banks only lend against property, you will find it virtually impossible to get anyone to back an idea no matter how good it is. Try the USA. They understand investment capital in the states. Possibly the only thing they do truly understand, other than weaponry.
Product / Brand Managers
Spend your life worrying about whether Coles is going to drop your Big Red Sauce today or next week. Do 6 focus groups a quarter on the flavour of Big Red and whether the ads truly reflect the vibrant new piquancy. That the public can’t taste – what would they know? Do 4 business cases for an increase of 10% on your ad budget. Meet the agency twice a week for 6 weeks just to get a half-page ad moved into the front half of Good Taste magazine. Wonder why your girlfriend makes jokes about you getting on the sauce, being red-faced, are not so big, except your gut and why you eat pies every lunch time. Know that there is another life and this stage is simply that, a stage. And that you will one day come out of your cocoon and become a butterfly – a marketing manager with plenty of HVPG cred and a real budget, who’ll be able to fire that son-of-a-bitch at the agency who wrote about you so disparagingly in Marketing Mag.
Marketing Consultants
We all end up here at some time or other. Whether we stuff up a promotion and the board calls for our head, or we’ve just left Uni and can’t find a job, marketers invariably spend time on their own, as ‘consultants’. Keep in mind, for many professions, this is as good as it gets. Dentists invariably work in numbers of one, at the most two. Same with optometrists, chemists. They’ll never know what it’s like to have an army of thousands under their control. To be a consultant is one of the hardest of all marketing jobs. You are your own boss. Like you or lump you, you are it. You establish your own goals, KPI’s, own company policies. You are your own sales force, often your own accountant and it’s lonely. Yes, you get to go to lunch if you feel like it, or sleep in until the afternoon, and you can make serious money, given you have few overheads. To survive, you must quickly establish an area of perceived expertise. A generalist marketing consultant working on general industries handles start-ups and small companies and starves. Be helpful to marketing consultants. And they often move from here to running a clients department to lecturing or something equally useful to you, so be nice.
Marketing Managers
The most hunted member of the marketing clan. Hunted by consultants who want a budget for brand analysis or planning. Hunted by ad agencies, media sales people, promotions companies, printers. They get bottles of wine and perfume sent by strangers trying to woo them. They are invited to lunches, dinners, sex parties and sports events by more people than Kate Moss with a pocketful of coke. If you’re into being popular for what you can do for people, and don’t mind how shallow the company if it is pretty and the drugs are free, this is the gig for you. You get to make the last tiny smidge of a decision, having been shoved into the corner by someone half your age who’s had more training on client manipulation than an SAS sniper would get in target shooting. Marketing management can be got into several ways. The most traditional way is to be a product manager and step up. But many a Marketing Manager has been national Sales manager or have come from another discipline such as engineering but has had a few years training alongside an experienced Marketing Manager. There are unfortunately a few without any decent backgrounding and they often are the ones you’ll see with the good-looking suit. The job is as much fun as you want to make it and you do get to massage the public’s mind if you’re in the right position, so it’s worth doing. Make sure you have a decent budget and make sure you have autonomy. Many do take on roles that don’t have budgets cause the business itself sounds like fun, or they need a job, but they don’t last long. And a short stint looks lousy on your CV.
Researchers / Strategists
The most intellectual of marketing roles and one of the harder ones to get into. At ground level there’s a few jobs around interviewing people over the phone or doing shopping centre work, but it’s tough to get the next level up. You’re competing with PHD’s and lots of middle-class snobs from England who think if you aren’t English you’re an idiot with absolutely no taste or understanding of the really important issues. The ad game also suffers from a focus on British intellectual power. As an Australian it is your sworn duty to laugh at them. If they really had their act together they’d still have an empire. Like the English, many researchers spend too much time worrying about nuances in the projects they are working on and miss the big issues. If you can read between the lines and give clients precise answers to their core marketing questions, you’ll do well. And that’s pretty much all you have to do as a strategist – understand the game (knowing a few good processes helps) and decide what should be done, to get what you want. And the pay is good for both.
Sales Managers
One of the easier gigs. Yes, you set KPI’s with your team, yes, you maintain key relationships with big customers. But you spend most days in meetings or going to lunch and generally doing SFA. Great gig if you can get it, not as much fun as Marketing Manager, but as many of these positions are an amalgamation of both MM and SM, a lot of sales managers do the really tasty stuff anyway. You need sensational people skills and a heart of stone, because not all people you employ will work out and it breaks your heart when you have to shoot part of your team every few weeks or months. You get into it by being a good sales person, note I didn’t say the best. Anybody who puts their best sales person into managing the rest of the team is an idiot. The best sales person should always be selling. The best manager of sales people should be the one doing that. They are rarely the same person. Good marketers are often quite good sales people and the other aspects of the job like brand management etc. we obviously excel at. It’s an important thing to do at some stage in your career and many find it one of their best and most enjoyable roles. And it can pay very well.
Sales Persons
A hard job. We all sell all the time. CEO’s sell. So do Taxi drivers. But to sell and only be judged on how well you went that day or week at selling, is tough. You are at the vagaries of the weather, the economy, whether someone likes pink shirts or the stripes you may be wearing today, whether they like younger people or older, have a hang-over or need sex. Your life is constantly in a state of flux. You have to be a chameleon, constantly adjusting your personality and your values system to fit the other person’s possible wants. Reading their minds before they open their mouths. Yep, some can say fuck it and are themselves, warts and all. They just roll through the day being the blokey pig or the fey designer and it works for them. But it’s rare. You can’t be yourself in some industries unless that industry has moulded you that way. And they do affect you. I’ve known people who were one way 5 years ago who are completely different today. But it does pay well. And if you like a challenge….
Uni Lecturer
Nice thing to do when you’re old and grey and like talking to people who only feel entitled to ask you the very occasional question. You probably need good marks in a relevant degree and a masters would help a lot. A PHD in something very relevant would be outstanding, but how often is a PHD relevant to life? There’s not too many people floating around who’ve done a PHD in a marketing related discipline so it’s not like they have many to choose from. Relevant business experience is very rare in the Uni/Taafe lecturing world but desperately wanted by the better Uni’s. Even though the pay’s not exactly fantastic, it would be a good thing for you to do to help younger marketers if you’ve had a well rounded career.
Conclusion
Marketing is the most interesting career you could have chosen. It’s more diverse, more challenging and more rewarding both in an intellectual sense and a sheer remuneration sense.
Hopefully I haven’t forgotten too many positions above. If yours has been left out, send me a note.
You walk in to the office. You’re a minute or so late. You’re hot and bothered from racing to get there. Your feet hurt already. The coffee machine is broken, so you can’t have one. You get to your desk. There’s a yellow sticky note on your PC that asks you to come to a meeting that started 20 minutes ago that no-one told you about. You drop your things, pick up a pad and go down the corridor towards the meeting. As you near the door you can hear them talking about you. You stop, and listen.
The upshot is, they think you are expensive. They think they could do all your stuff themselves and they don’t like your style and direction. Sounds like they are about to dump you – after all you’ve done.
You know you have made them millions and you know they have no handle on the market or the delicate customer/chain balance. They don’t have a clue how to negotiate with the agency and they couldn’t motivate or manage the sales team, the board and the key suppliers in a pink fit. You know you’re vital and they think you’re just another marketing person, just one more little cog in the wheel of corporate OZ. Bastards.
You can’t be bothered with this crap. And besides that, you’re sick of being there until 8 .30 pm and being told off for being 5 minutes late the next morning. What a bunch of turkeys.
You throw your head back, straighten your shoulders, march in and tell them all to fuck off. Feels really good, like diving into a cool pool on a hot day. Fifteen minutes later you’re on the street with both a heavy cardboard box and your future in your hands.
Now what do you do?
Go out on your own.
You’ve always wanted to be your own boss. You’ve always wanted to test your ability to run the whole show. To have your ideas followed without question. To get your plans implemented. To get all the money, all the glory. Feel all the fear. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to the jungle.
It’s actually a pleasant rain forest. Some days it rains like shit and half your life gets washed away. Some days you step on a snake and you’re lucky you don’t die, but most days the weather is cool, the sun shines through dappled leaves and there’s plenty of fruit on the trees, as long as you can work out how to get up there. It’s not as scary as the corporate world wants you to believe. They make it seem dangerous because, since the powers that be abolished slavery, there’s no other way to keep good people in their jobs besides fear; of the unknown, of failure and of penniless starvation.
You’re a big girl now
This is crunch time. This is the time to prove to yourself what a brilliant mind you really have. How charming you can be. How smart and manipulative you are. How much people love you or fear you. Every day, look in the mirror, growl, and say to yourself, ‘go get em girl’.
Why?
There’s the morally defendable reasons for breaking out on our own, like ‘independence’, ‘testing myself’ and money, but the real reasons are more fun. With your own show you can trade in your frumpy spouse, send your kids to better schools, do a lot more overseas trips, get written up in trade journals or interviewed on TV, launch brilliant offshoot companies and stick it up your rich cousins and the guys you went to school with who told you you’d amount to nothing. You could even sue the bastards at your old company, just because you can. Not to mention that you could design your uniforms in that brilliant lilac/orange combo you’ve always liked or turn your nanna’s chocolate bickies into the biggest thing since diets were invented. The satisfaction is frankly, immeasurable.
Don’t Stress
The thing that puts more people than anything else back on the scrap heap of employment is fear and stress. Stress is the killer. For those who worry, this is not the life. For those who succeed, the only attitude is that there is no point worrying about things. Your natural human survival gene will kick in whenever something is threatening you. Within a very short time you’ll be acutely attuned to danger – and you’ll know what to do about it almost instantly after you sense it. If for any reason, or no reason at all, you don’t think someone will be a good influence, will pay their bills, will be trustworthy, trust your gut.
Millions of things can go wrong, but most of them don’t. Stressing only burns up energy and causes heart attacks. It does not help. If you are really worrying, write down the problems and what you can do about them, then go for a 10 k run or drink half a bottle of vodka or do something else that takes your mind off them until the next day, when things always miraculously become easier to handle.
When’s a good time for you?
There’s no bad time to go out on your own. A recession might seem like a bad time, but it’s more understandable that people get laid off, so you’ve got more justification when you’re explaining what you’re now doing. The whole world good or bad times, always needs things like food, clothing, transport, marketing advice, so the level of demand might be one or two percent below a boom, but it’s only the tiniest degrees of difference. Everything goes in cycles and good or bad times will not stop you if you’re cut out for the jungle. Do it when you feel like it. Or when you’re angry enough. I’m a big believer in revenge as motivation.
Have a marketing career game plan
I remember Lindsay Fox saying that he looks in the bathroom mirror every morning and says ‘what am I going to do today’? When you are your own boss, your life is totally in your own hands. You could go down the beach. You could spend all day at lunch, or on the couch. So you need to plan. I don’t mean a big business plan, although most people need them. Assuming you are a trained, disciplined, experienced marketer, I’m talking a couple of pages of notes on long and short term goals. That length ‘business plan’ can be actioned and will get results because it’s focused. Just check/ re-do your set of notes every few months to keep yourself on track.
The people who need complex, every possible scenario business plans are not the marketers, they are the people we must work with. The accountants, bankers, partners and mothers out there who often don’t have a full grip on what you have in mind and want to know you’re on the right path. If you’re asking for money you’ll need to do one. And a big fat one at that; 50-100 pages, with lots of appendixes and a juicy cash flow, especially if you’re asking for a lot of money, or for help from a government department. There’s plenty of books on how to write a business plan on Amazon and a ton of advice on the web, so I won’t bore you with the details, suffice to say that everyone always believes a ‘logical’ spread sheet and the findings of ‘market research’. You may have to doctor some elements of the story for an audience, but never kid yourself. It’s your own money/life on the line.
Think Big
McDonald’s first owners only thought in terms of a couple of diners. Ray Kroc bought them and thought of a couple of thousand. Don’t limit yourself by the lack of imagination that is often corporate Australia. The owners of corporate Australia, usually USA, German, Japanese or UK businesses, don’t think small time. But as they want you to only run Australia, and they don’t want you to run the world, (that’s their job) they happily keep their employees dream’s small. If your idea will work in Frankston, it will probably work in Frankfurt too.
Start Career Change Instantly
There’s a book I read once called The First 90 Days. The premise was that the first 90 days of any relationship is vital, sets up the ground-work for it forever on. So it’s critical to get things on the right foot straight away. If you’re going to change how you do things or how you react to things or for that matter have a personality change, do it as soon as you decide to take the leap. It’s the same with employing people or getting a new squeeze. Set up the systems straight away, so they think ‘this is how it is, this is how it’s always going to be’. If you want them cleaning the dishes or buying take-away on the way home, start pretty close to the first date.
Take your contacts
The most important things for survival are the soft mushy human ones you’ve made into friends. You’ve probably collected hundreds without even realizing it. Take your data-base along with you. But have key people; one for motherly advice, one for collecting money advice, one for motivation, a couple to flirt with etc. etc. While many firms have written into their work contracts that you can’t actually contact clients, there’s usually nothing about suppliers, advisors or work colleagues, and they know potential clients, know lawyers, accountants or graphic artists, media people etc.
Take their systems
If you don’t actually storm out in a fit of pique, but like a player, plan and stage your exit with more dignity, it gives you a chance to write down the business systems you think work. Systems are vital – they make businesses run well. Get a little note book or send yourself emails whenever you notice processes going on, whether they are financial tracking, how orders are placed etc. It’s a pain in the arse trying to remember how everything is done when you’ve left, but easy to observe /document as they happen. Template everything you can.
Everyone’s an Expert
I mean the taxi driver. Your mother’s cousin from Kanzas. The dog. And finally, on my list of those not to listen to – all the accountants you ever met socially.
Branding
Now’s the time your training and professional experience really pays off. Manage all contact points. Be integrated. Don’t scrimp on thinking it through. The plumber’s home tap often drips. If your marketing has holes, it’ll cost you a mint.
Getting Money
Your Mum loves you. So she might lend you some money. So does your rich uncle Peter. The bank won’t unless it’s against a house. I know of no one who’ll lend against projected cash flow in Australia. If you find some group who may, please, please send me their details. There are millions of decent, law-abiding, well-run businesses out there who would like to meet them.
Venture Capitalists, like ‘business Angels’ (which are really just individuals playing at being VC’s) are a source for money but notoriously expensive, ‘cause they take such a big slice. So are the various, exciting-sounding government grants, mainly because the time that goes into winning them is often more than they are worth.
Put some skin in the game
In smaller start-ups, it’s almost always all your money. If you want people to lend you money, you usually have to put in too. This can be done as a salary sacrifice, but most of the time cold hard cash (you might draw against) is the only credible thing. You’ll only have a voice if you put in lots and it does give you a tool to hold onto power. Power is critical. If in a year or two you find yourself getting up at 5 am to do the books for a board meeting, you’ll remember this advice…those with the power sleep in.
Paying for things
Equity is the most expensive money you ever borrow because you have to keep paying it off forever. Avoid it. Don’t give away equity (shares) for favours that you could pay for easily, especially basic services like accounting or engineering design etc., no matter how much it sounds like a good idea at the time. Control and not having to answer to others is so much more important than paying for a few hundred hours of someone’s work at the front end. If you are short on money, stretch out the payments over some months, but it’s best if you negotiate that first. Don’t be surprised if the ‘smarter’ people insist on payments up front. They’ve heard that start-ups invariably fail.
Failure Rates
The failure rate of new enterprises is another fear-factor concept designed to keep employees in their place. They tell you 9/10 fail. Shock horror, your family will loose the house and your kids will starve. I did some work with a major bank and it turned out to be bunkem. We analysed the businesses that supposedly ‘failed’. It came down to a definition of failure. What is simply change and growth, on the surface looks like them going bust. They often didn’t. As most businesses start out as a trading name, turn into a company, then become a trust, may change it’s name, float or get sold to the kids for tax reasons…every few years what was legally one entity became another. It’s just morphed like Madonna into a new vehicle. Same people running the show, same customers/products etc. Failure rates are way lower like one in 2 or even 3? Interestingly, women entrepreneurs have a much lower failure rate than men. One reason seems to be that they usually don’t think they know everything – they ask people for help.
Swim with the fishes
Make mates with people who run their own businesses – it’s amazing what a bit of advice/right suppliers can do for your day.
Don’t ignore legal stuff
Many promising businesses have gone bust because they have missed taxes or permits, insurance etc.
Partners
If they are friends, they often won’t be in 10 years. If they are spouses, see previous sentence. Likewise, someone has to make the tough decisions and be the ‘boss’. However you may hide your dark side, make sure when it matters, this is you.
Sexy Businesses
The really good ideas are those you hadn’t heard of until you read about them on a blog. Facebook. “I’m going to get a bunch of kids to put all their details on this website, including where their tattoos are” .. or Twitter “Kids are going to tell us what they had for breakfast… Why they did their nails in green”. Would you have considered that?
There’s still lots of scope for businesses based on the sheer nature of man, like food, environmental, or ones that do things fast and easy, porn etc.
Innovation, especially within established industries, pays well. Things that you’ve always wanted to do, like starting a ski school or teaching rich women about shopping in Paris, might sound great, but doing it lots over time will ruin it for you.
Learn to budget
Sometimes your money has to stretch to Mars.
Cash is king
Think cash flow. CASH FLOW. Which is why it’s best to get a customer or a thousand before you jump. This is not to say you should sell too cheap – many people go broke making sales. However, it’s a fine balance. You’re better to have a sale and some money, than no sale. Keep your expenses to those you must make. The only time to splash out is when you’ve retired.
Look after your other lives
Your kids, your sex life. Your friends. You’ll probably own several businesses over the years. (I’ve already owned about 10) But you only get one set of key relationships and the buggers remember when you weren’t around.
In search of the perfect marriage – I’m sitting spinning on my ‘directors’ chair, drumming my fingers, scheming up something evil I can suggest to a client, to rip more precious lucre from their customer’s plastic accounts. And I’m wondering what lunch might look like, who I’m having it with. I’m bored, of course.
It’s a condition that lives with you night and day when you’re over 40 and have been in the same business for more than 10 years. There’s hundreds of thousands of we ‘executives’, unexcited, but competent, out there in the ‘burbs, making up the decision-making class, wondering what little adjustments we can make to our lives to let a bit of spice in. I stare at the phone, thinking, as one does, if I had the right number, and knew whose name to drop, I could speak to George Bush or Vladimir Putin in 10 seconds. I wonder what changes to our existence I could manage, if I said just the right thing…
Like a Volvo coming off the production line, praying it will end up in the hands of someone who can drive, the phone rings. I’ve obviously willed it to ring. I can now claim involvement in a miracle.
It’s a bloke. He asks me to tell him about Starship. I give him the usual 30 second ‘lift-stopper’. That’s what we do, who we handle. He tells me he’s been to our website, and that he’d like to come in to our office and discuss a project. I ask him for an idea what it’s about, and he says a few sentences that explain his company, what they make, where they sit in their market and what they spend on advertising. We agree on a time to meet. The whole conversation takes about 3 minutes.
Oh goody. New business. I’m suddenly excited again. Something to get my teeth into, to think about. And that’s exactly how it happens. It’s not complicated.
This article is about how to make that choice, from someone who has pitched to hundreds of clients. (Sometimes they’ve made the right decision. Sometimes that’s choosing Starship. Sometimes the right decision has nothing to do with our agency.) This is not from a client’s perspective, it is, as the guy in the purple says, from the pulpit.
There’s a few things to consider before you pick up the phone.
Agencies are full of sales people
No-one survives in agency land who can’t sell an idea to a client. So what they say/do is designed to get you hooked. It may be all eager and earnest, it may be very businesslike. Or not. Just because they come across uninterested or ‘cool’ don’t think for a moment that that isn’t their act. It is. Take everything that is said or promised, as a possibility only.
Agencies are great at selling you the world and giving you Dubbo. That’s why the rest of society says we’re wankers.
People have to make money
Agencies are businesses. They are not retirement homes for ageing journalists or stepping stones for creatives on their way to Hollywood, however the individuals within them see themselves. You must make their time worth it, or they can’t work on your business. Accept that people with more brains cost more money – don’t buy on the basis of price alone.
What is it you really want?
Do you want to be known across Australia/the world as the girl who did X? Do you want to marry your bosses daughter? Should the brand be No.1 in 6 months? Should you be able to take over your main competitor in a year because they are broken financially and physically? There are millions of goals. So many clients don’t explain what they really want. 6% of sales increase. To stay in Woolworths. I need to take the board’s eyes off my budget/performance. Decide on 5 or 6 that are realistic for your sort of money. Then find the agency who can do 3 or 4 of them.
Do you want them to be very busy?
Some people gravitate to the very fashionable hot team. But keep in mind, these people are often hot due to one or two campaigns that may not be at all relevant to your industry, your needs. And the reason they are ‘hot’ is because someone let them do an ad or two that was really out there. Often it’s not the creative teams that are good, it’s the ability for their suits to sell the ideas on to a board – many agencies are very good at creative and have done great ads, but you’ve never seen them because no-one had the guts to run them or put enough money into their air time.
Don’t ride a bad horse
What you want is a sparky horse you have to pull back, that scares you, not one you have to kick all the time to get going. It’s so much easier to say “no, whhhoooahh”, than ask for the impossible from a bunch of untalented dick-heads.
Creative kills media every time.
Keep in mind this very simple fact. Really stand-out creative costs way less to do the job because you don’t have to run it as often for it to be noticed. A media group will tell you success is all in the media choice. This is bullshit. Yes, effective media is paramount to getting value for money, but if the creative isn’t much good, no-one will care. You will spend far more on media to get the same effect. Which serves who? Yes, you betcha, media buyers/sellers and the media itself.
Must they know your industry backwards?
Sometimes this is paramount, but rarely. Generally, if an agency knows a little bit about an industry, that’s enough.
Do you want competent work or work that breaks the mould?
Sometimes the trick is to keep yourself in with the board. That may mean conservative, but nice work. Other times, the only thing that may work in an industry is right off the wall. Choose on this basis, but understand that the people who did the really radical stuff for an agency may have left years ago. So ask who did it, when and where they are now?
One agency or many?
Most smaller companies are better off with one agency who does it all, for consistency reasons and because every agency/design group will think every other one’s work is shit for one reason or another. So if they have more than one, they get pulled left and right all the time. It’s like that with all professions. Dentists tell you what’s wrong with the other guy’s work. So do accountants, so do I.T. people…
What they do now vs. what they could do?
John F Kennedy stole this line from a genius. “We judge ourselves on what we feel capable of doing, while other’s judge us on what we have already done.” Many agencies do great work which never gets seen, for whatever reason. Ask to see their rejected creative files.
Shit well shot
If an agency thinks a client is reasonably dumb, or they are pitching to a committee of 4 or 5, they will dress up the ideas to the max to make sure they like therm. The ideas themselves could be so lame it’s not funny, but well art-directed, anything looks good. Insist on hand drawn roughs with ideas – any agency can make anything look good.
Skills base
Do you need certain skills, in media, etc. – or mass market stuff?
The tools of the trade have really changed for marketing in the last decade. You may need strong resources in the digital and media space-someone with capabilities in video, blogs, podcasts, etc. They are often very different skills but still can come from the same people. It’s more important if they are comfortable with your communication style – if they only do big powerful ads and you need a soft sell done with long copy, ask yourself if they can change their head-set?
Don’t get fooled by the promise of big name creatives (who may never work on your business), marketing ‘sophistication’ (I hate jargon – it’s used by various professions to pull the wool over the eyes of their clients), many offices, or ‘international alignments’ etc. They are like mobile phones or cameras that have so many features they can virtually make you breakfast – do you really need to pay $10,000 more per month just to be able to see ads from London, when you could see them on YouTube for nicks?
There are many agencies who boast big, impressive client lists who only have them because their owners in London or New York signed a world-wide contract. Think Nestle, IBM, Ford etc. Thus, they do not have the talent that won the account. Don’t let a big client’s logo behind the receptionist’s desk fool you.
Fit with your company
They must fit your culture more than anything. If they don’t understand you, they’ll never get your brand. Go with people you can really talk to.
The agency must also fit the stage you’re at. A big corporate with 20,000 employees can only use a little agency for top of the heap stuff like corporate TV or little jobs for small divisions. They can’t get all their stuff done by a small company, there’s no capacity. Likewise, a big agency will ignore a small company like you ignore an ant. Decide if you want to be a big fish in a small pond or whether you’re happy being one pretty fish in their glass bowl. It’s about balance – can they do our work? Will they care?
Don’t jump too quickly
People often throw the baby out with the bath water – most agencies are dying to put their grubby hands all over your baby/brand. Often just to prove their ideas are better than the last people’s – you need to make sure you know what is sacred to your brand’s existence and what is transitory. Would Maccas change their logo to blue? Would you let them do it if you were marketing manager?
Two or three bites of the cherry
Sometimes a good agency doesn’t get it first time around. If you really like them, tell them what you think isn’t working and see what they say. If they are grown-ups, they will probably come back with some other ideas or a new approach.
Dumping the old gang
This needs to be done carefully and with diplomacy. Many a split has been caused by poor basic communications or even accounting on either side. This is something that can usually be easily fixed. (And many a creative group has mysteriously lost all your artwork after a nasty break-up. Whoops – the server fell over!) Know first that you are sure, and remember never to jump out of a plane without a parachute.
Process for selection
- Check their website.
- Choose about 3 or 4 to see only (the more, the harder the decision will be and the more of everybody’s time you waste).
- Ring and make an appointment (first few are usually free).
- Brief in the project/pitch details.
- Offer a small sum for their time – say $5,000 to be taken seriously for a small pitch, $50,000 for a Telstra (it will still only be 10% of their costs, but you will sleep better).
- Give them 2-3 more meetings and about 3 weeks to do the pitch.
- See them in 90 minute windows – do not let them drag it out.
- See only one or two a day – you will be exhausted otherwise.
- Take another week before you decide who to chase up – sometimes ads take days to register, even on you.
- Negotiate a deal.
What would you do?
If I was choosing an agency, whether it’s for creative, a design job, a media buying group, it doesn’t matter which, I’d decide what size I wanted and what kind of work/talent skills I was looking for. Check their sites. I’d ask the most interesting three to pitch, just with rough drawings of ideas or media strategy – not completed negotiations – and a three page proposal. I’d judge them on the quality of their ideas and how accurately they met that exact brief. Then I’d give the best two of them one little job each. Maybe a magazine ad, maybe a media buy, whatever.
Given that went really smoothly, I’d negotiate with the one I liked best on rates and retainers. And not actually decide until I’d finished that whole process.
Next week, I’m writing about changing a company’s focus from production and financial stuff to a marketing emphasis and how to do it cleverly. If you’d like to help me to change focus, call me and we can dine over it.
How creatives charge
Make no mistake, if you don’t remunerate them well, no-one will be motivated to work for you. There are seven key ways for agencies, but none of these are mandatory now and it’s usual for only 2-3 to be in your contract:
Media commissions
The original percentage of spend approach, usually 10 percent. This of course encourages high media spend, low creativity.
Service fees
A basic up until about ten years ago, service fees are almost unused nowadays. They used to be 7.5% of total spend.
Hourly rates
Run normally against a timesheet, these reflect the work done. It may cost you more than you want, but is no doubt pretty fair for all.
Project fees
Usually quoted at a flat rate. Be careful to include multiple versions of copy, as you may change your mind at great cost. Small creative groups spend hours accurately costing each job, then go broke and disappear.
Retainers
A fee per month that usually has X number of tasks in it, and an over-run if there’s extra work. Almost all PR firms live on this system alone. Can be good value, can leave you wondering what they did for last month’s $10,000.
Hit fees
Sometimes a brilliant idea, logo, TVC, product concept comes from someone you don’t want to sleep with, but are happy to dance around a hall with. You can pay an agency a once-off fee for the idea and everyone’s happy. You could rip it off, but hopefully they’d sue you for theft of copyright.
Sales/results
Some strugglers (client or agency) try to sell a percentage of sales deal. These are notoriously hard to measure, hard to contract for, hard to follow-up and can lead to very nasty court cases. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Recent research
(B to B Magazine, 15 January 2007)
B to B Magazine asked marketers to rate their relationship with their lead ad agency. It found that 23.6% of marketers are “extremely satisfied” with their lead agency; 52.9% are “satisfied”; 19.7% are “somewhat dissatisfied”; and 3.8% are “extremely dissatisfied” with their agency.
Currently, 16.4% of marketers are involved in a search for a new agency; top reasons for searching were “current agency is not producing results” (29.9%), “change in strategic direction on the client side” (13.9%) and “cost cutting” (13.4%).
What are marketers preferences? The overwhelming response was understanding the client’s business (cited by 64.7% of respondents), followed by good chemistry with the agency (17.9%) and outstanding creative (15.0%). Only 2.4% of marketers said price was the No. 1 criterion in selecting an agency partner.
B to B’s survey found that just over half (50.5%) of marketers use one ad agency, while 44.2% use up to three agencies and 5.3% use more than three.
A Guide to Non-Toxic Networking – It’s hot. The car’s air-con is struggling to fight back the strong northerly wind. I’m late. I hate being late. I always feel useless when I’m late.
I hurry to find a park, march the couple of hundred metres fast enough to be covered in sweat. I wipe my brow with the sleeve of my shirt (God I’ve got style) and charge up the stairs. I look around the room. There’s a couple of hundred people dressed in suits, (in fucking summer. Anywhere else they’d be in g-strings it’s that hot) trying to look business-like.
I cast my eyes around, looking for the people I’m supposed to meet, but they are not here, so suddenly I’m the one who can feel like they’ve got their act together. A rare sensation for me I assure you.
I’m still standing waiting half a minute later when the first drinks go past. I smell the beers and champagne wafting past, calling me like sirens on the hill ‘We want you Geoffrey. It’s been days since we’ve seen you. We miss you. Come Geoffrey, come to us, all is forgiven…”
I let my hand stretch out. A will of its own. The waitress (why is it all waitresses at these supposedly PC semi-government functions are always slim, pretty private school girls under 21?) turns automatically and slides the tray towards my paw. I grab the closest glass of shampoo, nod a thanks to her, sip the sweet nectar, and off I drift to party land.
My friends arrive just as I’m taking my second sip, and another waitress comes past with another tray of drinks. They grab a glass as I introduce them to each other. We talk about getting there, about the subject the key speaker will be discussing, about what happened at work that morning. This is Melbourne, city, lunch-time, any day of the week, any one of hundreds of similar functions. Today’s a political party election launch speech. Tomorrow could be an annual general meeting, a conference function, a formal lunch for a media group, or even a client. (But I’d be paying, and therefore grumpier.) I often notice the same faces in the crowd, often hear the same loud laughter, observe the same atmospheric changes, the same social processes of mix and mingle, massaging of ego’s, pulling of strings.
You can actually time the vibe change at most functions. They start to relax about 10 minutes after the second drink, which is usually about 30 minutes after they arrive. They will talk more, become more animated, their shoulders are less tense, their body-language more confident.
You have to ask yourself, what are we here to do? Are we really here to find out what Ted Bailleu is going to do to the State if he gets voted in? Or are we here for an excuse to leave the office hum-drum behind, or to further the cause of whatever cause we have on our horizon at present? Push the barrow, oil the wheels, stimulate the engine of commerce, make a quid?
Most people are here to keep themselves in touch. Not to learn much as such, because they won’t be able to give you more than a sentence or two in a week as a summary, but instead they are here to meet other business people. To extend the hand of friendship and widen their circle of powerful friends. Few will admit that. It’s frankly crass to raise the subject of networking. But that’s what any half intelligent person does in Australia, as often as they can.
Sign of a civilized society
Regular social interaction is the very definition of a civilized society. If you want to get anywhere in Melbourne, London or Tokyo for that matter, you have to know people. You network to survive and prosper in Australian business. God knows how hard it is to get anything done if you have to ring total strangers all the time. But if you met Fred at that function in the Docklands five years ago, you can still get through to him on his private line and you can still ask him if anyone in his department knows how to…..
Given that you’re silly enough to think I might be right, let’s look at how it’s done, shall we?
Your enjoyment is paramount
There’s absolutely no point in spending time doing anything on this planet unless you enjoy it. People who claim they have to work at this job or that, and hate it, but do it anyway, are frankly kidding themselves and are gluttons for punishment. If you really want to get away from anything in OZ, you can just walk. That’s the beauty of living in a democracy. A free society. Something the clowns who are always trying to impose rules on us ought to give consideration to occasionally. The less you allow freedom of thought and action to prosper, the more you tie yourself up.
That being the case, if you’re going to do anything, set out to enjoy it. I enjoy these articles. I’d be a fool to write them if I didn’t enjoy it. Ask yourself, as you walk into any function, ‘what would make this fun for me?’ Not ’what can I achieve?’ Or ‘Who do I have to be nice to?’ But ‘What will I do for fun?’
Always introduce
Not enough of this goes on. In really civilized places like London, Paris or New York, everyone introduces everyone to each other. They don’t stand around in little huddles of familiar friends. You can tell the banality of the group by how little they intermingle. The higher you move up the power-sphere in Australia, the more open people are to meeting others, the more they introduce each other. Go to a function of company directors or politicians, leading sports people, they will welcome you with open arms. Go to a suburban BBQ of strugglers, they will do it way less.
Always think of something to say about the other person and push them forward to meet each other. Even if you don’t know them. ‘Have you met this guy in the red jumper? What’s your name? This is Sally, she likes anything in red…’
Never ask what they do to start
On that subject, people will usually tell you. You almost never have to ask. And the more interesting they are, the more time they will take before they tell you. Sometimes I can’t resist and ask first, but you don’t really need to. It’s often quite interesting to see just how long it takes them before they ask you or tell you what they do.
The soft insult works
In Australia it is an un-stated law that people you can trust will insult you and people you can’t trust will say nice little things and agree with you, to get your guard down. If you understand this very subtle difference, you will be able to poke fun and to make friends quickly. I can’t begin to define the difference, but I know I like people who give me a hard time, a bit of cheek, and I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t.
A gentleman/lady
Is someone who makes others feel at home. That’s anything from not noticing them make a manners mistake, ie, the wrong fork, to not correcting their grammar, to not noticing their shoes are dirty or they are 20 minutes late, unless it’s a very old friend, where you can make a fuss of all of those things and get away with it under the guise of humour.
Go to the opening of an envelope
There’s never enough functions to go to. There’s never enough people to meet. It’s like being too rich or too famous, you can’t do too many parties, conferences, functions.
Dress sense
Dress for the occasion. Not to stand out if you’re a guy. To knock them sideways if you’re a girl. Simple huh? But always be practical. Heavy wool suits are stupid on hot days. Stiletto’s are not a good look on the teak decks of yachts. And remember what Chanel said. Before you go out, look in the mirror and take some piece of jewellery off.
Party drugs
Do you know the person? Do you trust them? Do you fancy them? As yourself these questions before you say yes.
Subjects to avoid
There are no subjects to avoid. In fact, it’s much more fun to discuss sex and alcohol with Muslims and or Born-again Christians, more fun to discuss real estate developments with Union bosses….
Never bore
If you have been speaking for more than a few minutes, shut up. If you have asked too many questions, just listen. If you see their eyes wander from you, or glaze over, move on.
How to swap cards
‘Give us a card’ is a lot better than saying ‘Oh, I’d like to contact you sometime in the future’. Always have business cards so you can ask for theirs.
Remembering names
I believe in making up nick names because I’ve got the memory of a tin sieve and it’s more fun and easier to remember a nick-name especially if you’ve coined it yourself. It also makes for a great bond with a stranger – they will love you for it. Then again, if it’s really insulting, they may not.
Taking yourself too seriously
You don’t matter a damn on this planet. We are all just a virus giving this poor globe a cold. You will be gone and not remembered in a hundred years. If you change the globe significantly for the better, you may appear on page 154 in a history book being written by someone doing a PHD. Don’t be serious, the rest of the virus can’t stand it.
Making an effort
Life should not be effort. No one wants to network with people who make things seem hard. Clever yes, witty yes, pretty, yes, insightful, yes. Important? No. See earnestness.
Earnestness
To quote one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Wing Commander Max Kirkcaldie, who trained the Battle of Britain fighter pilots, and made an outstanding Gin and Tonic, earnestness is the blackest sin. Never be earnest. Never spend time with earnest people. If you need a definition, or want to debate the above point, kill yourself.
Have parties yourself
So few people do. 20 or 30 years ago there were a lot more parties on. (I blame the safety nazi’s drink driving rules.) You don’t have to spend much money. A big bowl of chips in the corner and a BYO invite on email is all it takes. You could invite them to the BBQ’s on the Yarra River or the roof of your office if you don’t like your boardroom. And a party is a great excuse to make contact with all sorts of people you haven’t seen for years or to get near that special someone your friend knows but won’t line you up with…
Who to mix and who to avoid
Grand parents and kiddies make for family functions, but they fuck up a decent night. Keep age-groups within cooee of each other – that’s within one generation only. As far as mixing people at a function goes, if you’re standing with a few people, and wondering if you should introduce someone else, do a quick mental calculation about suitability. Combining clients and competitors or suppliers can be dangerous. Very good however to mix people with opposing views, for the sake of entertainment. The key thing is to make people’s night/day memorable. (It’s simply not done to invite people who all know each other, or all agree on an issue, to functions like dinner parties. See Etiquette.)
Read Etiquette books
Lade Troubridge’s is good. Jilly Cooper’s ‘Class’ has some strong points. Esquire, a famous magazine from the US (1930-50’s) has a great book on the subject if you can get hold of a copy. It also has some 100 or so brilliant cocktail recipes, which do go some way to fixing almost any problem. The bottom line is always do things you would like other people to do for you. Give enough notice. Introduce. Send thank you notes or ring the next day, open doors, make light of difficult times etc.
Don’t preach like I am – it’s boring
Sorry about this, but the format of this article is always telling you what to do. I try not to do that in person.
Invite people to lunch
This is my favourite meal of the day. Why? It’s easy to organise. It’s business-like. It’s say 2 hours of conversation, which is enough to explore lots of possibilities but not long enough to over-do them. It can be cut short ‘Sorry, they’ve just rung me, the bank managers in reception and I completely forgot about her…’ It can be healthy. Salad or fish?
Don’t expect to get something out of everybody
People are not commodities and most of us don’t want to feel used. It really should be as good or better for them as it was for you. The real purpose of networking is not a sale the next day. It’s friends. It’s having a mate who’s a judge to call when the police raid or it’s someone who knows where to get $5 million for a poker game. People to have dinner with. People to go on bike rides with. Yes, some of it turns into business, but if you go out looking just for business, you will often come back empty handed. It shows.
Picking up – do’s and don’t’s
Be careful in this, the most important area of networking. Do get a contact point. (Where they work and what department, is often enough) Do ask for a card. Follow-up at your discretion. Keep it business-like until you kiss them. If you know they are married, don’t get your hopes up for a long termer. Better a quick, enjoyable squeeze than no squeeze at all. Getting locked in a hotel room with them for a few hours is often a good idea. Excellent if the spa is bubbling and they bring a friend. Conferences in foreign cities were invented keep bored business people interested in life. And the golden rule? Whatever happens on the plane or in the lift, stays on the plane or the lift….
Match Making
Why not set people up? “This is Peter, he’s an HR manager for Xcom, and this is Sky, isn’t it? Sky’s looking for a few people for a project and, shit, Peter, she reckons she needs some help finding them….”
Most people go to functions to have fun and there’s nothing more exciting than meeting a person who you think for a moment might like to jump you in the stair well. And they may remember you in their wedding speech.
Wearing name tags
It looks stupid. It feels stupid. It is an American abomination. Yes, some dickhead may want to talk to you because you’re with a big company, but everybody hates them. Try swapping name tags with someone you like. It’s a great way to make the event more interesting. I find being Caroline Witherspoon, from Coca Cola or whomever, always more fun than being me.
Alcohol is your friend
My favourite father-in-law used to call alcohol the greatest of social lubricants.
Drinking to excess
Never do anything to excess. The intelligent definition of excess generally only involves killing you.
The devil’s in the details
It doesn’t matter what you remember about someone, the colour of their sox last time, their car is a hummer, their wife’s passion for sailors etc. Anything that gives you a connection is good. Use this to make conversation when you next see them. Twisting is very good – how’s your wife’s yacht business? Opens up a lot more conversational options…
Databasing
Yes, put their name on your database. Yes, consider contacting them regularly.
Following up
First of all, you should decide to put them into one of two categories, immediately. Category one is friend. In this case, when you ring them up, you don’t mention your business unless they raise the subject. And you don’t push a sale on them unless it seems requested. You may use the business subject matter to open the conversation, but don’t get all earnest and leave it there. Explore their backgrounds, interests. If they make it about business only, it’s their decision. If, on the other hand they would be better as a client for whatever reason, adjust your game as appropriate. Most of the networking stuff (books/emails/lectures) talks about following up the next day with a note or a phone call. That’s relevant if there’s something urgent you need to act on, like you promised them tickets to the concert tonight, but generally you don’t need to panic. Just because you met someone in February, and it’s now September does not mean they won’t remember you, as long as you weren’t a complete drip.
As my follow-up, next month I’m writing about turning a good business idea into a business itself. If you want somewhere to park some money or somewhere to get some, let’s do lunch.
I Love Coles, BUT…
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. This is coming from the next aisle. You could be forgiven for thinking it was a couple of iced-up hip-hop dudes from the western suburbs, all baggy pants and 50 cent attitude. You might imagine it’s a 3 year old trying to tell Mummy he can see a Truck on a packet of cereal. But no, it’s two blonde, jeans wearing, late 30’s Mums. The oft-cherished Household Grocery Buyers. Deeply pissed off with not being able to get the pasta sauce, biscuits, a cheese… can’t get the brands they want. These women are not unique. They are complaining loud and long right across the suburbs in their millions. They are upset that the supermarkets have introduced Private Labels and deleted all the little brands they’ve come to love. So the gourmet market is leaving. The middle ground is leaving. The poor down and outs are disappointed, angry. Any of us given an option are going elsewhere. It’s about choice, range, options. Pure and simple.
You can’t get what you want. You might like Milo or Nescafe, big brands, but you also like that funny little brand of capers from Portugal or the roll-mops from Finland. So by deleting the smaller brands, the supermarket is destroying your sense of self. Your kitchen, your family, is not as it was.
This is the direct result of a management policy running like a rampant disease through retailers in supermarket land. Dumber than shooting yourself in both feet with a spear-gun then trying to justify it by saying you’ve got less chance of falling over, the Coles, Woolworths, may-be soon the IGA’s of the world are taking what we want about them and ditching it out the window.
The concept of Private labels is in direct contrast to why I go to their stores in the first place. Why do I go to a supermarket? Because I can’t get certain stuff at a Milk-Bar. If the Milk Bar on the corner had range, was a similar price and obviously more convenient, I’d shop there over the supermarkets. Derr. And they think I don’t care. And that I’m so stupid I’m likely to believe their product is as good as an independent suppliers. People who’s lives depend on the product competing.
Who this really hurts
You and me. It’s often poorer quality. The wrong shaped granules or bitter tasting or whatever. In many cases sizes aren’t optimal, colours, packaging etc. don’t suit so well. Or it’s shit made in China, not Australia, for the sake of a few cents less.
And obviously it massacres the companies that make things here. And the small and large suppliers to those companies – the truckers, the input products, services like accountants, ad agencies etc.
But the thing that saddens me most is the stupidity of the strategy in a marketing sense. Not content to prove their own lack of imagination and education by constantly harping on about price when professional marketers all know there are other more effective, smarter sales motivators, many of the supermarkets and other big retailers continue to doggedly trade on price.
Where supermarkets do offer service (How can I help you today? – Foodworks) community involvement (Supporting our local community – Ritchies) convenience (We’re locals and we’re proud of it- IGA) etc. they do way better. But the best strategy of all, in any retail setting, is range. Giving people stuff they want. Delivered best at present by intelligent independent supermarkets. The little guys. Good on them. If you want to see range and how it works, in Melbourne, try Leo’s in Kew. Or any of the small supermarkets in Atherton Road, Oakleigh or Sydney Road Brunswick. In Sydney, I’m told to try Jones the Grocer or About Life.
In Brissy, Fresh on Melbourne, Power’s Markets or James Street Market, Newfarm.
Balance? What’s that?
This treatment by major retailers of other businesses reflects no understanding of the delicate balances working in our society. I remember overhearing a quip from a buyer once ‘It’s mind over matter. I don’t mind and they don’t matter.’
The march to Private Label displays no integrity on the part of the big supermarkets. Nor for that matter, any integrity on the part of the sucker companies making for them and thus, like sheep racing up the Abattoir gang way, assisting in their own destruction. (Yes, I know they need to feed their families. Which is the only reason they go along with what amounts to blackmail.) A limpet on the retailer whale shark as it sucks out their production lines, making someone else’s brands on minimal margin. And just as bad – often disappointing their other customers; the very people they need most – weakening their negotiating power still further.
Attitude
The arrogance of the big guys. The cheap-brained grab for money. The condescending assumption – that our desires don’t matter – only the eternal dollar. The sheer bad naturedness of beggaring little companies all across the land. The draining effect on Australian morale. Our diets dictated by what Coles or Woolworths management deem us to be able to eat. In a democracy? Talk about losing touch with your consumer….
Market power
This arrogance comes from the knowledge that a lot of people will have to change the buying habits of a lifetime for them to lose market share. The current situation is that 75% of the $60 billion grocery trade in Australia is owned by just 2 companies. I wonder how long this dominance will last?
With Coles (these figures are a few months old – one wonders how far they have got with this plan) the aim is for 6000 (six thousand) products to be in the mammoth ‘I love Coles’ range, at 10% cheaper than the ‘average’. I believe they are up to at least 2,500 or so. Some 230 plus in the ‘Smart Buy’ range at 30% cheaper. I guess that would be the black and gold stuff- all crumbly loo-paper, gluey pastas and stuff your dog would say no to. About 200 of ‘Coles Finest’ at the same price as the long-dead average competitor. That’s, in many categories, three ‘brands’ they own. How much space is left for the products they have unashamedly copied? Coles wants 30% of all products to be house brands by mid 2008. Are they on target?
Woolworths is just as bad at giving customers what they want. They are looking at 900 ‘Homebrand’ at 30-40% cheaper. 300 or more ‘Select’ at 10% cheaper. But they are being slightly sneakier about it with what seems to be more home-owned but not acknowledged brands, registered to their various offices locations. They own ‘Southcape’ and a stack of other pseudo brands. (With Coles look for ‘Toorak Rd Tooronga’ on the label.) Which makes many of these figures miniscule in reality – the hidden home-owned brands, I’m lead to believe, account for much more than either will admit to publicly.
Retail cancer
And the sickening thing is it’s not just supermarkets. Almost all significant retailers, from Bunnings to various Chemists to the Just Jeans and Dick Smith’s of the world all do it. The bloody tyre shop has it’s own brands. Like I want to trust my families lives to the (sadly) recently deceased Bob Jane’s product development department. What’s that consist of? A grumpy part-time buyer beating up Dunlop’s lowest paid engineer?
And it’s all over the world. Tesco has 31% of the UK grocery mkt and Sainsbury’s 16% grocery mkt. House brands account for 30% of all lines in the UK. 20% of all products bought in Europe and the USA are now private labels.
Goodbye consumers
It looks like an unstoppable machine. One that flies in the face of fairness and customer enjoyment and respect for your buyers. Where were the people in their marketing departments during lecture 101? Or haven’t they employed any qualified marketers?
Their boards talk about a marketing focus but they don’t satisfy customers. They talk about destination shopping. The shopping experience. I live the shopping experience every day and I’m telling you it’s getting worse by the hour. I’d rather drive 10 minutes further and go to an independent where I’m often the only person in the store who speaks passable English.
Aldi as a model?
From fear of competition, Coles are copying Aldi, a bottom feeder from Europe that targets the poorest 10% of the public (pensioners, unemployed) and sells them their own brands at a considerable profit. Instead of taking their rightful place as a middle-Australia supplier fighting shoulder to shoulder against Woolworths, Coles are diving their brand down the feed-chain, chasing Aldi. Why ruin Coles? What do they think their own discount-house brand oriented Bi-Lo stores are for?
Why do they do this?
The real motivation is margin – from 15% rocketing up to 45% plus. More control. Possibly to save on buyers wages. The business model is ‘We’ll steal their idea’. And the culture is ‘we are invincible.’
They hide this grasp for profit behind the expressed motivations of ‘Saving you money’, ‘Better quality control’ and the frankly incredible ‘We can do it just as well as them’.
Who this really helps
Only retailers. To a lesser extent, over the short-term, it potentially helps the mythical ‘shareholder’, (Westfarmers bought Coles recently, so it can’t have worked for the shareholder much, can it?) but actually it helps directors and various key executives on short-term arrangements with KPI‘s that can be manipulated to make it look like it’s going to be profitable. Heaven help the long-term employees or the public.
Not helping marketing one bit
Where are the marketers in Coles and Woolworths? What are they doing about this? Are they so scared of the accountants sitting above them that they don’t say or do anything? If you’re a middle level marketer at a big supermarket, you’re not doing your profession any good being there.
Our lives are affected in some ways worse than anyone else’s. For we marketers this policy reflects a severe professional threat. With some 10,000 or so Private Labels eventually cramming the shelves of Australia’s major retailers, without marketing budgets, that’s five to 10,000 or so marketing managers and/or product managers, sales managers out of a job. It’s less work for the media, the packaging people, everyone. You, as a marketer, have less chances with your career.
The destruction of these brands undoes decades of well-meaning marketing effort. If a brand is killed, it’s a useless word on your CV. It’s actually poison. ‘Oh, they went broke if I remember, was that your fault?’
Get this right. Fewer brands = fewer opportunities to stand out and lead = fewer chances of riches and glory and/or working for yourself etc
Big is not always right
I know this is sacrilege amongst ‘academic’ marketers, but we can’t just accept that because a practice is conducted by a big company, that it’s OK…somehow acceptable by mainstream marketing as a ‘marketing rule’, just because X corporation does it.
Surely our collective role as professional marketers is to make people’s lives better, not worse?
Open your eyes
What can we do about it? See the aggressive chess game for what it is. Watch the brands evaporating faster than the sugar dissolving in your coffee this morning. Talk about it openly and honestly. Call it the I.P. & asset theft that it is. The rape of Australian small business. The abuse of market power. Write to the ACCC about it. Send them an email. Ring them. Let’s hope with Rudd in they’ll try a bit harder than they did under Howard.
Shut up
If you’re a manufacturer squeezed between the pressure to give the buggers more market information to justify your product’s inclusion on their planner-gram, versus the certain knowledge they are about to launch a competitor directly against you, don’t play their game. Don’t make their products. Tell them to nick off.
Help those who help you
Seek alternative distribution anywhere you can. Put whatever ad money or support you have into the independents. Mention their stores on your ads. Shove your promotional people in there too. Nothing nicer than being accosted by someone offering a tasty tidbit while you slide down the aisle. Give them gondola ends. Case deals. Link your website to theirs.
Develop products with the independents that have say a 5 year exclusivity – guaranteeing they will keep your brand alive long enough for you to build it in the minds and buying habits of the public. Help them anyway you can. Making the independents a more enjoyable shopping experience, a more successful operation, will help them sell more of your stuff.
Change your channels
Look at other distribution options – web selling, party-plans, home deliveries. I don’t care; survive. You could set-up retail yourself. I met a pie manufacturer the other day who makes four brands and when I suggested he could run his own stores, he laughed at me. ‘We’re not retailers’. Well I’d rather be a not very good part-time retailer than just plain unemployed.
Promote, promote, promote.
Never before has the pressure been as intense to own a piece of your public’s mind. To develop, to cement loyalty from customers and retailers, than now. Powerful, creative, intelligent advertising will protect you way better than any other thing in this fight to the death. The reason most second/third tier brands are in trouble is because they have not promoted themselves well enough. American HVPG companies spend 10-12% of their turnover on promotion. Australian, more like 5%. Think about that.
Pick an agency.
Then pick a few media and attack the buggers. Give the public a reason to demand the product. For the buyers to fear dropping you.
Treat it as war
Use all of the weapons you have in your arsenal as a trained marketer. P.R. is good with HVPG, so’s TV, magazines, outdoor. You can run cooking shows now on you-tube. The digital world provides you countless options to promote your products and save your company. Don’t just sit there like a stunned mullet waiting for the filleting knife.
Innovate
You can even change your products so they have enforceable I.P. protection, even patent protection via unique packaging or formulae. Fundamentally, the reason retailers can copy products and get away with it is because those products have become a commodity due to copying in the first place by second and third tier brands. Make yours different.
Don’t help them
If you have to come to some agreements, do it badly. Plan your tactics so it doesn’t quite work for them. Stall, miss-deliver. Drop pallets. Don’t return calls. Make it hard for them to stuff your industry, whatever that industry is.
Gang up
You could get together with the other guys with similar equipment, similar suppliers – I know it’s illegal to collude – but that doesn’t mean you can’t have coffee with an old friend to discuss economics. Be careful of the 1974 Trade Practices Act – you can’t be proven to ‘withhold supply’, but there are many ways to skin a cat and these are decidedly feral.
Marketers are such wimps. I can’t remember the last time marketers in any industry got together to protect themselves and look after their own interests. Farmers do it all the time. So do Doctors, Master Builders. But marketers? What’s wrong with us?
What’s to stop a few decent, gutsy marketers forming an association? The ‘Anti Privateers League’? Or ‘Not at Home’? Or ‘No Name, No Future’? ‘Black and Blue about it’? Or ‘CCRAP – Companies and Consumers Rallying Against Privates’ We could get the ASMI & AMI behind it. God knows they do bugger all else.
Don’t shop there
And most of all, don’t buy the house brands. March away with your wallet like the smarter side of Australia is already doing.
Retailers
If you’re a retailer reading this and going purple from my attitude, put yourself in the position of your customers, for once. Do the right thing for your fellow Australians. If you have to make your own products, contribute to our collective well-being.
Help us
Do original products. Do better products – solve problems and/or inspire us with healthier preservatives, smarter, less wasteful packaging, more natural formulae, sharper blades, quicker setting or something else that’s useful. Market those improved products like professionals. Give yourself a reason to have some pride in what you do. Make we fellow marketers respect you rather than just fear you because you’re big and fat and can suffocate many of the smaller guys with a fart.
As a final point, I’m not anti-retail. I love retail. I just want a relationship with retailers that’s mutually satisfying.