Starship Articles
I’m at the mall. An American term. Actually it’s Chadstone. Mecca for merchandise. One of the leading shopping centers in the world and an Australian commercial icon. Promoted as ‘the fashion capital’, it’s not hard to see why.
Chadstone swells with a throng of people. Self-conscious about what they are wearing, how they look. A flowing sea of ages, shapes, sizes, outfits, carrying bags, sitting on stools, bumping into each other, meeting.
Two Paris Hiltons, perhaps 14, are stopped by three younger 50 cent types (Hip Hop clothes – baggy pants, trucker hats, hoodies) wanting directions then asking if the girls want a Juice? The girls are polite but cool, disinterested, non-committal. Looking around for a better option. A couple of 16-year-old surfer guys wander past. They see the scene. Turn. Sharks sensing an easy feed. The two surfer types (cords, t-shirts, paler colors, bleached hair) stop about 4 meters away. They whisper quickly then turn again and look straight at the girls, challenging them. The three younger guys tense up, knowing they are not winning. One taps his mates on the chests and walks off. The other two follow, regretting.
The girls hide their grins. Walk over towards the surfers and stare into the window of the shop next to them. Knowing the boys are interested, they enter the store. It’s House. Pans, napkins, plates. They point to stuff and I can see them mouthing, what’s this for? The boys follow, pick up similar things, make the same funny observations and thus, contact is made. The whole process might have taken 3 minutes, the time it took me to get a skinny latte.
This is the life of Australian kids, other than school or home, they live at shopping centers and fast food outlets, surrounded by tons of stuff. Tempted by everything. Swimming in a sea of brands, retailers and tribes of people.
Estimates vary from $5 to $10 billion of direct sales go to teenagers in Australia. (US figures are $100 per week, per kid) A conservative figure from the Australian Family Association put the average weekly disposable income of a 14-17-year-old at $37.79, which totals about $2.1 billion for that age group alone. Add to that their influence across everything from the family computer or TV to what kind of car Dad gets or the brand of bread he buys, you can see they are a critical market for many companies. Marketers find them a challenge – almost out of reach. Marketing pundits like me usually refer to them as media savvy. Switched on. I think it’s crap. They are technologically savvy – they’ve been brought up with PC’s, mobile phones, the Web, but they are not marketing savvy. They haven’t been around long enough to have seen the ads or heard the lines before.
But they are no doubt cynical, born out of years of being sold to. My seven-year-old knows the jingles for lots of ads word for word. By seventeen how many will she have seen? A lot, but a hell of a lot less than a 37-year-old.
How they think
Yes, teenagers are cynical, but still passionate. They are often passionate about being cynical, (which confuses many researchers, who take it at face value) but they are passionate about everything. They feel. They care. It’s about hormones. From 12 to 20 your body is raging with Testosterone, Estrogen, and the thousands of other hormones that ark up your libido and spark up your brain.
Embarrassment a way of life
One of the key side effects of raging hormones is an acute self-awareness. If you are trying your best (to get laid, noticed), you often mentally sit outside of yourself, critical of your own behavior, clothes, friends, family. This leads to embarrassment wherever reality falls behind your expectations. For a teenager, brought up on a diet of mega cool music videos and TV ads, faced with the blunt truth of growing up in Dandenong and being driven to parties in Mum’s Magna, embarrassment is a way of life. But it always has been. I’m pretty sure Jesus was embarrassed about Joseph being a carpenter, when He wanted to be the Son of God.
This constant observation, coupled with their rapid learning, due in part to the fact they are at school, being continually conditioned to learn, means they change and develop rapidly. They are quicker to take up a new concept than any other significant market segment. Making them the main group to launch new technology and fashions at. They are, by definition, the major early adopters of our society.
This speed of information up-take is neatly balanced by the desire to fit in. To find peers they can relate to, people with whom they have common interests. You can’t have a social life or a sex life if you don’t have any friends. Kids get together and form tribes, gangs. You’ve seen them. The Skaters, The Goths, The Barbies. There are heaps of tribes and most of them act according to what they see in movies, video clips, ads.
As teenagers have for decades, they copy the heroes of the day. In the 60’s it was Jagger or Lennon. Today it was Paris, last week it might have been Delta who those two girls modelled, as they put on their mall outfits. These gangs also stand for certain values and words. This tribal behavior makes psychological segmentation vital if you are to target them successfully.
A negative outlook
One of the key differences you can see between a teenager in 2005 and one of 20 or 30 years ago is in their perception of the future. Even with the cold war, things were not this bleak for my generation. Today’s teenagers feel they are living in dark times – the clouds are swirling over the land of Mordor.
We have a very effective education system. Those lefty teachers at most government schools have taught the kids about the poor state of the environment, about global warming, about over-population, about globalization, about genetically modified foods, about greedy board members paying themselves millions while the company goes backwards etc. The kids see corporate behavior not as a good or neutral thing, but often as a real evil. So they often view people who work for those groups, that means you, reader, in the same light. Not to be trusted.
Regardless of the fact that teenagers can’t stand us, and would rather have their finger nails peeled off than talk to advertising people (According to Speak Easy Magazine, BSB World-wide recently video taped the bedrooms of teenagers in 25 countries supposedly to gain insight into how they think, but I presume it was because they are closet voyeurs and also because the teenagers wouldn’t talk to them face to face.) My mates in adland absolutely love them. They’ll always include them in the media mix. They’ll always talk you into designing special ads for them in street press or on TV. They’ll always make a fuss about their particular angle with youth. Why?
Why is marketing to youth so important to the ad industry? Because we all want to be young. And our young creative teams are more familiar with youth trends than with older people’s trends. And because they remember, very, very fondly, being young. Young people have thick hair, tight muscle tone, rampant sex lives and no worries about mortgages, spouses or kids. Young people don’t have to clean up. Don’t have to make a dollar and can just live on a beach somewhere if they feel like it.
And ad guys love this market because it’s a fickle market. You can get it wrong and often no-one over the age of 20 will ever know. You look good just by trying. ‘This is our hip ad for the youth market’ says the 60-year-old board member to his wife proudly – they both agree it’s very slick and funky. They wouldn’t have a clue. But their 14-year-old grandson will barf with embarrassment.
The differences between someone 12 or 19 are extraordinary. Sadly, they are often targeted by the same campaign. As a person I think you change more during these years than at any other stage. You are more experimental, more political, both on a micro and macro level, more idealistic, more certain, more easily influenced. You are being educated at home, at school, on the bus, in the back of a car. You are being manipulated by friends, governments, corporations and someone you’d like to manipulate too if you could only get them to think of you as cool…
How to market to teenagers
You have to get into their minds.
One of those square daily philosophy diary things that some guy had in his office one day said ‘Life is a journey of going from cocksure ignorance to insecure awareness’. We are all sure we know everything at seven to seventeen. It’s when you’re 27 that you start to question your own assumptions, and ask better questions. You have to get past their biologically based belief that they know all.
You need to either make them fall in love with your brand, which isn’t hard, given they are so full of hormones each and every one of them could jump-start the sex industry. You can use sexiness itself as a tactic, (the fashion industry is really only about sex, when it comes down to it) no doubt they focus on it. Or you could shake them like a football coach, shouting at his team during the half time break when they’re 20 goals down. On the subject of sports, celebrity endorsements work well, but chose your hero wisely. Pepsi is still often associated with Michael Jackson.
Give them a forum
The research says if you give teenagers a way of expressing themselves, of debating issues, talking about say the environment, or corporate governance, they appreciate it. If you’re prepared to view things their way, and not dictate what’s correct, they will treat you with the same respect. I’ve yet to see a marketer pull it off effectively, but I like the theory. I assume the best ‘forum’ would be chat rooms on websites. Particularly as 38% of teens are on-line more than once a day, according to Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Focus on your core brand strengths – don’t patronize
Look at Foxtel, Macintosh (I-Pod), Rimmel (The London Look). If you work on the basis that they are not stupid, but rather, just less experienced, and you don’t assume they have already heard it all before, cause they can’t have, you’ll focus on core brand strengths. If you do, you won’t need to segment as much. And no one likes being talked down to, but it’s worse if you use their language.
Speak in your own language
The kids absolutely hate it when an older person or a company uses their words or phrases. Speak in plain English, only. No matter what your research says, if it sounds OK to a 30-year-old – like how a teenager would say it, it’s cringe-worthy.
Media to use
Multi-media
Teenagers will listen to their I-Pod while watching TV and reading a magazine and doing their homework on the web. Giving all of them equal attention. I don’t know how. What that behavior does say however is that your creative better be bloody good or it won’t get noticed – it’s often competing with three or four other bits of very professional creative at the same time.
But which media?
Teenagers use all the media except perhaps direct mail, as few of them are on lists – they haven’t bought a car in their own name or registered for the dole etc.
I favor TV and some radio stations for mass. (1 in 4 children have a TV in their bedroom). SMS (teens want instant gratification and results and SMS provides this. and outdoor, (particularly barely legal street posters) work too – you can’t exactly avoid an ad at a bus shelter if you take the bus from there everyday to school. I think the soon-to-be-here video phone ads will be a great opportunity to get a message to them at a relevant time. You will be able to send a message when someone is within a certain distance of your store – ie. “Feel like a drink? There’s a Juice bar on the corner of High & Long Streets”…
The internet has a 75% penetration rate amongst Australian youth, teens are also the Chief Technology officer in their household. Yet 89% of 13 to 17 year olds have never made an online purchase. Due to a lack of a credit card. Have you tried online accounts where parents deposit funds and the teens can redeem them for points at certain websites, creating opportunities for tieing in parents loyalty cards.Digital credit where teens win points on websites, they are then directed to an advertisers site to redeem points for purchases. Or shopping via web-enabled phone, with charges applied to their monthly bill (hopefully) overseen by parents. And remember that the internet is not a boys domain as 48% of teen internet users are girls.
Getting a brand recognized as ‘cool’ is important, so advertising in the right magazines is vital. Teenagers read a lot of magazines as mags give them a chance to feel like they belong in that crowd, yet are not expensive. Dolly, Girlfriend, Smash Hits and many of the skateboard, surf titles, like Chick etc are effective, as long as your creative matches the environment.
Point of Sale
‘Cool’ packaging is a big winner in this market, as it is with any market. Anything bright and funky looking is usually popular with the younger female members of this group. Save the chic, streamline stuff for those in their twenties.
How to behave
Respect them
No-one wants to deal with a company which doesn’t make them feel welcome, and a valued member of the human race. Especially when you as a teenager suspect a company’s motivations. You can’t just say ‘we respect you’ either. You must prove it. Watch the kids entering a bank. Are the staff friendly, welcoming? Or do they stare at them, wondering if they are on drugs?
Educate them – Demonstrate
At few other stages in your life are you as open to information than at this stage. This segment represents a great opportunity to attract people who may be customers for many years. But they need to know why they should buy your product or service.
And frankly, as a marketer with an ad budget, and hence some kind of influence on their lives for whatever period, a blink of an eye or a year of the same series of ads run on TV night after night, I feel you need to communicate with them in a way that helps us as a society. Please do your ads with respect for our way of life and their long-term good. ie. If you’re going to show a gorgeous girl eating, don’t have her eating crap. If you are going to show people enjoying themselves, don’t make it hip to be stupid. I’m very sure much of the youth suicide epidemic has to do with their lives being hopelessly outside of where the kid’s expectations are.
Where you have a weakness in language – and we know you and I hardly speak it, and various tribes and ages use different terms (12-20 is a long road), you’re way better off to use visuals to communicate.
Teenagers are acutely visually receptive. They are observers. Which is why fashions are so critical. And so dangerous. Instant segmentation. Instant loyalties, values, instant dating of the ad…
But showing intelligent actions works fantastically. (Think of the current ‘you can’t choose your family’ Ad for Toyota Ecco) not for any arty or smarty-pants sake, but to demonstrate the product, the service, the benefit, the reason to be of the brand. And hopefully also giving the teenager tools for life. (ie. In the Ecco situation, you write the number down when the person calls. Derr.)
Given you are exploring the minds of our youth, I reiterate I think you have a responsibility to our entire society to do it with good intentions.
Here I need to add the key rider –if you can’t say something with entertainment value, something either emotive, beautiful or clever, you have absolutely no hope of holding their fleeting attention. It is far more cost effective to avoid trying to drum a dumb message into their heads, the cost of the media is prohibitive due to the need for repetition. Due to poor advice and a lack of either decent research or creative resources, lazy or silly management often spend a great deal more than they need to on communicating with teenagers. Use the powerful, scary creative. It’s cheaper to run and way more effective.
Yanking
Our kids live on a diet of American fast foods, wear American fashions, listen to music, watch American movies and TV shows and use American slang. This is nothing unusual across the globe – kids all over the planet are wearing Nikes, eating Hershey bars, listening to Eminem. It’s laughably referred to as ‘Globalisation’ by Americans and their cohorts. I see it as an invasion of our culture by another, larger one. And it’s simply a reflection of laziness and weakness on the part of our marketing managers. It’s so much easier to go along with the yanks and use their product choices, their ads. You’d have to ask what a marketing manager’s role actually is, if everything comes from the States. Media booker? Sales person? Only? And look what the effect is, over time – our kids become American.
Is that a bad thing? The answer depends on whether you think ‘Australia’ matters.
I don’t hate America. I wear American clothes too. I am using a Mac right now. But I don’t love America. I love Australia. And I want to defend it’s culture. We must look after our people, our way of life. It doesn’t have to be jingoistic crap with Waltzing Matilda as your sound track, but show Australians in ads. Use Australian locations. Use our words. Use our personality. (Don’t just use our voice-overs and hope you’ll get away with it, either.) Or we won’t have an Australia. We’ll be just another banana republic distribution point for Proctor and Gamble or Ford. If you really want to see where the balance lies, where the values are, try suggesting to your American bosses that they use Australian ads, cause you’ve already done them and our teenagers are the same anyway….
I don’t just blame Marketing Managers. Our media barons are doing exactly the same thing. It’s cheaper to fill our airwaves with American shows than make Australian ones. I loved watching Sex in The City, but I loved even more, for very different reasons, The Secret Life of Us. You’d hope Kerry or Rupert would give a fig about where they grew up, wouldn’t you?
You’d think those who influence our kids the most – the media, (besides you, Miss Marketing Manager, with your 30 seconds a time golden opportunities) would get a kick out of creating shows that actually make Australian’s proud to be Australians, and may-be our teenagers feel a little less suicidal, a little more motivated, wouldn’t you?
image sourced from Angie Wang
http://okchickadee.com/portfolio/willamette-week-illustrations/
What is it about young men? They just can’t take their hands off it. They love the intense. The detailed. The more maybe plausible, the more wonderful. The web is the absolute pinnacle of wank; there’s lots to get excited about and very little comes of the experience.
Despite the web’s huge faults, like the rest of them, I absolutely love the damn thing. I wouldn’t give it up for the world. As a buyer, I’m impaled upon the horn of a dilemma; I have to buy the web, and it’s great to work in, but how do I stop myself getting annoyed at the wankers?
Why do they Wank?
Web has the WOW factor. On the surface, the web offers the best of all worlds. An interactive one-on-one with customers, with TV style creative, at a fraction the cost per hit, often. And it’s sure to get better. It’s now an integral part of almost every campaign run in the western world. I’ve not had a client brief us on anything in 3 or 4 years that didn’t involve some element of working in with their web-site or creating a new one.
From the little school girl selling hand-made designs for Xmas cards to the grandmother giving advice on how to cut roses, the web allows commerce to bloom at almost no cost and with no barriers. As a servant of the species, I can see few greater political and social developments. It’s a damn shame it is really only helping us in the West, but in time…
It’s big for marketers
You can reduce costs while increasing the information and improving the sales experience. You can segment, hit and adjust messages instantly according to effectiveness; all this for almost no increase in cost per sale. And it can hit anywhere in the world.
You can get close
Theoretically you can develop strong bonds with customers via the web, especially with chat rooms and the like. By definition it’s got to be with people who don’t have a lot to do with their lives, but hey, if they have the money, who cares? Does your business interact with customers? Or do you just post up electronic brochures? You can do both.
You can hit on the ones you want
You can find anyone with the right search engine listings. People who want to get it off with caterpillars. You could up-sell them to butterflies. Cross-sell them a net or flowers, value add with repellent (to make them more of a tease) and perhaps a can of insecticide to ensure they have to come back to you for more once the relationship has died.
You can change your appeal in minutes
The blue coloured background is getting 57% more sales than the purple one. Let’s do them blue. Or you can play with the search engine keywords – see what happens.
You can tell your mates
Ain’t it nice to send a (retailer, wholesaler, even support staff etc.) customer to your website while you’re on the phone to them. You can say, “See the red one there? That’s the model you need. It fits and doesn’t it look great? And $300 less than the oppositions. How many pallet loads should I put you down for?”.
How to do it with a smile
I must start this bit with a caution. There are a lot of intelligent sounding 20 something’s running around spitting jargon at their customers. They wear stylish glasses. They look you in the eye. They believe what they are saying. They are much more ‘aware’ of what works on the web than you and I, except for one thing. They are full of shit.
What works is:-
1. getting people to your site
2. convincing them to buy something
3. taking the money from them
There is no other reason to operate a site, unless you’re in the charity business. I reiterate the blinkingly obvious here because so many people miss the point. Bottom line is all that counts in cyberspace, like any other media.
What to look for
Design – Always be good looking
The media does not dictate the message. The punters see your normal ads. They will see your website and expect the same. The punters expect companies to talk with one voice. They don’t have time to make distinctions. The basics of design, which you, or at the least your creative team, should know from other direct disciplines, must be adhered to. Appropriate and effective colours, good typesetting, keeping the message simple, putting emphasis on the products that have the best margins etc. and especially respecting and helping the punter’s purchase process, stay the same, regardless of media.
Dumber the better
I’m fairly stupid, so I’m a big believer in simplicity. That goes for everything on the web. If you don’t get it instantly, remember; neither will anyone else. Navigation is critical. You must make it drop dead easy for even the dumbest to find their way around your site.
First impressions count
Like any sale, the first few seconds are critical. Give them a moving front end, for 10-30 seconds. It will keep them entertained for the first short while as your back end loads. Ideally it tells them what the site’s about, or what’s on special. It hugely reduces the surfing effect – keeping them on your site. (Be careful your e-commerce system works with the programs. I’ve been warned there’s been some problems.)
Seduce your customers
Movement and sound give this. Sound is often turned off on people’s computers, but this is changing. I heard somebody is developing smell for the web (that will be great for selling things to eat and really interesting on the porn sites).
Dress for them
Make your pickies in the style of your audience. You can’t use stock shots or clip art, unless you want to look like every other pissy little home business trying to masquerade as a big company. It’s about standing out from competitors in a market, but still fitting into the punter’s expectations and within your branding. It’s a tricky art. It is often best to leave at least the ‘template’ design to your agency or design team.
Be a sincere brand
Stick to a theme. Make sure it’s in keeping with your normal corporate communications. Your brand you’ve spent years and millions building should not take off on a tangent just because some kid straight out of design school is working on your website and he wants to show something exciting to his girlfriend.
Buy off the rack
If you’re smaller, there are great programs around now like Sausage’s Business in a Box etc. which allow you to set up your own web-site or at least have your own team update it cheaply. Get your own digital camera. Shoot and upload yourself. It will save you heaps of money.
Old lines and tricks work
If you’re a bigger player, talk to successful big players. You don’t have to invent your own total systems, regardless of what the IT department says. Groups like E-Store have proprietary systems they may sell/lease to you that seem to work for large inventories.
Be deep
If they seek more information on whatever the topic is, have more if you can. It’s good to have facts beneath the hype even if they are just references or links. It gives you credibility. No-one buys from the shonky. Earn their trust. And remember people will often pay you to have their link on your site.
Like equals like
Book marketers do this well. They link a purchase of a book with other sales to people who’ve bought that book. They tell you those other people bought X, Y & Z titles too. It instantly generates up-sells, cross-sells etc. You could do that in almost any market.
As them the question
You can ask a few questions when they fill out the registration form. You can even do it with pop-ups as they skim through. (They tend to be a bit unpopular – it’s important not to overdo it.) Gather data any way you can. It’s good to know what your customers want and it’s bloody near free.
Update your act
Nothing upsets a customer more than incorrect information. And if you’re not careful, Professor Fels and the Australian Competition and Consumer Cavalry will get you.
Watch Out for ‘Maintenance’.
I hate the word. People doing something that can’t be updated unless they do it and charge for it, data holding charges, data transfer charges, the list is more extensive and harder to fathom than bank charges. Then again, you don’t want the thing clogging up when your TV campaign starts, because it can’t handle the volume. But be very careful what on-going costs you get locked into.
Get others to pay
If you’re putting in links, or want to show details about the products you’re selling etc. ring the supplier and ask them if they want to pay for the privilege. Think like Yellow Pages. Try ‘how about a few bucks towards our costs, thanks’?
Assure them you’re safe
From having a physical store, which gives the punters confidence because they can take back the goods, to safe e-commerce by using a familiar branded system etc.
Do the deed
Get the bloody sale. Some of the most successful sites are still only achieving sales of one in 500 to 1000 people who visit them. The worst problem seems to be abandoned shopping carts. The best system (and I’ve never seen it operate) would be live (or apparently live) contact via the site during the sales process. “I’m John, can I help? I see you’re interested in a Titanium G4, do you want us to throw in a DVD drive?” Another good closing device is increasing the expectation that they won’t get the deal unless they buy right now – “only 10 left – hurry”. Try anything. Only a few seem to have got it right.
Give it to them
Like all the other aspects of a sale, if you make the delivery hard or expensive, poof- they are gone. Offer cost and timing options. Deliver when you say you will. Or at least tell them what’s happening, and give them alternatives by email, so they don’t get angry with you.
How to buy the web as a media
Bigger is better
The big players, like the banks, telcos, TV stations etc. get more hits. They can afford to advertise their sites. More critical, we often have to use them since they’ve closed down all their branches. You can just rent space on banners, pop-ups, sites within sites and the like, but you can also do link swap-deals, share inquiry leads, value-add to their information and any way you do it, you’ll benefit from their huge catch nets. Yes, they want their pound of flesh, but you know if it’s going to pay very quickly. If you try the search engine, banner ads or whatever they are trying to sell you for a few hours and it doesn’t work, drop it.
Hits don’t always click
‘Hits’ could be gliches on the telephone wires. They could be people opening the page, saying to themselves “Shit, I thought I was going to Big Hunky Pricks, but I’ve landed on BHP, and they look bog ugly!” and leaving again. Yes, BHP has had a hit, but so bloody what? On the other hand if they click through for a while, ie. look at mineral prices, delivery systems and try to open an account, you’d have to say BHP is communicating with its market. At a cost of 0.1 cent to 10 cents a ‘hit’ (I rang a few) they don’t seem expensive in comparison to the per-click rate of up to $2.00, but it’s what you’re getting for the money that counts.
Pay by sale?
If they really think they have something sexy, offer the promoter a deal where you pay per sale. If they take you up on it, they’re either confident or stupid, which is OK by me.
Ask what else they can do for you
You can set up a banner ad so it automatically sends sms messages or more complex emails to punters, plays videos or music, runs searches, games etc. Sounds nice. Try the ideas on a small scale and please make an effort to track them.
Search Engines Sell
Some 81% of surfers get to your site via a search engine. Businesses that optimise your position on the right search engines can get you business, but watch their costs.
Look excited too
People who sell space on the web are often easily scared off. I think it’s the whole ‘we’re cyber surfers, not capitalists’ bit, but the poor little things get all shaky if you don’t look interested, so please be encouraging. Oh, why bother? Try this instead. “That sounds very exciting, are many of your clients actually making money out of it? How can you prove that to me?”
Where are you going now?
As it speeds up and becomes more focused on working efficiently, on generating funds and opening up markets, the web will be one of our core marketing tools. It’s way beyond the fringe now. As it invades our homes (in fridges, on phones, replacing TV) the web will evolve into the thing you, as a marketer, will spend more time in than anything else.
It’s nice to know the web is destined to become much more user-friendly for everyone, especially very important customers like you and I. Let’s just hope it’s representatives become more realistic along the way. Remember the old saying: ‘Judge them on what they actually do for you, not what they say they’ll do’.
Vanilla Products vs. Nouveau Rich.
New, Vanilla Coke. I can see myself, lying in bed. So stoked I can’t sleep. Desperately waiting for dawn. Dying to get down to the supermarket to grab a bottle and rush outside, slurping it down, drenching my shirt as the cool, wonderful liquid washes down my throat and changes my entire life… I don’t think.
You’d reckon with the sort of turnover and market presence the world’s largest consumer product has, that just a tiny bit of that money would be spent on thought. You know, a simple, logical, basic, humble thought like ‘does any body really want this?’ Or do they think so little of their customers they are prepared to just push a product on them with the incredulous statement, ‘Reward your curiosity’. Curious about what? What a bit of vanilla might do to the taste of Coke? MMMM, fascinating. I could spend hours thinking about what it might be like…
No. I lie in bed, instead, thinking about how to launch new products. Products that are not just dumb brand extensions. Then I get up, shave. Shower. Drop the kids at school. I go to my first meeting. “And let’s throw new services in there too”. I hear myself thinking, toying with my notes about this article, as I sit in another meeting with the finance company who wants to be a bank. The debate goes on. What do we call it? ‘It’ you ask? Yes, it. The ‘new’ bank.
Well, if you’re half way to being a marketing professional and you were going to take on a role like that, you’d ask the question ‘what is it you want to stand for?’.
The trouble is, they can’t answer the question. They look at me blankly. The silence is the embarrassed kind, like when you find a nasty stain on your pants front. Then someone pipes up, ‘Well, we’ve promised our distributors we’d have this all tied up by the end of the month, so we need to get on with it.’ Why were they ashamed? Because they knew in their hearts that there was no need for another home loan. There’s millions of them out there.
Which brings me to the key thing about new products. GIVE THEM A REASON TO BE.
The public hate me-toos. And they hate stupid brand extensions, designed only to milk a bit more out of them. The public (and I expect you fall into the category of ‘the public’ in most aspects of your life other than in the marketing of your particular little niche area/industry) expect something new to have been created to fix something. They expect people to have responsibly thought through customer’s needs. And they can’t believe it when idiots just launch products or services that are the same as every other one on the shelf. They say “that’s dumb” and they are absolutely right.
Why launch a new product/service?
It gives you an exciting project. It gives you complete carte-blanche on positioning, pricing, placement, people etc. It gives you a great item on your CV and lots of sleepless nights wondering about the design, the ads, the media buy, the distributor’s loyalty etc.
It gives you several months where everyone in the company can interact with you. It also gives your sales reps plenty to gossip about. Plenty of reason to ring those contacts they felt havn’t wanted to hear from them again. It gives your printers plenty to charge you for. It most probably gives your retailers (sorry, ‘channel partners’) a reason to notice you, and your loyalist customers another reason to buy something from you, just to ‘try it’. It may even give your employer a return on their investment. And the Chairman’s wife something to comment on at the Xmas party.
But to you, that’s nothing. To you, a new product is everything. It’s your golden opportunity. Some of you reading this will be remembered in awe for the decisions you make in 2003. You will be revered for creating a major brand. A product or service that earns millions, if not billions of dollars for your company and its successors literally, potentially, for hundreds of years. Something to be proud of. To be bold about. Something that gives you a sense of true worth. Something to smile about on your death bed.
Please don’t let yourself down. Don’t be scared like the Coke people are, into doing crap just to keep their jobs. It’s a risk, but it’s not that risky. It’s not just only 1:10 succeed. Brands change their ownership, their company structure. Their business name. They do way better than one in ten.
Yes, many fail. But isn’t it better to have a go, than spend your life living in Vanilla land?
How to choose a new product
Ask what is really needed.
I know I harp on about market research while most of my contemporaries are happy to give you advice about what’s in or out or what they’ve done lately, but hey, I think the fundamentals are more important than the icing on the cake. I’ll put it another way. I know you’ll make more money if you get your shit together.
Ask your current customers what it is they want, now. Use your customer registrations if you get them. Try other alternatives, whether that be by focus groups, chatting at a BBQ or going on-line, check your customer complaints, try running a competition for new ideas etc.
Get input from the players
Ask your retailers, agents, distributors, sales team, the receptionist, whom ever may have an impact on the success of the product, what it is they think it needs. Have the critical ones, like the buyer at Woolies, if you happen to be in HVPG, to build the baby with you. Take them the research. Take them the sketches. Discuss pricing and segments etc. They love to be involved. If you listen and act on their comments, they take ownership. They care. They’ll buy a bigger slab when it comes to the launch and they’ll defend you and your in-store real estate if you struggle a bit at the early stages, like all babies do.
Caution: Stay in business
Prioritise possible new products under a likely time-line scenario. Always put resources first into the cash-flow option. The product/service which will show almost instant returns. Millions of company failures have occurred because the person in your position has tried to chase the big winner and ignored immediate income. Putting up with poverty in the pursuit of immortality may seem romantic, but it doesn’t pay the rent. Once you have a winner or two paying the bills, you can get on with the more idealistic ones.
What to do once you’ve chosen the product/service
Develop a prototype and show them options
Get the production department to knock up a prototype and take it back to the market. Go through the whole process again. Do not let your ego get in the way of its success. (On the other hand, sometimes it’s best to do something so completely left-field that only a small percentage will like it. That’s OK if they happen to have the money, may be loyal and there’s enough of them.) If it’s the wrong color, price, shipper configuration, change it. (Ditto for services. Give it a name, a rough brochure, do the distributor research then the consumer research.)
Check the nitty-gritties
Should it come in a six-pack? Can the trucks carry it cost effectively? Will the shipper slide in the warehouse? Will there be insurance problems? Has the labeling met the standards? Go through every tricky detail over a few days then get someone else in the company to do it too. For this task, use the anal person in accounts you hate. That way, they’ll come up with every reason it won’t work six months before you have to answer the same issue at board level.
White Board It
Come up with every possible use, market niche, roll-out scenario you can dream of. Then come up with every possible thing that can go wrong. You could call this a SWOT. Shove this after the business plan.
Cash Flow it
Have fun with XL. What if we could get X for it? Do estimates of your highest expectations, your medium and your most depressing. Take the mid-ground to the board. You’ll be amazed at how a set of numbers gels a board into action, no matter how dubious. Get a ‘development’ budget out of them.
Write a Business Plan
You can’t expect me to go into details, suffice to say if the exec summary runs over a page, the board will go to sleep.
Go back and get a real budget
When it comes to asking for the real budget, get twice what you really think you need.
Brief all the outside consultants
Design, ads, PR, DM they all complain about being at the end of the line when it comes to big projects. Fine. Get ’em all in a room together. Make them all sign a confidentiality agreement. Run through the project. Be open to what they say. Give them the details on the budget on the white board and slice it up according to what they agree on. This can be great fun.
Give it a ‘brand’
Fully brief your ad/design team. Motivate them. Make them sleep with the product if you can. Have them understand its uses, it’s advantages. Have them invent a personality if it hasn’t quite got one. Brief them to create your vision. Ask them to consider a wide range of media. See how they think it might work as a TV ad, say 2 years from now.
Get extraordinary creative
It must reflect the essence of the brand’s reason to be. Knock back the first couple of attempts until you’ve got in your hands something you can’t stop telling people about, it’s that good.
Get a forward order
With whatever the ad/design group gave you, (packaging roughs, TVC’s whatever) go back to your original distributor contacts and ask for a forward order. Do any deal you can to ensure that some channels/retailers are behind the product even before you’ve made any. This will give everybody on your team some confidence. Confidence is vital if you want them to stand behind you when the shit hits the fan. And it always does with a new product.
How to launch it well
Test Market
It’s almost professional negligence not to do a test market if you can. It’s best if it is run against a control location – say you use Ballarat as the test and Warnambool as the control. This should be undertaken as an exact replication of what’s planned across the country and it does take a few months. But it sure beats spending bigger money and finding out you’ve got the premise wrong.
Seed the Market
If you’ve been a good boy/girl you will have already set up the key distributor buyers. It’s time to use your PR team to drop stories in the press/TV about the need for a solution to this/that terrible problem.
Launch Day
There’s been heaps of articles about how to do an exciting launch in this mag in the past. So I’m hesitant to step on people’s toes. Always try to get an exciting, relevant location. Give it a theme. Invite a few well-chosen celebs, all the distributors and suppliers who’ve been working to build the baby, the TV/radio/press journo’s, and a camera crew to film interviews etc. for the stations who don’t send a camera man/journo. Have as many of your team there as possible. Board members are good. Even try to have a few people there who’ve had the problem your product/service is trying to fix. They make for great interviews.
Chase up all of these people a week before the opening and the morning of it as well. Send cabs to get them if you have to. Most players go for a morning launch so you can get it on the evening news, but it does depend on the target market etc.
Make sure the speeches are very short, the visuals are exciting and benefit oriented, and the food (and booze if it’s after midday) is excellent. Spend your time when you’re not speaking, introducing people to each other. Get your team to do the same.
Then send out quotes, stories, footage etc. to the right journo’s/producers, depending upon the story. And you should get your PR people to chase up all the producers/journos to make sure they’ve got the footage, they are excited about the story etc.
Launch options – the slow burn vs the big splash
Philosophically, there’s two ways to do a launch. You can do the slow burn where you dribble information and product into the market, or you can do a big splash. Big splashes work better to generate immediate interest for obvious reasons, but are a real strain on the cash flow, so you’ll need deeper pockets.
Most smaller companies go for the slow burn (hoping word of mouth will kick-in) because it’s more affordable. It’s also, in practice, riskier. Sadly, slow burn’s often run out of steam as they don’t quite meet sales expectations and the distributors declare the product/service a looser. There’s plenty of other products/services vying for a good location in the supermarket or on the web site.
What to do immediately post launch
Inspire the team
No matter how good or bad the launch went, tell them it was fantastic. Get em excited. Lead from the front. Get em on the phones. Go out to see the bigger clients yourself. Get the orders coming in. Shout out when you get them. Convince every body this is a winner.
Work the team
Have daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly meetings. Make individuals soley responsible for certain aspects. Force them (I use that term intentionally – I don’t care if you do it with promises, guilt, money or threats. Use what works.) to meet call requirements, sales targets. Sniff for politics and stamp it out. Don’t let it be the people component that kills the product/service.
Media
Please do what your agency recommends about dominating a media and being single-minded about the promise etc. (Exactly what you choose will depend on target markets etc.) Give a copy of their prop to the board – just to cover your arse.
Don’t go against gut feel
Have some balls (ovaries?). There’s a lot to be said for ‘If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you’ to quote Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem. Gut feel comes from observations you can’t quite put a finger on. From experiences as a kid. From knowing when another person hasn’t got the faintest.
If any of the great inventors hadn’t heeded their gut feelings, we would never have had their inventions. In all seriousness, would you have encouraged Alexander Graeme Bell to keep fiddling with his ‘telephone’ in the 1800’s? How would it have researched?
What to do a month after launch
Call your distributors with a formal questionnaire, say a fortnight or a month into the launch. Go over every aspect and where they sit. Are you meeting expectations here? There? What do you need to do?
Check your/their expectations against any market indicators as soon as they are available – warehouse sales figures, web site hit rates, PR releases/runs, shadow shops, even an awareness study if you can afford it etc. It’s brilliant if you have warranty cards or some other customer feed-back in place so you can check real buyer demographics against anticipated customer profiles.
Meet with your ad agency/PR people. Go over the launch, what worked well, what didn’t. Whether you’re meeting sales targets. Seriously consider whether a change in strategy/ creative, particularly positioning, may work at this stage. It is almost always the cheapest option. You’ll still have to be running ads, so why not make them as effective as possible?
Cut/expand distribution
Depending upon initial customer interest and (if you can afford them) shadow shops, consider how/when to focus on better retailers or spreading the task amongst more, if that’s what you think you need.
Keep the Board Happy
Do a presentation to the board about how things are going. Show them graphs. Notes from phone calls if that’s all you’ve got. Hide nothing from them. Explain your thought process and ask for their input. If you’ve kept them informed/ excited about the project along the way, they’ll be chomping on the bit to find out anything now it’s up and running.
Hit On them
This is also when you may need to ask for more money. Don’t be afraid. It’s better to ask only a month or two into the launch than six months after, when the product has really begun to falter through lack of finance.
Take a holiday
About three months after the launch you’ll be wrung out. This is when a thick book, a warm island and a quiet spouse are invaluable. Spend a week in oblivion, then come back and act like the bastard/bitch you have to be, all over again.
You will not go down in history, or for that matter just break even, unless you work your team /market harder now than anyone has worked them before. A new product or service is a delicate thing. It must be protected and nourished. Supported at all costs. Little tiny weeds in the garden become great big gum trees in time.
In the Grand People’s State of Australasyia, there is nutritious food for all, a superior education system, lots of sport, an effective health care system and a sense of balance and fair play in things social and commercial. Regularly the people make decisions on things that effect their lives; government, major purchases, infrastructure, international relations, even taxes and laws.
The sages who keep this running smoothly, the true back-bone of the country, are the marketerians. They are the holders of all true knowledge. The great marketerians are in, or at the key seats of power. The marketerians hold sway, represent the people to those whom they have elected, and often make the final decisions. The marketerians are revered for their honesty, their frankness, their translucency.
The marketerians do not rise to these positions of trust and power lightly. This is not a born-into profession. They must study for many years, work hard at their calling. They must learn the subtleties of social management, psychology, research, decision-making, finances and law. They dedicate years to honing their peculiar sciences and arts before they can work at the highest levels of their calling. The marketerians are like Tibetan Buddist Monks or ex-footy-players; revered across of the land of Australasyia.
And they do have a sense of humour – which is an important trait for running a happy society.
Australasyia wasn’t always a happy place. And every year the people celebrate to remind themselves of what used to be, and how much better off they are now. Every year, on Guy Fucks Day, (or Fuck Guys day if you’re so inclined) an effigy is burnt of the beancountians, who used to control Australasyia.
When they were in power, all decisions were made on the basis of profit and those same profits invariably went to the beancountians. The people were badly looked after, the environment was polluted, there was unfairness at all levels of society. The rich got richer, the poor became poorer and only the beancountians were enjoying themselves. Because they like stuff like that.
They despised orginality. They worshipped copying. They thought if you haven’t done it before, how do you know it will work? Little rules were set up for everything. All daily tasks had to be done in just so a way and in just so an order. Cruelty, blame-labelling, penny-pinching ruled instead of insight, democracy and freedom of choice.
This went on for a long time. For years the country had been held to ransom and squeezed of it’s humanity by arguments that the only thing that mattered was the bottom-line and the only good decision was one that was sanctioned by the beancountians.
And the beancountians were very political. Paranoid. They looked around for people who might be against their values, who might be able to threaten their strangle-hold on power. They despised the marketarians, who’s values were very different to their own. They plotted and schemed to control the marketarians, to belittle them, to make their lives hell, to convert the marketarians over to beancounterism. They took any steps they could to ruin the marketarian cause.
It got so bad that the beancountians actually took control of the marketerians professional society – they put their men on the board and told those same men that they would give them board positions on other boards if they did things the beancountian way. They insisted that everything be decided on the basis of numbers and greed and that the things to instil upon marketerians were aspects of their own beancountian profession like measurement and process-management instead of inspiring things like self-development and environmental improvement.
They got the marketarians society to spend a lot of it’s own money on a bench-marking study that was designed only to instil more control and less creativity. Because creativity and the strategy that stimulates it, are the enemies of all beancountians.
The beancountians even had a magazine they published. It looked like the true Marketarian’s magazine, it sounded like the true Marketarians’ magazine, it even had articles which were like the true Marketartian’s magazine, only it was not as much fun. It was therefore not read much by real Marketarians, and was laughed about by the true believers.
Naturally, many members of the marketarian philosophy were angry about the demise of their profession, but the beancountians were in control of their very society – what could they say, what could they do? If they argued about issues that were not beancountian focused, the debate was shut down and their very membership of the society was threatened. Were they too good for the societies rules? Were they not prepared to toe the line? To match the ethics of the society? The rules, of being a ‘good’ marketarian (neatly adjusted by the beancountians as you know).
One day, after secret promises were made to each other, a small group of clever marketerians decided to wrestle back control of their lives and their country. They plotted and schemed, just like those nasty beancountians, and eventually took over one little company. Then another. Then an institution. They would buy up a few shares, get on the board and vote off the beancountians, (except for one symbolic book-keeper – there’s some things that are simply beneath a good marketarian.)
And, just as the beancountians had wrestled control from the people in this sneaky way originally, the marketerians gradually became relevant again. They began to get self-esteem back. They began to feel that their calling was important, that marketarianism was worthwhile.
Eventually the marketarians were in a position to challenge the beancountians in a vote on leadership for the biggest companies and institutions at their annual general meetings.
Because they listened to the people and insisted on saying the truth about the current conditions and painted the future as what the people wanted, the marketarians won hands down.
But the beancountians refused to go. As the marketarians now ruled all the important institutions, and they were at their very heart, fair-minded, it was decided to put it to a people’s vote.
The result was that the beancountians were given three choices. To be castrated from money. To be castrated literally. Or to have their personalities castrated instead. The beancountians all chose to have their personalities removed.
So every year, on Guy Fucks Day, the marketarians consciously fuck up something for the beancountians and a hundred thousand beancountians don’t find it funny at all.
Ever want to be a true marketarian? We could be. What’s holding us as a profession back from taking our rightful place at the centre of the circle?
Marketing is stagnant
We, as a profession, sit – a rudderless barge, too fragile and small for the open ocean; locked in a stagnant pool of self-loathing. Convinced of our own inadequacies, we accept our role as number two to the beancountians. We need to think about relevance. You see this at almost every company and institution in OZ. The marketers propose something, the bean counters either say no flatly, or make outrageous demands – making the marketers life hell (when have you seen an accountant’s idea require 50 pages of report? It’s not, it’s just accepted as fact; because they trust him/her) before a poor copy of the idea is accepted, usually castrated of its originality, and starved of funds.
I have been a member of the Australian Marketing Institute for some 3 or 4 years and got bugger all for it. I’m also a member of half a dozen other organizations, from chambers of commerce to clubs to similar professional groups and I get more from every single one of them than I get from what is supposed to be the peak body of our profession. What’s wrong with the AMI? What can we do to make it work for us?
We need growth
The accounting profession has two key bodies you can join. You’re either a CPA or a Chartered. These two bodies together manage some 100,000 members between them. There are far fewer accountants out there than marketers. Almost every business has more marketers than accountants. There are also many hundreds, if not a few thousand people getting a degree every year in Marketing or a related discipline that would see them logically becoming a member of the AMI. But they are not joining. The AMI could have several hundred thousand members. It has about 5,000. Let’s do something to pull it out of its doldrums.
Get women involved
A large percentage of marketing managers and other marketing professionals are women. I’d guess at 60% plus. Almost every account manager at most agencies is female. But there are far too few at AMI events. It seems a very male-oriented club. How can the organization attract more women? More interesting functions? More female speakers? More relevant services?
Engage and empower the youth
The AMI has to engage younger members of the profession. I rarely see people under 40 at AMI functions. The AMI needs a big influx of young people of both sexes. It needs lots more functions aimed at them and it needs to listen to their ideas and to change to suit their desires.
Give us value-adds
Where are the deals done for the members? Where’s the discounted cars, the free insurance, the lower mortgage rates? See the spread sheet for other occupation’s benefits.
Promote our profession
Do I have a badge to put on my car? A bumper sticker that says ‘Get a marketer to do it right?’. or ‘Want a finger on your button – get a marketer?’. A tie? A pin? A set of cufflinks? Earrings? What? Nothing?
Where are the TV ads pushing people to only trust a licensed marketer? The fricking plumbers society gets more promotion than we do. The Doctors have their own TV shows, and a lobbying group that would scare a herd of elephants. Where is our lobbying at federal level for more funding for our profession? Were we even represented at the 2020 summit?
A better name/Qualification?
Yes, there’s CPM, but you have to jump through hoops (come to this course for $1500 – it’s so many points. If you don’t, you can’t be a ‘professional’) just to stick a series of letters after your name that no-one has ever heard of. Who introduces themselves at a BBQ as a CPM? CPA’s do it all the time. Even the name is again copying the accountants, not doing something for ourselves.
Give us a better name than ‘Marketer’. It doesn’t work. People think you sell vegies from a stall. Inspire us. How about a title infront of the name instead of after it? Like Dr or Sir. How about Don Geoffrey? Kin Geoffrey? Yo Geoffrey?
What should we do?
- Run the show like marketers (How would you expect lawyers to act – like lawyers?) Make decisions like marketers. Practise what you preach.
- Get some funding
- Research what the profession and public think – find out what it is the profession wants; touch upon the taboo subjects like our name and our professional status, do it with internal and external input and do it fast and water-tight. Get some insight and make decisions.
– How do we want to be perceived?
– How do we get there?
– What will it cost?
– Who’ll pay for it?
– Benefits, distributed to whom, are?
- Work out what stance helps the profession. A new game plan? A new name? A new set of values? A new symbol? A new professional marketing budget?
- Get some more funding
- Determine the best team & appoint them
- Get the changes underway.
- Go to Cuba for a holiday.
Fresh leadership
The main people at the head of the AMI have done a sterling job getting us this far, but like the entrepreneur who can’t take his baby past the $100m mark, it’s time to let some other people take over. Time they moved on and let younger, more in-touch, driven people get involved in leading us forward. The old grey mares need to go out to pasture. Can’t we get some energised people in there who can motivate, invigorate and lead by example?
Outcome – 2014
Picture this at 10.30 on a Tuesday night (Free to Air, Paid or Web) :-
“Tom Petrovski, thanks for today’s sharemarket comments. Now we’re switching to our resident Marketarian for today’s broader economic analysis – Touloa Abdoula – your comments on the crisis at Ford?”
I’m sitting on the couch. I’m watching Two and a Half Men, which by the ratings makes me about 30% of the population. I’m feeling very male. I sniff under my arms for re-assurance. I’m glad I showered this morning. I’m almost tempted to get a beer and put my feet on the coffee table. But would I dare? It’s a glorious, well-crafted worship of ‘blokes world’ (see it on CH 31) without the tits and hotted up cars.
Yes, it’s hopelessly sexist. Yes, women are only recreational devices, stalkers, cleaners or ex-wife harpies. Charlie, the owner of the house, elder brother and ‘great guy who gets laid more often than eggs’ hero, is talking to his ‘you’re a wimp if you have kids’ brother and he’s using terms like ‘boner pills’ and ‘like dude, tell summon who cares’.
And I think about this, as I’m mulling over how to put a Guerilla Guide twist into my article in our ‘digital’ edition.
Charlie is supposed to be American ultra-elite. Look at his ‘ideal’ lifestyle. Living right on Malibu Beach California, works in music. Writes jingles (could own an ad agency – hey?) Multi-millionaire, single, 40 something, white, middle class, talented, good-looking,
if you like tall dark and handsome. Charlie Sheen is not exactly portraying a struggling up and comer, the deserving guy who’s got talent but needs a lift out of social obscurity. He’s portraying the back-bone of America. Their social leadership. And here’s my point. He talks street talk. Yes, it’s white middle class street talk, but never the less, it’s not perfect English and it sure isn’t Australian PC corporate talk.
And there you are wondering, as you sit in your nice corner office over-looking Sydney harbor or Adelaide harbor. Sitting there wondering if the English your legal team has just sent back to you is putting the emphasis quite right on those banner ads you’re about to run on Facebook.
No matter how well strategised those ads are, if the language is half as bad as most of the ads run in Australia today, you won’t get the desired impact. They are not written in an English we, the public, use anymore.
Australian advertising on-line gets shit-house results. The bench-mark/gold-standard for web site visitation to conversion is 14% – Roses Only. Amazon gets 10% sales to hits. What does your site get? 2%? One?
No wonder we’re still trying to convince boards that digital is better. The language is so bad coming out of ad agencies (and marketers) that I’m surprised any sales get made at all. No wonder the best stuff is purely visuals. You can’t stuff them up anything like as easily.
We in marketing land in Australia are at a major cross-roads. We are losing contact with our customer base. They are seeing (you tube) videos, watching TV shows, hearing radio announcers, speaking with people on the street or at the shopping centre and their language is one direction. Then the punter turns on the box or hears ads on the radio, and the marketers making those ads are talking another language completely.
The language that works isn’t a ‘learning experience’, it isn’t a ‘productivity gain’ it isn’t ‘choice’. It’s only choice if it’s used by Maori to describe the desirable. As in when you are told you have been given half a dozen Scallops with your chippies and you say ‘choice bro’.
It so isn’t the crappy, mamby-pamby stuff you hear pandied across your office’s meeting tables every boring day of the week. It’s real language. Spoken by real people. It has mistakes in it and repetition and the sentences don’t have subjects and the replies don’t match up and the words tumble over each other’s speech.
I don’t care how right on the money your marketing department think the wording is, how legally correct the lawyers in compliance find the wording. The public simply do not understand it. Yes, it occasionally makes sales. But they only turn on and focus on the ad when they absolutely have to buy that car or that widget cause the last one’s gone to God. The poor public have to de-construct what corporate Australia is trying to say to them to actually engage with us.
The public are speaking 21st century mid-pacific English and most of your ads are mid – 20th century middle class Australian English. There’s a long way between the two. Whole words mean different things. What does sick mean? What does bad mean? Or soft? Gay? Blonde? Mad? Nasty? Fat? Dirty? To be nasty is to be a) very sexy b) bad tempered c) cheap and tacky. Even blonde old me can give you at least three opposing meanings for all of them.
As we talk about digital marketing over the course of this article, and while you read the rest of this, the leading publication on Marketing in Australia, keep this bit of data firmly in your over-worked, over-educated mind: all the theory stuff means absolutely nothing if you don’t use words the punters will understand.
Get control of your communications. Manage your legal team. Soften up your board to the idea of speaking like their customers, or continue to drive them away.
‘But it doesn’t make sense’ I hear your board saying. Look at it from the public’s point of view: Would you listen to someone shouting at you in Swahili? Nup, you’d walk off as fast as you could.
Now, assuming you have the power to get some or all of your communications written/ recorded in the same language as your customers speak, let’s just for a moment talk down and dirty digital.
Advertising online: Digital is very dirty
The most interesting thing for me about digital communications is that the power has gone back to the people. (Yes, I hereby confess to being a closet believer in democracy, sorry Ruddy and Turnover.) And because the people now have control over what they watch and what they think about, they can tell all those smarty-pants control-freak types they have always hated, to go fuck themselves. They can tell their teachers, their parents, the snotty well-spoken rich kid who played chess at lunch time, everyone they hated to go fuck themselves. And they can do it so easily. They just watch and do what they like, instead of doing what WE want them to do.
Communications in digital land is so lollies in the supermarket. The public can’t help themselves. 10 year olds kids with money in their pockets and no parents around to tell them not to buy all that sugar. They go for the easy, the fun, the stupid, the gross, the revolting – the things they really fancy.
Trying to get the public to go for sensible, well-worded ads that are just so and have a punch line and that your accounts department think are good, is basically like trying to get ugly, smelly, recently divorced men to make the bed properly. Why should they care?
It’s your problem Miss Marketing Manager to get them to listen to/react to your ads. If they aren’t exciting (and insert whatever basic instincts you think would be appropriate to assume here, please) and well, basic, then they are gone.
Whenever we do banner ads, we stop and say to ourselves ‘is this dumb enough’? ‘Is this on the edge enough’? If your mum would approve, the public won’t even see it. It will go past their eyes like wallpaper.
Think of the emails you actually send on to your mates. What is it you send on to Kyles, Cirsty and Samantha? The nice stuff?
Go for vomit, boners, naked desire. Violence, humiliation, greed and lust. You could add in, for good measure, a bit of sheer envy and some nasty druggy gossip. Learn from tacky women’s magazines. They know how to talk to women – when they get it wrong they all lose their jobs cause the circulation goes down the toilet. You have to have effective communications when the public has the ability to turn off.
I’ll make that point again another way. They can turn off, so you have to turn them on.
Digital may be dirty, but it’s not dumb
Digital, whether we’re talking digital TV, digital web, SMS, MMS, QR codes, I don’t care if we’re talking implanted silicon eye-balls on tram seats, digital is informed. It’s uber smart. It’s individual, identifiable, measurable, and trackable. It is therefore also 100% accountable. That you can now track customers by buying habits and psychology as well as straight identity and demographics, makes this age absolutely marketing nirvana. When I was studying marketing, literally before most of you reading this were born, there was no such thing as accountability. Sure, there were lots of theories, but no actual figures. No identifying who likes which ad. Today, if an agency is not organizing that sort of feed-back for your campaign, they are, by definition, years behind where your competitors all are.
They are reading your thoughts, Hal
I remember being briefed by a whacko born-again Christian who made us sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (ten years ago, ten yr ctt I can talk about it now – Nannannanah David!!) about his plan to generate artificial intelligence to get into customers minds via their PCs and track their motivations, so he could pump them with ideas of his own making. We rejected the ‘deal’. I remember thinking at the time that his ideas were sick. They are now common place. It is happening today via cookies and cute little micro-programs and you have no idea where this data about you ends up. They are reading your thoughts. But do you care? Only if you have something very nasty to hide.
If some organization had enough people with time on their hands to track my scattered ramblings, I’d be more amused than anything else. But do most reading this really like the idea of having their simplest, silliest thoughts in someone else’s hands? Oh, yes, I forgot, they do already; twitter.
The world is art – good or bad
There are thousands of I.T. departments out there in corporate land who now effectively have control of companies communications. They are deciding the content of banner ads, websites, MMS, SMS’s etc, and they are doing it because they have always wanted to be creative and can use jargon to make you think they have to do the work. You or your agency can talk till you are blue the face about needing to align the mainstream branding with the on-line work and they’ll ignore you and put up some ad that looks, says and effectively is from another head-space than yours.
This reflects on the world as we know it in a strange way. Our visual world is becoming uglier. The art we see, most of which is advertising, is becoming worse. The I.T. departments out there, who are now in effective control of most company’s face are not trained in design or have any appreciation of communication disciplines. They are, we should not forget, the dweebs in the corner who no-one would talk to at lunch time at school and they have grown up nasty and twisted. They like art like manga (Japanese violent mags) and tattoos. They think comics are well typeset. They do crap design cause they don’t have the ability to do anything better.
And your company therefore ads to the mess that is generated by every back-yard web designer and stay at home dad who’s knocking up their own site on his ageing PC.
All communications are art. We should stop to consider if we are hurting the public’s eyes. In years to come this will be considered an ugly age. The 1970’s, for all it’s garishness; flares, bright shirts, big hair, at least had beautiful advertising.
Crossing cultures requires non-verbal skills
On the subject of art, this is the only thing that works on people who don’t speak your particular brand of corporate semi-english. (Anybody not working at your company.) Art transends language cause it uses visual clues. Sure, it’s often more subtle, but it can be as direct, can be as easy to ‘get’. But it requires more skill than just pumping out words that sound right to you. Look at your advertising/ corporate communications as art. If you take away the words, does the punter get the message anyway? Then consider this – more than 1 in 5 Australians don’t speak English at home. Most of them have to translate everything you write into their native tongue just to think about it.
Expectations are out of line
Many marketers are trying to put their company’s expectations of accountability back onto the pubic in bizarre ways. Some advertisers want the public to acknowledge they have received their messages.
I know it sounds really sensible that you would like to know who’s received the SMS and can prove back up the line if the supplier has actually sent them out to the correct target market, and that you’ve got all the 100,000 punters you have paid for, but it doesn’t work. What’s in it for the punter? Nothing. Do they acknowledge they have seen your Outdoor ads? That they have been sent your post card?
If you are going to want feedback, give them a reason to provide it and keep your questions to one or two only. This is the case with any form of feed-back, from check-out quizzes to EDM’s (out-bound emails). No-one is going to spend hours answering an SMS while they are driving across town.
Words are cheap. Art isn’t.
I notice on one of the web marketing forums I occasionally look at, that besides the fact that about 70% of brands say they are spending 10% or more of their budget on mobile marketing, many are troubled by MMS. The perception that MMS (moving ads sent to your phone, if you’re not sure) is ‘hard to use’ has grown from 14% in 2006 to over 30% in 2008. In other words, with more use, more marketers are turning off.
This is despite their obvious rise in popularity and that they are definitely one of the key future elements of mobile advertising. They are ‘hard to use’ because, shock horror, they take a bit of work. Even if they are only 10 or 20 seconds long, MMS need real input for them to work. You can’t just get the I.T. department to knock up something on power point and think the public will respond. Putting aside the obvious need for an offer or some sort of incentive to respond, they have to be clever, brilliantly simple, hopefully witty and beautiful. Like any form of TV style ads, don’t expect them to be dirt cheap. If they are, they usually look it. You need to get your board’s head around the idea that they are little TV ads and they need similar budgets.
Digital is everything, everywhere
There is no advertising done today that does not involve digital in it’s development. Except for local papers, letters and outdoor, most of them actively involve digital entirely. (And those media are rapidly scrambling to have a digital element at the messy end.) Don’t give digital vs. not any consideration. When the web became popular 20 years ago it was as if we had discovered the wheel – there is simply no way you can go back. Unless of course, if electricity becomes really expensive ….
On the Southern Seas, at below 40 degrees latitude, there isn’t land from South America to Australia. About 20,000 kilometers of clear water.
This is the place where the biggest waves in the world compete for the heavy-weight title. Piling on top of themselves, whipped by the wind, the waves pick up confidence, passion. Size. Driven along in spinning circles, over millions of sea-miles of water, evaporation and currents, the wind itself gets lungs. It becomes alive, twisting, engulfing, it’s sheer strength lifts the waves like beaten egg whites. The surface of the water builds into great long, rolling swells that crash and churn.
Say you’re on a 15 meter sloop set up for this sort of weather, with Satellite Navigation, Life Raft, rescue cable clipped to your life jacket. One second you’re sliding down the face of a wave like a giant surf-board slicing a hill, the next you’re cutting your way towards the sky in an effort to avoid turning turtle with the next on-rush of heaving, deadly water. Imagine yourself, stuck to the tiller-wheel. Wrestling it with freezing hands, battling the ocean. Wind blasting through your skin. Out on your own – only on a storm jib (not much bigger than a bed-sheet) and everyone but you below. Holding the lives of your comrades in your hands. One mistake and you all go under. Get it right and you crest the waves cleanly. Here you are, in the cock-pit of life. You can’t hear yourself think for the noise and the stress, but for some stupid reason, you’re grinning from ear to ear.
That’s the roaring forties and it’s how those years feel to many of us living them. “I’m on this constant roller-coaster of work, kids, house. Work, kids, house. I’m exhausted. But I’m happy in some ways, I suppose.”
In your twenties, life is more like that for those in the cabin below, bumped around by peers, family circumstances, fashions, hormones and fate. In your thirties, you are still often not in complete control – terribly time-strapped, feeling responsible, trying to be, but not yet fully empowered. Not yet at your peak career-wise, still have the odd free evening, still blame your Mum for your problems with fellow women etc.
In your forties you have no-one to blame but yourself for where you are and how you conduct yourself. Gone are any excuses about how you were brought up or bad luck that may have befallen you. At 40 plus you either are your own person, in control of your own world, or you are a fool.
If you haven’t made the incredibly stupid decision to do something boring for work, (you’d be highly unlikely to be reading this, we are, after all, marketers. Our lives are usually more exciting than other’s.) But even if you have made a boring decision about your career, in your 40’s, the rest of your life just isn’t. You are flat out running your life and sapped of time and often energy, because of the lack of time. You are efficient, because you simply have to get the task done. You are also cynical about many organizations and their motivations, but recognize there’s little you can do without taking your eye from the main game, that of doing your most for family and friends.
40’s people purchase much of this country’s goods in a huge variety of areas – industrial, educational, bigger or prettier cars, hardware, second houses, entertainment and household goods, finance etc.
In finances, many of my age group are way past the stage of fearing about paying off their home, they’re on to seconds, thirds as investments or escapes. 40’s people hold more than two-fifths of Australia’s household wealth. The wealthiest have half of their assets as equity in their own home, a quarter in superannuation and 10 per cent in family-owned businesses. (NBC News, 2004)
Your culture gives you your values. My generation, brought up on sixties, seventies and eighties songs, have values dictated by those songs and the hundreds of TV shows, films and books we’ve read. These values affect the way we see advertising, the way we react to marketer’s plans. The way we judge products. We remember Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, Eagles, disco and punk. We see ourselves in the heroes of our day. So we judge and react to things often by how we’d expect James Bond or for that matter, Jackie Onassis to respond to a situation. This is a hard concept to explain to a 25 year old product manager, especially if they’ve never heard of Jackie O.
We’ve witnessed incredible moments in time; Man on the Moon, The Russian Wall coming down. JFK taking the head shot. Our lives are a floating sea of memories and experiences. These experiences deeply affect how we view the purchase process and how we operate as customers.
And we’ve witnessed the many waves of marketing fashions that have washed over our world. We’ve seen customer focus come and go. We’ve seen the marketers get the upper hand – when businesses bloom and people get decent service and feel satisfied. Then we’ve seen the accountants come in with their wrecking balls, breaking customer confidence, destroying brands and loyalties with their mean, short-term minds. (Why can you now buy a Hardy’s 1 litre bottle of good red for only $6.00? Because of the company with the same-name’s recalcitrant stance on Asbestos, they’ve stuffed up the reputation of the brand across the board – talk about proof for the concept of good-will?)
Don’t try to fool the 40 –50 year olds. We know what’s happening when you try to put one over on us. We are the oldest end of the Generation X group, with all that implies. We are cynical, powerful, judgmental and experienced. We are, in the main, anti-advertising. Anti-marketing. We want the widgit for what it can do, not the bullshit you marketers surround it with.
Fundamentals of this age group
When you study 40-50 year olds, you get strong underlying themes that relate, funnily enough, to their life-circumstances and their experience. They are a predictable lot.
More focused
Because most 40 ish people are acutely aware of their responsibilities, they are more focused on what they want from marketers and their companies. They chose quickly and don’t forgive mistakes. They are therefore more likely to have developed strong brand loyalties because they don’t have time to shop around and don’t want things to break-down – from breakfast to birthdays we need certainty.
More your own person
Selectivity gives you a sense of self. You are a Marmite person. You eat only fruit before lunch. You drive a 4WD and you avoid mining stocks etc. etc. Aware of age limitations, many become set in their choice of music, film genre’s, banks. Preferring the tried and true to the risky. But their own person brings opportunities for marketers too. If you can get inside their head with an offer that sounds like them, their values talking, you can win them over. And as they are a hard customer to win, they also often remain loyal once won. Making them a profitable customer to own.
Body -focus
Most people don’t get to 40 plus without having at least one or two good health-scares. Almost all see genuine proof that gravity wins in the end. Our bums curve downwards, as do our tits, our eye-lids and our chins. That’s why we are such a great market for plastic surgeons. Aside from lawyers and houses, the biggest single thing that divorcees spend money on is reconstruction of looks. I know a dentist in Brighton who makes a fortune from what he calls Settlement Caps – new sets of teeth written into the divorce contract along with the car and the fortnightly, 3 hour kid visits.
Divorce
If the statistics are right, despite delayed marriage, and high divorce rates of some 40%, and remarriage, nearly two-thirds are currently married (Aus Stats). Still, that means at least a third of 40’s people have very deep scars from encounters with partners and more baggage than a 747 in terms of kids, hang-ups and prejudices. Relationships take on a whole new meaning when a couple of good nights sex can cost you several hundred-thousand dollars and limit your retirement options severely.
Women suffer terribly in terms of tiredness in this age-group if they have kept the kids (and most do) they must work, maintain the household infrastructure and be a mother and father. Often to teenagers….
Teenagers
Much has been said of the influence of teenagers in this magazine over the years. These are the poor people who have to feed, clothe and manage them. Enough said.
Tail end of the Baby-boomers – optimistic
But adding to that they are living a fairly rational existence, 40-50 year olds have one great saving grace for us marketers. They see life through rose-colored glasses. They have been raised on a diet of Disney-type values. Get Smart, Hogan’s Hero’s, Mash, Dallas. The good guy gets the good girl in the end. They haven’t fought in a war. They haven’t known real poverty. They have seen things come and go but Australia remains a great country to live in and they feel a true sense of achievement that it is themselves who have had a hand in building it that way. So at least at this point in time, they are a more positive lot than any of the other major age group segments.
This is not just an Australian thing. Many researchers and scientists around the world studying this age group refer to this ‘agreeableness’ syndrome. They have identified an emotional ‘growth-spurt’ in late 30’s to early 50’s people. Some believe it’s due to 40-50 year olds gaining more control of their work environment, others that it comes from falling testosterone in both sexes around this age. Either way, this target group is happier than others.
How to hit 40-50 year olds
Hit em emotionally
The precondition of optimism which underwrites this age group makes them great suckers for an emotional sell. Give them guilt or dreams and they come running.
Concern for family/friends
Most 40-50 year olds have baggage. Which means they have to service it. That’s talking to ex-wives or to the teenagers in their rooms up-stairs or ringing old boyfriends who send you birthday cards if you’re not so straight or a chick. A sense of responsibility is an opportunity for marketers. Up their life or house insurance. Up-grade their home computer system so the kids can learn faster.
Re-kindle their desire for youth
There’s also the old rebel with a cause – herself. This is classic mid-life crisis period. The juiciest market for sports cars, Harleys, Malibu surf boards, dancing lessons, treks to Nepal….We think we’re active and energetic – even if we’d prefer to play golf on the computer.
Give them detail
They may seem pre–occupied and time-strapped, but most people over 40 give things attention when it is due, so please don’t skimp on necessary facts when the purchase process warrants it. Anything from cars to software, to tools, to newer foods needs detailed information as back-up.
Target by psychographic/life stage
When you research this market you get a lot of cute terms like ’adult tweenies’ (It’s fun finding out how real, sophisticated marketers gabble on in self-created marketing jargon) which is a woman who’s kids are just leaving home – she’s between being Mum and being an empty-nester. Then there’s the term ‘Pheonix’ which refers to the person who’s kids have left home and low and behold, they’ve suddenly discovered a whole new, uncomplicated life. Talk to your research company about which of the many sub-groups you should be targeting more directly.
Media – what’s on, son?
TV
40-50 year olds often no longer have choice. Unless their kids let them flick during the ad break of The OC, they do not have control. When they do grab the remote, they’re selective. Apparently the News and The Simpson’s do well. A bit of sex, for nostalgia’s sake, like in ‘The Secret Life of Us’ or Desperate Housewives are worth buying slots in. I’m also a believer in early morning TV – the ratings don’t always show that they watch Sunrise or Today in big numbers, but if I ring someone of that age group between 6.30 – 8.30 am, they invariably have the box on.
Radio
They’re big listeners of radio, especially in the car and loyal to their stations. Mix and Gold are favorites with those wishing to re-live their own golden years. The ABC stations also do very well with this age group. Shame you can’t get an ad on them.
Press/Mags
This is the last generation of real readers. Today’s 30 somethings have lost the knack. Broad appeal magazines do every well with the women, trade style or specific interest mags do OK with the men. Press as a medium is still a foundation stone for advertising your message to this group, especially the real-estate based weekly locals, if you’re targeting the higher income 40 somethings.
Direct Mail
Always good as you can measure results accurately. But make sure you personalize it so they think you care or they’re getting something really worthwhile. Shove a good, urgent incentive in to get them to bite.
Outdoor
They might not have much time to read outdoor if they have their kids with them, but this is a very effective vehicle for people who are often in their cars. Remember it’s not just what you sell, but how you present it. Please be funny on Outdoor. I have to look at them too.
Web
Becoming tech savvy, they need to continue educating themselves about new technology to maintain their career. And their children are teenagers and thus on the cutting edge of interactive communication etc. inevitably, 40 something’s learn from their kids. Google, due to its sheer ease of use, is big among this segment. Besides, it’s now virtually impossible to run a credible campaign without backing it up with a strong web presence. People check the details on the web before buying. You really have no choice but to do it well.
Under-targeted, genuine buyers
If you want richish, happy disposition customers who don’t have the time to cause your complaints department grief and who will be loyal once won, 40 somethings are a very nice segment. And a segment who hardly anybody really shoots at. Being one myself, I strongly recommend offering them incentives to switch brands. I’d like say 20% off, or a DVD player thrown in….
It’s a Friday. I’m at lunch. Possibly the only thing I do with any sense of professionalism. I’m with two of Melbourne’s younger female up and coming marketing movers and as we pick our way through the dips, Koftas, Falafels, pickled turnip and the occasional bit of green stuff, the conversation turns to the projects in hand.
We are planning some events and I stupidly ask about one of the other speakers. I’ll call him Mr. Smooth, cause that’s what they called him. The flood gates open.
“I hate him, but someone else on my committee thought it was a big deal to get Mr. Smooth on the event and they’ve already asked him. When I was at xxxx Telco, his agency was pitching and wanted us to OK a budget for $250,000 for a TVC. It was a round the world ad, you know, and I could see them getting all their holidays in for nothing. As the MD left the room, he whispered to me that he liked the idea but wouldn’t pay more than $20,000 for it. So he left me to negotiate with them. Over the next few days I got them down to $120,000, but the MD still wouldn’t come at it, so I was working out what I could say to them, when I got a call from our MD again. He said “You tell that fucking ad agency guy that if he rings me up again and tells me how to run my business and how he knows more than me he’ll never see anybody from xxxx Telco again. I thought it was your job to keep those pricks from hassling me, what do I pay you for?’ And hung up. So I’ve got to ring Smoothy and I told him what the MD said word for word. He didn’t even say ‘sorry for going over your head’. Two years later, I’m at another company and I’m at a pub and out of the blue, in walks Mr. Smooth and gives me a big hug and says how he’s always really liked me and walks out again, like we were best of mates. Then I find out a couple of days later his lot are trying to pitch for our account. So I hate him. Shallow and sneaky and got a hide like an elephant. And thinks he can just ride over people and that we’re all so stupid. And he’s got a massive coke habit. And he tries to fuck all the girls in his office and, and, and-”
Which seems like a nice intro to my article on dirty tricks. Do they happen often? Do they happen to you? Do you practice the dark art of the stab in the back? What are the rules of engagement? What are the no-no’s? Is it vital to go through life occasionally stabbing those around you or can you sail on blissfully through the business world like an angel skipping over clouds, propelled by gossamer wings?
I hate to admit it, but I think business in Australia requires a steely heart, a lack of any sense of guilt. I was recently in New Zealand, where there are far fewer people and they all know each other and you just can’t get away with being nasty, because people will warn each other. I could feel a genuine sense of community. But here, in good old OZ, the warnings may be false, the target may be obscure, the game is played with no holds barred and the prize is often survival in the company you’re in, while the other guy ends up getting the package and driving cabs around North Sydney.
Does this Machiavellian behavior stem from our country being founded by convicted criminals, who’s only means of survival was to rat on their fellow inmates? Is it because the whole structure of our legal system and society was put together by the morally bankrupt, money-grabbing second sons of the English aristocracy? Is it because we are led by a Prime Minister who can laugh at his promises made only weeks earlier, before the elections, because he seems to the old and frail (scared by his media – too frightened to open their doors and hearts to anybody) to be the slightly better option of two evils? Or is it modern day? Is it how humans have come to be? Are they as dirty here as anywhere and I’m just looking at sweet little New Zealand through the rose-colored glasses of my holiday mood.
Who gives a frig? Lets get on with some of the tactics. Because ‘Ours is not to reason why, ours is just to do or die’. And yes, call me juvenile. Call me crass.…
Things worth considering as you’re scrambling up the corporate ladder:
(Supplied by some very helpful readers – I did an email survey)
Help them look stupid…
Influence how they dress
Nothing makes a person seem one thing or another more, than what they are actually wearing. If a person is edging on the loopy side anyway, encourage them to dress to accentuate that; “hey you looked great in that green and orange checked shirt you had on at the barbie – you ought to wear that work.” Or the boring person, who really needs a giddy-up, “John, grey and black always look more professional. Only idiots wear bright colours to work. Pick up your game mate.”
Ruin their presentations
Give them a couple of really strong coffees the morning before they present. Or ask them if they feel nervous and not to worry about how they look. Others are
A) Slipping a laxative into your colleges coffee before he/she presents
B) Give them the squeaky chair or the very low one
C) Talk or cough during their presentations.
D) Delete their latest version of the Power Point Show and have the one with the boo-boos all through it come up.
Misspell things
Deliberately editing your college’s documents creating spelling and grammatical errors. How do you spell there’s? Their’s? They’re’s? Where does the apostrophe go?
If you can’t get to the editing role, on some computers you can just switch the power off, so they lose their work. “Owww. Shit John, I wish you wouldn’t leave the chord there, I’ve hit my shin. Oh, hell, mate, I didn’t mean to blow the power.”
Broadcast their stupidity to the world
Media Training is especially good – encourage your colleague to be ‘courageous’ in interviews. Tell them not to bother about appearances, “hang it, you look more natural without make-up” etc. And tell them if it’s an important subject, the punters need the full argument. So they rabbit on for a full two minutes. This works brilliantly on say Today Tonight, where a 3 second sound bite is thought to be letting the interviewee bore the audience.
Ignore them
(You’ll be amazed how many people will follow you if you lead by example) Don’t sit near them. Don’t listen when they speak. Interrupt when they are mid sentence. Never make them coffee. Walk off when they tell a joke. Invite everyone else to a team lunch but them.
Or create a diversion whenever they try to get attention. My ten year old is a master at this. So is John Howard.
Play tricks on them…
Leave messages that someone from the (Hillsong, Scientology, Mormons, Orange people) Church rang up, say once a day for a week.
Or log onto your college’s email and send around gay porn to everyone in the office, including the CEO, who of course, may be gay. This works very well in major banks, city councils, government departments and other locations where political correctness is liberally mixed with our favourite old stand-buy, sheer hypocrisy – on the surface everyone is PC, underneath, they all make jokes about each other and you’re giving them plenty of material….
Frustrate them
Attach your colleague’s phone receiver to the handset with double sided tape. Then ring them – fun watching them getting upset trying to answer the call…
If you really hate them, put super glue (dries clear) on their house or car keys so they won’t get in the lock.
Make their life revolting
Rub a bit of dog turd under your college’s desk so when employees and executives walk past they think he’s one filthy bastard. Another along this line is the old smelly keyboard. You slice a green prawn thinly, slide into the back of the key-board and then wait a few days as it slowly goes off.
Reorganise them
Rearrange their diary schedules. This is great fun if they use an electronic diary and very easy if you know how to work the office intranet.
Keep them in the dark
Never give them all the information. Organize WIP’s (Work In Progress) when they are on the road…
Make them an addict
Plant drugs (you can just use out-of-date vitamins from your home bathroom) and/or needles in your college’s draw. The real ones are sometimes hard to source; you could ask them for a contact. This could be done subtly, say in the lift with their boss. Or you could place an empty vodka bottle in your colleges draw or pour whisky on the carpet near their desk so it stinks for weeks. Shocking waste, but very effective.
Make them a thief
There’s always stealing a bit of petty cash and blaming your college. “I know there was $47.63 in there, I was going to buy stamps and we didn’t have quite enough for a whole 100 packet. Now there’s only $27.63. I know I’m not losing my mind, who’s been tickling the till? Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anyone is dishonest. It could have been the cleaners…”
Make them the bastard
Raise issues about their grip on reality. Question their morals in front of half a dozen colleagues (say by asking which is more important, lying or winning?) then just raise your eye-brows.
Make them lazy
Pretend a business call keeps coming in and claim your colleague never follows it up. “Look, I know they are a bit low on their sales levels lately, may-be they aren’t so motivated since they got the big pay rise?”
Divert them
It’s almost essential to encourage ‘positive ambition’ in colleagues. Nothing wrong with them telling people their real dream is to be an actor or to join the SAS. Or drop travel brochures on their desk. Tahiti looks good…
Worry them
Publish their job on Seek. ‘Hey John, looks like someone’s not sure about your performance…’.
Bitch about them
To everyone in the industry, while playing the nice guy. “Did you see the way she dresses? If you’re going to eat pies and chips all day, don’t wear hipsters.” Or, “I said no to those shoes five years ago and she’s supposed to be an ambassador for our company… She never makes coffee, does she think she’s above us? She was really rude to the water machine guy the other day, I was so embarrassed…”
Steal from them
Take their money. For example, in Ad land, there was the Television Production Head who worked in cahoots with the production company creating bogus crew invoices and pocketing the proceeds. Made a fortune. Eventually caught. See point 4 on sucking up. He spent lots of fun nights in jail.
Or go to lunch with them and forget your wallet. Go to the footy and disappear when it’s your shout. I know an accountant who hasn’t paid for a beer at the footy in 20 years. Hi Phil, how’re the Bombers doing?
Some bastards even take their old company’s confidential data to the new company. This is usually a breach of employment contract. But many is the ad agency born out of this evil wedlock.
Leave them hanging
Never give your colleague all their messages. Or tell their clients they’re sick when they’re not, they’re at lunch when they’re not, they are in the loo with the MD, a mastiff, a midget, a mirror and some white powder…
Be the real prick
Help negotiate the MBO (management buy-out) and then sell out your mates when you actually sell the company to a third party. On that issue, the old ‘buy the company and say the whole time you’ll be keeping all the staff, then sack most of them’, is typical too. Should be a law against it. Then again, if there was, they’d have to put half the boards in jail.
Your Own Career
On sucking up – the two-faced twin brother of the stuff above. The five most used are:
- Always buy your boss a birthday present, suggest an anniversary present, remind them of the diner party they should be organizing or the thank-you note they should send.
- Always work longer hours than your boss, then take off when she’s not around
- Buy the exact same suit/t-shirt/shoes as your CEO. You can say ‘snap’ in the lift and complement him/her on their taste. “Gee Joan, the work-outs are really toning you up. Have you been skipping lunch too?”
- Have similar interests to your key superiors “That’s fascinating Susan, I’ve always been captivated by South American butterflies. The “mytongueisrightupyourbumus” was the first I collected when
I was only 8…” I’ve known people to change footy teams and even codes (how could you really like Rugby if you’ve been brought up on an intelligent sport like Aussie Rules?) to get them up the ladder. - Most people think using sex is a virtual guarantee of riches and power. Then there’s the saying ’sleeping your way to the top means you’ll get it in the bottom’. This may appeal to some readers.
Do any of these seem familiar? Have you been stabbed right royally before? (One wonders why that saying exists? Then the richest people in Europe didn’t get there by being nice. Fancy having someone beheaded just cause you fancied their sister, like Henry 8th) Or are you a stabber? The office arsehole? You know if you are. You’re the one always justifying the means by the end…
On reading this, what’s the career lesson for the rest of us? We who try to do the logical and right thing, most of the time? It’s judge people not on what they say, or how they seem to behave towards you, but on exactly what they do for you and your career. If they help you, help them. If they don’t, well, you have a few options to consider above.
I arrive 20 minutes late. The pre-speech bonding session is in mid-swing, but the crowd is subdued. Calm, almost scared. I look around, but can’t see a waiter. I panic, as one does at 6 pm when there is nothing to drink nearby. There’s only water. I’m not kidding. This is at a ‘networking’ night for company directors. I’m told there’s no drinks until after the session. I’m thinking fundamental mistake numero uno in Melbourne; not to give the stiffs something to relax them.
We are called into the main room. There’s about 200 blokes in drab, dark suits, with a smattering of women to break up the monotony in their grey or burgundy two piece business dress outfits. Everyone is very serious, although trying to be witty, jovial on the surface. Crocodiles cracking wisecracks.
The obviously gay style consultant tries to warm up the crowd with a few jokey comments but within minutes is complaining (as he’s telling us how to behave in boardroom situations, mind you) that we are the quietest, least funny crowd he’s ever spoken to. He’s literally on the edge of tears. I feel a bit sorry for him, then think, fuck it, and join the rest of the staid faces, staring blankly at him while he squirms on stage, like a butterfly on a pin.
People shuffle in their seats, but no-one throws him a lifeline. This is corporate Melbourne, where we pay ourselves double bonuses while we sack 1,000’s of employees – go Pac Dun! Oh, the rag trade, a reflection of corporate Australia. The often unnecessary, pushed upon a public with a promise of sex, coolness, exclusivity, only to be deemed out of date the moment your Credit Card is emptied. Love them or hate them, you have to wear the industry’s product or you’ll look really wrong. Especially when you’re pushing 50, like sorry, saggy old me.
Now the style consultant is here to tell us how to network and how to dress. He’s pretty convinced the two go hand in pocket, so to speak. You are as people perceive you in the first few minutes and you never change from that impression, so you better dress the part.
His premise is that you should break the mould or you won’t be remembered. That those in the room who we will recall weeks later won’t be those in dark grey suits cause that’s like everybody, but those in different outfits.
I’m suddenly getting excited. I think I’m dressed perfectly. I look down at what I’m wearing. I’m in slightly frayed, designer jeans. A Reefer (Navy) Jacket, flashy shirt. I’m the only person in the room not looking corporate. I’m looking adland. I’m memorable, at least here. (If I was at a meeting of Marketing Managers or Ad agency execs in St Kilda Road, I’d be a dime a dozen.) I’m only dressed this way because I’d been at a shoot and hadn’t got back to the office, but I’m still thrilled at ‘having it right’, so it seems.
This wisdom is coming from a guy in a dark grey suit with a white shirt and a blue tie…..He says the more radical you dress the more you’ll be remembered. I’m thinking he’s about to say ‘wear a mini-skirt to a meeting to a bunch of men, but he then says ‘to go really out there, wear a yellow or gold tie!’ I start to realize this guy’s about as radical as the board of the Reserve Bank.
The crowd starts to nod – first movement all day for many of them. There’s a rumble of agreement with his thinking. That the choice of tie is the most radical decision you can make all day. Shoulders relax, heads lean back in chairs. They almost clap. I get depressed, oh, the hopelessness of dealing with accountants.
I’m no longer worrying about being completely sober at 6.45pm on a weekday. I’m stuck on the issue of dressing. Does how you dress make a difference to your career? Does how you dress control what people think of you, of how importantly they take your pearls of wisdom? Does how your company dresses, indicate where in the pecking order your team is? Does it matter by industry, by company, by country?
And does being a marketer mean you need to adopt a particular dress code to further your career? You expect a lawyer to dress a certain way. You expect that of a doctor, a politician….
When does attire matter and what matters to you?
What you are wearing says everything. Even your hair does and whether you’ve brushed the dandruff off your shoulders or clipped the mass of hair between your eyebrows. People judge other people by looks. Pure and simple. It’s the reason the cosmetic, fashion and hair product businesses exist. Frankly, extend that thought a tad and it’s the reason the car business can’t get past big petrol-guzzling status symbols and why some suburbs cost ten times more than others. But let’s just deal with the stuff on your back and earlobes for this article.
People are walking ads
You are your own ad. What you are wearing says whether you fit into this tribe, lead it, follow it or should be shot by it. Your clothes make you look older or younger, thinner or fatter, cooler or dumber in a split second. It is subtle, too. If I wear a teenager’s shirt, I look like I’m trying too hard to look young, which says I’m desperate to fit in, which says I need friends, which says I may have bad breath or a failed marriage…..if someone wears a suit that’s too baggy says he was too fat once (is greedy), hasn’t got enough money to buy one that fits (poor salary or unemployed) possibly is single and has no partner to tell him what to wear etc. etc.
Hints
If you are up and coming in marketing land, there are only so many outfits you can wear. If you’re any good at what you do you’ll know instinctively what they are. If you’re unsure, ’cause say you’re from Tasmania or you’ve just come from HR and this is your big chance to work in Marketing, go to a conference on a subject the hot people are interested in, observe what they are wearing and then copy that style.
Apply the P’s to yourself
Say to yourself Do I look like I have the right personality? Do I look too expensive? Do I look people focused? Do I look like I’m well packaged? Does my brand stand for what I want it to stand for?
Dress for your future
Most of the research we did on this article said it’s critical to reach a fine balance between expectations and the ordinary – to dress just ahead of your position, but only one rung. Dress how your boss should dress, not how the board does. But when you get a chance, shine.
Dress for your industry
The people in the entertainment business dress like rock stars and movie stars. Those in the banks dress like they imagine the board dresses. As most will never meet their board members, they have no idea what slobs those old blokes normally are. I notice the boss of Westpac always wears red, her corporate color. She, in her matching two piece suits and pearls (only half a generation behind the Queen) is the most exciting thing in Australian banking. Think how scary that is for a fashionista working at Westpac. Do I wear the two piece with red spots or the two piece suit with red stripes, decisions, decisions…
Dress for what we expect
There are many in smaller companies even in IT in OZ who think a suit makes them business-like, missing the expectation of their customers completely for the sake of their own expectations of what you wear ‘at work’. The bigger firms, the telco’s, Ciscos etc. dress casually to fit their industry. The little guys often think ‘business’ before they think IT. This often makes the little guys look desperate. It’s like that in my business. If I turned up in a suit they’d think I’m from some dicky little ad agency in suburbia. But If I turn up in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, they think I’m from the big end of town and have different expectations of service, pricing and quality of work.
Stay ahead of the pack, just
Dress for the job you want, not just the one you have. The line is so delicate I can hardly describe it in words. People will hate you if they become conscious of your ambition to get to the next rung. You are trying to steal their dream. But your bosses won’t put you in a role you obviously don’t fit into, so you have to balance those two opposing needs.
It’s a very fine line between cool and bogan
If it’s casual day, think whether you want to look like you shop at Kmart in Fountain Gate or at Chapel Street? Who would you rather trust the company’s brand with? Someone determined to return to suburbia and mediocrity at a moment’s notice or someone striving towards the future?
You are an ambassador
If you’re on the front door, or you’re out and about, for all intents and purposes you literally ARE the company.
All companies have a dress code
Every company in the world has a dress code, but most of us are blissfully unaware of it unless we think about it. Some are radical, some are just like every other firm in their sphere. It’s one of the hardest things for a prospective employee to get – how to look like one of the people who already work there. If you get it right, your prospective boss will think you’ll fit in with their culture, but if you miss, you won’t get the gig. If you’re going through a personnel agency, ask your consultant exactly what the people she has met are wearing, even down to the color tones, the labels, the shoes.
What’s the brand of your company?
This is something to give real consideration to, that is easily argued to be a marketing issue. The fact that many studies have proven dress changes signal behavioral changes in workplaces and that your branding must be reflected in your business attire, means it’s almost expected that marketing should get involved in workplace dress codes. Go on, I dare ya. This is a great opportunity for you to have the rest of the department/ company know you are here. Get them do what you want. What if you were running the marketing for a bank and said that everyone must wear jeans at branch level? Would that get across to your customers that you were more people-focused? Or that you’d lost all their money? Or spent it on Levi 501’s…
You are not a football team
Nothing goes with Hawthorn’s Brown and Yellow except puke. It’s very hard to look cool wearing the Kangaroos sky blue and white. No-one owns a suit that works with Brisbane’s colours either. The only time you should connect yourself with a football team is at the ground and even then, not with a fat, two-metre long scarf. How do you expect your head to look well defined and intelligent when it’s encased like a half-cut penis in half a kilo of badly dyed polyester?
Jeans & T-Shirts have replaced the suit, in many industries
Business-like now means a t-shirt with Che Gavera or Smashing Pumpkins, The Killers or Sea Shepherd on it. According to a very cool internet article on the subject of power dressing, “A suit has become something you wear if you’re asking for money.”
When is a suit wrong for a Pet Retailer?
There’s an ad for a new Pet Shop chain called something like Pets Land, and the guy speaking on the ad is in a cheap pin-stripe suit, surrounded by normal looking staff in pets store uniforms. It’s memorable only because of the suit. It just looks wrong. A suit to me says ‘corporate rip-you-off’, not ‘trust me, I care about animals’.
Interviews are different
If you get a spot on the Gruen affair or interviewed for the News, go more conservative than you otherwise would. There is something inherently wrong with wild colors on TV. I don’t know why, it just is the case. If the interview is obviously on a Saturday, you can wear a sports jacket (doesn’t match trousers) and you can wear shorts in summer, but only if the scene is at the beach. Who can forget how out of place the Queensland politicians look when they are interviewed? Even though it’s 40 degrees outside and only an idiot would be wearing long sleeves and a tie, we inherently think they are not to be taken seriously if they are interviewed in shorts.
Do people get subtle?
One iconic ‘image of contrast’ was the front page of some newspaper in about 1991. (Long time ago I know, but you’ll get the point in a moment, so stay with me here) The first USA v Iraq war is starting. The yanks have just landed at Kuwait. There’s a photo of Saddam Hussein dressed in all his military gear – gold braid, medals, gun on his hip, being a ‘General’ in charge of a country, and same day, same time, a photo of George Bush senior, polo shirt, jeans, fly fishing on a lake somewhere. Who looked cool and in control? If you have a meeting with a guy/girl and they dress more casually than you, it often says they feel/are more powerful than you. It’s subtle, but you feel it.
Use your attire to send subtle messages
If you wish to ingratiate yourself to someone, (i.e. act like you’ll be a good boy, do what they want etc.,) dress better than they would expect for the circumstances and sit slightly lower in the seat than they are. You are behaving in an obsequious manner that is hard to put your finger on and won’t arouse much suspicion. This is how to dress if you’re asking for a raise. Conversely, if your tactic just before the raise is to threaten you are about to leave, dress very casually for a few days like you don’t give a toss (i.e. I’ve already got a job, and I’m just waiting for the paperwork to come through) they will panic and ask you what’s wrong?
Can you dress like a dude and act like a geek?
Sorry, there is no such thing as successfully living a lie. I don’t care how hard you try to be cool, if you are trying, it shows. You can’t be cool in hot pink. You can’t be radical in a suit. I don’t care how rich you are, you can’t be taken seriously as an erudite sophisticate in a wife-beater and tats.
Points to remember
- The higher up the ladder, the less you should look like you care. Really powerful people dress within certain guidelines but make an effort to upset their work colleagues by out-dressing them. That’s either more casually, more formally or with colors that don’t match. This is a subtle way of putting other people off their guard. Why can she get away with a red top under a purple jacket with that stupid set of chopsticks in her hair, when I’m wearing grey on brown on tan like all the other product managers?
- If you’re going to be ultra-fashionable, you must lead. No-one in the real fashion world (France/London/Tokyo streets) actually cares who’s wearing what, they do their own thing. The rest of us, which is like everyone in the western world, must look at magazines every few weeks and steal their ideas from Hollywood (check Who Weekly), Italian Vogue and Frankie.
- It’s not what you pay, it’s what you team it with
- A good watch or stunning suit beats a bad haircut. Actually, nothing beats a do. Individual hair (good or bad) is critical to good fashion.
- A pair of patent leather Church’s outdoes anything but carpet slippers with black tie. NB. The wrong thing on your feet on a yacht (or court, horse, bike, fishing holiday/ surf tour etc.) means you spend your day washing dishes.
- A worn-out Jermyn street shirt beats anything but a new Haines T-shirt on a Sunday morning.
- If you’re older than 40, you better be ultra thin, uber rich or very funny
Sound like you look
And adjust your speech patterns. Everyone does. Certain words work with a hoodie that sound mad coming out of a guy in a suit, bro. Models should not pronounce things like Truck drivers and truck driving, tight stubbie- wearing blokes don’t always fit in if they speak like the Queen.
Be realistic
If you are the size of a small country, forget trying to look OK in something from Sass & Bide. There is nothing sadder than someone who believed her husband when he said, yes, she looked good in that tight outfit. If it hurts to get it on, get it off. Similarly, the skinnier you are, the more flowing should your outfit be. Don’t go too tight or you’ll look like two chopsticks fighting over a dim sim when you walk.
I’m at a dinner party in Hawthorn, there are half a dozen women in the room. A fashion designer, a doctor, an art director, a personnel consultant, they are various ages. Various personalities. Various looks.
It’s that time of the night. The Perno’s are being poured. The Cointreau is being sipped. The Cognac sniffed. With one too many Chardonnays sloshing around inside my bloated frame, I’m feeling very French. Arrogant. I think I’ll warm up the conversation. Given I’ve got an article due, I decide to ask about beauty products.
In a split second the women go from cocky to uncomfortable. It’s like someone has turned on the cold tap in the shower.
One guy, sadly more drunk than me, says, in an attempt to be funny, “Why do women use make-up and perfume? Cause they are ugly and they smell”. The silence is palpable. His wife has left him since.
What’s the problem, the male side of my brain asks in my head. It’s just another subject. The girly bit of my brain tells it to shut up and change the subject. It tells me that men are the cause. Ugly, smelly men. Men who hesitate when their girlfriend asks them if they look fat in these pants? Men who are sooo much nicer to the good-looking girl in the shop than the slightly frumpier one.
Another bloke in the room is a surgeon who literally makes millions a year pulling varicose veins from the legs of 30 something’s and pumping botox into their faces.
He handles the issue with aplomb. After all, this is his home ground. His angle is the oldest of all. That beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes to the bone. His belief is that a person’s personality and outlook on life is dramatically affected by how they see themselves, and how they feel they are perceived. That if you think society rejects you, you reject it. If you feel beautiful, you behave more beautifully too. He said his patients are nicer post operation. Less stressed, more open to others. Like the true noble queen, magnanimous in victory.
I can recall an article in Vanity Fair (international magazine for the intellectual high-society types, in case your idea of a good read is 4WD. And an extremely relevant title, now I think about it,) which was about the London dinner party set. The writer said that if one is just out of school, with a peachy complexion, one can go almost anywhere on those golden wings. That sheer beauty alone will take a person who’s background is ordinary, accent rough, intellect not much, and their looks can give them access to royalty, money and the famous, anywhere in the world. Whilst they remain beautiful. Think about Kate Moss, for example.
Perhaps it’s this belief that beauty equals mobility, nobility, or that beauty equals less effort, that the beautiful get further with less work than the rest of us, that draws people to seek their idea of perfection. I remember seeing a study conducted in the USA a few years back where parents were asked which they’d prefer; beautiful children or intelligent ones, and something like 80% chose looks over brains. Their belief was that the better looking get further in life.
Perhaps it’s true.
Zo French?
The beauty industry, make-up, moisturisers, crèmes, is run by the French. That’s the only problem I have with it. The French may have the lion’s share of the market in this country now, but that will change. The Estee Lauders, Revlons and Max Factors of the world have proven without a doubt that the French can be beaten soundly at their own game. Mind you, as these brands are USA based, maybe the arrogance factor has something to do with it. If there’s one country who’s vying for the Arrogance World Cup against France, it’d have to be America. Home of the ‘We Know Best’. An attitude from big players which almost always provides opportunities for the canny marketer.
Global Brands Are Useless
Over the years I’ve read heaps about global brands and I’m still trying to find one or two benefits for the customer. I guess if you happened to be flying around the world the whole time it might be nice to be able to buy the same lipstick or hamburger in Dusseldorf as you can in Dandenong, but how much of the global population does that help? One in ten million? Global brands serve nobody but the global head office who don’t want to trust their subsidiaries in far off places like Australia. They want to make sure you Australian marketers can’t get anything wrong. And that’s it. My God, fancy if you used the wrong shade of red? The whole house of cards could collapse …
Vulnerability of global brands
All of the major brands in beauty are Global brands. This means they are completely unable to move or respond quickly. Especially if the problem is in some obscure little country. Which means Australian products can, if they try, grab large chunks of market share relatively easily. Think of the rise of Australis in the 1970’s and 80’s. I have not looked at another market that is so vulnerable to the upwelling of a new series of brands. What is stopping Australian businesses? Is it a lack of finance? Is it a lack of good manufacturing operations? Is it just a fear of the filthy French? Get over it. They may know how to make cheese, but have they ever won a war? No. Fight them and they fold. You can walk right over them. Ask the Germans or the Vietnamese. “You’d rather have the Germans in front of you than the French behind you” (to quote a Viet vet). If I was an Australian beauty products manufacturer I’d make damn sure my buyers knew the French think of us as the Muroroa of beauty products. The place where they dump what they don’t want. Where they can test on the next best thing to animals; Australians.
The case for Australian Cosmetics
There’s a reason why Australians use fewer beauty products per head than any other western country. It’s because our women don’t need to.
The fresh air, decent healthy food, an outside lifestyle. Lots of exercise. Good blood lines. (Usually the people who leave a place that’s not-so-nice are the healthier, smarter ones, the survivors. They have immigrated here.) Our people have become the best looking on the planet. Our women dominate the world stage. Elle, Megan Gale, Natalie Imbrulgia, Kylie, Nicole Kidman. The list rolls on like the world’s who’s who of beauty.
The world looks at our women like Maggie Tabberer (another world beauty) looks at a cream sponge. You think they won’t accept Australia as a beauty Mecca? You think they won’t take our beauty tips seriously? You think they won’t buy Australian beauty products? Of course they will. Like most beauties, it’s only insecurity that holds us back. Our lack of confidence. We just have to believe our products are as good as theirs. The branding credentials (the stars) are already bouncing around the world’s stages. You could use them, or at least profit from our own beauty’s successes.
How to do beauty products in OZ
Reflect our market
Yes, there’s something to be said for ‘aspiration’, but the sheer chasm of difference between the Revlon or L’Oriel girl in their ads and the girls of Australia is so great there must be real mileage in doing ads that feature Australians, selling make-up designed for Australians. Think.
Why is it our movies do better at the box office than imports, dollar for dollar? Because like our customers looking in a mirror, we want to see ourselves.
Ride the wings of technology
Be at the cutting edge of natural and/or chemical. Be aware that a bit of both is really where the market is going at present. But avoid, please, pseudo estrogens, those molecules which mimic the appearance of female hormones. They appear in many products and cause your sons to have small dicks, your daughters to reach puberty at seven or eight and the trout and alligators, let alone thousands of other species, to change sex. I’m not making this up.
Be smart about cultural preferences
About the portrayal of our women. Less blonde. More brunette. Be diverse. Don’t treat our women like vapid morons.
Be sensitive to fashions/looks
So many ‘international’ ads look plain daggy when they are seen against Australian fashions. We lead the world in street looks. If you don’t believe me, get out of your glass-faced office in the outer suburbs and go to Brunswick or Greville Streets. Using out of date looks ‘cause that’s how they dress in the moronic Midwest doesn’t make for fashion (or beauty) credibility here.
Be a moral leader
Think about your customers and how to make them like you. Support women’s causes. Children’s causes. Especially the long term/environmental causes if your key customers are the younger market.
Be scientific
Or ‘natural’, but speak with authority about the reasons why your product works and go into detail on websites, brochures etc.
Influence values
Recognize you have an opportunity to help causes. Make red lips matter. Make hollow cheekbones matter. Make eyebrows thick or thin. Change hair. Invent looks, attitudes, styles. Boost sex, romance. Boost flirtation and adventure. Encourage freedom. Encourage empowerment. Encourage self-worth. The beauty industry has the opportunity to undo what the fashion industry always tries to do, which is to destroy confidence (‘You can’t wear that, you’re too fat. And it’s last year’s. Get something new, you ugly thing’.). The beauty industry can give back hope.
Work against the medicos
The beauty industry is the only thing standing to stop the doctors pushing standardized physical perfection on everyone. Have you seen ‘extreme make-over? They think we all have to have ski-jump noses, no tummies, rock jaws, pinned back ears and no wrinkles. The beauty industry must stand for imperfections made into features, for the beauty of individuality versus the ugliness of sameness. The beauty industry has a fantastic opportunity, no a moral obligation, to stand for the different, the unique.
Take a leaf out of Vogue in the 1970’s or Myer Grace Bros during the late 1980’s when they used models who were not the ‘usual’ look. Many of their models were not beautiful in a classical sense, but were made beautiful by an accentuation of their looks. By product. The products you are trying to sell. By using unusual models, you are actually proving to your market that your products work. Proving you can make them, the ‘Miss Average’ look great too. What’s a better reason for them to buy your product?
Spend the money
As a professional marketer there’s one fact you can’t deny. If you don’t have a budget you can’t do anything. If you want to grow your beauty products business you can’t just rely on PR and some nice packaging. You have to market like the pros. Get a decent budget. That’s 10% plus of the sales increase you want.
Spend on packaging
It’s absolutely vital. It’s the key thing that separates the expensive from the cheap, the also-rans from the stuff you pay heaps for. Do good, complicated, multi-layered expensive packaging. Make people believe the product is worth it. God knows the difference in actual ingredients is stuff all. And keep in mind that the cute but cheap ‘old-fashioned’ packs used by people like Botani or Aesops only work with ‘ancient’ style formula. If you want to claim break-through and modern you need packaging that’s fresh and new.
Get distribution
If you want sales you have to get distribution. To get distribution you must grab space in the retail stores. The key ones, the major Department Stores, Chemists, and hairdressers must be worked. Even if you start in the lesser runs, you must aim to get your product into the key stores. And consider related stores if you can’t get into the majors. Country Road used to carry their own lines. The French fashion stores like Hermes carry scents, moisturizers.
If you can justify it within the brand’s image (ie. it may downgrade a better brand), consider the Pricelines of the world – they carry everything. While you won’t get much margin, you’ll be rubbing shoulders with the main players in the market as an equal.
Point of Sale
Point of Sale should hold the product, it must have mirrors that work. It must have a wide range of colors, styles. If you want to be taken seriously, it should dominate the area it is in. Use big photos. Use big bold colors. Use Australian girls.
In department stores POS is a true art-form . You need to create whole test areas, special seats for women to lounge in. Huge posters for atmosphere. Outfits for staff (a cross between a lab technician and a fashion photographer seems popular at the moment) glass display cases, special lighting (to make the punter look nicer) etc. etc.
Outdoor
Works. Again, it’s a visual media.
Merchandisers
You must have your POS cleaned up and stocked regularly. Better to have only 10 outlets working well than be running 50 really badly.
Sales Consultants
Most of the department stores will take your sales consultants as free on-floor staff. Actually, they insist on it. If you’re intending to target department stores recognize it’s a long, hard process to get them to take you on and they only will if you can supply all of the support staff, including those on the floor. And a powerful brand.
In Ads, use youth
If youth is what they are aiming at, use it. My six-year-old has absolutely flawless skin. Given the age of models today (16 is getting old) I predict they’ll be using tweens soon. One day even my little Dorothy Coco’s age group may get a run.
20 or so is the dream age group. If you are under 20 you want to look 20, if you are over 20, you want to look 20. I want to look 20. So do you.
And use old(er) ladies
The ageing of Australia has resulted in quite a large market for products marketed to the over 40/50’s. Most players use ‘old’ actresses like Andy McDowell, Liz Hurley etc. who appeal to those who can remember them as young actresses.
Target Metros
I’m told, by extremely reliable sources, that ‘metrosexuals’ males who buy beauty products, account for about 5% of up-market brand’s sales. And that market is growing very quickly.
Use magazines
Beauty is a visual thing. The best visual marketplace is the glossies. Big, wide spreads; extravaganzas that literally drip glamour. Close ups that are so close up you can see how the pores have been photo-shopped. Not a flaw for miles. Take the front end, the middle spread or the back pages, only.
Use Sundays
The Sunday Herald Sun/Sydney Morning Herald magazine is becoming a showcase media, for some reason. Perhaps it’s the cost per thousand rate compared to traditional women’s magazines.
Use TV
One of the big brands I interviewed for this (I always interview extensively for my articles – I know they read like I just make them up, but actually we at Starship believe in putting a lot of effort into being accurate. So we can be flippant, with authority.) said that the only reason others didn’t use TV was that they couldn’t afford it. Quote: “If they had their pricing and products right they’d use TV.”
Sample
Always give away testers and samples. If it works they will come back for the real thing and buy others in the range too. But make very sure the little pack really looks/works like the big one.
Use Direct Mail
Especially if you’re working with Chemists or consultants. It’s important to keep your sales force focused. If you have a good database of customers, consider direct with them too. It’s a powerful visual media and quite often cheaper than magazines.
Use the Web
Again if you are working with consultants, the web is brilliant for keeping them in touch with the big plan. But it’s also great for customers for general information on your products, where to get them, why they work etc.
Consider Pyramid Marketing
Mary Kay and Nutrimetics recognized the stranglehold the big brands have on the key distribution outlets and went around them. By using teams of otherwise unemployed housewives and motivating the buggery out of them with promises of untold riches delivered with a cult style fervor, these companies have carved out a real niche in the market. And big? Are you sitting down? Mary Kay has something in the area of 5000 plus consultants running around the suburbs of Australia selling their wares. Apparently Nutrimetics have even more.
Be empowering
Allow your local staff some autonomy. What’s the point of appointing qualified marketing staff if you won’t let them do anything that a normal marketer would? Have some confidence in your Australian people and allow them to do their job properly.
World brands have severe limitations. Graphics may stay globally consistent, but local content should reflect the local market’s needs, aspirations, accents, looks. No-one here wants to be culturally colonized. Sorry to tell you this, but we are not the 53rd State of the USA. Nor are we Vanuatu.
The major players will stay arrogant and out of touch. If you’re an Australian brand, use this obvious lack of cultural fit to your advantage. Appeal to Australian women (do the bloody market research to make sure you know what they want first) in an Australian way and you’ll clean up. I’m not saying be blokey. I’m saying learn from David Jones, Just Jeans, Elle McPherson underwear, Neutrogena’s ads. Not L’Oreal’s. Because WE are worth it.
I’m at Byron Bay. Mecca for the socially aware. Spending a couple of hours with an old mate who has taken every holiday over the past ten years here. He bought a ‘bit of property’ every time he visited. He now owns a fair few spots, shops, farms, apartments. He decided to retire, in his forties, and all he does now is surf and drink beer and talk to people. He’s charming, his family are charming; the scene is charming, almost.
We’re lounging on the grass eating fish and chips with our kids. The sky is azure blue, cotton-ball clouds tippy toe across it high above. Whales jump, miles out to sea. As they do, mobs of hippies, interspersed with Japanese tourists, gabble in awe as the white water plumes shoot up from the sphere of endless blue. The chant of some 30, spoiled, fresh-faced, well-meaning middle class black t-shirted kids, protesting to Make Poverty History, almost drowns out the sea gulls.
The seagulls swoop and cackle every time one of my spoiled, middle-class kids tosses half a chip their way. Somehow the noise and eagerness of the gulls is out of step here. This is a serene environment and the mad scramble for food, the flapping of wings, the snapping at competitors, is wrong – it does not fit. The sun is forever shining, the grass is greener, the wind lighter and airy, a perfect 24 degrees, soft unadulterated mellowness. But then come more birds, and with no regard for the peace and calm of the place, they make a violent racket over a few greasy chips.
It gets me thinking about calmness. About a focus on one thing, one culture, versus a loud gabble about anything. About how many marketers say way too much, pester their customers, rather than pacify, staying relaxed in themselves, like the proverbial surfing hippy.
I guess much of it comes down to confidence, comes down to knowing what it is you stand for, and proudly pushing that direction. Having the balls to make the big call; not trying to be everything to everybody.
And I think about who’s successful out there in marketing land, and how much they focus their efforts on a single-minded proposition.
I’m simply big.
The big operators always focus. In fact, the bigger you are, usually the simpler you get. I’m not sure if you get simple because it’s easier to manage when you’re big, or you get big because you are simple or keep things simple, but either way, simplicity in marketing messages goes hand-in hand with size. It’s the big groups who say a simple message. (Like I-pod, where even the name is simple.) It’s the small ones who always want to say way too much in their communications. And I know you’re probably saying ‘big companies that are already known have the luxury of being simple and the little guys have to stand out and be different to get big’. Wrong. To stand out to the masses you need to keep it basic. U-Tube has grown from nothing to a multi-billion dollar company with ‘Broadcast yourself’.
Simple means easy
Simple is so much easier for everyone. From the customer who can describe your ads to their friends, to the marketing department briefing their agency, to the agency’s art-directors who know what kind of image to look for, simplicity makes your marketing smoother, your message stronger, your dollar go further.
You simply stand out.
By being one-eyed on what you say about the brand, you allow the public to recognise a pattern. They can see you in a field of moving images, in the wash of rubbish that is today’s communication mix. You maximize the effectiveness of your media spend, by being more recognisable amongst the 5,000 plus messages they have to wade through every day.
Yours are the ripest melons
It doesn’t matter what the message is, as long as it can be delivered and you can feel good about it for many years. It must obviously have wide appeal if you are to grow large. (With a narrow focus on a low income target group, like unemployed alcoholics blind in one eye, you might end up very poor yourself.)
A psychological positioning
You need a message that anyone, in the right mood, will relate to. Fortunately there are millions of these messages – we humans can relate to all sorts of situations or emotional positions – but, and here’s the rub, it must be both an emotional and some-how fit a ‘logical’ angle too. Logical is easy, the better size, the cheaper price, the more convenient pack. But there are millions of brands out there that do everything right and that still fail to make real money. Why? Because people don’t buy on logic, they buy emotion. You and I as marketers know this – the pack looks prettier, the brand says animal-friendly, the vibe is for kids, the lonely old man finds a new friend, whatever. We like the brand.
The choice isn’t easy
More effort goes on this issue than almost any other in big company land. Number two is executive jostling position, three is the financial situation and a long forth is any thing else.
Why? Cause why we are here and what we say about ourselves makes or breaks waking minds in senior marketing land. The day to day is often made up of meetings about psychological locations, moving niches, deep research, chatter on-line, or consultant’s constant ‘revelations’. But most of all, about how we should paint how we are seen. Why again? Because we’re human, and humans have values, simple values. And these values filter through to everything we do in life, so when a brand has a simple positive value, it has emotional appeal.
This takes focus. And as we have to do new ads or the public gets bored very quickly, the issue is often very simply ‘How we can hit the centre of the circle again and again without straying from the sweet spot. What is it we can say, that says it again even better?
And this focus is the job of the positioning line, the tagline.
Role of a tagline
To remind people why you exist. To summarize your brand’s values. To reinforce the good things they believe about your brand. To make you stand out and stand for something specific. To enhance your brand’s memorability and to hopefully, generate a long-term positive feeling towards your business. And most importantly of all, to give the agency and the marketing department something to aim for with most ads.
Big Company discipline
Good taglines are a big company discipline, like decent marketing budgets, professional, intelligent briefs and accounts departments that pay on time.
Smaller, dumber, lesser-skilled businesses wonder whether they need them, can’t decide on what to say and often grasp the first thing that sounds OK, without putting the effort into decent analysis of the implications. Taglines, like any other key business communication tool, deserve real thought.
How to
Research your market
Ask around the business. Interview customers. Run focus groups or quant studies if you’re that well known. Be hard on the researchers – did they really mean that? How can you be so sure?
Test your taglines post their development too. Run a few focus groups or some quant on the take-out and how they are seen – make sure what you think it says is actually the take-out.
Decide if you’re there yet
Many players settle for how they are seen now. You need to add the one magical ingredient – vision. Choose a tagline that says as much about where you are going, as where you are now.
Focus on your findings
What to focus on is your core competitive advantage – real, perceived or intended. Easy to say, huh?
A broad advantage
Make it something that will appeal to all of your customers and most of your competitors customers, not something that just appeals to those you might like to focus on. The more universal, ‘motherhood’ the statement is, the better to win a large customer base. Motherhood – everyone is in favour of motherhood, (otherwise we all wouldn’t be here…) except I guess if you happen to be becoming one right this day, then you’d be in favour of abortion, six or seven months ago.
Make it deliverable
When Coles adopted ‘Where quality costs no more’ in the mid 90’s, they lost market share hand over fist (which is a bit like the way they were wanking themselves, I guess) because the punters said (I did focus groups on it for their competitors) “quality always costs more – this is a lie”. It was demonstrably undeliverable in the public’s eyes and so lost them credibility.
Do a style guide
Set up the situations in which it will be used – how big it is to be in relation to the logo. Whether it’s used on all communications or whether it should vary by demographic group? But take the decision side of the style guide out of the designers hands – set a strong brief yourself. If you leave it to the designers, they will often do it on the basis of their perception of how it looks best, not how it works best strategically.
Leave the details out
If you haven’t got the meaning from the tagline, the tagline is not working. If people have to think for a little while first, it may be OK, in fact is often better, because they will remember it more if they ponder or ask someone, but if it plain doesn’t communicate properly, go back to the drawing board.
Resist the temptation to qualify
Sometimes companies make the mistake of trying to be too specific – too accurate. To explain exactly what you mean. This makes for very dull ads, and does not acknowledge the public has any brains, which is insulting. The push to do it usually comes from anal accountants or engineers who want everything perfect and who don’t understand how humans really think or behave and/or middle-weight lawyers who believe the ACCC still has some teeth and are always sure you need to make everything as plain as the nose on Graeme Samuel’s face.
Nice examples
BMW 3 Series | “The ultimate Driving machine”
Vodaphone | “Make the most of now”
Panadol | “It’s my choice”
Tatts | “Life could be a dream”
Lexus | “The Passionate Pursuit of Perfection”
Coles | “Something better everyday” (Edit from the future in 2016: Now it’s ‘Coles Freshed It’, wtf?)
Life Health Care | “There’s more to life”
TXU | “We care about electricity even if you don’t”
Youtube | “Broadcast yourself”
American Express | “Don’t leave home without it
Hewlett Packard | “Invent”
Commonwealth Bank | “Which bank?”
Microsoft | “Where do you want to go today”
iSelect | “You’d have to be Puffin Muffins, (Boning Marrow, Tossing Possums, Wrestling Rhino’s – there’s about 10) to buy health insurance any other way.”
And I love this one from our boys bearing arms in the States…
Colt 45. | “It works every time”
Dumb Ones
Swartzkhoff | “Professional hair care for you”
How could it be? I’m doing it at home!
ANZ (1980’s) | “The Best Bank is the Bank that serves you Best”
Hardly rolls off the tongue
Holiday Inn | “Look again”
Well what the fuck does that mean? Keep looking for another hotel?
Toys ‘R’ Us | “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us Kid”
Fine in principle, but it would have been far better if it was “Don’t grow up”. Again, less is more.
Johnnie Walking | “Keep Walking”
In Australia, “Keep Walking” means piss off, should we just ignore Johnnie and go straight for Jim?
Fanta | “Don’t you wanta Fanta?”
Just stupid.
Coca Cola | “The Coke side of life”
That’s the fat side for those who’ve had too much.
Camel Cigarettes | “I’d walk a mile for a Camel”.
You probably wouldn’t make it a hundred meters.
Best Western | “Best everywhere”
Talk about under delivering on a promise.
L’Oreal | “Because I’m worth it”
You’re worth using a home hair coloring kit instead of going to a professional? Nup.
Types of positioning lines
Traditional taglines
Said after the brand’s name as in ‘National Australia Bank ‘Tailoring banking to your needs’. Not a very original way to do it, but probably the most effective.
Before lines
‘Seriously… Network 10’. Sets the public up often better than telling them after – but needs to be short or the brand gets lost in the process.
Surround line
Ie. Go Harvey Norman Go.
In their case it says to me ‘Go away from Harvey Norman’ – and one quick walk around their furniture department with the gorgeous vibrating plumped up arm-chairs designed for the super obese, said run to me.
Non-taglines
The classic fashion industry ‘we’re so cool we don’t need to say anything. We’ll just use grumpy, stick-thin models and guys with a three-day growth and you’ll know we’re it and a bit’. Which is fine if you’re the first one in your sector who takes this approach, but when they all do it? Just another way to blend your brand into all the others and stand for nothing. No wonder the rest of the marketing world laughs at the fashion industry. And why, when they do say something, like Benneton (United Colours – anti racist) or Ripcurl “The Search” (for the perfect wave), they get noticed and remembered.
Live the dream – deliver the reality
Get everyone in the business to buy into the positioning focus – this is not that easy with 20,000 employees (often requires considerable internal work training courses, intranet emails, re-launch parties etc.) But the public doesn’t care if your internal communication system is shite. When Westpac says ‘we know and respect our customer’ the punters expect the staff in their branch to say ‘Hi Mary, how are the kids?, not ask her for frickin I.D.
Get over it
Yes, you’re not sure what the message should be. And you’re not sure if the current one is working. This is a good place to start. Giving decent consideration to things is invariably way better than bog determination to shove a dumb idea down the public’s throat. So often the case…
The steps to find a simple promise, and the focusing of your company on that, aren’t hard really. It’s a bit like eating an elephant – one bite at a time. It should be quite up-lifting and will give you heaps of excuses to debate issues with other senior management and the board. With any luck, you can even launch a new campaign, which is always nice for your CV.