Monday, September 14, 2009

Dyson Ball - a vacuum purchaser's dilemma

So, I'm buying a new house, and I set out to determine if I want to have a built-in vacuum or a stand-alone vacuum - specifically the Dyson. Why the Dyson? Well, they have great ads, and really seem to stand for something. So, I "Google'd" it.

The forums I found - including one by car enthusiasts - all pointed to the Dyson as the clear winner in the suction and cleaning battle. So, then I set out to find a Dyson. I visited the Dyson site and found ... that I am now very confused about what their models all do. I didn't know that there could be so many models. They all look alike, and their descriptions don't really help you tell what miraculous feature one vacuum has over the other.

Here's the punchline however. On their site Dyson sell refurbished vacuums. These are older models, and without the new "Ball" feature. Presumably, however, they machines are as good as new. AND, they are roughly half-price. However, my better half isn't interested in saving $300. She's interested in getting "The Ball." Why? Well, simply put, because Dyson has done such a darn find job of telling us all about how great the ball is, and how stupid you'd be to buy a non-ball model.

Dyson = GREAT Branding! We are willing to pay a premium just because of the value of the brand.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Will Google make you irrelevant?

Image via CrunchBase

I love Google! Who wouldn't?

But today I was going to buy some software to make a drawing of a new bathroom that I'm setting up. When I searched (on Google, of course) for some design software the first sponsored link was for Google's own Google SketchUp software. Price? You've got to know ... FREE.

Google's competitor, Microsoft, makes software, sells it for ba-zillions then goes out and destroys its competition by out-muscling them. Google, on the other hand, makes software, GIVES it away for free, and destroys competition by the ultimate under-pricing model.

This is all well, I suppose, until Google finds a way to move into your own business sector. If you see that happening, then it is probably time to go out and find another career. There aren't many examples of Google failing to bring successful products to market. If Google automates Marketing Strategy (and they will eventually), then it is time for me to go back into Project Management (unless they've automated that ...).

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

CBC's article on Guerrilla Marketing Gone Bad

CBC has a good retrospective on Guerrilla Marketing, and some bad or even disturbing outcomes.

Check out "When Ad Campaigns Go Bad".

The Web Urbanist also has a good review of 5 campaigns gone bad.

In fact, doing a Google search for news on "Guerrilla Marketing Bad", provides some interesting results.

Friday, July 31, 2009

On the other hand ...

Today I came across Mango Moose Media, and in contrast to my last blog entry and rant on the Ikea kerfuffle, MMM's site does have some interesting quotes on it:

Every media plan should contain an element of alternative media
"Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make" - William Bernbach
Standing out is our job.

Alternative advertising, guerrilla advertising, ambient advertising, non-traditional media, mobile campaigns, pizza boxes, sidewalk ads, street teams, hangar ads, nail salons, floating billboards, pop-up billboards, limo wraps, projection ads, PR stunts ... the list goes on. These guys sound fun. I bet they get into trouble from time-to-time.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Swedish for "DUH!" - Ikea's guerilla ad campaign

Ikea is running an interesting, and apparently stupid, advertising campaign which involves tagging (i.e. spray-painting) their ad on public space. Do you think people are upset with this?

How about this:

Ikea has apologized and admitted the 400-sign national campaign was poorly executed.

It blamed the mistake on miscommunication between it and the company contracted to do the job, and promised to remove the stenciled ads.

What ... their Marketing team doesn't sign-off on this sort of ad campaign? Come on!

Read more on:

Also - the comments on these stories are interesting. They say that there is no such thing as bad publicity ... I wonder.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

What is Brand Health?

Following up on yesterday's post about financial ratios, and predictors of business success, today I'm plugging away at Brand Health.

Again, armed with my basic knowledge and Google, I set out to define ...

Brand Health 101.

Unlike the hard-and-fast & tried-and-true financial ratios, there is no standard and limited information floating around out there about Brand Health. It is something of an art and science. Available information is vague but critical, and is largely controlled by Agencies. Hmmm ... sounds sort of like Advertising.

One important commonality among the definitions of Brand Health is that Healthy Brands can command and sustain price premiums, and Healthy Brands can better sustain themselves in the face of adversity.

Among the many websites I found through Google to compile this summary of Brand Health, these were the most helpful:

And here's a quick run-down on what Brand Health is and how to measure it ...

If you generally define Brand as what people think of your product or service, then it flows that Brand Health is a measure of how they think of your Brand. To that end, Brand Equity (a quantitative measure of the value of the brand in the consumers' minds which is often assigned a dollar value and reported as an asset on balance sheets) could be considered a sub-set of Brand Health. Sometimes it is even considered to be the measure for Brand Health.

Otherwise, to measure Brand Health you have to be able to determine what a consumer's relationship is with your product or service, and answer questions such as:

What they know of it?
How they intereact with it?
How they use it?
What they think of its performance?
Their emotional bond to it?
The place it has in their heart?
The place it has in their wallets?
What they believe the attributes of it are?
What their distinct image of it is (perhaps their "Onliness")?

In their paper "Towards a System for Monitoring Brand Health from Store Scanner Data", authors Bhattacharya and Lodish define brand health using established notions of health. The two dimensions of Brand Health they say are:

Current wellbeing — a brand's attraction to consumers in an environment where all brands are operating under typical, normal conditions, and
Resistance — a brand's attraction to consumers when it is under attack from competition or from other elements in the macro-environment (e.g., when a new product enters the market).

Very interesting of course. In practical perspective, how is one to measure Brand Health? One way is to call up Angus Reid Strategies. They have a proprietary Brand Assessment Measure tool (BAM), that has four measures: Knowledge, Uniformity, Originality and Power. Their BAM score is well recognized and is derived from analyses of people's responses to the full set of brand attributes.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

What's the best long-term predictor of business success?

Return on Equity or Brand Health? Current Ratio or Brand Health? Average Inventory Turnover or Brand Health?

I wonder ... A long time ago a friend of mine made good cash by investing in Starbucks and Microsoft. How did he predict their success? His advice was simple, if you like a company, believe in that company's product or service, and like their culture, then you should invest in them. Hmmm ... in hind-sight it sounds to me like he was talking about their brand (oh, and I wish I'd done it at the same time)!

So, I thought I'd do blog a comparison of financial ratios to brand health. Today, I'm poking at financial ratios. Armed only with my own dated knowledge of ratios, and Google (which quickly led me to some good sources, cited below), I am happy to present for your reading pleasure ...

Basic Financial Ratios 101.

There are a wide variety of financial ratios that help to give you some idea of a firm's success. These can pretty much all be computed from basic information provided in annual statements, or are already publicly available on a wide array of websites. Ratios provide a snapshot of a company's performance. On its own an individual ratio won't tell you anything. Even when you get all the ratios for a given company at a given time, they still won't tell you anything.

Ratios are really only valuable when they are compared with other snapshots in time or wih other ratios from other similar companies, other similar industries, and so forth. Additionally, you need to have the context of what the company's strategy is and what they are trying to achieve. that will tell you why the ratios are what they are, and let you know if they should be what they are. In that light, here are some of the most common financial ratios:

Liquidity Ratios --> provide information about a firm's ability to meet its short-term financial obligations and pay debt. Among Liquidity ratios are the Current Ratio (Current Assets divided by Current Liabilities). A higher current ratio reduces a lender's risk, while a lower current ratio indicates that more of the firm's assets are working to grow the business. Alternatively, an Operating Cash Flow Ratio calculation provides a much more conservative view of a firm's liquidity ((Cash + Marketable Securities) divided by Current Liabilities).
Asset Turnover Ratios (or Efficiency Ratios, or Asset Utilization Ratios, or Asset Management Ratios, or Activity Ratios) --> indicate how well the firm uses its assets. One measure of Asset Turnover is Average Inventory Turnover (Average daily cost of goods sold in a period divided by the Average Inventory in that same period, or Annual Cost of Goods Sold divided by 365). The appropriate ratio value and its meaning varies dramatically by firm and industry.
Financial Leverage Ratios or Debt Ratios --> try to tell the story of the long-term solvency of the firm. For instance, the Debt Ratio (Total Liabilities divided by Total Assets) or the Debt-to-Equity Ratio (Total Debt divided by Total Equity).
Profitability Ratios --> include several different measures of how well a firm generates profits and controls its expenses. These include the simple Gross Profit Margin (Sales less the Cost of Goods Sold), which focuses on the firm's cost of goods sold, but does not include other costs. More complex ratios are the Return on assets (Net Income divided by Total Assets) which is a measure of how effectively the firm's assets are being used to generate profits, and Return on Equity (Net Income divided by Shareholder Equity) which similarly measures how effectively the investor's cash is earning profits.
Market Ratios --> measure investor response to owning a company's stock. For instance, Earnings per Share is an often-quoted ratio (Expected Earnings divided by Number of Shares issued).

Tomorrow ... "What is Brand Health?"

With thanks to:

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Top ranked sites by time spent - Facebook is on top

Image via CrunchBase

According to Compete, the top ranked sites by time spent on a site are:

I find it interesting that looking at three different metrics - unique visitors, visits, and time spent - you end up with completely different rankings. The big guns do manage to keep their space up at the top.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Top ranked sites by visits - Yahoo! rules

Image via CrunchBase

According to Compete, the top ranked sites by visits are:

Of course visits are different than unique visits. For instance, someone who uses Yahoo! as their home page may visit it several times a day to get news, weather, games, and so on. On the other hand, that same person may visit Google once a day to search for something.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Top ranked sites by unique visitors - Google wins

Image via CrunchBase

According to Compete, the top ranked sites by visitors are:

Friday, July 17, 2009

YouTube's video popularity chart

Image via CrunchBase

There aren't a lot of lists of "viral videos" or "hit videos" out there. Which I found very surprising. So, I went to the source ... YouTube. You can find the sorted list of their top most viewed videos at YouTube. Of interest, I think you find a different list if you are logged in (i.e. more "adult oriented" in nature) than if you are not logged in (i.e. more PG).

Also, you can filter their list by "when" (today, this week, this month, this year, or all time), and by video or channel.

Anyhow, enjoy YouTube's list of most popular videos.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Another Viral Video List

Image via CrunchBase

I found another list of Viral Videos.

This one is prepared and maintained on the
Visible Measures Blog. Have a look at their May 2009 list of the top web videos of all time.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Viral Videos in perspective

I'll admit I've been enjoying following the Sons of Maxwell song and crusade against United Airlines pathetically bad customer service. This is a story - and one would like to hope a big exception, but somehow I doubt it - about an experience gone terribly awry, and the great ability of a consumer to create an enormous amount of buzz in their own defense, using the power of the internet to communicate and engage.

In that light, I'm fresh back from holidays and have been reading "The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing" by Emanuel Rosen. The message is powerful.

Both of those happenings led me to start thinking about viral videos, how they work, and what they are. Maybe this song and video are "anti-buzz" against United Airlines. In any event, it is amusing and ever so telling about their overall way of doing business. It also shows the power of a consumer with a good story in the internet age.

Back to Sons of Maxwell and United Airlines ... for some background, you might want to read more from Dave Carroll's own story on his own blog, and then you should watch and listen to the song on YouTube.

By the way - the views on that video are on fire. They have had more than 2.7 million views in less than a week. The majority of the comments on the vlog clearly feel their pain, and express anger and frustration at United and other airlines.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Globe & Mail employees vote to strike - the end of another newspaper?

Image by roland via Flickr

Employees at the Globe & Mail have voted to support a strike mandate. Will this be the end of another newspaper as we know it?

If the 500 editorial, advertising and circulation workers do strike, how long will they be able to be out before the Globe & Mail shuts down and vanishes? Without a doubt it is a great paper with a great history. However, in the face of newspapers having difficulty competing with online sources, will this be a catalyst for people to simply abandon the old fashioned newspaper - founded in the 1800s, and start using technology from 1996 and 2005 to browse the web on their computers or wireless devices? That's where my money would be.

I don't know anything about the background of the dispute at the Globe & Mail, but maybe the employees should be looking at better alternatives, such as:

Revenue sharing based on producing popular content for the Globe's websites?
Ownership and bonuses based on the actual success & longevity of the enterprise?
Opportunities to participate in unique revenue creating ventures?

The short of it is that the newspaper industry as a whole in North America is suffering. The union workers at the "Big-3" could probably shed some light on this for the 500 editorial, advertising and circulation workers at the Globe and Mail.

From CBC.ca:

Globe and Mail news and sales employees on Saturday voted 97 per cent in favour of authorizing their bargaining committee to call a strike unless the company comes up with a better deal to replace their expiring contract.
The 500 editorial, advertising and circulation workers' current four-year contract expires on June 30, and a strike or lockout at the Toronto-based daily newspaper could take place on midnight of that day.

A brief history of the Globe and Mail from Wikipedia:

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed newspaper based in Toronto, and printed in six cities across the country (Halifax, Montreal, Toronto (several editions), Winnipeg (actually printed in Brandon, Manitoba), Calgary and Vancouver)
It has a weekly readership of 935 000
The Globe and Mail has always been a morning newspaper.
In 1995, the paper launched its Web site, globeandmail.com, which had its own content and journalists in addition to the content of the print newspaper.
It later spawned a companion Web site, globeinvestor.com, focusing on financial and investment-related news.
The predecessor to The Globe and Mail was The Globe, founded in 1844 by Scottish immigrant George Brown
The Toronto Mail and Empire was founded in 1872 by Tory politician Sir John A. Macdonald (the first Prime Minister of Canada)
In 1936, The Globe merged with The Mail and became The Globe and Mail.
In 1965, the paper was bought by Winnipeg-based FP Publications controlled by Brig. Richard Malone
The Report on Business section was launched in 1962
FP Publications and The Globe and Mail were sold in 1980 to the Thomson Group
Control of the paper was sold to telecommunications company BCE Inc. in 2001.
A year earlier BCE had also acquired CTV, a major private television network.
With the sale, the Globe and CTV were merged into a new company named Bell Globemedia (now CTVglobemedia), which became a subsidiary of BCE with the Thomson family retaining a minority stake.
In late 2005, BCE reduced its stake in Bell Globemedia, leaving the Thomson family, through its holding company Woodbridge, with a 40-percent stake. BCE, Torstar (owner of the Toronto Star) and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan each control a 20-percent stake.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Google vs. Bing - an update

Image via CrunchBase

I just read on Reuters that Microsoft's Bing is continuing to grow its web search audience. It is still relatively small however compared to Google.

According to comScore:

June 8-12, Microsoft search accounted for 12.1% of U.S. Internet searches
June 1-5, Microsoft had 11.3% (the week Bing launched)
May 25-31, Microsoft had 9.1%
May (the rest of it), Microsoft had 8%

At the same in May, Google held 65 % of U.S. searches, and Yahoo! had 20.1%.
It will be very interesting to see if Bing is able to hold the 12%+ or gain more. Additionally, it will be interesting to see if their gains are at Google's expense or at Yahoo!'s. According to brand wisdom, it should be Yahoo! that suffers most.

Google Vs. Bing - Will Bing stand a chance?

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft relaunched their effort to beat Google in the search marketing game. This time Microsoft has come out with an entirely new search engine - called Bing.com.

Will it beat Google? I don't think so.
Microsoft cannot claim much of anything with the new search engine.

They are not the first
They are not the most popular
They are not the dominant

They may be the prettiest. Their site is full of neat Ajax programming tricks that make it a bit more intuitive to use than Google. It also has a nifty menu that creates itself down the left side that helps you filter your results. Will those innovations help? Maybe. Can Google copy them. Absolutely.

According to Comscore Media Metrix:

Microsoft Sites increased its average daily penetration among U.S. searchers from 13.8 percent during the period of May 26-30 to 15.5 percent during the period of June 2-6, 2009, an indication that the search engine is reaching more people than before. Microsoft’s share of search result pages in the U.S., a proxy for overall search intensity, increased from 9.1 percent to 11.1 percent during the same time frame.

Once the buzz and campaign that Microsoft has been driving dies down, my bet would be on Google to maintain strong leadership over time. But then again ... at one point in time I never had any reason to think I wouldn't use Altavista.com for a search.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Congratulations to the Calgary Herald

The Calgary Herald won several newspaper awards recently.

Firstplace; Magazines: for Monthly magazines produced in 2008 entitled A Day in the Life.
Second place; Special Sections: "Best of Alberta: The Search for Our Greatest Citizen."
First place; Special Projects: for marketing, advertising and editorial initiatives undertaken throughout 2008, in honour of the newspaper's 125th anniversary
Thirdplace; Newspaper Marketing and Promotion: A promotion centred around the Herald's Green Guide
Second place; Integrated Ad Campaign: For a program it completed with WestJet called Fly Free.

You can find more details on the Calgary Herald site.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

My apologies if you are in the newspaper business

The three things that are killing off our traditional newspapers are:

Heavy debt loads due to bad choices with respect to heavy consolidation,
A rapid shift to the internet to get timely news and information (esp. with the wireless web now allowing people to view the news in real-time on their iPhones and similar devices), and
The emergence of CraigsList.org and Kijiji.com eating up their advertising revenues.

And now this report courtesy of CBC.ca today ... "Craigslist revenue on pace to top $100M US".

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Big Rock Eddie's 2009 Winners

You can find the winners on YouTube now. If you follow the link from the title of this post you will find Big Rock's press release about the Eddie's and links to each of the winners on YouTube. Just in case you don't want to go to that bother, here are three of the winners and entrants.

The big winner:

One of my favourites (this one hurts ...):

And another (this one hurts ... more):

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Thanks Jim Button - The Eddies were GREAT

What else can I say. The 2009 Eddies didn't disappoint me last night.

It looked like a sold-out event. The lobbies were jam-packed and a tonne of fun.

The quality of the ads were excellent. My personal favourites weren't the winners. But, that didn't matter. Maybe I'll have to pull out my video camera and get creative for next year :^).

Monday, June 1, 2009

I'm going to the Eddies

I meant to blog about this weeks, and weeks, and weeks ago. But, alas ... I forgot. One might say I fell off the blogging horse. So, now I'm flogging the blogging.

In any event - on with the show - tonight is one of the biggest nights and coolest events in Calgary. The Eddies.

The Eddies were conceived by the good folks at Big Rock Brewery back in 1993, and have been going strong ever since. Proceeds from the event go to charity.

It's my first time, and I am looking forward to it.

I know it is only hours before the event, but if you still want tickets, check out Ticketmaster.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The End of Twitter?

CBC reports today that Nielsen Research has found that despite the massive influx in Twitter - helped along the way by Jon Stewart, Oprah, Ashton, and CNN - the massive abandonment is even more interesting.

A full 60% of people who visit Twitter each month will never return again.

That is an improvement from where it was (at about 30%) prior to all the celebrity attention.

In contrast, MySpace and Facebook each sit around 70%.

(In related news ... I recently blogged about the "Coming Death of Facebook", which was an opinion piece on the CTV news site.)

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Results are in for the Super Bowl Ads

The results are in for the Super Bowl Ads. Comscore reports that:

One-quarter of respondents in comScore’s pre-Super Bowl survey indicated that watching the ads is their favorite part of the day’s festivities.
Ads which people would most like to see again were Bud / Bud Light, Doritos, Coca Cola, Pepsi, and GoDaddy.com.
Ads which most improved their brand image were for Doritos, Bud / Bud Light, and Denny's.
Results indicated that GoDaddy.com's ad may have hurt its brand image. However, it also had the third highest ad recall.

Have a look at the full story and charts over at Marketing Charts.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Four pieces of advice for a tight economy

Quick post here:

Narrow your focus. Classic branding strategy and business strategy is to ensure you are narrowly focused on doing "one thing" and doing it right. Hey - big car companies - take note! Don't blow your brains out (and budget) by trying to be everything to everyone. Figure out one thing and do it right. E.g. GMC = Trucks (focus only on trucks ... get out of SUVs), Chevy = Cheap family cars (focus on Cavalier, Malibu, and Impala ... get out of Corvette and Camaro), Pontiac = Sporty cars (focus on Grand Am ... ah heck ... kill the brand entirely), Cadillac = Luxury (focus on real luxury ... get rid of the low end models).
Focus on your brand. Be sure you know what you are all about in the eyes of your customers, and how you deliver that to your customers.
Become low cost. Look to Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines, and others. Figure out how they deliver great service and great customer experiences at low cost. How do they keep their customers happy, their employees happy, and earn a profit at the same time (even in this ugly economy). Adapt those lessons to your business model.
Innovate by providing an alternative at a lower price. If you are looking at your business and thinking "How do I innovate?" Look simply at your product or your competitor's products and figure out a cheaper alternative that will fundamentally change the market. Then figure out how to create that product and go after the market. Eventually work your way up the food chain through the higher end models. A good example of that is virtually all of the competition to the North American Auto Industry. Volkswagon introduced the bug in the 50s at the low end of the market, and scared the North American Auto industry out of that space, then came back and ate their lunch at the mid-end (even at a premium price). Honda did it back in the 70s starting with the Civic. Then ate the high end with the Acura line. Hyundai did it in the 80s starting with the Pony. This year they won top quality honors for a luxury car. Watch out ... here comes Kia.

There are four things you can start doing tomorrow!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Getting high Google rankings - a Mug's Game?

I've been in business for quite awhile. And maybe call me jaded but I'm beginning to question the value of latest holy grail of marketing - SEO and web optimization. Not because it doesn't make sense to target your audience and measure effectiveness of your marketing effort. Of course it does.

My rising doubt arises about the ability of marketers to actually realize this potential without putting all resources and budgets into this one marketing basket.

Two events over the past twenty four hours really have me pondering this question.

The first is a "free" assessment of my website - www.interactivevoice.ca by a consultant who specializes in web optimization. While the assessment was OK and indicated my website would never reach page 1 on Google, it begs the question - who cares? My company is small, specialized and not interested in catering to the whole world, or even the whole marketing industry. To even start the process would cost several thousand dollars. I don't see the how the ROI potential.

The second shoe fell today while ready the Search Insider blog on getting first page listing on Google. Apparently the odds of getting a first page listing are around 500000:1. To beat these odds, requires a lot of focus, resources and likely outside help (expensive help).

I don't know what the answer is but my question is: is it worth it? Or are we forgetting the real basics of good marketing?

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

On-line numbers

Following are some statistics on current internet usage in the U.S. In some respects, the numbers are pretty staggering in terms of time spent online. On the other hand, it begs the question, if this is the average are online marketers ignoring alot of the market who aren't "heavy" users?

Average U.S. Internet Usage, Combined Home & Work, (Month of December 2008)
Sessions/Visits per Person 59
Domains Visited per Person 108
Web Pages per Person 2,353
Duration of a Web Page Viewed 0:00:55
PC Time per Person 68:23:22
Active Digital Media Universe 166,120,474
Current Digital Media Universe Estimate 225,748,755

Source: Nielsen Online, January 2009

Monday, February 2, 2009

Email big brother is coming

According the Deloitte, 2009 may be the year email volumes decline among business users. Not because of a change in behavior by employees, but as a result of actions taken by employers to reduce costs and manage productivity. In some cases, the prediction is filters will be placed on the amount of emails received or sent, storage capacity limited or even "email free" days established.

If this scenario does come to pass, what will be the impact on your email campaigns to business clients or prospects?Maybe none as it will take time and effort to impose this type of discipline.

But it does suggest there may some potential threats, particularly for marketing related email communication. If employees are restricted to how much time they can spend reading emails, the quality of your email newsletter will need to be superior to your competition. Not only in terms of quality of graphics, ease of navigation and overall appearance, but also in terms of content relevance. If it doesn't provide content that helps the reader do their job better or keep them current, it is likely they won't have time to read all the newsletters they get.

There also is going to be increased difficulty in subscribers actually receiving your newsletter. And it may not be their decision. This trend - if it does materialize - speaks to the need to integrate alternative communication channels for customers to send or receive your message. Direct mail, increased use of voice communication, use of text messaging along with email can play a bigger role in communicating your message. The great thing is they all can be work together and the results totally measureable.

Super Bowl Ads

Check em out and vote. ... Youtube's got 'em.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Important Marketing Trends for 2009 at CES in Vegas

I found this on YouTube today. It is an interview by AdAge of Accenture's Greg Douglass. Interesting to me was that the word VALUE popped out again. I think that is such an important word to focus on (one way or another) in 2009.

Greg's two key messages are:

Make your product aspirational. Consumers want to aspire to some sort of new Electronic thing.
Bundle services and options with products they sell. We haven't seen this sort of bundling to any major extent yet. Adding value to the device will be key in 2009.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Trends in advertising, 2009

Today's Google search ... "latest trend in advertising 2009".

And, that led me to a number of YouTube videos. Here's an interesting one ...

Leo Burnett Group Predictions '09, Future Trends in Advertising

Just in case you missed them ... those were:

New Realism - Economic Conditions will lead to a value-based messaging. Expressions that are confident, secure, uplifting, connected, honest, and progressive
Hyper-Reality - The pace of change is accelerating.
Trust Economy - Trust in a Brand is critical to success
Eco-Austerity - Environment pressures will turn into an economic reality
Digital TV - Tipping point of broadcast quality
Thread media - Content will be tradable across media (i.e. integrated advertising across media)
Generation Game - Gaming will become a mass-market pursuit
The end of fact - The internet allows more opinions to be delivered more rapidly.
Brands as vehicles - Brands are about to become a "means" and not an "end".

Monday, January 19, 2009

Hot Marketing Strategies

In my daily random Google search, I typed in "Hot Marketing Strategies". The first several listings were all businesses touting their capabilities. About the 6th or 7th listing was for MoreBusiness.com. On it, they had a list of "Cool Tips for Hot Marketing Success"

The list (paraphrased) is:

Create an Energetic Team - with a mix of energetic people from various departments Guide and Coordinate
You should not only lead your marketing team but also ensure that each member is aware of their responsibilities. They need to be able to act in unison to ensure the success of the marketing campaign.
Guide and Coordinate - guide them according to their strengths and weaknesses and coordinate various teams to avoid misunderstandings. Also, coordinate with your back-end operations
Keep It Simple - It makes it easier on your own company and on your customers.
Consistency with Flexibility - Your marketing campaign should be consistent & brand oriented.
Plan In Advance - take the time to plan, rather than just responding to competition.
The most expensive marketing is marketing that doesn’t work - Plan

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Now here's a job title most people can identify with ...

I just saw this job posting in my daily "Flight Jobs" email.

Head of Stress

Head of Stress required to work for one of the largest manufacturer's of aircraft parts. This position will hold responsibility for people-management, budgets, supply base, documentation etc. This role will have significant customer facing and commercial negotiating including material review board support.

What's the stressful part? Dealing with people, budgets, supply base, and documentation? The customer facing stuff or commercial negotiating?

Come on ... figuring out a new advertising campaign for a company and hoping it will be successful and actually drive sales ... wow, that is stress!

Okay, I get it. The job must be all about stress in terms of aircraft parts.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Top 5 Marketing Trends for 2009

Look out ... it is 2009 already!

For fun today, I Google'd "Latest Trend in Marketing 2009" and came up with a report from Design News that reviewed findings by the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) about marketing trends in 2009.

The top 5 Marketing Trends MENG indentified were:

Insight and innovation are the way to beat the downturn
Key Strategies for 2009 indicate a return to the basics, and include: Customer satisfaction and customer retention, ... then ROI, brand loyalty and segmentation
Economic strife trumps the greening of our economy. Global warming dropped the most in importance among marketers (by 14 places in rankings)
Buzzwords like "Web 2.0" and "blogosphere" suck. But that might be reflective of most marketers still not having a clue about them.
Internationally China sill is identified as the greatest area of opportunity, and India was seen as a distant second with just 17% of respondents indicating its potential.

Interesting thoughts in interesting times...

Dave Jones
Market GoGo

Self Service Technology

I am a big advocate of using communication technology to provide more customer self service options. Not only does it offer the customer a faster way to get through routine, mundane transactions, it can really differentiate a business. Being open to do business whenever the customer wants offers a competitive advantage.

But my belief in self service technology was severely tested the other day at Superstore. I used the self serve checkout for the few items I was purchasing. Among them were 4 bags of water softener salt weighing 20kgs each. Each time I scanned the bag, "the voice" demanded I place the item in the bagging area. But there was no room. Each attempt to scan another bag was met with the same response - place the item in the bagging item.

Only after my temperature was rising and frustration level increasing, did the check out person show me where the items should go. On top of this, my credit card failed to process twice.

So what was my conclusion? Self service doesn't work?

This experience reinforced some of the basic assumptions that need to be incorporated whenever a business is adding self service - whether it is at the check out, over the phone or on the web.

1. Don't assume your customer understands the process you are implementing. It may make a lot of sense in the boardroom or to the programmers but does it make sense in practice.

In the above situation, it would be really easy to add a special on screen instruction for oversize or heavy items to place them on the end of the bagging area. And have this area marked.

2. Provide an option for the customer to "escape", especially where the process is caught in a loop. Again, simply repeating the same message without offering a solution just aggravates the customer. The intent is to simplify the process, not antagonize the customer.

3. Make sure the "escape" works. The system does have a help button. But the poor young woman was busy with other customers and never did come to my assistance.

4. Get customer feedback for improvement. While I am sharing this experience with you, Superstore remains blindly unaware of the problem and possible solution.

I still believe self service can enhance the customer experience. But this experience underscores the need to think through the implementation and make adjustments based on real customer experiences.

Friday, January 9, 2009

YouTube for business

I recently came across an interesting Alberta based company that can deliver any form of video via the web through a secure private network. This application opens up a number of interesting opportunities for organizations looking for more powerful ways to communicate internally to a large, dispersed employee or agent network. Some of the ways it is being used by organizations includes leadership communication, investor relations, and distribution of training programs.

In the "old" days, we would have to create video content, duplicate hundreds of videotapes or DVD's, and organize shipping to branch offices. They would in turn have to organize staff to view the video and there was no interactivity possible. One more example of how the web has changed the way organizations can communicate internally or to customers.

The real question is why more companies aren't taking advantage of such easy to implement and low cost delivery channels?

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