First impression disasters – Windows Vista
One of the blogs I read, Lifehacker, had this post about a preview of Windows Vista. I love a bit of technology, so quickly navigated to the site to have a look and a play. You would have to assume that this is exactly what the marketing people at Microsoft would have hoped for.
So I switch browser (I use Firefox rather than IE), give them my email address, install a bit of software (ActiveX) and start clicking...this is what I got.
Is this the greatest challenge in modern marketing?
Do you remember when you had to choose a home loan? Or car insurance? Or a printer? Did you go online? How many choices did you have? Did it make you happy having those choices? Barry Schwartz says it didn't.
Why would you call your company SICK?
Well, you might call your company SICK if you were German and your customers didn't speak English... You might if you didn't think of ever entering international/English speaking markets.
However, these guys have actually built a very significant business in the US and many other overseas countries, so they might argue it makes no difference whether their business is SICK, SLICK or SCHMICK.
When a business is doing well, marketers with ideas about branding (or anyone else who wants to implement change) will struggle to get a hearing. Even more so if the changes proposed are seen to be cosmetic.
Let's face it, the impact is hard to prove upfront. Would SICK be more successful if they used a different brand name in English speaking countries? What do you think?
“Marketing” has a brand problem
The role of "marketing" is one of those subjects that often raises as many questions as answers. Now if people don't excactly know what it is that you should be delivering, it is pretty easy to not deliver to a CEO's expectations.
(I wrote about a related issue, how marketing is rated within an organisation, here in response to an Accenture report with some interesting findings)
THis is obvious from the fact that Marketing Executives have some of the shortest tenures in business.
Eric Kintz from HP (who has one of the most poetic titles I have seen for a while by the way: "Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence") writes an interesting article on the subject; "What is Marketing responsible for?"
My blogging friends over at Marketing Profs sent me an advance copy of their new book “Marketing Champions” (Wiley Editions) and I like their thinking. Their main argument is that CMOs have to a great extent failed so far to draw the linkage between marketing and the harvesting of cash flow.
They have developed a hierarchy of cash flow responsibilities that I resonate with at a high level. In their pyramid model, the responsibilities gradually build in their relevance to cash flow.
Level 1: Communications
Level 2: Lead Generation
Level 3: Revenue
Level 4: profits
Level 5: Customer equity (customer acquisition, customer profitability and customer retention)
There are not many companies I know where Marketing is responsible for all of the above.
If you would describe these responsibilities to someone and asked who was responsible, you might hear "the CEO" or "The Sales and Marketing Manager" but not "Marketing".
Not that Marketing couldn't do it. The problem is much more difficult. The problem is that the brand "Marketing" is not associated with it. "Marketing" is associated with communications, advertising, spending money.
And I doubt we can convince people otherwise. We can't re-position marketing.
Time to re-brand. A new term, a new concept. Let's get to work!
Just accept it; you’ve got no option
I recently tried to sign up for an online banking service with the National Australia Bank. As expected, I was asked to read an agreement, scroll through it and click the "I accept" button at the bottom.
So I scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled....the "agreement" is the equivalent of 29 pages A4, or almost 12,000 words. They have no expectation that people will read this, it's just to cover their butts.
I've got a new tagline for them "Trust us, we're a Bank".
PS: Someone else posted on this issue not too long but I can't remember for the life of me who it was; credit for the original observation to whomever it was..)
Steve Irwin and the brand Australia
I don't think most people here in Australia know exactly how big Steve Irwin was overseas. Or the influence he had over the brand "Australia".
He told a story of Australia that people wanted to hear; a beautiful, wild, dangerous place full of 5 meter crocs, snakes spiders and sharks. Never mind the fact that 90% of us live in urban centres more akin to San Francisco than the wild west...He told the story of the fearless man who would struggle with the wild animals but never hurt them.
I read a recent story that illustrated how well he understood the power of this branding; a group of people up north (where the crocs live) proposed to introduce big game safari's; i.e. overseas visitors coming here and shoot crocs and other wild life for $15k a pop.
He invited a very senior member of the adminstration for a weekend away in the bush and explained that this would destroy the brand Australia overseas and significantly impact tourism in its wake.(The one he helped build).
Tourism is one of Australia’s most important industries. It accounts for 5.7 per cent of total employment, contributes $73 billion to consumption per annum and is worth more than 11 per cent of total exports. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Big game hunting never went ahead and I doubt it ever will now.
Anyone who is not taking customer service seriously should look again
I love this story about a chinese man who didn't quite get what he expected from Dell and wanted action. Only a few years ago the power balance between complaining customer and multinational would be tipped well and truly towards the multi-national. Not anymore.
Instead of the Intel Core Duo T2300 processor
he had expected, the computer had a T2300E, which lacks "virtualization technology," a feature that allows the computer to run more than one operating system at a time. Dell says it's of little use to laptop users, but Zhang says he wanted it anyway.
A few years ago the 30-year-old Zhang might not have gotten very far with his gripe. But 53 million Chinese are denizens of online forums, making it easy to find folks with equivalent complaints.
In the old days, we'd tell our friends and family, influencing maybe twenty people around us. This might mean some lost future revenue to the company we bought from but realistically, would Dell feel that?
Now look what happened: not only did this guy find a bunch of people like him with the same complaint as well as a laywer to take the case but more importantly, the story zipped around the world in a matter of days. I picked it up from two sources; Steve Rubel's post on Dell's response and CRM Daily about the actual case. Now, if you hadn't read it yet from another source you have read it here....
For now, this is about a big, global brand but it won't be too long when every brand, local or internationally will have to contend with the fact that customers will be able to compare notes, talk about your firm, your delivery, your service whatever it may be.
Brands and a broken promises
We were made an offer recently to bundle all our telecommunications services and pay a fixed monthly sum. You've probably had similar offers. After looking at our total spend and comparing that to the offer, we decided that it was going to save us a fair bit. Condition was, you have to sign up for 12 months.
The first couple of months the bills were massive; this was due to "adjustments" between billing periods that I gave up on trying to understand. Finally, the "adjustments" are behind us. But the bills are still massive. When I took a closer look I realised that a 5 minute mobile call now costs me around $4.00
This company will be making a fortune out of me unless I drastically change my consumer behaviour. For the next 12 months. Probably my own fault for not digging deeper initially.
Their marketing people have done nothing illegal, they have not lied, but they have still hoodwinked me. So what is the impact of this?
Here are some considerations for their brand:
- The telecommunications market is highly competitive.
- Loyalty is a major problem; the cost of acquisition of a customer is very high
- I trusted this company enough to give them all my business
- I will never trust them again; 12 months and 1 day from now I will have a new provider never to return.
- I will have told more than just a few people.
I wonder if these sums still add up for this marketing manager?
Advertising money can’t buy; unplanned and very effective
Melbourne, Australia is arguably the most sports mad city in the world.
Australia also has it's own code of football, Australian Rules, better known as "Aussie rules" football. I won't go into detail about the game (just follow the link if you're interested.)
As with most sports, many people have a particular commentator they love; maybe because they know their stuff, maybe because they are funny, maybe a bit of both.
Here in Melbourne a fellow by the name of Rex Hunt (an ex-footballer, ex-cop who is also known for his international fishing show) has a massive local following because of his unique humor infused into his commentary. He also has competitors from other radio stations and he doesn't mind having a dig at them.
His biggest slur on his competitors is that they are boring, so he calls their team of commentators "The Tobin Brothers" which happens to be a leading brand in the undertaking business...
Imagine, your brand name mentioned in the middle of commentary, to a massive audience without spending a penny. Now that's advertising money can't buy.
PS: I recently met the Managing Director, Martin Tobin, and I can tell you that he had a smile on his face when I asked him about this.
Understanding your target market
I have started to use Firefox as my browser a while ago (and I like it a lot). They have been extremely successful in marketing this (free) new browser, even getting recognised as "one of the top 10 most influential brands. (Always take that with a grain of salt; read the disclaimer about their research sample..)
The software is an "open source" software application, meaning that other developers are encouraged to help develop and add-on to the product. They have taken a similar route in their advertising encouraging users to create a TV commercial for them. This is a lot of fun, but what is really powerful is how well they understand their audience; read the brief below. Could you describe your customers in such detail?
The primary target audience for the Firefox advertising campaign are moderately experienced Web users, who are comfortable with using the Web but are not necessarily power users. These users understand how to download and install software, and use the Web for basic activities: reading news, web-based email, limited online shopping and banking. They may rely as much on the physical Yellow Pages as they do Yahoo! or Google. They may also have had negative experiences with the Web as a result of spyware, viruses and other Web nuisances. Yet they see the value in the Web, and so return. But they likely do not clearly understand how a Web browser can
improve their Web experience.
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