Emotional and not rational aren't the same

When i see headlines that tell me emotion in marketing is important i feel uncomfortable, probably as uncomfortable as your colleagues outside marketing feel. I want to question it. Understand what they mean by emotion. I want to know the context. 'You never got fired for hiring IBM' is an extremely rational message, expressed emotively. Different point. Perhaps emotion is just the wrong word. To be honest i think it is inaccurate, it just screams total irrationality. I just love the blue collage. And i dont believe anyone is suggesting this.

However if we said.

Buyers use intuition, certainly when shortlisting. They don't have all the information so they cant be purely rational. People buy from people they like. Some decision makers look to minimise risk, maintain status quo rather than optimise every decision. You would nod and agree not all decisions are 100% rational. It is just when we say purchase are emotional, we lose the audience.

Perhaps if left it as buyers cant afford the resources and time to make every purchase a rational one we wouldn't be having this debate.

Please include attribution to B2B Marketing with this graphic.

Marketing is a commercial function not a shouty one

Before I got into the communications industry I sort of assumed that was what marketing was all about, communications or more accurately TV advertising. Understandable really, fresh out of college all I could see was the advertising on our telly, the big posters on the high street, and the press ads. I was wrong then and a lot of organisations are equally wrong today.

Too frequently marketing has become the home of what is perceived as useful but non essential type activities like advertising, CRM, Brand, Events.Thats is why marketing lacks board representation. It is an attitude even more prevalent in sales led organisations.

Maybe in some instances it is the right one but it is frustrating for marketers because marketing in the broader sense has the power to transform a business. Notice I didn’t say drive leads or sales. You have to set your sights higher than that. Marketing is, or more to the point, should be a commercial function not a shouty function. It needs to help the business address the big questions like.

Who are targeting? Who are we NOT targeting? What are they worth? What are we prepared to invest in converting them? What do they need? Why are they not engaging with us? Is our product or service fir for purpose? Is there a smarter way to distribute our product or service? How are we going to make money? That sounds like the start of a business case.

It feels as though the CMO has all too often become the CCO, the chief communications officer. The role of marketing has been split across multiple functions, including sales, finance, customer service; lots of owners but little accountability for the big picture. This is in stark contrast with Peter Drucker’s viewpoint on the importance marketing.

“A business has only two functions, marketing and innovation. Everything else is cost.”

Drucker’s perspective is difficult to argue with this especially now in a world where businesses are transparent, products are increasingly commoditised or  copied and such a premium is placed on customer experience.

So how is it going to change?

I wonder if the catalyst will be the recognition that we are now all in the business of service, every product brand is effectively becoming a service or it should do so. If you buy that idea then you tend to think of your business having two sides the customer facing half, and the internal half. The new CMO will be the CXO, the customer experience officer.

And with that the role of marketing is re-elevated. Job done.

Emotion - a very dirty word in business

We went to the b2b conference yesterday and we discussed the need for emotion in our marketing. It wasn’t really a debate, everyone believes marketing must be emotive if we want to engage customers. So what’s the problem? Actually there are several and the result is a lot of marketing dross.

First and foremost the problem is everyone at these events are marketers. So whilst we recognised that emotion is important we also know that the word triggers exactly that amongst finance and sales colleagues. ... Anyone suggesting we need emotion in a business context must be a non-commercial, arty marketer who studied geography or history at university. It is all the worse in b2b where sales culture tends to dominate, as does the belief that all b2b buyers are rational experts speaking only xls, features and ROCE.

Second, we tend to discuss emotion and rationality as though they sit along some sort of sliding scale. I am sure every agency can tell you stories of not so junior clients asking them to put more emotion into communications, make it less rational. Unfortunately there is no magical emotive pump gun sitting in the creative department. 

Third, we assume that emotion is something that resides purely in communications. So once you have got through the advertising designed by the geography department then its down to the stuff that really counts rationality, features, negotiation and the jedi mind bending skills of sales.

Lets unravel them in turn. 

The first is the easiest. Yes. Emotion is a dirty word. We cant change that, but we could address the topic slightly differently. Telling sales we need our brand to be liked enough or feel intriguing enough for a consumer to want to interact with us may resonate better.

Communication should act as invitation to find out more, not an hour by hour agenda of the party to follow. Just don't talk about emotion or your colleagues will just mutter history of art or something similar. 

Second, yes you can have your cake and eat it. Is showing nuns grasping the simplicity of technology (IBM) an emotive message, a rational message or a rational message introduced emotively. You know the answer and you know what works. Have you seen the cat film showing the machinery manipulating massive blocks of Jenga? The vehicles are nimble, flexible and powerful. Its just that giant Jenga gets the message across better than say they are ... nimble, flexible and powerful. 

Third, and this is a bit more controversial. We seem to have forgotten that we work in marketing not just communications. There are other ways to add something that is emotionally intriguing. Perhaps through the UX, or call centres, or even service level agreements. Its so reliable we are doubling the warranty period for a $1. That’s emotive, its also rational. And its definitely not either or.

There are lots of b2b brands that sell successfully using emotion. That’s probably the next piece to write. 

Disclaimer. Any mistakes i have made in the past weren't my fault. 

PC World. Benefits led - cliched but true

Nice example of a brand focussing on the benefit not the features, really simple idea.

"These are not headphones. These are 30 minutes of escape into your own private space."

Will automation kill creative and marketing agencies?

What happens when marketing automation services are combined with site optimisation platforms, retargeting and CRM solutions? So imagine the best of eloqua, monetate, outbrain, adobe, salesforce or whoever building an end to end solution to engage consumers. Don't think they wont, they have started already.

Clients will understandably be seduced by the ability to test, learn, respond in real time. No need for strategy as that rarely survives a smack in the face (Mike Tyson). It will be short term continuous tactical optimisation. It will be personalised. And it will probably work. Relationships will of course be overtly transactional. And brand will be delivered through content and 121. Control. Lovely.

The marketing department will need some other stuff. Some content, although they probably got too much anyway. So what they really need is a copy writer and an editorial plan. And of course a few pictures, some nice creative. Maybe an app build, assuming they need something more than the basic. Companies like umajin let you build a basic one quickly and cost effectively.

So what will the role of the agency be? A design shop, delivering creative assets. Perhaps if we are lucky we will incubate services like community management, handing it over to the client when it is up and running. There may be brand consultancies delivering territories and small creative shops executing the strategy. They will have to compete on price and speed.

The best agencies will transform themselves into strategic partners, helping clients procure creative solutions. The weaker ones will be arguing it is all about the creative, emotional engagement and ignore the commercial challenges.

The really smart ones will have to become platform integrators. Don't really know what that means. But clearly there is role for someone to be an agnostic expert. Someone to advise how to pull it together and spot the missing gaps in the customer experience.

I am off to brush up my knowledge of automation and all the platforms that get launched almost weekly.

Money can buy you love: loyalty marketing

Loyalty programs seem to be on the rise again. To be honest I have always struggled with them. The gain seems to be too little over too long to bother. And the ones I like are the ones that give me things for doing nothing, or more to the point nothing more than I would have done anyway. Which rather defeats the purpose of a loyalty program. They should change behaviour.

How many people have cards for Sainsbury's, Tesco and Co-op. I need to find out. But I did observe a couple in queue at co-op exchanging vouchers then 2 days later in Sainsburys waving the reward card. I only clocked them because they took so long discussing the virtues of a co-operative organisation. They clearly admired the co-op but not enough. 

I only went there for my daily special brew top up. 

With a few caveats the secret to loyalty is doing what you do very well. Good product, good price, good service and easy. Easy in that your brand is the path of least resistance. 

Talking of easy. I am not a fan of easyJet but I tend to think of them first for local flights, I know my way round the website. I go there before I go to skyscanner. It is the default. That's what your aim should be. And if you cant be the default, make sure it is easy to engage with your brand. Remove the hoops. 

Of course it always help if they like your brand. 

But what I find interesting is the emergence of paid for loyalty schemes. When you pay for something you have sunk costs, so to that extent you are going to make sure you use it. Hey presto. Behaviour change.

Intercontinental have run ambassador club for yonks, very successfully. But it is a profit centre not just a cost to the business. Guardian have launched their new membership program https://membership.theguardian.com not sure it is a loyalty program, but it looks like an interesting value exchange with customers, so may be it is. The other interesting thing about paid for programs is that consumers defend and advocate them, after all you can hardly buy in to it and say it is crap. 

So perhaps the secret of loyalty is just for businesses to what they do well, don't expect people to value what you hand out for free. 

But remember maybe money can buy you love. 

B2B content marketing - benchmark stats

Still lots of work to do. One thing it doesn't answer is what exactly constitutes content?

http://goo.gl/e8ysOQ

Jorg Gray pioneers dreadful advertising

This is special. The line says 10:32 the moment i was asked to join the board. 

Welcome Piers, so whats your perspective on improving the supply chain. Oh you cant make it ... you have to buy a watch. 

These are premium watches ... so make sure you advertise in quality publications ... like the metro ... and give 10% off just to show how premium they are. 

The problem with this is it proves any idiot can do marketing and advertising. Thanks fellas.

Practical email advice - who would have thought it

Thanks to david hayes one of our clever planners for finding this

http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/best-practices-in-writing-email-subject-lines

Show your mum want marketers do all day

The joke goes although i am not sure it was necessarily meant as a joke was that the client and agency like big marketing campaigns because at least they don't have to explain to their mums what they do. I am not so sure it is marketing who love big visible high profile campaigns. If sales, the MD or COO don't see your campaign in the specialist press or perhaps if you are lucky enough to have a big budget on TV then the inference is "what are those fools in marketing up to all day".  A really smart and devious marketer circumnavigated this issue by purchasing a few outdoor sites en route to the head office; i only have admiration for that level of Machiavellian thought. Nevertheless the irony is that the people in the business who want you to improve lead quality and conversion are often the same people encouraging you to play a bigger budget volume game.

Chess, advertising and marketing dis-integration

Marketers talk about integration. I think that is frequently a cop out. The real problem is a dis-functional misalignment of the business. In effect the business is disintegrated let alone their marketing and communication efforts. Here are the classic symptoms.

Finance create products to maximise short term margin. Operations want volumes of leads. Sales want quality of leads. Marketing use other metrics like customer satisfaction and long term customer value. All these objectives are in conflict.

Of course the we have to work within the constraints of the business but sometimes they are so restrictive they make everything you do a failure by one or other of the above criteria. If marketing want to get up the food chain, be more commercial, they have to help the business become more integrated. Everyone sharing the same objectives and vision. What do we want to be? How does this translate into business objectives? What do we need to do and really importantly what should we not do?

Solving the marketing version of the problem, communications integration, whilst the business beats itself up is nice but not that useful. Someone once said chess and advertising are the two biggest wastes of human intellect. There is some wisdom in that. Too much effort solving the wrong type of problem.

Do you know an organisation that fits the profile?

Short termism is the key to business success

What i didn't understand properly and what even the less imaginative accountants acknowledge is that profit is not an absolute concept. You tend to think of profit as something factual and indisputable. But profit depends on a variety of factors like how you decide to depreciate assets, how you treat the expected future flow of revenues from service contracts and at what point the costs hit the bottom line. Of course businesses think they are trying to maximise profits but the interesting question is over what time period. Those in the business who have a shorter term horizon focus on reducing costs and maximising margin, those focused on the longer term focus on maximising the contribution from a customer. In other words if you rip off a customer the chances are they will piss off earlier than you hoped. 

Unfortunately it is a lot easier to reduce costs and increase margin which goes some way to explaining why so many businesses have such a short term outlook and are run by accountants and not marketers. The fact that us marketers have managed to create a reputation for being being unable to add up and being not very commercial also explains why we are not on top of the pile.

Who's best? Consultant or Planner?

What's the difference between a consultant and a planner?

A consultant identifies and solves the business problem.

People will buy more crunchies if you make them cheaper, expand distribution and run POS promotions through the trade.

A planner identifies the human challenge.

People have forgotten crunchies are much more fun than chocolate bars, they explode in your mouth.

Clearly both roles are important, they just require different parts of the brain ... rather than necessarily different people.

Social subversion

http://wheresthesausage.typepad.com/

More subversive views questioning the value of social media and suggesting we focus more on content.

Personally i think social's value varies enormously by sector, is it a big purchase or is it something where purchase and consumption are frequent. Is information readily available? Is there inherent risk in the purchase decision? Is it a fun product?

The other point made is that majority of people who interact with brands in social media tend to be loyal high value or dis-satisfied. Certainly in retail it is hard to get the former to purchase more so what is the value of social in enabling them to influence the less frequent buying majority.

Interesting to see its the same old case studies referenced. Where's the new news?

Proving the case for CRM and loyalty

How do you establish a ROMI for a brand new loyalty CRM program?

This is the sort of thing we get asked all the time. To be honest i am not sure you can, not in a meaningful way, unless you have the Coke answer to the Pepsi question. There are too many unknowns. It's all a bit WHAT IF. Especially when you start chucking in social selling and media to the mix.

The irony is the value of the softer benefits are sometimes easier to calculate. Ability to trial new products: making discrete offers to customer groups; feedback and research; co-creation, influence. But these don't really matter as the question isn't really about ROMI, it is about a particular type of ROMI. The cross sell and retention version. The questions the business really want to answer are ...

How can we develop a relationship directly with the consumer, dis-intermediate the retailer, to sell more?
Is it smarter to spend on direct relationships than brand, advertising, in store etc?

Of course the way round this is to produce a spreadsheet (a.k.a. business case), layer some science onto the intuitive. And this is where the problem often lies, the program can get killed or stripped back before we work out what the real potential is. Marketing and agencies alike need to be far more experimental, more do less strategy. The results of this are probably the best inputs for the business case.

Anyway wasn't Tesco Clubcard an experimental pilot? It will never work.

Boris gets his marigolds on

The gov London remove graffiti, clean up your city ad is jaw droppingly lacking in insight, it makes me want to run out and buy some spray cans. To paraphrase
''... you know how you tidy up the flat when your mum comes round, well get this. It is not your mum, it's the world and it's not your flat it's London and its the Olympics. Lets clean up London.'

Only problem is you don't tidy up when your mum comes round, you sweep everything under the carpet, hide the recreational drugs and this i suspect is a far better analogy. And couldn't the advertising have used a bit of behavioural economics, we are not talking Jedi mind tricks. Focus on numbers involved, added a competitive edge, some reciprocation, set a target. Not just please do the stuff we can't be bothered to or forgot to cost in when we promised to open London to the world.

Then it starts to unravel in your hands. It is backed by 'P&G' because ... they make lots of cleaning products. Everyone must have been frothing over with excitement in that workshop.

I am still a bit confused by the strategy.

Q. Are we just tidying up the bits mum can see, can we leave a load of rubbish in the lodgers room?

Q. What happens next year, will the London Gov sponsorship pass to Dulux so we can get back to normal?

Q. Has the Eton for London election got anything to do with it?

B2B: social isn't the start point

If we asked you what your tv strategy was, you would
understandably look a little perplexed. In fact whatever media we asked you
about you would think it mad to address in isolation. Social media is a vital
part of the media mix. However it is still in essence a communication channel,
albeit a very clever one. One that is flexible, one that allows you to be ultra-
responsive and to cap it all one that is measurable. It should be part of your
customer service strategy, help you reach influencers, support search and many
marketers use it as direct response PR and even sell. You can use it to inform,
engage, entertain, inspire. I am sure you have seen that chart on visits to
slide share.

So if you don’t need a social strategy what do you need? I reckon you need a content
strategy. You have to make yourself vaguely interesting, interesting enough for
the right people to want to talk about you, want to share what you have to say,
want to interact with you. It is less about what you want to say and what your
brand is and isn’t it is about having an opinion, perhaps zigging to
competitors zagging.

Who thought the eurozone would work?

One currency, 27 agendas. 27 different sets of economic problems to solve. Interest and exchange rates were the ultimate get out of jail free card for policy decision makers. So now what do you do when your country becomes uncompetitive and you run out of money. There are no macro economic fine tuning tools available to you. It's just like you and me with no job and your house dropping in value. So the answer is you borrow more, get state support or default.

The euro zone has benefitted the stronger economies, and probably no coincidence the ones with better transportation systems sitting centrally in Europe. They have more more accessible markets.

No prizes for being right. What do we do now? Break it up or devalue the euro and everyone will lose money. Ouch. Luckily I work in an industry that is essential to the economy. Marketing and advertising ... May be not then.

Integration is not the answer or even the question

I have always thought an obsession with integration from a brand owner is a good indicator that their brand lacks salience and personality.

The word integration encourages us to think in terms of events and campaigns. When mathematicians talk integration, it is often in relation to time. And that is the main point. The best integration is something you do over time. It is a brand rather than a campaign thing.

We tend to integrate campaigns for all the wrong reasons – safety rather than the conviction that dovetailing messages or replication of a message in different media somehow communicates better. A fear of failing rather than a desire to just do it better. Everyone understands and learns better if they are exposed to different stimuli, whether it is learning to ski or speak Spanish. Too often we forget, conveniently, the basic virtues of different media – TV (one message to the masses), Direct Mail (tells a longer story to people we think are more interested), Poster (presence and stature), Digital (depth of engagement).

The most powerful communications display brand connectivity. The tone, style and flavour of the brand are consistent and shine through. It is a brand conversation. It is how you do it. Not what you do or say that’s important; More brand essence than brand values. I still think the best example is Honda. The integrational device is the brand. In every communication they demonstrate the ‘maverick obsession’ that lies at the heart of the brand. They have been consistent over several years now.

So perhaps we should stop fussing about integration and talk about brand consistency. This allows you to ignore a medium if it is not working/required for a particular campaign. You’ll talk again, there is always next time. The brand becomes more important than the proposition. We should carry on using integrational devices, but call them integrational devices not integration. They are tools rather than philosophies.

So when clients create cross discipline briefs the two most important elements are – the brand what it looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, how it does things and the integrational devices. So in the case of Coco Pops - and i am paraphrasing someone else here - its chocolatey breakfast fun for kids ... and don't forget the chimp.

What do Honda, Yeo Valley and Toilet Duck have in common?

Differentiate yourself, be distinctive, identify points of difference. Marketers treat the expressions as synonyms. This is the first mistake.

Here is what happens.

A point of difference is identified. It could be an extra 50 minutes on a mobile tariff, a longer warranty, alternative skins for your laptop, uk call centres. All of them are positive attributes, all of them are researched and when pushed respondents state a preference for them but do they make a difference. Probably not, yet we hang most of our marketing on them. Of course if you are first to offer something like 36m warranties when everyone else offers 12m or all the laptops are silver black and grey and you offer a host of coloured skins then brilliant go for it but otherwise tread carefully.

Focussing on points of difference can give you a nice warm feeling, your job is done. All you need to do is to tell everyone; responses and customers will surely come. But then you find testing the approach in the real world reveals that people are not that interested in what you perceive to be the important part.

When markets are commoditised or several competitors are offering similar services - white goods, communications, energy even automotive you need to stand out, be distinctive. This doesn’t have to be rational and probably can’t be unless you transform how you support or deliver your product. You need to zig when others zag. Context is important, the mundane looks good when everyone else offers risky or quirky. Bond markets look pretty sexy for most investors these days although Greece and Italy are doing their best to de-sex them. Being distinctive could be your brand, your values, your service commitment, your web design, the in store experience. It is important and increasingly so.

An example.

Honda are great engineers, so are the germans. In fact most cars are well made according to JD Power. But Honda grew market share by being different, almost maverick to the disciplined German approach. They had different interpretations of engineering obsession, the considered test and learn Germanic approach, the clunk of the door, versus the creative and total commitment approach of the Japanese. This was reflected in their cars and styling. The points of difference like Honda’s v-tech engines were terrific but sensibly they recognised it was not enough to excite consumers, it could have done the opposite. Reinforced the good but boring Honda tag.

Another example.

European flights. Easyjet. They are orange, they are cheap. Should they talk about speedy boarding, the range of services in flight, number of destinations or UK airports they fly from? No. Shouting price in an orange style seems to work.

Marketing courses talked about the importance of differentiation, economics courses told us it was best to be second into markets. Learn from mistakes, minimise risk and steal best practice with pride. If you can do this but do it in a distinctive way then perhaps you have cracked it. And maybe this explains the successes that are Toilet Duck, Go Compare, Shake n' Vac, Yeo Valley, Lynx.