Marketing Karma

In the transition phase between cost per/direct marketing strategies and the longer term goal of consumer dialogue and relevance, we have an uneasy phase that leaves many marketers stuck with a traditional mindset and falling ROI.

How do most marketers compensate for falling results? Do more of what doesn’t work. We’ve had popup banners, flash banners, advertising on eggs, charity muggers in the street and yes, there’s plenty of mileage to squeeze out of billboards yet… Sao Paolo in Brazil has already banned outdoor advertising on billboards due to public pressure, what of our Australian cousins?

Great post here by the Wooster Collective highlighting the issue in Sydney Australia. Is outdoor advertising just legitimized graffiti?

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I’ve long been a believer that customer service is your most effective marketing strategy. Here’s an anecdotal story of how powerful good customer service originated by a human being can be… so powerful in fact that it pops up on Seth Godin’s blog this week.

Read: Amazon Sends best ever customer service email

Well done Amazon…

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US Word of Mouth Spending in 2006 reached just short of $1 billion ($981 million), a 36% year on year growth on 200 accordig to PQ Media’s Word-of-Mouth Marketing Forecasts.Visualizations from Emarketer

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For a long time, I used to think that “by invitation only”, “book now, places limited” were clever marketing tools. Until that was, everyone abused it and like any form of marketing today, consumers fail to trust what they read.

So thank you for Chris Anderson from the Long Tail for pointing out how certain industries need to take a good look at how they sniffing their own communications glue.

In this very insightful post referring to the Airline promo below, Anderson notes the following self-evident “lies”

• there is no such thing as a “special courtesy rate”
• “guaranteed savings” is a meaningless phrase (and indeed you can often find magazine subscriptions cheaper through an agent–check eBay–or a credit card loyalty program)
• it makes no difference if you reply by the “reply by” date
• “statement of benefits itemization” are just empty words meant to invoke an invoice
• all those “free” or “included” things are just the regular content that’s in the mag for everyone.

When trust becomes an increasingly significant prerequisite for brand loyalty, these messages will create the opposite affect to initial anticipations. Consumers turn off and seek an honest alternative.subform_thumb.jpg

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Many thanks for Alan Thys for recycling this one… missed it the first time round

For those of you that hate B2C telemarketing, this is for you (video below)

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In part one, I talked about fake reviews and how consumers distrust testimonials.

In this section, I’ll look at the other side of keepin’ it real - PR. Can you spin positive PR on a negative product? Years ago, possibly yes. Today, not likely. There are too many bloggers out there waiting for an opportunity for the ecosystem to link to them with that one scoop that’ll shaft your company.

Good.. because this is not some Marxist run on capitalism, but consumer power, which ultimately leads to the most palatable and profitable form of capitalism.

In a very good post at Church of the Customer, Ben McConnell leads with “PR is Useless” . I can see where he is coming from with the material, but I would rather consider this as “Useless PR is Useless”. Bit of a cop out I know… but you can’t deny Radiohead’s recent pay-what-you-like announcement as one of the best pieces of PR in the biz. Without jumping on Ben’s back, what I guess he means is that traditional approches to PR are ineffective.

Ben writes:

Karen Hughes spent $900 million of Americans’ money to convince the Muslim world that our elected leaders in Washington aren’t insane. Worldwide opinion polls say otherwise.

Walmart has probably spent close to the same amount of money trying to convince us it isn’t the greediest company in the world. But its actions tell us the real story. Today, it’s how Walmart is trying to avoid paying state taxes.

Comcast can say it’s “comcastic” all it wants, but when its technicians fall asleep on customers’ couches, or grandmothers with a heart condition get so frustrated by the company’s inattention they smash up a local office, then no amount of professional PR can mask its dreadful operations.

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No fun watching reruns in the US these days… and that was before any writers’ strike.

If you’re a media buyer, then Q4 is going to present its own challenges if you rely heavily on the TV as your route to fulfilment.

One analyst notes: “The strike has clearly challenged us to approach the TV world a little differently over the next weeks,” said Eric Blankfein, senior VP-channel insights director at Horizon Media in the Huffington Post. “We are looking to provide our clients with alternatives in reaching their audiences at a crucial time of year. Retail is so focused on fourth-quarter results that we can’t afford to have a drop-off in audience delivery.” The strike offers good reason to evaluate and consider moving some clients into venues such as cinema, radio, digital and print, Mr. Blankfein added.

No doubt digital is the big winner here. You won’t see Google and their cronies on the West Coast walking out on their media buying clients (mainly because they have no writers to deal with). For Madison Avenue, it’s one more reason why their time is looking increasingly up.

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As our interactions on the internet become increasingly like the real-world relationships, truths about how we interact with our own family, friendships and colleagues come to bear.

There was a time when sending out 50,000 emails with Dear <$firstname> in Salesforce worked, but people have got over that now. You have to start treating your customers like you would you friends. CRM by quantity becomes more about the borg than high value clients. No one like getting a call from the borg wishing them happy birthday. You wouldn’t do it to your friends…nor should you outsource it when dealing with clients.

Jackie Huba from Church of the Customer flags up new research that says what we as consumers know, but as marketers conveniently ignore - people hate “fakers” when it comes to buying stuff. In fact, more than half of the people asked for a recent survey said they avoid buying from a company if they even suspect a paid professional is secretly behind the review of a typical, everyday person. About 30% of the survey’s respondents said fake reviews are a big problem, compared with 20% in 2001

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We can learn a lot from Toyota. And for fear of coming up with yet another platitude I’d offer out that Toyota’s success is “attitude not platitude”. It rhymes, therefore it must work. Seriously though, Toyota’s success runs through its very DNA:

You could learn about how to take on the largest company in the world on its home soil and win. You could learn about building a global empire with little or no natural resources in your own backyard. You could learn about kaizen, never ending improvement and reliability. It goes on.

Success in the DNA

1) Long term product development mindset

No wonder Toyota is the most profitable auto manufacturer in the world continuing to grow overseas despite stagnant markets. And when the world demands fuel efficiency, who has already stepped up to the plate with a hybrid car that won’t break your bank? And if you must have the SUV/4WD, then who’s going to give you the hybrid option? Not Toyota… but Lexus (Toyota’s subsidiary brand)

2) Think Ecoystem

John Caddell from Futurelab writes a very good post about how Toyota’s relationship with its value network is critical to long term sustainability.

Among the many accolades that Toyota receives, little mention is made of their supplier management. It’s strange, given how frequently the press mentions supplier issues at other auto companies–usually in the context of extracting price concessions.

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For he will be reborn as a cockroach in his next life for a multitude of sins against all stakeholders.

Unless you’re fortunate enough to be an EMI for example whose indiefication may just free them from the claws of record label short sightedness.

Suing customers is one thing. Whatever the moral platform on which the labels attempt to justify this argument, it is as Seth Godin would say “broken”. As long as the customer thinks so, it is. If you are going to sue customers, just make sure you remember to renew your domain names.

So when artists start leaving your repertoire and customers start going elsewhere, you would have thought the last thing you’d do is piss off your distributors. You see, I don’t really understand why those record stores are still open these days. Who buys music in a store unless you’re a specialist? Of course there’s still a demand, but then they were selling black and white TV’s well into the late 80s.

As a consumer here are my stats. Money spent in record stores in last 5 years £0. Money spent on Itunes in last 5 years £500-£1000. Not particularly scientific but indicative. 15 years ago, the numbers would have been the other way round. So things must be pretty hard for the labels that they would have to dig deep and partner up with their sworn enemies to take on one of the few rays of light for the labels - Itunes.

It seems that decades of protecting and owning the IP has ingrained a control mentality and culture which seems completely out of place in the modern economy. With media reporting the decline of DRM protected music sales, you would have thought it time that the labels started panicking.

If the labels haven’t panicked, shareholders certainly have. Warner Music shares have dropped from $27 1 year ago to just over $9 according to Red Herring.

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