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.