Only Dead Fish

Method In The Madness

Good case study from Tom Fishburne whom you may know as the creator of the excellent Brandcamp cartoons, but is otherwise employed as the Marketing Director for Method. I like the approach that in a recession, people may well want to trade down in price but they also want to trade up in value: "Everything we’ve ever done has been to create “value” in the middle of commodity soup (and get consumers to love us)". Method don't accept that household cleaning is a 'low interest' category. They sell a culture and a philosophy. One that sees green as an aspect of product quality ("and it's progress, not perfection"). Good stuff.

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Modern Branding

Good concise presentation from Adrian at Zeus Jones who, as I've said before, really do get it. This reminds us not only how prescient John Grant's thinking was and is, but also finishes by questioning whether it's possible to create truly different products with the same processes, disciplines and people, and even whether our customers are better at branding than us. Good stuff.

Modern Branding

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The Death of Customer Service

The delightful Mrs Slocombe courtesy

TIME magazine is running a feature on "10 Ideas That Are Changing The World". Alongside some pretty big concepts around sustainability, "reverse radicalism", geoengineering, and the impact of ageing populations, they highlight the unstoppable rise of self-serve technology citing such joys as supermarket self-scanning and self-checkout, movie ticket kiosks, airport self-check-in and even ER check-in kiosks at hospitals (I kid you not). "Only now" they say, "are technology and public sentiment aligning to truly shift the responsibility of collecting goods and services to the consumer".

Ubiquitous self-service does two things:- it drives big savings for the companies which introduce it and it shifts the responsibility and work onto the consumer. Few initiatives deliver real macro savings in productivity. The efficency gain is far from always on the side of the consumer (how many times have you been frustrated by the inflexibility of machine-driven service?). "Business will get smarter about when to serve you" says Bill Nuti, CEO of NCR, one of the biggest providers of self-service systems. Maybe it will. It needs to. The point at which you interact with your customers and the experience they have is the most important form of marketing there is. There may well come a point at which increasing automation will invert into a corresponding increase in customer desire for the benefits of human service. Businesses which structure themselves around human interaction could find they have a real purple cow on their hands.

On Brand Utility

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I like this from Zeus Jones:

"To me, marketing as a service is an operating philosophy - not a deliverable. It's a school of thought around how business success and customer care/acquisition can be achieved. One shouldn't deliver branded utility as a part of an integrated campaign or even as a campaign per se; instead there should be a commitment to work being useful into the heart of everything that's done. This is as true of the agency side as it is of the client side. Once you embrace this as the way you've decided to go to market, it's not about issuing or working on a brief. Instead it's about a holistic approach to doing business."

A New Way To Be Good?

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I heard on the radio this morning that today was apparently meant to be the most depressing day of the year (happily I'm not feeling it). So in trying to think about more uplifting subjects, I read about the strategic launch of Google's philanthropy venture Google.org.

Led by the rather wonderfully named Dr Brilliant, Google.org's 40-strong team has already been going for sometime but has only just unveiled their key strategic intent based on an over-riding objective which is, they say, to "use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease". When it launched, Google.org represented what The Economist terms "a new sort of philanthropic entity", being set up to pursue opportunities for for-profit investing as well as charitable grants, and funded not only with 1% of the firm's equity and annual profits, but 1% of Google employees time.

Dr Brilliant (who bizarrely was once Doctor to The Grateful Dead) had a blank sheet of paper and the world's biggest problems to look at when he started so it's probably not surprising that it's taken a couple of years to announce the strategy. They started with 1000 ideas, whittled them down to 11 (the 11 which were "the biggest, most imminent, least well resourced problems."), and then finally focused in looking specifically at what Google had to offer in terms of resource, reach, their command and proficiency in handling information, their technological and engineering capabilities, and their entrepreneurial culture. They ended up with five key initiatives:

1. RE<C: Clean, renewable sources of utility-scale electricity that is cheaper than that produced from coal
2. RechargeIT: supporting and fostering the mass commercialisation of plug-in vehicles
3. Fuel the growth of SME's
4. Use information to inform and empower in order to improve public services (education, health, water, sanitation etc)
5. Predict and Prevent: Identifying hot-spots and enabling rapid responses to emerging threats like disease or climate based situations.

It's tempting to be cyncical about this (cheaper, renewable electricity must fit nicely with Google's own priority to efficiently power all those server farms) but it's the commitment and the capability which I think sets this apart. Just think about that last one again. It builds out of the InSTEDD project (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster) which Google.org has now invested in and for which Brilliant won the TED pize two years ago. This project aims to use web and communications technology to help communities around the world identify, act upon and warn others of  infectious disease outbreaks or natural disasters.

Think Twitter, Facebook and other ubiqitous but free software being repurposed when and where  necessary for humanitarian benefit. Like the Twitter bot framework which "bridges the web service and phones with a location detection feature that can link to a layer in Google Earth". So imagine an aid worker with one bar of mobile reception being able to twitter on SMS not only to a network of fellow aid workers, but also to their headquarters back home who can view the message on screen showing the location on Google Earth and reply telling them where the nearest other aid workers are. 

In typical Google style this is a hugely ambitious, high risk and high return strategy. But then, perhaps that's what's needed. Particularly when you consider that, according to a recent Oxfam report, there has been a four-fold increase in the annual number of natural disasters. Perhaps this goes beyond philanthropy. As The Economist speculates, perhaps this is "a new model for how a big firm should engage with society".

Related links:

Google.org blog

Losing Control

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Change is difficult. Especially when in just about every way, the change needed to happen represents a fundamental revision of the way in which things have been done. And done for a long time. We are "Flipping the Funnel". It takes a huge emotional investment right from the top when you do that. The benefits might not be immediately obvious. It runs contrary to the natural instinct for the need to control. But change is necessary. I've been meaning to post these words from Adriana for a while:

"Talking about “how to control a brand” today is as provocative as saying three years ago that on the Web companies will lose control of their brands. The buzzword Web 2.0 does not capture what this shift is about. It would be more accurate to talk about the Two-Way Web or the Read/Write Web to make it clear that the Web is not a medium. The Web is a network where people are creating, sharing and distributing without any need for the industry’s involvement. The two-way nature of the online enables individuals to develop their own ‘brands’ effectively and cheaply because a brand is more like identity than unrelenting messaging and campaigns. Brands could get a share of the Web magic, if they were willing to come out from behind the glossy fronts and engage as human beings. In short, marketers - Step. Away. From. The Brand. You cannot control it, the best you can do is to help shape your company’s identity, while respecting people and the way they engage with you and each other. None of this involves ‘leveraging’ anything from traditional marketing."

Comms, Radiohead And The NME

I did a talk with a big creative agency yesterday. I took Conor McNicholas, the editor of the NME, in with me to talk about the ever-changing music industry. The parallels with the comms industry are considerable and relatable. Both are witnessing challenges to established business practices and traditional modes of distribution, both are witnessing business models changing beyond recognition (Conor even said he'd talked about it with Trevor Beattie). The NME is busy trying to put itself at the heart of the new models that are emerging. Bands (ones that are right for the NME of-course) are now releasing singles by covermounting them on the NME in order to gain a more widespread distribution with an audience of passionate new music lovers. Conversations with record companies now focus on how the NME can plug into new model "360" deals with the bands that involve management, touring and merchandising.

And the Radiohead thing came up of-course. Interesting that despite the fact that everyone could download it completely for free if they wanted, the average price people are paying is coming in somewhere around £5. No doubt because of all those 30-something blokes (like me) who've grown up with Radiohead and feel some kind of kinship and loyalty to them. Paying for their record is our way of saying that we are still part of that gang - you wouldn't rip off your mates now, would you? I asked Conor whether he thought more bands could do what they've done. He doubted it - the music product itself is increasingly being used as a promotional tool for the more lucrative parts of the business (notably touring) but Radiohead have something very few bands have (and many brands would love to have) - the combination of a massive following and killer credibility. Credibility is one of those things that is extremely hard to attain and even harder to retain. But Radiohead have built a huge, enduringly successful business out of just that. So its a case study that many brands would do well to learn from.

P.S. As an aside, in reaction to the BNP’s active recruitment campaigning in schools using white power music, the NME teamed up with "LoveMusicHateRacism" to put together 29 track album featuring amongst others Hard-Fi, Bloc Party, The Enemy, MIA, The View, Lethal Bizzle, Babyshambles and New Young Pony Club (who've all given their time and work for free). The first disc is being given away with the current issue but you can download the second disc now here.

The Gentle Touch

I saw a presentation this morning by self styled "chubby grocer" (great moniker) Mark Price, MD of Waitrose. There  was something quite unique about the way he described the approach they have to their communications. It's been about 10 years since Waitrose ended their advertising drought (for about 100 years the partnership believed that investment in the product would suffice) in the face of the huge competitive pressure of the UK Grocery market and the need to raise awareness of their genuinely unique consumer benefits. Since then they've done some consistently brilliant  advertising and design creative.

In a market where it often seems to be a competition as to who can shout loudest, they have taken an altogether different approach, and developed a discrete but powerful positioning. Mark used words like 'gentle' and 'soft' (including the Theodore Roosevelt "Speak softly and carry a big stick" quote). How often do you hear words like that in the retail market? I like a lot of what Waitrose do, but thought that was particularly special. For all the Chelsea fans out there here's some great tactical work by Kitcatt Nohr they've done today off the back of this morning's news of Jose Mourinho's departure. And seeing as how I'm a bona fide poultry owner myself, here's the one about chickens...

Redefining Marketing

MAD posted on Friday on the Chartered Institute of Marketing's attempt to redefine the role of marketing. Believe it or not, the CIM's definition of marketing has been the same for over 30 years. It was way back in 1976 (the same year as Chopper bikes, Punk, The Muppets, Starsky & Hutch cardigans, and the year Prince Charles grew a beard) that they described it as:

"The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably."

They are now suggesting a new definition:

"The strategic function that creates value by stimulating, facilitating and fulfilling customer demand. It does this by building brands, nurturing innovation, developing relationships, creating good customer service and communicating benefits. By opening customer-centrically, marketing brings positive return on investment, satisfies shareholders and stakeholders from business and community, and contributes to positive behavioural change and a sustainable business future."

What do we think about that then? Personally, I'm a fan of pithy descriptions, so I'd rather they'd have just left it at end of the first sentence. The rest is trying too hard and just dilutes the premis of what most marketing is actually about - shifting product.

Redefining Luxury

Here’s a thought about the concept of luxury. Luxury has always been about brand; the name, the label, the notion of the world you are buying into, exclusivity, individual expression of choice, and the experience that that brand provides; the shopping experience, personalisation, the delivery and service, the look, the feel, the smell, the touch, the taste of it.

Over time, experience becomes more important. There is more choice, so the experience is critical to brand loyalty. People are more demanding so the experience has to work harder. The desire for self-fulfilment and self-realization leads towards experiences which help us find personal meaning and satisfaction, those which enable us to feel good about ourselves, a growing desire for new experiences.

Now, perhaps, there is another element which is becoming more and more critical – time. Sure, it’s an increasingly precious commodity, but it’s also an investment. Brands that enable or are a part of that investment have to deliver a return. We’ve just partnered with The Future Foundation on a piece of research looking at the future of entertainment. One of the surprising findings was the level of importance people now place on the need for ‘down-time’.

Yes, time is ‘the new currency’. More than that though, time itself is the new luxury. Time to oneself. Time away from the frenetic, fast-paced, always-connected world in which we live. Time with friends. Time having a laugh. Time not thinking. Time doing nothing. Time for self-indulgence.

I’m not big on luxury in the traditional sense (in fact this weekend I’m going camping), but I am big on investing my time carefully. For me, like many, that’s my luxury.