Canadian Animals

Ads in Canada are filled with animals (not the actors). Telecoms (three of the four major ones: Bell, Telus, and Fido), TP (Snub and the one from the bear I don’t recall), hand soap for kids (forgot the brand), mayo (Hellman’s, a dog preparing a sandwich, ), cars (Puss the cat from Shrek for Chrysler), you name it.

Interestingly they follow two “animal ad strategies”: single species and zoo. Bell and Fido for instance use single species; Telus goes with zoo. Bell, being recognized as the most traditional Canadian telecom invested in beavers, Frank and Gordon. The beaver is one of Canada’s national animals so it makes sense. But their tricks and jokes playing with Bell’s range of products (wireless, satellite cable etc) is overwhelmingly boring. But their PR is good, to the point a radio announcer spent almost 5 minutes talking about how cute and funny they were (liar). The same week a local news report was showing the ad on TV.

Fido deals with dogs, and dogs only. It doesn’t matter the breed. They (ad agency included) even had the cynical idea of copycatting one of the most acclaimed campaigns in world advertising (animal category) a few years ago. Recently Fido aired a campaign where the dog closely resembles its owner. Pedigree launched an offline campaign about 10 years ago using the same concept.

Telus is all about testing animals, the “zoo strategy”. That’s it, testing. They tried pretty much everything living and non-homo sapiens. The list includes monkeys, rabbits, ducks, giraffes, birds, exotic frogs, ferrets, badgers, and more recently flamingos. Indeed, flamingos. What it has to do with telecom services I don’t know, but the exotic rosy animal is there. It’s not even worth placing a link for you to watch.

We can’t forget some advertisers really need to use animals because it’s their target (or reason for existing). But in this case, Whiskas and Iams (to mention but a few) and humane societies are losing space to this whole fauna invading the commercial break. Their ads are becoming even boring for obvious reasons. Imagine the following situation: the first ad has a bear on it; the second, a flamingo, the third, a dachshund, a pug …Overexposure is psychologically and practically bad.

My tolerance is zero for companies randomly and irrationally using animals. This is not the case of Whiskas, who produced an excellent campaign using people performing as animals. The message was clear, the whole thing was very creative and they didn’t have to explore the image of a poor cat (except for a few seconds of him eating at the end of the ad).

The offline spammers and the "P" word

Much has been discussed about the death of the paper in direct marketing. The “Web 2.0” generation says online is the way to make marketing profit, but there are some doubts about it.

Paper (or offline) direct mail is more alive than ever, but this is not necessarily a “healthy fact”. A good chunk of what is sent by regular mail to individuals is what people commonly call “junk mail”. Can you imagine 4 million tons of paper in one year? This is just what the US produces every 365 days. Do a simple calculation and you will find each citizen there receives 13 kg of paper in average. You can easily assume 95% or more is useless, go straight to the garbage or do not receive any attention from the recipient. And yet, it is worthy.

Junk mail is the offline spam, the dinosaur marketing practice that survived the agility and omnipotence of internet and its features. But please do not confuse direct marketing with junk mail. They’re not necessarily the same and I can tell you that (already worked with both, direct marketing and junk mail). The possibilities and the challenge of dealing with offline direct marketing (and consequently junk mail) are enormous.

Younger marketers might think sending a misleading piece of paper with poor design is something out of fashion and one shouldn’t expect to sell. Wrong. I know lots of companies acting in countries from Japan to the UK always looking for new ways to bring new customers. And they do buy in. Amazingly, these people purchase the most varied types of offer, from being a heir of Leonardo da Vinci to a pre-approved lottery by a certain Prize Settlement Headquarters.

Branding is something quite unique about offline spammers (or junk mail senders). Some companies opt to use different names every time they mail. So you can receive lots of correspondences from the same company, but you will never know it’s the same because the name is absolutely different. This frequent variation also reminds me of a very known word in the world of direct marketing: the “P” word.

Pummel, the “P word”, is a very extensive definition in junk mail concept. Marketers working with this type of market believe that individuals can be won by restlessness. In practice it means “the more one approaches these people, the more chances one has to convert them into customers”. Fair enough, it’s a strategy. But the same theory can be used on the opposite way. More and more people are turning to “preference services”, like the British TPS (in this case it’s specific for telemarketing). Here, customers or prospects may show all their rage against marketing approaches and ask to be removed from the mailer’s list so they won’t be bothered again.

Apparently mailers do not care that much about it. I’ve already seen strategies where people would be pummeled up to 15 times in a single month in case they purchase something. Another consequence of this massive bombardment of mail boxes is a very short lifetime. Customers do not buy in very frequently and usually mailers tend to ignore existing customers to go after fresh names. There’s your enormous challenge in the junk mail industry. How to be profitable trusting very little in people who already relied on you (customers) and offering the world to someone that has never loved you yet (prospect)?

Sweden is not the way

Once I asked the headquarters (in the Netherlands) of the company I was working for to go to Sweden. I wanted to analyze how they structured their marketing activities and understand better the structure. A lead generated by my then-boss made me believe we, the British branch, had the same problems, “marketingwise” to deal with.

My first attempt was to get the name of the Swedish marketing director via the so I could get in touch with him and see what we could arrange. My boss fully encouraged me. A contact in Amsterdam refused to give the name of the contact, asking back what I wanted. After explanation, he refused again saying all the matters regarding Sweden should be dealt by the HQ. The same day, after a long conversation with the GM for the UK, my boss managed to convince her to send me to Stockholm, only to be denied once again 24 hours later.

I don’t remember having written anything about marketing management so far. It is a matter that’s becoming more and more popular, even formally recognized in some university degrees. Imagine how you would feel not having access to something that would enormously contribute to your marketing planning?

Get to know sister companies and branches is a tremendous step to understand what the market is asking for, especially when both companies have a similar problem. So you, reader, don’t say I’m creating something from the scratch, take a look at Wikipedia’s definition of marketing management (bold is mine).

Marketing management is the practical application of marketing techniques. It is the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of programs designed to create, build, and maintain mutually beneficial exchanges with target markets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_management

Translate the bold part the way you like, but can you actually think of something more obvious than discovering your own organization before going out in the market? That is, at least, what HR recommends on the very first day of work. Amsterdam had all the rights to control the program. But hey, aren’t we all on the same side?

"Dumb it down"

Yesterday I’ve heard for the first time in my life to “dumb it down”. It meant to be “lower your level of professionalism because the client didn’t understand quite everything you wrote on a report”.

It didn’t hit me hard as if I was angry or anything. But it was a different feeling. For the first in my life someone had issues with a style of presenting reports and conclusions that is what most of people currently do. It wasn’t technical, but it had a very business-oriented content, a bunch of statistics, analysis and conclusions.

It was probably my education, or how my former employees taught me to present this kind of thing. But this is something I didn’t quite expect it in the business world.

Anyway, I’ll have to dumb it down from now on.

The fast and the furious

Once I read an article called the “The young guns and the old farts”. It was all about entrepreneurship and told a story of two totally different styles of managing innovation within the same company. One side was the owner-manager and the other, the subordinate. When I tried to take this concept to marketing, it was clear this works as well, except for a major difference: there’s nothing to do with age.

Many features are part of a successful marketing strategy, but some has a bigger impact than others. Everybody is talking about creativity, advertising, tracking results, and planning. I’m fond of planning, have always been and encourage it. But what happened to the initiative part? Who’s got the guts to trigger a project (and not to receive an orientation to start it)? In many cases even the senior management doesn’t actually command the process of new projects.

Many of my bosses have always told me to test. Marketing is a big lab of projects. There’s the risk assessment for all of them, of course, but trying different concepts is a good way to find THE concept one’s looking for. As I said in a previous article, marketing is not every time linear, but thinking straight and logically brings better results. Coming back to the point of initiative, pro-activeness is quite fashion these days. Unfortunately it’s something marketers are taking for granted for two reasons: 1) ideas are poorly based on their own realities, and 2) it takes them a lot of time and effort to be implemented.

Some interesting facts.

A few days ago I’ve heard about a simple project that could give a whole new perspective for a client. Time this idea has been in the drawer? 2 years. I participated on the revamp of a corporate website and intranet project a few years ago. Timeline of the project, from conception to implementation: 3 years. A fabulous blog research and survey by Backbone Media (www.backbonemedia.com) says 51% of companies who launched a corporate blog spent just 1 day up to 2 months between idea and implementation of the project. The average marketing project timeline in a marketing department I used to work for jumped from 45 to 60 days within 1 year. A job I had to manage with some co-workers to develop an idea to profit from 26,000 inactive customers: timeless. In this case it was also useless because the owner of the program saw no reason in dealing with these people. They are “dead” for good. How can marketers buy this sort of thing?

Do you see the point? People within a marketing project (clients, marketers, suppliers or whoever it is) are burying amazing initiatives using their pride and power of veto. As long as it makes sense and follow a rational conception, ideas for marketing projects should be worked out right away, really fast and furious if necessary. Marketers should constantly push towards innovation for everyone’s profit (not financially speaking). Once I’ve heard that 3M had a demand to generate 1 new idea every 3 minutes. Who knows if they’re going to be produced (or even if it’s true), but at least they have abundance of material to work with.

Yes, it is true marketers are full of work and priorities, but time is there to squeeze. Consider the fact of setting goals to develop projects in weeks, not months, even less years, doesn’t matter the size. Just try and you will see the benefits.

Free towards a purpose

Some big companies realized something that many people always knew: the best things in life are free. This whole Marketing Consul Project made me think how stylish volunteering is these days. This blog has a clear intention to help others with their marketing conceptions and plans. But popular companies and institutions are widely exploring this volunteer niche.

Perhaps the most recognized brand asking for volunteers today is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), the Free Encyclopedia. The website grew from almost unknown 2 years ago to the major knowledge search destination on Earth. It reinvented the Encyclopedia business without charging a single cent for it.

Google is next (www.google.com). Two words: open source. The giant search engine that stormed the market and became history in less than 10 years wants to give you free tools. What do they have in return? Lots of things: loyalty, market share, research lab for their inventions, feedback etc.

Amazon (www.amazon.com) also offers its buyers to drop a line about products they experienced. Can you see a better way to create interaction? Yes, you can, but thi doesn’t deny it’s a great idea. Following this template, MSN Autos (http://autos.msn.com) have millions of reviews from car drivers and buyers. Honestly, they’re more useful than the experts’ comments. I actually decided which car to buy based on the fellow customers that spent some time leaving their opinions.

The Marketing Consul is a great opportunity to be part of this volunteer network. In the end, free knowledge through volunteer is a great way to spread the message and make marketing. Full steam ahead we go!

Marketing: the balance between observation and experience

Marketers can be quite annoying in many ways. As a matter of fact, the literal translation of the word “marketer” into Portuguese is of a dirty person who does everything to achieve something, especially in politics.

One of the ways marketers annoy people is by creating hundreds of different terms (a.k.a. marketing jargon) so nobody else outside their networking will understand them without a reasonable explanation. Viral marketing, SEO marketing, war marketing, fax marketing etc.

What people, marketers or not need to understand is that marketing is simple. Marketing is a perfect union of strategy/theory and empirical knowledge. Details are obtained through careful and insistent observation. This should be the first step.

It is true everyone is eligible to understand marketing, but really few can actually apply it. No wonder so many engineers, journalists, and a bunch of other professions currently occupy marketing positions. Marketing welcomes everyone.

I had the great opportunity to work with professional marketers for a while, people who were “raised” in the marketing field and made of marketing their primary area. I also had the chance to see the other side, people who were just doing marketing because they were told so, for lack of options or because they were the real starters of the whole business: economists, anthropologists, teachers, psychologists, fundraisers etc. Both categories definitely do not match, and you can clearly notice the difference.

Real marketers are annoying (this time in a good sense) and go straight to the point when it’s needed. No frills or chit-chat. They are also concerned about strategically thinking about everything. They know for instance that planning research impacts on communication and strategy has effects on database. I remember of a financial director who also assumed the marketing department in a company. He was great on financial controlling and database, but lacked a great deal of communication, skills and strategy regarding consumers.

The opposite came when I met a former ad executive as the head of the marketing department. He spent most of his time in the communication strategy, but had terrible ideas about the general marketing plan. For him, marketing was placing ads on magazines, sending direct mail to the company’s customers and making sure the website was rightly updated. A third segment of these people are those who have the leverage within a company (e.g. sales directors) and think they understand everything about marketing to the point they actually want to make the entire marketing plan themselves.

Marketing at its initial level is simple, anyone can be part of it. Regular salesmen are seen as exceptional marketers because of their capacity for quickly understanding the environment and adjusting themselves to it. However, when the level of demand grows it makes necessary to count on people who are not mere observers but also prove to be experienced and generalists in marketing. Those are the details that will make the whole difference in the end.

Asking too much

This posting is not about pricing. It’s about strategy. Questioning is among the best ways to brainstorm and create plans. Everything as long as it makes sense. Unfortunately it seems asking questions is becoming out of fashion. People sometimes really don’t understand the difference between settling a doubt and a direct confrontation. It’s like being the devil’s advocate. Lots of questions won’t be ever fully answered. Why did Sears bankrupt in Brazil? How come Wal-Mart is leaving Germany? Why French giant chain Carrefour cannot establish them as a brand in the US? Asking questions to different doubts should be encouraged, not to the point where marketing will become philosophy, but whenever it’s necessary to improve your plan. We shouldn’t be afraid to look like 8-year-old kids putting “whys” and “ifs” ahead of all the other words in every single sentence we say. Innovation pulls innovation. But, just like alcohol, know your limits.

Some of the useful questions I’ve made and heard while working in marketing.

“Why do they sell and we don’t?”
“Why don’t we test this?”
“If this will improve our performance, why hasn’t it been implemented yet”?
“Have you heard about (subject)”?
“Why do we have to use the same suppliers all the time?”
“How do you explain this?”
“Is there any other alternative”?
“Are you sure”?
“Did you talk to (person)?”
“Did you check (subject)?”
“Is it similar to that plan?”
“What’s the value of our product/brand”?
“How can we work this out on a different way”?
“Is it worth trying?”
“What is the competition doing”?

A 3-D version of customers

Direct marketing is a very expensive marketing tool to deal with. It costs more because it intends to reach a very specific target. As a compensation it is expected a higher percentage of conversion because you’re putting all the efforts to take a message to someone who wants to hear it. In many cases though, expectations are not fulfilled mainly due to poor selection of people. Not working on your back-end can also become a problem if your customers are leaving your company/product or just don’t buy anymore. "With more power comes more responsibility" and "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" are the answers.

"More makes more"- If want to convert prospects into clients, make sure you are getting the right people. Profile these people into narrow filters. Perhaps you won’t use all the information, but at least you’ll know how to deal with it.

From the most simple to the most complicated to achieve
1. Geographic (Where?)
2. Demographic (Who?)
3. Psychographic (How they behave?)
4. Mapping (a comprehensive 3D selection)

3D is not a video-game measure. It’s actually the combination between the 3 of items (Geo, Demo and Psycho). Using this method it’s possible to find gaps to be explored. This is similar to what entrepreneurs do. They research the market to find something that hasn’t been offered yet or someone who hasn’t had the opportunity to have access to a product or service.

Take Japan as an example. There are 47 prefectures (similar to districts, provinces or states) distributed into 8 regions (geo). The region of Tohoku is the least populated whereas Kanto (where Tokyo is) is by far the highest populated (demo). Though Japan has an interestingly homogenous distribution all over its territory, some differences are clear. There are rural and urban areas where people have different activities and ways of life (psycho).

That’s when data becomes information. Data alone doesn’t "speak", but a combination of statistical (geo and demo) and subjective information (psycho) clears the whole panorama. Detailing customers and markets to the extreme is a great advantage to companies looking for exceptional conversion in direct marketing.

"Eternal vigilance" – This shouldn’t be the rule only for acquisition. Companies in general have huge problems trying to either persuade their customers to remain loyal or to make them buy more. There is lots of competition around and being unfaithful is not a rare practice. Looking into your own customers is usually the best, quickest and cheapest way to convince them to stay with you. The geo-demo-psycho thing can also be applied here, but it will be deeper.

Geographic (Where – may also be the channel, like internet, DM, telephone)
Demographic (Who – gender, age, occupation etc)
Psychographic (Why did they buy this brand and not other? Any promotion involved? Good deal? Value?)
Mapping

Looking for not answered questions is a way to fill the gaps and prepare targeted new strategies. It’s all about finding the right person.

Promotion, dumping and creativity

You haven’t probably realized, but in many cases marketers simply and shallowly attach promotions to prices. It’s so erroneous and common that not a few people would define promotion as discount. But the topic evolved, and a lot. Promotion is one of the four original P’s of marketing (together with Price, Place (distribution) and Product). “Original” because more recently other P’s were added. It’s not the case for now.

The principle of promotion is reciprocation. It shouldn’t be dealt as a discount or price reduction only. It might be, but it’s not the only one. One might have different reasons to promote from purely commercial (please buy) to awareness (please notice) to a desired action (please do something). What they share in common is the fact that both sides will profit somehow.

Dumping is a way to show that price is a very delicate matter. This commonly seen as a dirty practice in the market dubbed as “The sale of a good in a foreign market for a lower price than in the domestic market or for a lower price than its cost of production” (http://www.google.ca/url?sa=X&start=3&oi=define&q=http://www.econ100.com/eu5e/open/glossary.html&usg=AFrqEzfKZDVMikcn5vXMXXw1DVsJIUYxPw). Some marketers truly believe this is the most efficient way to attract customers. In the end, they ignore or simply underpin an eventual financial loss. This is exceptionally cruel for small businesses which do not have enough leverage to keep up with such strategy.

Dealing with price when doing a promotion is not the most appropriated way to sell because consumers’ preferences changed a lot in the past 2 decades. It’s just too simplistic to think someone will buy your product just because it’s cheap. Also, it’s a bad compensation for your profit margins selling for lower than you can produce.

The amount of options a customer has now is amazingly powerful. One might be looking for price, but always remember that premium brands and upscale segments do not occur by chance. There are other people who don’t care about the tag, but the product itself is what counts. And that’s where creativity enters.

Promotion means advertising, letting people know you have a special deal for them. Advertising is not making a joke in national primetime or any other media. That’s what advertising agencies haven’t realized yet. Promotion should be the clearest and quickest way to advertise. Promotion, however, doesn’t start on communication. It’s a far broader strategy that should start on the very core of the marketing plan.

Creativity in promotion equals:

- Being simple
Just like above. The clearer you and your message are, the easier and quicker your audience will catch.

- Promising and delivering
What’s the purpose on promoting something you cannot comply with?

- Avoiding “situations” (too many conditions, misleading messages etc)
Nobody wants or can read almost invisible terms and conditions

- Adding value to your existing product needs to be tangible
Even commodities offer lots of options these days.

- Knowing your target
This was the first advice when I went to a local small business advice center. If you have someone who’s willing to listen, your task becomes easier.

- Leaving the price alone as long as you can
Try indirect benefits like parts, accessories, coupons, gifts certificates, vouchers, extra prizes etc

- Think outside the profit.
Selling is important, but selling once can become a complication in the future. Loyal people are cheaper and more profitable to keep than investing in new acquisitions. Have a back-up plan to satisfy those people who purchased once from you.

Dell is an example that combines very well all these topics. Have you realized how subtle and effective they are with their promotions? They’re frequent (almost every day there’s something going on), there’s a clear added value to their products (like “free” upgrades, free accessories and peripherals, shipping included etc). We’re not talking about selling shoes or two boxes of strawberries for the price of one, but a 700 dollar computer (to mention the cheapest ones).

Rule of 11

This “rule” can be labeled as a conspiracy theory, but in the end it makes sense. For quite a long time people from all over the world have been discussing the quality of Hollywood movies, if not all of them at least a good part of them. “Rule of 11” is supposedly a series of measures taken by studio owners and the movie industry senior players to make sure their movies will pay off properly. The idea is to keep a movie dumb and simple; to the point an 11-year old kid could understand it. If they can, everybody else older than that can too. I don’t know when it started, but apparently it was in the 70’s or 80’s.

It makes total sense. The bulk of people admit they go to the movies to entertain themselves, to forget life outside or to see something they’re not used to. Lots of what happens in American films are quite cliché or at least far away from real life. It’s all about entertainment, something that demands to be uncomplicated. If you want to test how target stereotypes still work, just organize a focus group with average American people and invite them to watch a film by Francois Truffaud. They will not understand everything, won’t like and will have problems with the subtitles, and will likely complain about the film’s pace.

Obviously those who are “manipulated” (us) do not have access to this kind of information. Neither a movie producer nor executive will publicly admit this. I learned this from a very smart Compared Communication teacher on my sophomore year at university. And that kept me thinking. It’s the kind of thing we never think about it, but when it comes to mind there’s no way to deny.