Monthly Archives: July 2017

Adidas marketers should run around a football field if they want to sell footwear…

29 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Digital marketing, Marketing

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With much fanfare, the marketing clerks at Adidas announced they are no longer going to advertise on TV, as their target market is young and allegedly doesn’t watch TV. Their Aussie brethren repeated that announcement again this week.

It seems Adidas will only use digital channels for marketing to these young folk – completely missing the larger audience of active sportspeople still playing football, netball, jogging and much more, well into their 50’s. These people also have more money than younger people and will spend it on all sorts of branded goods.

they’ll spend money on anything…

I declare a hand here. I was once paid a few shekels to play football and eventually played for 40 years, so have bought a shed-load of boots, running shoes and clothing. I am a qualified football coach and assistant rugby referee. I coached juniors until two years ago, advising parents on what boots to buy.

I attend my kid’s rugby, basketball and hockey games, participating in team management. So in summary, I am a parent of, and involved with, the young sportspeople Adidas want to reach – not to mention a lifetime sports gear customer and person who showered regularly in male sporting sheds. Though that’s not a vision you need right now.

I’ve also worked on creating ads for sports drinks and sporting goods retailers, so may have some semblance of an idea about the market. Hence my humble opinion via the following points:

Point 1:
Young folk do watch large screen TV, often with an iThingo in hand. They love to watch sport on TV, as well as on smaller devices. So they do see TV advertising.

Point 2:
The lads play FIFA on PS4 which is where they see some of the coloured footwear of different players. This may have some influence on their choices. They also attend professional sport as fans, so they see what their heroes are wearing. Interestingly, sport brands rarely have pop-up stores selling stuff at these matches – where are the brand activation folk?

Generally though, their footwear decision is influenced by the following three things:

  • What their mates are wearing – if someone turns up to pre-season training wearing the latest lime-green boots, then that’s what they all wear.
  • The expert in the shoe store – Foot Locker or Athlete’s Foot – who advise on the best boots/joggers for their feet/sport.
  • The cost of the damn shoes – governed by my (or their) wallet.

The delusion that the only way to reach young sportspeople is via digital channels, is farcical. One has to wonder, what’s in the sports kool-aid at Adidas?

My kids (and I) have worn Adidas, Nike, Tiger, Puma and Asics. They are not loyal to any single brand. I was never brand loyal either, though admittedly I did prefer the Adidas Predator boot in my twilight years.

Craig Johnston, Aussie inventor of The Predator and proud mullet wearer…

More importantly…

Point 3:
This younger generation is responsible for the single biggest consumer protest in history. Around 700 million of them have downloaded ad blocking software to their digital devices, specifially so they don’t get any (Adidas) advertising. So am not sure who the marketers at Adidas believe will see their digital ads?

Stop that digital advertising…

Obviously, to overcome the issue of digital advertising not working, Adidas will create content and brand experiences for their customers. But they will need to spend money to promote the promotion, so to speak. They cannot rely on social media or WOM.

I suspect Adidas will awaken from its folly in good time. Maybe they should speak with P&G to learn how they lost $Billions in sales, when they moved away from TV advertising to Facebook advertising? P&G returned to TV BTW.

I’m banking on Adidas moving to a “footpath graffiti” strategy. They’ll hire street artists to paint the footpaths of the cities with Adidas branding – digitally activated of course. This will allow them to capture the attention of all those young people walking around staring at their feet and the ground, while on their mobile phones.

When said punter steps on an Adidas brand image, a RFID message will be activated on their mobile, instantly offering branded content -not selling anything, because as we all know, selling in the digital world is evil. This will make the punter’s life more fabulous, so they will fall in love with the Adidas brand. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Gotta run – where are my Dunlop Volleys…

connect to me on the run: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

Marketo demonstrates why marketing automation fails more often than not – twice in one week…

27 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation

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You have to admire the marketing automation industry. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Twice recently, the good people at Marketo have demonstrated why most marketing automation fails – unless it has one essential element. And that element has no binary code or computer chips.

Can you guess what it is dear reader?

That’s right folks. The most powerful element ensuring the difference between success and failure in marketing automation, is “Homo Sapiens” – not a computer.

If you don’t have humans monitoring your computers, your automation will eventually fail. A layer of human intelligence is essential to monitor, analyse and act on what the computers are doing and revealing. Those microchips cannot do it on their own, despite the marketing automation sales spiel.

Here’s how Marketo demonstrated this recently.

If you’re a Marketo customer you’ll know the problem that occurred this week. In an amazing piece of irony, a Homo Sapiens at Marketo forgot to renew the Marketo domain. So Marketo’s customers couldn’t access the Marketo server to do what they pay Marketo to do – marketing automation.

Of course the industry has had a field day joking about it. Check out #marketofail.

But an even more powerful demonstration of how essential Homo Sapiens are to marketing automation, came with an email sent to me on the 19th July, from Bill Binch, the Managing Director of Marketo. It was a follow-up to an email sent a week earlier promoting a Marketo event.

Here’s the first email I received on the 13th July. I suspect your antenna is rattling too dear reader. When you read something like “STOP MARKETING. START ENGAGING.” you know you’re in for a self-serving sales pitch. After all, we’re in the marketing industry, not the marriage game. Leave that to The Bachelor reality TV series.

Ironically (again) the copy in the invitation says your customers “can smell insincerity kilometres away” and you certainly can with this invitation, it’s pungent.

I didn’t reply to this first invitation. It came from the latest name on the “From Line” – they keep changing. Probably a “customer engagement officer”.

On the 19th July, Bill sends me a personal message, though I do suspect he sent a few thousand of them. Here it is:

I’m not sure why he’s inviting me to the Melbourne event, given I live in Sydney? But I’m very keen to meet Bill. After all he sent me a personal message stating he’d love to meet me and that’s pretty powerful stuff for a business communication. So I replied personally to his email. Here’s my response:

Thanks Bill
I live in Sydney, so Melbourne is a bit difficult for brekkie, but could do the 1st if you’re in Sydney?

The problem of course folks, is that when you use marketing automation to fake sincerity, you can get caught out. The return email address for Bill’s message is not his personal email address.

It is an auto-reponder address: marketing_apac@marketo.com

I suspect there are no Homo Sapiens employed to monitor the auto-responder address, because Bill hasn’t replied to me. And given his enthusiasm for me to attend, I’d have thought this “marketing 101” function would be a sure thing at Marketo.

But then again, they seem to be more interested in getting engaged than marketing fundamentals.

I hope to get a reply, as I’ve decided I’d like to attend. And am keen to meet Bill, as I’m sure he’s a very capable MD. Better still, I’d love to work at Marketo, as I know I have something to offer. Even if it is just monitoring the automated marketing – because it seems that even when Marketo’s domain is working, the marketing automation is failing…

 

automatically connect to me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

Grocery shopping goes back to the future, despite Amazon’s arrival…

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

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Unlike many of the marketers in the packaged goods industry, I’ve some hands-on experience in the grocery category.

Back in ancient times, the early 1980’s, my family bought a suburban supermarket in Sydney. Every day we’d arrive early to collect the milk and dairy products outside the store before the sun hit them. And every night we’d shut up shop and head home, somewhere around dinner time.

It was the first time I knew the meaning of “putting your feet up”. That’s because if you’ve been on your feet for 12 hours, up and down ladders, carrying and unpacking boxes and taking bags of groceries out to customer’s cars, all you want to do when you get home is put your feet up and enjoy a cold beer – which we did each night.

An actor portrays me helping a customer…

In those prehistoric times we provided a home delivery service. (my mother also used a similar service when I as a wee lad) Here’s how it worked.

Customers would write their shopping list on a piece of paper and drop it into the store. Or they’d call us on the phone and we’d take the order. Some customers had standing orders each week and only called us to change the order. They’d pay us in cash, or even a cheque, to settle the account.

So our customers would send us their shopping list, we’d pick n pack it, then deliver the groceries to their home. It was amazingly old-fashioned dear reader. We also delivered goods from other stores on our shopping strip, like the butcher or baker, as part of the service.

Another actor portrays me delivering groceries…

But jump forward to 2017. Amazon is coming! The sky is falling. Online sales are growing – mainly because that’s what happens from a standing start, sales grow.

More importantly though folks, thanks to amazing digital disruption, customers can order their groceries on a website or app. They just enter their order on a keyboard, use their credit card to pay for the goods and the grocer delivers the groceries to their home.

Unbloodybelievable. How far have we come thanks to digital disruption? Whereas customers once used a pen and paper to write their order and the grocer delivered the goods, now customers use a keyboard to enter the order and the grocer delivers the goods.

This is such disruptive behaviour, it’s obviously a reflection of something going on in society. It seems some of our old habits have a long tail. Students of marketing will be well aware of the consumer behaviour of the 19th century – ordering goods remotely through mail-order catalogues and then having the goods delivered to your home.

It appears this same behaviour is catching on again. Amazon used to rely on this, but now they’ve bought retail stores too, so customers can go shopping in the stores, not just get home delivery.

So roughly 160 years since the early mail-order catalogues and thirty-something years since my family did home delivery, people’s behaviour is, well, it’s the same as the 19th century. Very little has changed. Surely there has to be a digital buzzword for this phenomenon of things remaining the same?

Gotta go now. Have to do the grocery shopping…where’s my shopping list?

 

Disruptively connect to me https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

The awesome, ultimate, essential, killer definitive guide that is guaranteed to blow your mind…

13 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by in Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Marketing, Thought Leadership

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There is one truth in copywriting that resonates loudly in the digital world. It is simply; “the more adjectives the writer uses, the less their words are trusted by their readers“.

This is most evident with content marketers and their shoddy infomarketing. They are responsible for the growing chronic disease known as infobesity.

The only benefit of this disease, is its ability to help with insomnia. In case you struggle to get to sleep dear reader, I recommend you do as I do. Download some “ultimate definitive guides to digital wonderfulness”. You’ll be snoring within minutes, even seconds, of starting to read one.

Here’s one of the latest pieces of killer content I downloaded. But be prepared for amazing revelations. The title is “The six pieces of content your business needs as growth fuel“. A bit of a clunky headline, but wait, there’s more…

Click on this image to learn the first of the six things you need. I guarantee this knowledge will blow your mind:

Are you stunned folks? Who’d have thought that the first things you need for your business as growth fuel, as against growth fuel for your business, are these:

  • Home page
  • Product/service page
  • Contact us page
  • About us page

This insight is truly remarkable. Thank goodness the thought leader published it. I ask you, “how could any online business succeed without a home page?” and “who would have thought to have one?”

I was breathless when I read it. It’s no wonder so many businesses fail. They’ve forgotten to put a home page on their website. It must be true, because it has been published as a piece of content marketing.

And here are some of the other “things” you also need for growth fuel:

  • killer sales deck
  • well-built sales playbook
  • irresistable lead magnet
  • prospect nurturing email

You probably also need a “dejargoniser” to interpret WTF the author is talking about, not to mention an “adjective reductionator” to trim the content flab.

Have to go now – am off to blow my client’s minds about home pages. They won’t believe what they’ve been doing wrong…

 

Awesomely connect to me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

If your marketing messages don’t appeal to idiots, you’ll fail…

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Marketing, Sales, Social Media

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One of the best ways to check your copy before approving it, is to read it out aloud in a room on your own. The mistakes and clangers will almost always identify themselves as you read. Then you can fix them.

Better still, give your copy to an idiot or illiterate to read. According to the Adult Literacy Study, there are more illiterate people than smart people in the OECD.

The consequence of ignoring idiots is costly indeed. Because if you don’t communicate clearly, the idiots won’t understand your message and you miss out on most of your audience – and therefore most of your sales.

This brings me to the message that was put in my letterbox this week. Click on the image below to read it.

Apparently a family wants to buy a home in my street. They have roughly outlined what they are looking for and ask in the final sentence; “…please could you get in touch with us?”

But they forgot one thing. They didn’t include their phone number, an email address or even their name. We have no way of contacting them, even if we want to give away our home.

Idiots!

But this proves my point about checking your copy with an idiot. It now costs north of a couple of million dollars to buy in our street. So these people have money, even though they’re not smart. And an idiot’s money is worth the same as a smart person’s when it comes to buying stuff.

I have to get to a meeting now. Where are my car keys? Uh oh, I left them in the car – idiot…