Is digital delivering what it promises?

This was a question recently posted by the DMA in advance of a live debate they are hosting on Thursday 15 October – http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Edma%2Eorg%2Euk%2Ftraining%2Fevt-article%2Easp%3Fid%3D4648&urlhash=jN3a&_t=disc_detail_link.

Below was my posted comment…

When it comes to measuring performance digital is arguably the most transparent medium in terms of trackability. This is especially true since the ability to attribute ROI metrics beyond the last click, thus moving away from the flawed last ad model.

We are also seeing more sophisticated ways of tracking the shouts and whispers of social media buzz which meaningfully translate into ‘corporate’ value.

But… in assessing if digital is delivering on what it promises, ROI accountability is only part of the equation.

Given that digital is increasingly embedded in everyday life, there’s still work to do in establishing how it contributes to the shaping and building of brands over time. Only through demonstrating both the brand and sales impact will digital’s potential and position be fully realised within the overall marketing mix.

So how do we benchmark the comparative and accumulative value (i.e. the multiplier effect) of digital with non-digital ATL media? Well it doesn’t mean we limit this to replicating the existing ATL brand model template of pre/post awareness, image, relevance type metrics.

Don’t get me wrong - we still need to do this, so there’s a common currency that brand managers can relate to. But I’d suggest there is also richer way of gathering and interpreting this.

Let me explain…

There is growing chatter amongst the digital classes about shifting marketing effort beyond short-lived switch on/switch off campaigns to that of creating long lasting experiences. Simply put this boils down to helping brands ‘walk the talk’ by closing the divide between what brands promise and their service delivery. So it becomes more about pushing the quality of engagement.

Outside of physical interactions, this is where digital media really comes into its own. Whether it’s engaging within communities or tapping into the utilitarian properties of emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality or simply creating more user friendly applications, digital has the capability to facilitate, shape and grow such positive experiences through adding genuine meaning and value.

So perhaps we should reframe the original question to a more forward thinking: ‘how can digital help create deeper more meaningful brand experiences?’ And then through this seek to measure its individual and accumulative value relative to all other brand touch-points to help strengthen its position within the marketing mix.

Building benevolent and believable brands

As we know, WOM and referrals are playing and increasingly important role in people’s purchase decisions.

So my thought for today…

In this period of austerity brands that show greater benevolence and believability will be more likely to amplify customer attention and loyalty.

First off, by benevolence I mean stressing caring ethics in these uncertain and trying times. Simple but effective ‘physical world’ monetary examples include M&S 'Dine in for £10' meal for two offers and Sainsbury’s ‘feed your family for a fiver’ menus.

Brand benevolence can be further enhanced through digital media. For example the Celebration Facebook widget helped build relationships between friends. It did so by enabling them to send virtual Mars gifts containing mobile barcode redeemable at PayPoint stores. After all who doesn’t like receiving chocolate as a gift?

Social media also gives brands the opportunity to develop longer term relationships with consumers by getting inside and shaping the flow of conversation. However for many brands this appears to be a notoriously tough nut to crack, but needn’t be.

This leads to the second point contained within my thought for today…

As with ‘real’ life, if you want to be perceived as interesting you have to actually say and do something of interest. Translated to the world of marketing, this means building believable brands that meaningfully engage people based on their needs, wants and actions.

By believable I mean:

• Communicating with honestly and transparency
• Doing what you say – delivering on your promises
• And in delivering on your promises, doing so in a compelling and rewarding way

For example GSK’s NiQuitin and Alli products (NRT smoke cessation and weight loss capsules) also give access to personalised interactive support plans. Delivered primarily through online and mobile media they provide access to experts and social community support, advice, tools and inspiration. Arguably with development these programs could become the key ‘value’ components in their own right in driving consumer uptake with the product given away for ‘free’.

Finally, in becoming benevolent and believable brands this also helps humanise them towards forging stronger, more intimate relationships with consumers. And through these intimate interactions this creates more brand advocates…which leads right back to where we started.

Potent marketing tool: Fear

I saw a recent article (can’t recall where) talking about the Swine Flu Virus.

While the article as a whole was interesting, there was one apparently flippant quote that caught my attention: ‘nothing sells quite like fear’

This was in relation to the mass panic buying of 99 cent surgical masks in the blind hope that it would ward off infection.

I’m of course being flippant myself when I state 'apparently flippant'.

After all fear is the counter-balance to hope and together they have been employed by marketers for eons.

Just think of the marketing of socially sensitive products such as weight control, baldness, flatulence etc.

Or the murky world of insurance products.

Or a large chunk of cause-related marketing.

In fact come to think of it I struggle to identify many high-involvement products which don’t sit somewhere along this continuum.

As Aristotle said ‘hope is a waking dream’.

And at a base level isn’t that what marketing is all about - fulfilling dreams?

Open ID

The more lifestyle, shop & social community sites I sign up to - the more passwords I collect.

And the more I forget.

NO MORE...

Now I may be late to the game, but Open ID is proving a life saver.

A bit like having a magic key that opens all doors.

Nintendo calling...

Just read that Nintendo are releasing their latest hand held console the DSi in April. Apparently this allows users to listen to music and take photos.

This aligned with other features such as 'brain training' and the ability to purchase & read novels over the DS will no doubt help to continue building appeal beyond it's predominantly youthful audience.

This extension beyond it's core functionality of gaming brings to mind the expansive development of mobile phones.

Which then got me thinking...Nintendo already has the capability to connect people together.

Together with its widening utility and appeal, could Nintendo be seeking to become the ultimate 'hub in the hand' device by entering the mobile phone market?

Undoubtably it won't possess the same 'know how' of existing mobile operators but the same could have been said of Apple...and just look at the response to the iPhone.

A Nintendo mobile phone device with all the qualities and capabilities of the existing product has the makings of widespread appeal.

A time for the hunter to be hunted perhaps?

Existing mobile operators beware.

Much ado about something

I stumbled across a great blog from Dave Trott, a leading light in the world of marketing and also the 'T' in GGT a great ad & dm agency of old I'd previously worked for.

Never worked with the man himself, but reading his blog I wish I had.

'Nuff said.

Compelling ideas

As a planner how do you persuade clients to 'buy' your proposed strategy or idea?

Let me share with you the overlapping viewpoints of two well known planners:

#1 You can't bore people into buying an idea - you need to be interesting
#2 It's better to be interesting than it is to be right

Now let me add into the mix an extract from another well known planner, Malcolm White:

'...planning today is more about interesting ideas than it is about the right idea...[however] as Jeremy Bullmore put it: "we need to be intuitive, instinctive, scared and lucky AND we need to be rigorous, disciplined, logical and deductive".

...we need more of these sorts of people and less of those who are just interesting'

Coming back to planner #1 and #2. It is absolutely right to 'be interesting ' in helping gain a clients attention and buy-in. However this mustn't be to the detriment of ensuring those ideas are also robustly developed. After all the best ideas are those that not only see the light of day, but that also deliver.

So as planners it is our duty to be compelling. In other words we need to provide both the sizzle AND the sausage.

To borrow interest or not borrow interest?

That is the question that popped into my head last weekend triggered by my kids. Or to be more precise, it was triggered by the Madagascar film-based toys they were clutching excitedly in their hands after a rare trip to McDonalds.

By borrowed interest I mean the marketing tactic of ‘borrowing’ properties external to the brand in question to capture consumer interest, such as McDonald’s tie-in with DreamWorks.

Borrowed interest is often the main component of sales promotion activity where there is a tangible merchandise tie-in. As in the case of McDonalds this can work handsomely (well based on the straw-poll reaction of my kids…!).

There are also cases when borrowed interest is a necessity to attracting consumer attention such as in commoditised and/or low interest categories. Just think of the insurance market which employs a variety of mnemonic devices from dogs, phones and geckos to name but a few to help build a stronger narrative.

But outside of the above scenarios does borrowed interest have a legitimate role?

Not so, according to a very senior Creative I recall from the dim and distant past. According to him borrowed interest was an absolute ‘no-no’ when it came to developing marketing strategies.

His argument went along the lines of…

1. Borrowed interest falsely lays claim to consumer attention. It acts as a supportive crutch, when surely the focus must be to find something directly interesting to say about the brand in question that would help grab relevant consumer attention
2. Borrowed interest relies upon people making a contextual connection, without which the message isn’t taken on board.

I can agree with his thinking to a certain extent but not in his black and white assertion that all borrowed interest is bad. Agreed, borrowed interest done badly is more likely to lead to poor results. For example gratuitous references that don’t help reinforce the brand narrative in some way, will ultimately make any initial attention garnered somewhat hollow.

Also, while Wonderbra’s ‘two cups of joy’ viral homage to Cadbury’s Gorilla campaign paid off, a campaign risks failure if people don’t make the connection to such popular cultural references, especially when being used as a route into comprehending the overarching message. Of course the other risk is that even if people do ‘get it’ a brand won’t get the differentiation and attention it desires if it has lamely jumped on the ‘me-too’ brand band-wagon of following the latest fads (think of the initial splurge around Google map mash-ups).

However, it is my belief that borrowed interest as a strategy can attract attention and strengthen a brand’s appeal if done well.

Two very different examples help prove this.

First off, is the Diesel sex cartoon viral (SFW XXX Dirty 30). This video helps celebrate its 30th anniversary, using actual porn footage with the rude parts censored out by cartoon overlays. The WOM this created without a doubt helped amplify and reinforce its risqué and rebellious credentials

The second case is from Intel. Talking about microchips powering computers isn’t a terribly appealing way to reinforce the ‘Intel inside’ brand positioning to a youthful demographic. However harnessing the ‘Powered by Intel’ thought to their shared passion for music is. This led to Intel developing the 'Intel powers music' campaign to encourage MySpace users to install a branded widget, which let them increase the amount of music storage space within their profile page.

What’s lovely about this approach is that is takes a passion and turns it into a social object that provides real utility in a way that credibly underlines the brand credentials while building its reputation in music. And it does so in a way that gives a permanent presence that helps shake off Intel’s stuffy image. Genius!

We’ll save further discussion on social objects for another time.

In the meantime - borrowed or not - a penny for your thoughts?

Crunch time for brands

It’s not just consumers who are suffering with the recession.

Hardly a day goes by without fresh news of another brand’s woes. MFI and Woolies have gone; Whittards is going…and news today that even the luxury brand Chanel isn’t immune to the economic downturn in being forced to lay off 200 staff.

However with the credit crunch biting further, brands must resist the knee-jerk reaction of making carte blanche marketing cuts as a means of slashing costs to protect profit margins.

To quote Sun Tzu - the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.

As past evidence shows from a 1998 PIMS consultancy survey, brands that hold their nerve tend to win out. Research amongst 1,000 consumer- facing brands showed that during the 1991-93 recession that while those who cut marketing spend made higher profits during the recession they then went onto lose market share after this. Converse to this those brands that maintained spend or even went on the offensive and increased their marketing activity achieved higher brand vales after the recession.

Of course maintaining marketing spend by itself won’t necessarily attract customers or drive sales if the category as a whole is afflicted by the recession.

Instead marketers must seek to adapt the marketing mix. However while price reductions and special offers can drive traffic (think of M&S 20% ‘one-off’ sales days before Christmas), mid-to-high level brands need to be wary of doing this too often or for sustained periods as it could cannibalise revenue and/or erode brand equity.

The smarter brands will look beyond price discounting in matching their product offering towards consumer needs within the present economic climate. One example is the Morrisons supermarket chain which ran a high profile celeb driven advertising campaign before Christmas. While I’m not a fan of the ads per se they have been part of a concerted effort to make Morrisons more appealing by visibly and better communicating their offering of “freshness and value” just as the recession was kicking in.

This message has been supported by additions and amends to their product lines (including re-launching their value range) and refurbishing their stores to accentuate strong points such as allowing shoppers to see that bread was baked on the premises.

Like Morrisons, brands who invest in reinforcing their brand values and maintaining their marketing spend in the right areas will stand a better chance of emerging unharmed. Ending with another quote that echoes the thinking of Charles Darwin - it’s a case of survival of the fittest.