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Monthly Archives: January 2014

The marketer stripped bare…and our nude future

31 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Content Marketing, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

content marketing, copywriting, direct marketing, marketing, social media

On January 18th 2014 John Hancock (The Copy Mentor), arguably Australia’s best marketing copywriter and thinker, passed away from cancer. I’d worked with him for over 25 years and he was a good friend.

We’d been discussing for some time an idea of launching a marketing consultancy called “The Naked Marketer“. The premise was simple – we would work with CEOs, CMOs and business owners, to identify what was right and wrong about their marketing. Put simply – we’d tell the truth.

With no agency bias, or new business agenda, we would analyse their marketing activities and make recommendations to improve them.

It came about as a result of so many colleagues complaining about their marketing work practices and the lack of accountability or pride in results, that have permeated the ranks over recent years. Not to mention the digi-nonsense flooding cyber-space.

Hancock wrote the following essay – it is typical of his intellect and honest approach to marketing – which is extremely rare today.

John Hancock - The Copy Mentor

John Hancock – The Copy Mentor

The Marketer Stripped Bare

Marketing fashionisti go for the layered look this season. Fads come and go so quickly in the digital age that quick-change accessories are essential. You need several new looks in place on Monday morning, so you have a campaign featuring the latest craze ready to present by Wednesday afternoon.

By Friday it’ll be, like, you know … SO Wednesday that you’ll have to trot out something even newer.

Today not even a noticeable minority of marketers have truly come to terms with websites, much less social media. Yet the industry is already buzzing about the new GPS-driven handsets that promise to deliver your offer when the customer points her phone at a retail outlet.

No worries; wear your media and channels in layers, and you can quickly discard the old to display the new.

But what is actually going on underneath all the glam and the bling? Is the body of marketing as sophisticated as its tools and toys; or has it become mutton dressed up as lamb?

Not too long ago the practice of marketing marched in step with technological change. We had always counted responses and run tests, so when computers came along, we just counted everything faster and designed even more sophisticated tests. Acting on the results, we dramatically improved the profitability of our direct response ads and mailings.

When computers progressed to the stage of delivering personalised mailings, they quickly became the norm. This caused another jump in profitability.

Toll-free numbers immediately increased inbound phone traffic, leading to the first call centres. But they were just taking orders until the predictive diallers arrived, followed closely by truly computerised call centres that gave us instant, real-time results for the first time in our careers. Telemarketing exploded. So did profits.

But at every step of the way, professional marketers counted and costed and tested. Then we counted and costed and tested again. The things that became common policy were those for which we had hard numbers.

After spending time with clients and researching online, I’ve become increasingly worried. If we stripped marketing bare this week, I’m afraid we would find a discipline that has not kept pace with itself.

Marketing departments seem to be deploying new tools helter-skelter, without even rigorous accounting, much less rigorous testing. Where are the case studies on social media showing the increase in labour cost required to maintain Facebook and Twitter pages? Where are the A/B tests that divide a customer base into social-media and non-social-media segments to show what difference, if any, there is in the number or profitability of transactions?

The problem goes even deeper, or earlier, than that. Too few marketers with whom I’ve spoken have a clear grasp of the basic numbers describing their digital channels, from email openings, to click-through, to final transaction.

If that were the whole problem, the solution would be simple: today’s marketers need only pull up their socks and get serious, and all will be well. But I worry that the real problem is more profound.

Can the discipline keep up?

For most of my 40 years in this business, the technological changes themselves were actually more dramatic than those of today. We had to adapt, not from old computers to new computers, but from no computers to computers per se.  But we had a long time working with remote mainframes before we had to deal with the desktop revolution. We had over a decade’s experience with personalised mail packs before the first laser printers opened up new possibilities. We had years to cope with almost every new earth-shaker.

You have to react to multiple innovations in a single year.

There’s another challenge you have to face, that we escaped: pressure from the top. While computers were huge news in my early years on the job, their use as marketing tools wasn’t widely publicised. The CEOs of client companies weren’t breathing down the necks of their Marketing Directors to use personalised mailings or to install toll-free phone lines. The developments that affected marketers were well-known within the discipline, but that was about it.

Today, your boss’s boss hears about each new marketing wonder as soon as you do. Her son-in-law tells her; she tells your boss; and that afternoon you get an email along the lines of, ‘We need to be in this new space. Give me a proposal by COB Friday.’

On top of everything else, you operate in a fog of regulations and PR fear that actively discourages any sort of free-wheeling experimentation. Free-wheeling experimentation being, of course, the thing that generated all those technological goodies in the first place … and the thing we used to do to develop new ways of profiting from the latest toys.

Had we worked under corporate regimes like today’s, I doubt very seriously that we would have been anywhere near as rigorous in our analysis or as successful in our uptake of new technology.

The Nude Future

So what are you to do? Frankly, I hope this essay opens a debate and dialogue on that subject. To kick it off, here’s a general idea from an old guy who’s had to cope with greater changes than you have, though at a much slower rate:

The body of marketing thought is a beautiful thing; it requires no adornment. Strip off the digital clothing and take a long, hard look at the naked facts about how your business works within its major channel. Make sure you and your team know by heart all the basic numbers describing the key channel.

Dig deep. Be rigorous. The main channel should have good data on it; master that data. On the other hand, if your firm lacks good data on its key channel, take the initiative to develop it.

Your objective here is to absolutely master the key channel for your firm … as it is today. That way you have a thorough understanding of what has to happen in each new channel as it is dredged by the gadgeteers.

Finally, I challenge you to invent new, faster and cheaper ways of internal accounting and channel testing. I predict that today’s free-for-all will not last much longer. Sooner rather than later CFOs will demand that marketing heads cough up some numbers on all these whiz-bangs.

Start thinking and experimenting right now. Imagine how you could answer the toughest CFO when he asks you how much more profitable Twitter is than Facebook … and how much more profitable iPhone apps are than either. Or not, as the case may be.

By stripping away the ephemeral fashions and focusing on the eternal body beneath, you’ll be ready to answer.

————

I’m off to raise a glass to The Naked Marketer. Cheers…Malcolm

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Two marketers share jokes from the marketoonist…

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Marketing, Social Media

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

advertising, marketing, social media

e27f1314-61ad-11e3-aaec-12313d0244d2-medium

ikeus

stunt

retargeting

flashmob

conversations

tvhashtags

2e78043a-76ce-11e3-988e-12313b06cccb-medium

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PPC advertising is much older than you think…

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Digital, SEM & SEO

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

digital marketing, PPC, SEM, SEO

Ask any young digi-marketer – particularly those who have only been in the workforce post the great dot con – ‘how old is PPC advertising‘ and they’ll inevitably say about 10 years. Some may guess at 15 years, or say ‘as old as Google‘.

The fact is, PPC advertising is at least 80 years of age, possibly older.birthday cake

PPC advertising was started by direct marketers before WWII. It was called Pay Per Coupon advertising where the advertiser paid the media owner a commission based on the number of coupons received from ads that ran in that publisher’s print publications.

Then came an amazing new service that transmitted voice over data lines (known commonly as the telephone) and Pay Per Call emerged where media owners were paid commissions on the number of calls received from an advertisement. This grew with the penetration of televisions and phones in homes.

Now in the new century we have Pay Per Click, the latest evolution of PPC, where the media owner is paid when people click on ads on websites. The major difference is the faster speed of measurement and the depth of associated data.

Even the landing page tests of Pay Per Click ads are just versions of the original split-run tests conducted in traditional print and mail media.

Many young marketers don’t study history. They assume that because something is new to them, it is new to the world. It’s an easy trap to fall into – our tertiary marketing education is quite out of touch. The first thing we do when we employ university graduates is give them remedial education to bring them up to date and make them useful.

Young marketers are making expensive mistakes as they learn new technology. Yet if they took time to understand the ways of marketing and what has always worked in all media, their results would improve and their careers progress faster.

That’s assuming of course they are interested in results and careers?!

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Two marketers visit Thailand for their holidays…

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Marketing

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Tags

advertising, content marketing, copywriting, marketing

Happy new year to you. Over the festive season my family visited friends in Thailand. It’s one of my favourite countries, but it was a first for our kids, so a nice bit of culture shock for them.

Asian English is always an easy target and my Thai is a thousand times worse than most Thai’s spoken English. But here are some holiday snaps of retail signs and other marketing stuff to start the year…

One way to deliver ice...

One way to deliver ice…

Another way to deliver ice...

Another way to deliver ice…

Modern banking in floating markets...

Modern banking in floating markets…

Even stupid little dogs have clothes and shoes. More than some humans have...

Even stupid little dogs have clothes and shoes. More than some humans have…

I assumed this wasn't optional?

I assumed this wasn’t optional?

Mmmm non-vegetarian...

Mmmm non-vegetarian…

Seafood cuisine?

Seafood cuisine?

No breakfast, lunch, or dinner foods...

No breakfast, lunch, or dinner foods…

Unique eye candy was an understatement...

Unique eye candy was an understatement…

Park where?

Park where?

I had no idea where else to put the paper...

I had no idea where else to put the paper…

Another version that caused confusion...

Another version that caused confusion…

Turn-down message at the Mandarin Oriental

Turn-down message at the Mandarin Oriental

And a sport at which we Aussies could probably take on the Thai’s – the long forgotten art of nude shark wrestling. This is a photo of a statue of a nude shark wrestler…

The long forgotten sport - nude shark wrestling...

The long forgotten sport – nude shark wrestling…

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