Marketing People vs the World (again)

A piece of research I read this week once again did what it was supposed to and challenged my thinking about how much I really know about our customers.

The research was a survey of 1,000 consumers and 350 marketers. It looked at what marketers think consumers do and think and then the reality of their actual behaviour.

For example when asked for what was the preferred channel of communication for customer service was, the sample of marketers thought that 8% of people would want to use Facebook and 7% Twitter. When they asked the consumer sample, the reality was only 2% would use Facebook and a mere 1% Twitter. The traditional channel of email was vastly under rated by marketers with 17% thinking people would want to use it versus 32% of actual consumers who said they preferred it.

A similar disconnect was highlighted when both sets were asked about which devices were used to access the internet. The marketers thought that 18% of consumers would use a tablet and 23% a mobile. Again the reality of consumers was of the 1,000 only 6% used a tablet and 9% a mobile.

To be honest I was not really surprised by the results because as a profession we are regularly at fault of jumping on whatever the current bandwagon is. In our defence this is normally driven by the continuing pressure to innovate and be thought leaders. Likewise, if you walk round a marketing conference delegates are usually dripping in new shiny tech toys compared with the people they then go to try to market to.

Most of us who work in a business that sells products or services will know our own products exceptionally well. We know our own industries well and our competitors and their products. However when it comes to our own customers there can be a difference between what we think their behaviour, views and needs are and what the reality actually is.

So all this just highlights a very simple reminder. Understanding your customers, their wants and needs and how you can help them achieve them will help differentiate you from your competitors. Research, in what ever form you choose to use, from studies to simple chats over cups of tea, is always worth the investment.

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant

The beauty of basic business principles

This week I had the pleasure of hosting the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce “be better online” conference. Around 100 delegates from businesses across Norfolk and from numerous market segments descended to the Forum. All with the aim of learning some new tips and techniques that would help them improve what they were doing online and give them what all businesses want: an edge over their competitors.

As well as being an honour to host these events, I too sat with the rest of the delegates writing notes and picking up ideas that I could bring back to Archant towers and implement. I was not unduly surprised that from the varied speakers talking about such subjects as content marketing, search, social and email marketing there emerged some common but essential principles.

Too often companies undertake activities, especially online, without any goals or KPIs to check against. “We do social because we ought to” is not a reason. Have a proper plan with targets and goals and measure yourself against them and don’t be afraid to change if you don’t hit them.

Make sure you understand what your customers are doing on your own sites. For example it could be that your audience arrive on your site not on the homepage but a different landing page but unless you check your analytics data you cannot use that knowledge to your advantage. While you are doing that you should also make a point of understanding what your competitors are doing and see if you can do it better or differently!

Use content in its different forms to show people how great you are, don’t tell them. Use your own product and market experience to set yourself apart from your competitors. Finally a theme across all the day was my old favourite that applies to everything: test, learn and refine.

These simple rules may seem like common sense but are often forgotten by businesses. The value of a conference is not always in what is said but the chance to remove you from the rush of modern working and remind yourself that basic principles apply just as much to the digital world as to the offline world and arguably more so.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant

Microsoft and Nokia - a new dawn or an inevitable sunset?

The recent announcement of Microsoft acquiring Nokia’s devices business for £3.12bn did not generate anyway near the level of hype and coverage if it had happened 10 years ago.

Why? Well four years ago Nokia’s smartphone market share was 30%, now it’s 8%. Right now 90% of all mobiles work on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS platforms, Microsoft’s windows share is 4%.

Although Microsoft also bought the right to licence Nokia patents and the Lumina phone brand. Nokia will continue to operate as a network and tech company and still owns the Nokia brand.

It’s that brand point which is the most interesting thing to me. From nowhere Apple launched a mobile phone and within a few years dominated the market. It was quickly joined by other manufacturers using Google’s Andriod system such as HTC and most notably Samsung.

These handsets sold not just because of the technology, as much as how they were marketed. Apple made the iPhone aspirational, desirable, you had to have one. Samsung has taken that mantle over, especially to the under 25 market who now view the iPhone as the phone owned by the older generation and so not cool. Even Blackberry had some status driven by its BBM messaging system and its use by celebrities. Nokia phones were just functional and that positioning does not sell in the millions.

Technologists would have you believe that you need the next phone because of all the cool things it will do. The reality is that phones became an accessory like a handbag or a watch. When they did, they moved from selling based on functionality to selling based on desire. Those companies with marketers who know how to create that emotion through marketing and brand messaging won. Those with no track record lost.

If you want proof that marketing is something all companies should take seriously it was noted that Samsung and Apple were estimated to have made £3.2bn profit on their mobile sales in the second quarter of this year alone. That just short of the total paid for Nokia, that’s a lesson in itself.

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant 

Marmite and Advertising - you either love it or hate it

Advertising, you either love it or hate it, well that’s the idea anyway. Advertising is supposed to create some sort of emotional reaction. The Christmas John Lewis ads are great examples of this. Whatever it does, it is supposed to do something, especially sell you the thing the ad is about.

Occasionally ads provoke such a strong response that people feel that they need to complain. The all time favourite case studies of this are the Benetton campaigns of the 90s. However right now a new campaign from Unilever for Marmite is doing exactly what the team there and at its ad agency hoped.

If you have not seen the TV ad or posters, the current Marmite “cruelty” ad spoofs the work of animal rescue workers. In the TV ad Marmite rescue workers go into houses and rescue unloved jars of Marmite left at the back of cupboards and take them to a Marmite rescue centre to be re-housed.

However not everyone understands the definition of irony, and the ad has received hundred of complaints that it “trivialises” the work of animal charities. This though has had the opposite effect to what the complainers wanted and exactly what the Unilever brand team dreamt of. Lots of industry praise and more importantly a “significant” uplift in the YouGov Brand Index recall survey.

Now let me tell you I unashamedly both love this campaign for its sheer amusing genius almost as much as I love eating Marmite on toast. The creative concept is brilliantly clever and funny. It’s like no other campaign right now and continues the “love it or hate it” theme of recent campaigns. It’s a brand statement that no-one else is prepared to try, helped by the nature of the product. They are even so strong in keeping on message that the final image is of a small boy eating marmite with a face that shows he clearly is a marmite hater. Can you imagine a chocolate ad where the person spits out the chocolate in disgust at the end?  Neither can I this campaign is aimed straight at its loyal target market who love the brand and what it stands for and that’s why it’s a “love it” from me.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant 

Facial Recognition Advertising - a privacy step too far?

A couple of columns ago I wrote about temperature controlled ad boards that displayed advertisements depending on what the ambient temperature is. That is a clever use of technology but what happens when the lines between technology, advertising and privacy are blurred?

Most people are now all too familiar with online behavioural advertising where you visit a site and miraculously ads from that site seem to follow you around the web. It is of course impossible to drop a little piece of computer code onto a human being to get the same effect. However now thanks to Sir Alan and one of his subsidiary companies, Amscreen, we are getting close to that.

Amscreen has 5,000 digital advertising boards across Europe and they are now fitting facial recognition cameras to billboards. This will show whether the people looking at the billboard are male or female and potentially even approximate age allowing the boards to deliver more targeted advertising.

It does not stop there. Students at the European Institute of Technology are currently exploring the ability to link Facebook accounts to the computer chips in store loyalty cards. These would then link to in-store ad boards that would flash up ads based on a person’s Facebook likes.

At this point you then get into the big question of privacy. In America the upscale retailer Nordstrom ran a trial of a system that tracked individuals’ movements through their smart phones’ in-store Wi-Fi connections. Sensors within the store collected information from customer smartphones as they attempt to connect to Wi-Fi service. The sensors monitored which departments were visited and how much time was spent in them. When this was released in the media the consumer backlash about privacy quickly ended the trial.

The reality is as technology gets smarter, so will advertising and its ability to engage but potentially also annoy and invade. A marketer’s dream, but how much consumers will be prepared to put up with remains to be seen.

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant

The Colgate Brushswap Saga - marketing lessons from Colgate and Philips

It’s a sad but true fact that one of the best way to learn in business if from others mistakes and I would like to share an absolute classic from Colgate. Colgate’s brand has grown from toothpaste to toothbrushes and now electric toothbrushes.

The latter is a very competitive market with brands such as Philips and Braun’s Oral B spending vast sums on TV advertising. So you can sympathise with the marketing team at Colgate when thinking how they could make some noise about the launch of its new electric toothbrush.

What they came up with was BrushSwap. Create a viral noise by having a stand at Waterloo station for a week followed by another at London Victoria station for a week. At the stand commuters could swap their old electric toothbrushes for a brand new Colgate ProClinical toothbrush billed as being worth £170. A great idea you might think, or was it?

The problem with giving away free stuff and announcing it on social media is that it tends to get shared, a lot. On the first day people starting queuing at the stand at 5am, it wasn’t planned to open until 7am. By 9am they were forced to shut the stand after being swamped by people and having run out of brushes. Cue lots of annoyed people who had travelled to London to get this seemingly great offer taking to social media to vent their anger and Colgate trying to respond and explain the situation via twitter.

To be fair to Colgate on paper it was a good idea using a tried and trusted technique. The reality was different.  Colgate has now learnt not to underestimate the reach of social media to spread both a good message and a bad one when things go wrong. It has also moved the initiative online to an open to all draw for one of 7,000 brushes they are giving away. Network Rail is also reviewing what promotional opportunities it allows after numerous complaints from angry commuters caught in the chaos.   

Maybe the real lesson comes from Philips who placed a press ad appearing in national newspapers reading, "The best things in life aren’t free." The ad had an image of the Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush and the strapline, "The UK’s No1 sonic toothbrush. And worth every penny." Now that’s marketing.

Tim Youngman is director of marketing for Archant 

Temperature controlled outdoor advertising – as hot as the weather

The world of advertising likes to paint a picture perfect world of British summertime for particular products. For example, you never see cider ads with people sitting in a pub garden huddling under umbrellas hiding from the rain while wearing jumpers.

It’s often forgotten that bad summer weather causes problems for brands as well as tennis players and farmers. Brands can spend hours and weeks carefully crafting a campaign for their product based on the good feelings generated by good weather, only for it to be completely ruined by it showing during a period of inclement rain and cold. Despite this every summer we are faced with ads filled with images of picture perfect summers days, even when they are the exception and not the norm.

However for every problem there is someone somewhere coming up with a solution and in this case it is, and I am not joking here, temperature controlled ad panels.

Stella Artois is now running ad slots across outdoor advertising company Posterscope digital poster boards for its Cidre brand. When the temperature rises two degrees or more above the average in the specific location using real time data an ad appears for the cider brand.

Costa Coffee has run a two month campaign on the London Underground working with CBS Outdoor who manage the ad slots there and who were pioneers of digital outdoor advertising. They promoted Costas Ice Cold Costa range on the underground network when the temperature went above 22 degrees Celsius. The ads were location specific so when the temperature went up, a digital panel at a station exit not only delivered a promotional message but also direct underground users to the nearest Costa outlet that they could buy an Ice Cold shake.

Not only is this enormously clever but it will also reduce a lot of wasted spend and effort. Ad slots based on increased pollen counts are now also being introduced and this no doubt is just the start of a whole new advertising concept with winter brands already being lined up for temperature based campaigns. So weather sensor based advertising is here and will grow, all we need now is some hot weather!

Tim Youngman is Director of Marketing for Archant www.about.me/timyoungman