The thinking behind all great marketing communications grows fast...just like bamboo. This blog poses questions, challenges the status quo, shares wonderful insights, and seeks to build a community that has a voice that is simple, concise and surprising.
Showing posts with label Consumer Insights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Consumer Insights. Show all posts
Obviously I write a blog. So whenever the discussion about the relevancy of blogs comes up I listen. Well Brain Solis has published his annual State of the blogosphere that shares some interesting insights.
most blog writers are from Gen X and Gen Y but everybody reads blogs.
brands are getting blogged about more and more
blogging has proved valuable in building the company who has blogged
blogs live longer that tweets and status updates.
There is much more data in the article but for me point 4 above says it all. In a world of 140 charcter updates, when you find a trusted source that goes deeper... you tend to go back to that well.
I am working with a group to locate a new CRM and web system and the choice is full of complexities. One of the potential suppliers gave me a great little piece on simplicity. A short simple read that is so true.
“Finding and working with Don was a wonderful experience and everyone involved was extremely pleased with the outcomes. Don brings a wealth of experience and applied it to get into the minds and hearts of a completely new category for us. His global CPG background is a skill set unique in the Edmonton district. Conducting consumer market research outside of Toronto, Montreal, & Vancouver breaks the traditional CPG mould and gave everyone a sense that we were getting fresh insights.”
For a few years now I have been telling my clients and students that success and brand relevancy comes from strategies and positions based on real insight. Today I came across a great article on McKinsey Quarterly based on a new book from Richard Rumelt called Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.The Difference And Why It Matters., that so easily drives this point home.
I love Richard's style and experience, both proven and to the point. You see Richard is fed up with bad strategy masquerading as good strategy. In short he says that "bad strategy embraces the language of broad goals, ambition, vision and values'. Wow I have seen a pile of broad strategy statements in the recent past. That's why I believe the Heath brothers book "Made To Stick" is bang on. It has taught us about creating missions and visions that will stick, not just sit there and cause nothing good for the company to happen.
Too many organisation are not taking the time to uncover insights that will lead them to better understand their barriers, and then take actions to overcome them. Instead as Rumelt says, they are doing one or all of the following bad strategy hallmarks.
Failing to face the problem.
Mistaking goals for strategy.
Bad strategic objectives.
Fluff.
Do your self a favour and quickly read the Richard Rumlet's McKinsey piece, and see if you have been making you strategies as good as they could be.
About 25 years ago when I was working at my first advertising agency in Toronto, I came across a great little sell piece for an Agency in London called Davis Wilkins. Now I doubt this agency even exists today but their sell piece still resonates with me today. It had to do with safe advertising and how dangerous it can be. What follows is the copy from the piece which basically talks about taking the safe road in advertising and mushrooms, can kill you.
This should be mandatory reading for everyone who touches content development.
"One of the species of fungus opposite is the most dangerous mushroom known to man.
It is lethal even in amounts as small as 20 grammes. That's about the weight of a Brussels sprout.
Between six and fifteen hours after eating it, gastroenteric symptoms are present, and severe liver damage occurs within three days, followed by death.
It is a fairly common British variety, found in oak and beech woods between July and November and when fresh it smells faintly of honey.
The two other mushrooms illustrated are, by contrast, highly palatable.
One of them is quite rare, with a subtle mild flavour much prized in certain mountainous regions of Scandinavia.
The other is a Chanterelle, which smells slightly of dried apricots and is regarded in France as something of a delicacy.
DO WE PICK ADVERTISEMENTS LIKE WE PICK MUSHROOMS?
Given the element of risk involved in gathering our own mushrooms most of us prefer to buy them in shops with our hard-earned cash.
Which means that most of us end up eating mass-produced cultivated mushrooms. The taste may be bland and predictable, but at least we know they wont kill us.
Sadly, the same cautious attitude can easily be applied to the selection of advertising.
Anything, which looks unfamiliar, different or unusual, is regarded with understandable suspicion and anxiety by many advertisers.
As a result, advertisements end up resembling one another much as cultivated mushrooms do.
But although instinct may tell us that danger lurks in the unknown, it is the apparently familiar which threatens the greatest peril.
Partly because it looks so safe.
WHICH MUSHROOMS WILL KILL YOU?
Not, of course, the peculiar looking orange one, number three. Life would be much too easy if that were the culprit.
No, that's a Chanterelle. And like the very best advertising, it is distinctive, visible and has an entirely desirable effect on the consumer.
The killer is one of the others. One of them is the safe choice, the other choice just looks like the safe choice.
Confusing, isn't it.
But so it is with Advertising. How can you be sure that a new campaign really is safe? With the deadly mushroom, the effects are felt within days, with advertising, the poison acts more slowly.
Who knows how many products are dying a lingering death right now because somebody took a decision years ago to run advertising that looked as though it couldn't do any harm.
WHICH ADVERTISING WILL KILL YOUR COMPETITOR?
All great advertising looks safe and familiar.
In retrospect.
But the famous and successful campaigns we now admire looked strange and disturbing when they were originally presented.
Many of the clients who bought that work can still recall waking up in a cold sweat at three in the morning, asking " My God, what have I approved?"
New ideas are scary.
But they're nowhere near as dangerous as almost-new ideas, which are familiar to everyone.
If it's been done before, your competition will be ready for it. Your only chance of killing him with your advertising is to hit him with something he's never seen before.
Which means you won't have seen it before either.
WHAT IS THE REAL KILLER?
The advertising to avoid is the kind that looks safe and isn't. The mushroom to avoid is number two.
Advertising which looks strange and distinctive is a much less-risk proposition, if you know what you're doing, than advertising, which is bland and comfortable.
But only if you know what you are doing.
Which is where we come in.
Tim Davis and Chris Wilkins bring more than 36 years of experience to their new agency. Experience not only of creating original and surprising advertising ideas, but also of recognising and weeding out the ones that are dangerously wrong.
If you're an advertiser who would dearly love to have startling and original creative work, without having to lose sleep over it, think about what we have to offer. It wouldn't kill you to give us a call."
#1. Rozites Caperata
#2. Amanita Phalloides
#3. Cantharellus Cibarius
The only point I will add to the brilliant copy above is that it works because Tim and Chris had insight about advertising and pretty and deadly mushrooms, which they turned into a great idea and execution. With out real relevant insights, you just can't get to the point where creative content can be scary but safe.
As I watch the restructuring of marketing departments to deal with the reality of customers demanding more relevant and rewarding engagements, I recognise that holding true to the belief that a company is really marketing oriented is tougher that ever. Marketing has always been about a philosophy that everything a company does is with the customer's drivers fully in mind. However rapid change in technology is highlighting the reality that the entire organisation must now, more than ever, be involved in "marketing".
I think the term "customer experience" can play a key role to helping companies simplify as they battle to stay a true marketing oriented company. As a recent article from McKinsey points out, "In today’s marketing environment, companies will be better off if they stop viewing customer engagement as a series of discrete interactions and instead think about it as customers do a set of related interactions that, added together, make up the customer experience."
I think if you keep in mind that to engage with people you need to understand the experiences they want with all aspects of the company, and then build engagement strategies that meet those insights. As I have been saying for sometime now, the key is to uncover insights into how people experince things, and usually this is on an emeotional level. The McKinsey article also reinforces this points by stating, "A premium will be placed on problem-solving and strategic-marketing skills, rather than on traditional market research capabilities such as designing surveys and commissioning focus groups."
I highly recommend reading the McKinsey article that I have linked to below. It serves as a timely reminder that staying marketing oriented in today's climate is not just business as usual and some innovation in structure is a likely need.
When I was working on Molson and Labatt and Coca-Cola, it was imperative you had a youth strategy, as youth consumed a pile of your product. Working on Intel in China we were concerned with youth and the need to get them earlier to build brand relevance beyond the laptop. However, in no case can I remember having an elder strategy, a strategy to tap into the desires, needs and wants of the 50+ consumer. Well today all brands need to think about building one.
It is said that in 2009, 46% of Apple's consumer base was older than 55. We know that in the US, 46% of cars, and 80% of luxury travel is sold to the 60+ demographic. An old colleague of mine from FCB in Toronto, for some time now has run a successful business selling luxury items to the 50+ market. I know Johnson&Johnson and Afexa Life Sciences (the Cold-FX people and a client of mine) always keep a close eye on the elder market when developing new products. These two organizations, for obvious reasons, recognise that an ageing consumer base in most of the worlds key markets means health care will be high on their need list. I believe though, that all brands need to take a look at how their product and services can be better positioned to be consumed by this massive 50+ demographic. This baby boomer group will change pre and post retirement mind-sets just as it has changed everything else they have touched. So ask yourself and your brand, what do you know about the older consumer as it relates to your business. Are you relevant to them now, and if not can you be relevant to them going forward.
On BrandVertising (my WebTV show on branding and advertising) I recently focused on the issue of the ageing consumer with my guest Dave McCaughan, the Director of Strategy for McCann Worldgroup in Asia Pacific. Check out the show below and start now to build your elder strategy!
Last week on my WebTV show called BrandVertising, I had a great chat with Timothy Lee (a client of mine from Afexa Life Sciences in Canada) about product innovation and development. The show highlighted that invention and innovation are not the same thing, look no further than apple to learn how to innovate versus invent.
We also talked about the fact that engaging with customers is the only way you can do any type of inventing or innovating. Which is why a recent Interbrand study that shows so few companies are engaging with their customers is even more shocking. How will products that are relevant be developed in these organizations?
Have a look at the show and see what were rated by LaunchTV as the best new products of 2010.
Image by nickwheeleroz via FlickrThe recent survey from McKinsey on how companies use strategy to "beat the market" had some nice insights but the one that stood out to me was that only 33% of companies say they use novel insights in their strategic planning. Now think about this for a second. That means two thirds are using exactly the same research as their competitors to drive their strategic thinking. While this lack of motivation to uncover new insights has been a topic in other articles recently, it astounds me that McKinsey has the number so high. We have become so dependent on the Internet to get information, which is great. However, if we do not step outside and uncover insights that are truly specific to our needs (and not published for all to see on the Internet) then how will we be any different than our competition.
Macro generic industry data is great for getting a picture on some of the forces that are driving an industry, I use them all the time, but business needs to get to the micro level drivers that are specific to their buyers and business, to be able to build a brand that is relevant both to them and their buyers. I do not believe for a second that this can be done without spending the money and uncovering new insights about ones buyers and marketplace on a regular basis.
If you are keen to see the entire survey click on the link below.
Image by DavidErickson via FlickrI recently asked several of my peers in the advertising world for their views on a few things, one of which revolved around the future of the Ad Agency. Tony Altilia, one of my first bosses in the Agency game back in 1985, (who is now a principal at http://www.maximpartnersinc.com/ in Toronto), replied with this link to a recent article in Fast Company called Mayhem on Madison Avenue.http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/mayhem-on-madison-avenue.html?page=0%2C0.
To me I think the article is required reading for anyone who is related to the Advertising Agency world in anyway today. Lines like "They're all well aware that coding is now prized over copywriting and that a resume that includes Xbox and Google is more desirable than one featuring stints at BBDO or Grey." should make classic agency people shudder. Currency today is technology and insight to stakeholders and communities. Both of these demand an open mindedness that has not been the hallmark of the traditional advertising agency.
As another one of my former colleagues, Chris Beaumont (Past CEO Grey Japan), said, "perhaps this Brand New World demands a new 'agency' paradigm - where we look at what it is important to be an 'agent for'...". I think Chris has hit the nail on the head and that those firms that figure out what the word "agency" means today will be the winners. The days of Mad Men went decades ago, as did the original definition of "Agency". No longer do you need an ad agency as a 'go between' media companies and marketers. No longer do you need an ad agency as a 'go between' stakeholders and the organization. So the question I ask you is what defines "Agency" today?
Daniel Pink is indeed a smart guy. I often think his insights are real real good. This time though what blew me away was how RSA Animate took Pink's insight to another level of comprehension. It just shows how important visuals (or painting a visual) are to effective communication.
I recently wrote a blog called "Wow Me." which talked about wowing people by showing you understand how important they are to your business versus just letting technology carry the day. Then a few days ago I came across an article that reinforced the need for business, especially tech business, to become more consumer focused. At the end of the article he provides three simple questions to ask yourself, and if you can't answer them, then your business is not spending enough time and money gaining insight into who your customers are.
The three questions are:
-Who are your Top 10 customers?
-Are they satisfied with what you are doing for them?
-Are you satisfied with what they are paying you?
Summer is full of wows like sitting on a pristine lake dockside. However, all year long people are looking to be wowed when they meet you and your organization. Some firms like TD Bank understand this reality so much they have trademarked WOW, which is amazing in itself. In my mind this wow me attitude is driven by the power of technology and how easy it is to make your brand or business shine from the get go. The bar is constantly being set higher by smart phones, and the apps that are driving them.
So what do you do to break the wow factor when you have no new news and really your brand is not all that different from the competition. In my mind you start with your customers and what makes them tick right now. The best way to get people to say wow, is to show you understand them better than anyone else. Your insights should be so on the mark that they think "wow how did you know that?". By better understanding the people that your business depends on, you begin to place less reliance on technology alone being your wow factor.
The amazing thing to me is that people spend tons of capital on technology to stand out from the competition, yet this same technology is being bought by everybody which makes it tougher to stand out on technology alone. Even more amazing to me is that in comparison, very little is being spent to understand what makes the people tick that drive their business. I mean why do people buy the category? Why do people buy the product? What do people want from the ideal product, and can your firm deliver this today? It's great to look sharp but after people get beyond the glitz, what makes your conversation with them worth their while. What makes them say "wow these guys seem to just fit with what I think.".
So this summer I ask you, what makes the people most important to the success of your business say wow! Hopefully it's more than your technology. Hopefully it's that you know them better than anybody else.
As the marketing world grapples with all the new social media tools available, I think we should take comfort in the fact that at a strategic level, being social should come natural to good business people. At its core social media is just about allowing people to engage, share and profile their thoughts effortlessly.
From a business perspective, we need to understand the tools and how our customers are using them, but the strategy should remain simple - engage with people when you have something to say and it's something you think they will really want to hear. Don't abuse the entry they will give you into their network. Different consumers will demand different levels of engagement, so again take the time to understand the people that are critical to your business. Understand how they engage with social media and how they want you to engage with them on it. It is not about having a twitter account and a facebook page. It is about knowing when to engage and having something relevant to say them.
Many marketing service firms are exploring the social media marketplace for businesses. Take the time to meet with one and begin to learn how it may help your business out. Don't be afraid at first to just get into a learning phase and track what people are saying about your firm and industry. Keep engaging on-line to a later date, when you are truly ready to get into a meaningful discussion.
Remember you are successful because you know how and when to socialise with people. This skill will transfer to the social media world as well. If you are patient and engage when you have something to say that you know will be relevant to your customers, research tells us that you will be welcomed and shared amongst their network of peers.
While the title of this blog seems a tad "over the top" as my Aussie friends say, the point should not be lost that if you do not have anyone in the organization that is constantly, and I mean constantly, uncovering insights about your marketplace and your industry then your organization is set up to perish. Are you listening to what is being said about you on twitter or facebook? Are you following global trends in technology, demographics, economics, regulatory horizons, environment and lifestyle? Do you know how these ever changing trends will impact your business today and tomorrow? The attached link to a McKenzie consulting piece is a quick short read that I fully support. Their five global drivers over the next decade one could argue but in general they are great starting points for business leaders to consider and follow.
Simply put, if you are not dialoguing with your stake holders and consistently monitoring your market and industry, how do you expect to be making the strategic changes that are differentiating and relevant.
After 22 years in marketing communications and living away from Western Canada, I packed up my family from our home in Beijing and moved to Edmonton, the city where I was raised. Upon my return I chose to leave the world's largest ad agency that had taken me around the globe and given me access to some of the world's great brands. Instead I followed an itch to start my own business, and in 2007 I created Bamboo Strategy.
Bamboo Strategy is a boutique brand consultancy that helps business stay relevant to the communities they serve.
Image by nickwheeleroz via FlickrThe recent survey from McKinsey on how companies use strategy to "beat the market" had some nice insights but the one that stood out to me was that only 33% of companies say they use novel insights in their strategic planning. Now think about this for a second. That means two thirds are using exactly the same research as their competitors to drive their strategic thinking. While this lack of motivation to uncover new insights has been a topic in other articles recently, it astounds me that McKinsey has the number so high. We have become so dependent on the Internet to get information, which is great. However, if we do not step outside and uncover insights that are truly specific to our needs (and not published for all to see on the Internet) then how will we be any different than our competition.
Image by DavidErickson via FlickrI recently asked several of my peers in the advertising world for their views on a few things, one of which revolved around the future of the Ad Agency. Tony Altilia, one of my first bosses in the Agency game back in 1985, (who is now a principal at http://www.maximpartnersinc.com/ in Toronto), replied with this link to a recent article in Fast Company called Mayhem on Madison Avenue. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/151/mayhem-on-madison-avenue.html?page=0%2C0. 
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