Category Archives: Sales

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/

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…

What you sell and what people buy are often two different things…

08 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Customer Service, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

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If you’ve studied any tertiary marketing course, you’re probably familiar with Theodore Levitt’s famous consumer insight about power drills.

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

Marketers and their agencies are often guilty of not understanding the reasons why people behave the way they do. They don’t take time to talk with their customers. This lack of real communication has increased in recent years alongside the growth of marketing automation. We’ve stopped talking, we’re only computing, and lost a layer of human involvement along the way.

As I’ve written before, you’ll be surprised what you learn if you just talk with your customers.

This lack of knowledge about what motivates customers was laid bare at a tourism marketing conference in New Zealand, at which I spoke some time ago. I met Jeanette Kelly – a women who has spent years working in the hospitality industry, running her own business as well as working for others. Jeanette presented a wonderful piece of research conducted by the University of Waikato.

The accommodation and marketing managers of various hotels, motels, guest houses and the like, were asked what they thought were the most important factors influencing accommodation choices. They said, in order of priority:

  1. Staffing and accommodation service
  2. Room rate
  3. Location
  4. Facilities
  5. Marketing and Sales programmes
  6. Seasonal tourism
  7. Competition from other properties
  8. Supply and demand
  9. Events taking place in the area
  10. The general state of the national economy
  11. The state of the property

Guess what the customers listed as the most important factors influencing their accommodation choices, in order of priority?

  1. Cleanliness of the room
  2. Quality of the bath towels and wash cloths
  3. Quality of staff service
  4. Friendliness of staff service
  5. Comfort of mattress and pillow
  6. Quietness of room
  7. Well maintained furnishings
  8. On-premise car parking
  9. Overall facilities
  10. Level of security

In case you’re wondering ‘room prices’ came 17th on the list of priorities for customers. And what were the marketers smoking to believe customers care about marketing and sales programmes?

More importantly, as you can see in this case, what customers want to buy and what marketers are trying to sell, are poles apart.

So take some time to really talk with your customers and understand what motivates them. You could be pleasantly surprised by what you learn. Who knows, you might find they’re looking to buy something other than what you’re selling, or even be willing to pay more?

Have to go now. My bride says she has a surprise for me. Why is she carrying a drill?

 

Let’s connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

More than ever before, customers want to be sold too…

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Remarketing, Sales, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

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There is some serious B.S. being peddled claiming human DNA has miraculously changed in the last few years. The peddlers (known as content marketers) claim people don’t want to be sold anything anymore. They claim businesses that try to sell things to their customers and prospects will fail.

I’m not kidding, such absurd claims are being made at marketing seminars – if it wasn’t so sad it would be hilarious.

The claim of course, is complete rubbish and without supporting evidence.

hot_steamin_manure-500x375

content marketers shoveling content

The plain fact is this – people love to be sold to by good salespeople. And when they have a great sales experience they rave about it and call it “excellent customer service”. They tell friends at social functions and on social media. Some marketers even label them advocates.

Great sales technique doesn’t make the customer uncomfortable. It doesn’t sound “salesy” – to use an emerging piece of jargon. A good sales person is highly regarded by customers. And we all have our favourites, whether they be at our local cafe, clothing store, pub, hairdresser, mechanic, IT supplier, butcher, baker or grocer.

But when it comes to lousy salespeople or poor sales messages, people share a universal dislike. Since the beginning of time, people have disliked them – it is not a new sentiment just because of the internet or claims by content marketers.

How many times have you threatened to take your business elsewhere because a salesperson wasn’t available to serve you? We all love salespeople.

So to push a self-interest content marketing barrow and state all a marketer has to do is publish more and more non-sales information and the world will flock to your door, is pure fantasy. The content marketers may be smoking the wacky tobacky, but the punters aren’t having a bar of it.

wacky tobacky

Are content marketers smoking the wacky tobacky?

The common thread among modern consumers is they are time-poor and suffer from severe infobesity – much of this caused by useless content marketing messages that don’t give people a reason to act, or consider a brand. Content for content’s sake. Yet the last thing people want in their busy lives is more content.

Human beings are the laziest species on the planet – we always seek the path of least resistance. One of the key reasons apps are so popular for example, is their ease of use. So marketers have to make it as easy as possible for people to buy – which is why giving punters incentives, offers, propositions and reasons to “buy now” are key to getting sales.

To quote my old boss, David Ogilvy, “you cannot bore people into buying“. Yet content marketers are adamant you can. Waste more of people’s valuable time and you’re guaranteed to sell them more, they preach to the gullible.

Let’s examine some facts shall we:

The single biggest innovation in online shopping was an in-your-face sales tool. It was invented by Amazon – and customers love it! They call it customer service, because that’s what great selling is all about – serving customers and prospects well. The technique is now used on all major transaction websites.

Here’s an example with which you are all familiar – you visit Amazon and click on a book you are considering buying. The site then tells you “customers who bought this item also bought…”

Amazon

Look out, Amazon is daring to “sell things”…

Even “Facebook with a necktie” (known as LinkedIn) uses this technique. When you view a person’s profile, you are prompted with a message “People also viewed” and there is a list of people’s mug shots linking to their profiles. This is a sales technique as old as retail selling – suggesting alternatives to get customers to buy at least one option. It’s a sales tool, not a non-sales tool.

Companies have always published non-sales information, it is not a new invention. And they made the information available at every point possible along the “customer journey”. Sorry, I had to drop the journey buzzword at least once. Some of you ancient marketers will remember such non-sales content as brochures, websites, booklets, newsletters, educational videos, signage, on-pack instructions, seminars, user manuals – the list goes on.

This is all designed to assist customers and prospects to make buying decisions, or as after sales service. Why would the punters want more ‘information’?

Yet the content marketers are claiming the whole world has changed just because people can do some online research before buying. This is stretching credibility beyond truth. Just because a marketer can reach a prospective customer in more places than ever before, does not automatically translate into “don’t sell to consumers, just post information as much as possible“.

used content marketing

wanna read content rather than buy a product?

By all means, help build your brand by publishing relevant content that cost-effectively drives people to a sale, or keeps them coming back after they’ve bought. But make it easy for the punters to buy – they are already inundated with infobesity and can’t be bothered doing all the work themselves.

So please, you self-interested content marketers, stop the lying about content marketing and making fake claims all a brand has to do to succeed, is publish non-sales content. It’s dishonest. Brands have always published non-sales content, as well as sales content – and it’s the sales content that has the biggest impact on the business and always will.

I’m going on a customer journey to get a drink of water from the kitchen. Better check some influencers to see what non-sales content they have, so I can make my buying decision – do I get cold water from the fridge, just run water from the tap, or maybe drink sparkling water from a bottle? After all, I want to ensure my water-drinking customer experience journey is the best it can be…

OnePath – the complete path to incompetence…

15 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Customer Service, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

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Numerous media outlets reported today about an appalling situation at ANZ Bank’s insurance and superannuation arm, OnePath.

Apparently there has been a series of breaches affecting 1,300,000 customers, some of whom had their super paid into the wrong account for up to a year.

The review comes after markets regulator ASIC raised concerns about compliance at the OnePath division.

Concerns! I hope they are more than a tad concerned.

Mind you ANZ has a reputation for incompetence in the area of superannuation management. It lost millions of dollars of people’s superannuation by investing in Basis Capital – the disastrous investment share that started the GFC. It ruined people’s lives, but not management’s bonuses.

There is a very simple reason OnePath is not compliant. The staff cannot even perform the most basic clerical duties. Here’s a typical example:

Today I received this letter in the mail.

One Path return mail

OnePath to incompetence…

I’ve not opened it, just as I haven’t opened similar ones from OnePath for the last six years. And for the four years prior to that, I didn’t open the envelopes when OnePath was known as another brand.

The reason I didn’t open them is simple – they are addressed to the previous owner of our house. We bought the house in 2005. We have been returning the owner’s mail to his superannuation company for ten years – and still they send it to the incorrect address. I suspect another marketing automation fail?

So forget BIG DATA folks. If you cannot change small data like a customer’s address, particularly for something as regulated as superannuation, you deserve to be investigated in every nook and cranny of your business.

And I hope OnePath gets well and truly investigated.

checking nooks and crannies

Inspect every nook n cranny…

I’m no financial adviser, but if my superannuation or insurance was with OnePath I’d seriously reconsider my investment.

Hang on, I just remembered – I’m with ANZ…

The future of marketing is the same as it was 32 years ago – according to Marketo

11 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

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In 1984, Apple launched its first personal computer to change the future of computers. And in 1984 ADMA held a 4 day conference in Sydney at the Regent Hotel in Circular Quay. It was a huge success and where I first met my good friend and business partner, Drayton Bird.

Apple

On one evening, there were two boats for the delegate’s harbour cruise. The majority of the delegates crammed aboard the first boat, which left a small handful for the second. Mr Bird and I boarded the second boat. Despite our best efforts all evening, eating prawns and oysters, while drinking for Queen and country, we hardly put a dent in the seafood. We did give the beer and wine stocks a decent nudge though.

The topics at the ADMA conference included such things as the future of marketing, acquisition and retention, CRM, customer relationships, customer contact strategies, touchpoint analysis, data driven marketing, personalised messaging and much more. The consensus was the future of marketing was not mass marketing, but direct marketing – how to acquire and keep customers profitably – driven by relationships, data, insights, computers, testing, tracking, analytics and relevant personalised creative delivered in context.

There was nothing really new though, as marketing has always been, and always will be all about, acquiring and keeping customers profitably.

So it was with a sense of deja vu, I attended a breakfast seminar this week in the MCA, located next door to the former Regent Hotel (now the Four Seasons). It was run by Marketo, a very successful marketing automation software company – and it was about the future of marketing. (Hint – you can always draw a crowd when you’re predicting the future).

fortune teller

Predicting the future of marketing…

Of course there were the obligatory marketing buzzwords – our industry would die without them: these included “customer journey”, “incremental customer journeys”, “customer journey tools”, “customer engagement”, “engagement marketing”, and the new impressive job title for senior marketers – “the CMO”.

It’s interesting how a job title changes over time. The head of marketing used to be the VP of Marketing, or the Marketing Director, or the National/Regional Marketing Manager. Now the same role is the CMO – and they occupy a similar spot on the corporate food chain as they did in 1984. Though they are only ever addressed as an acronym – CMO – never Chief Marketing Officer.

CMO-tenure-feature2

But I digress.

Marketo’s business depends on marketers believing the future of marketing lies with computers and software that automates what humans used to do. So we were told mass marketing is dead – despite it being everywhere you look on posters, public transport, buildings, television, radio, in letterboxes, cinema, the internet, sports clothing, coffee cups, etc.

Curiously there were Marketo branded cups, booklets, pens, lanyards, banners and clothing everywhere you looked at the event – it was a riot of purple – which sort of argued against the mass media argument, if you get my argument?

Marketo 1

Marketo’s mass marketing was everywhere…

And certainly the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, publishers of the brilliant book “How Brands Grow” wouldn’t agree mass marketing is dead. They’ve proved it using science and customer data.

Apparently campaigns delivered directly to your customers to sell them stuff, via email, mail, phone etc, are also dead. Yet the seminar, which was free, was promoted directly to me via email. Go figure? But I’m easily confused.

So the future is not about mass marketing or even directly selling to your customers. What fool wants to sell things to stay in business? We were told the future is all about customer engagement – connecting with customers on every touchpoint in their buying journey – using data and computers to delivering your non-selling messages along the way.

Given Marketo’s business model though, one might cynically believe their predictions for the future of marketing are a tad biased?

I suspect Bob Hoffman, the Ad Contrarian wouldn’t agree with them either. While the event was being run, he published his latest blog titled Data Vs Probability in which he candidly argues: the more you study data, the more you realise that data is just the residue of probability – brilliant insight.

The speaker summarised by revealing the following bullet points as the key things we all need to understand about the future of marketing:

  • Relationships
  • Listening
  • Marketing everywhere you look
  • Outcomes
  • Context
  • Engagement marketing

So in summary, nothing has changed in 32 years – even the location for marketing events.

Technology changes, humans don’t. We still buy emotionally and justify rationally. Only now we have loads more channels in which to learn and buy – and marketers have loads of new channels in which to advertise (sorry, I meant place their content in context).

The problem for marketers of course is what I call “The John Howard Conundrum“. Just as he put it to Australians in his 2004 election campaign: “Who do you trust to run the economy…” – now marketers have the same conundrum as voters did: “who do you trust to do your marketing in the future?“

John Howard

Who do you trust to do your marketing?

I do like the good folk at Marketo, they put on a great show – but I’m not sure the average punter really wants brands to have computers engage with them and follow them through life on their buying journeys – whatever that means.

Most research I’ve seen, concludes customers don’t care much about brands except in the moment they buy or when something goes wrong. People don’t awaken and rush into the day looking for a relationship with their toothpaste or a tin of sardines, for example.

Unfortunately much of the customer engagement software we’re being sold, is driven from the marketer’s point of view, not the customer’s, and leaves cigarette burns all over the punters in its wake.

But the brekkie and coffee were good, the view at Circular Quay was enhanced by the presence of the QE2, while the presentation was not too heavy.

qe2

The QE2 in Circular Quay

And for a couple of hours I drifted back in time to 1984, when I was younger and enthusiastically thought the future of marketing was all about:

  • Relationships
  • Listening
  • Marketing everywhere you look
  • Outcomes
  • Context
  • Customer relationship management

Aaah, what’s old is new again, again and again…well done Marketo!

Youi’s awesomely useless marketing automation continues to damage its brand…

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

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Regular readers may recall my recent customer experience when I tried to engage with Youi, as I went on my smash repair journey. #totallynotawesomeyoui

Wow, three different marketing buzzwords or phrases, plus a hashtag in one sentence:)

Well folks, the totally not awesome marketing automation system at Youi has done it again. It sent me another passionate survey from The Youi Team – almost a month after I picked up my car from the smash repairer.

second awesome survey

It’s the same as the first survey – useless. It doesn’t allow me any room to explain my answer. I only get to click on one word. I was going to reply directly to surveys@youi.com.au but I know from past experience, the passionate team never looks at this email inbox.

I tried the suggestion at the bottom of the survey, as I couldn’t select any of the words shown above: “If you are unable to select any of the words shown above, click here and follow the prompts.”

When I clicked, it just opened another version of the same survey in a browser!

second survey 2

I have now phoned, sent text messages and emailed Youi, as well as posted in social media – yet the passionate Youi team hasn’t responded once. I suggest they fire their digital marketing team, as they obviously aren’t as awesome as they claim.

In the last month, Youi has launched a bunch of new television commercials with their presenter driving around in customer’s cars, while bragging about Youi’s service. The presenter is the smarmy bloke my kids think is a bit creepy or sketchy.

So given their obvious problems, I’d like to help the awesome Youi team. Apart from teaching them to speak English, not Marketing, I’d like to volunteer myself to do a testimonial on one of their TVCs. The sketchy bloke could drive in my car, now it’s been repaired, and I could share my awesome Youi journey with him for all the viewers to hear.

I think dear reader, it would be like, totally awesome, don’t you???

awesome

How Youi’s “awesome” marketing automation is damaging its brand…

15 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

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In haste two years ago I had to buy insurance for a car I bought second hand. I did a quick search online and ended up with Youi after they sharpened their pencil. They tried to increase the premium after twelve months, despite having no contact with me in the first year of the policy, so I challenged them and avoided an increase.

In the first week of December just over two months ago, my car was damaged by an anonymous driver. Well I know who did it – it was a truck driver doing work for the NSW Roads & Maritime Department. I parked my car across the road and that afternoon all these trucks parked opposite it, in preparation for night work on our road.

When I went to drive it the next morning the roof rack, top of the rear hatch and rear door were smashed – the damage was at the same height as the rear trays on those same trucks carrying the road working machines the night before. No apology note, just smashed car bits on the road. My taxes at work.

car

My taxes at work…

So I ring Youi and explain the problem. They direct me to a smash repairer to get an assessment on the damage. I left the car with the repairer and he rang me later that day to tell me the claim had been approved, but as it was three weeks before Christmas they didn’t want to do the job. Too close to their holidays – bugger mine. I’d have to bring the car back on the 12th January!

This meant I couldn’t use the car for the holiday period, as one tail light was smashed. Hours after the smash repairer visit, I received an automated text message from Youi telling me the claim was approved and to take my car to the smash repairer. Gotta luv technology.

Then I get an automated text from my “dedicated claims advisor” who processed the claim, saying I could contact her with any questions relating to the claim. So I did. I asked her if my policy had a rental car in it, as I couldn’t find a copy – it had been emailed not mailed. I didn’t get a response. I sent another message asking for an alternate repairer – and you guessed it, no response.

Claims adviser

my dedicated claims advisor didn’t get me…

Frustrated, I ring Youi and ask someone if they can help me. They tell me there wasn’t a rental car in the policy, so at least I knew the situation.

Then I get an email with the following subject line:

Awesome service from Youi – Client Survey For Claim Number…

survey

It was sent from the passionate Youi Team. As you readers know, any marketer worth their salt, never sends an email from a team. I’ve written about this before – teams don’t send emails, individuals do.

The survey is dysfunctional:

We’re passionate about providing you with awesome service which sets us apart from other companies.
You recently had a claim and we’d like to know how you felt about your service experience with us.
Click on the word that best describes the level of service you received from Josephine Marvelous. (I replaced the advisor’s real name)

  • Awesome
  • Good
  • Acceptable
  • Bad
  • Very bad

I couldn’t answer the survey. The telephone service to get the claim approved was good. Josephine did the job she is paid to do. Though I’ve never really considered a claims clerk noting answers to questions, was something to regard as “awesome” – but hey, I speak English, not Marketing, in my daily life?

how you use your car

It’s not hard to get how I use my car, because I can’t – use it that is…

The problem with the survey of course is my overall claims experience has been an awesome horror – yet I cannot explain this within the survey, without implying Josephine did a bad job. Who designs this stuff? Do they live in the real world?

Another automated technology fail

So I replied to the team with a long email message about the fact they couldn’t get my car repaired until the new year and asking for help. Not one of the passionate team members has had the courtesy to reply. Another win for automated marketing technology. The computer can send me a survey from the Youi Team asking about “awesome Youi” but the poor old sod who pays the team’s salary cannot send one back to them.

I have no idea if my message made it – the address was surveys@youi.com.au and I didn’t get a bounce notice.

The new year is rung in and on the 12th January I deliver my car to the smash repairer. Seemed to be a bit of a family business, given the bloke I spoke with referred to his missus not being in the office yet. He used a highly sophisticated CRM system “Just write your name and mobile on that pad and we’ll call you when it’s ready” he said. So I wrote my details on the scrap of paper and tore it off, leaving it on the bench.

He said the job will take about two weeks. In the meantime I finally get an automated email from Youi. Is the awesome team alive and acknowledging me?  No. The email has nothing to do with my claim. In December my credit card expired, so I had to endure the horrors of trying to update the card on non-user-friendly websites. They never make it easy do they?

credit card message

One of the monthly automatic payments was to YOUI. And now they wanted to talk with me because my payment had not been cleared due to the expired card – nothing to do with my claim. They chased my money, but gave no service for the payment.

Three weeks after dropping the car off I’ve heard nothing – from Youi or the smash repairer – so I ring the repairer. “Sorry mate, the parts have to be imported and take 3 weeks, so it won’t be ready until next month“.

“Why didn’t you order them in the first week of December, so they would be ready when I returned in January I asked?” Silence on the other end of the phone.

It’s now been more than 2 months and I still don’t have my car. I’ve sent Youi texts, emails and phone calls in response to their awesome marketing automation messages – and I’ve had nothing in reply.

Their brand is being built by a non-thinking smash repairer and an automated marketing machine – it’s no wonder my opinion of Youi is a tad less than awesome.

Even worse, their ads with the smarmy presenter keep interrupting my television viewing. My kids, who I consider very good judges of ads, as they are not tainted by too many life experiences, have always found the Youi presenter “creepy” and “a bit sketchy” – to use their words.

And the Youi tag line is “we get you“. Well they certainly got me – they got me well and truly p***d off.

Of course for my troubles I’ll have to pay an “excess”. Is it just me or does that term irritate the hell out of you too? It’s just an artificial gouge to save insurers money. I already pay an excess, it’s called the premium. That’s why I buy insurance, to insure against an accident – why should I pay an excess, when the insurance company took the punt and gave the odds?

Regardless, Youi needs to add a layer of human customer service between their awesome marketing automation and their customers. And they need to stop worshiping at the alter of marketing mediocrity and start communicating like humans, not like marketers who naively believe their own media releases speak the truth.

Though I am looking forward to cancelling my Youi policy – I’m sure on that day I’ll feel really really “awesome”…

awesome

The annual Superbowl advertiser churn rate continues again this year…

08 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Media, Sales, Social Media

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Here we go again folks – the longest hour of the year is upon us. Some say this hour lasts 6 months given all the media hype, but for those who just watch NFL once a year, it fills most of a day.

This is the time when the single largest flush of the US toilet system occurs. It’s the same time every year – the first 2 minutes of half time in the Superbowl. It occurs because millions of television viewers rush to the loo to drain the gallons of Budweiser, Miller, Sam Adams, Coors, etc they have been chugging down during the previous 3 hours of the first half.

toilet bowl

It also happens to be the most expensive television advertising time slot on the planet, which means an awful lot of marketing money gets flushed down the sewer, as viewers relieve themselves rather than watch the ads.

To ensure people do cross their legs and watch in discomfort, the advertising break has become an event in itself, with leaks (excuse the pun) weeks before the ads are shown on the TV. Advertisers spend a fortune in PR to get people to watch their ads. You can read here the list of brands advertising this year.

Most interesting though, is the annual churn rate of advertisers from the previous year. Only about one third of advertisers return each year to advertise, as the majority of advertisers don’t believe they get value for money. Yet there are those who return every year, because it seems to work for them.

Interestingly too, is how this is always ignored by the advertising trade press, as they fall in love with the publicity and help fuel the promotion of the ads, rather than the performance of the ads. Though I’m sure we’ll hear about brands who establish Social Media Mission Control Rooms – or SMMCR for short.

These highly expensive executive teams spend their Sunday based in a SMMCR responding to Tweets, trying to create publicity around the fact they spend their Sunday in a SMMCR responding to Tweets. That’s a career highlight you’d want to share with your grandkids, hey? Though I suspect, as I’ve shared before, this will be the best use of much of their efforts:

shitter_twitter_1

I have written about the super flush in previous years. And I even put the theory to test with the Sydney Water Board during the Grand Final of the Rugby League, between Canberra and Penrith, in 1991. Sure enough, the single biggest sewerage flow of the year occurred in the first couple of minutes of half time.

Though I suppose one benefit of mobile devices is the ability to stream coverage onto them. So maybe the fans will be able to multi-task and watch the ads while they perform their ablutions? Though given the inebriated  state of some of the fans, I dread what will happen to their phones…

cell-phone-toilet

I wonder if you can insure for it?

Should all alleged Content Marketers be sacked on sight?

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Advertising, BIG DATA, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Sales, SEM & SEO, Social Media, Thought Leadership

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Your headline is one of the most important parts of your content. It attracts the reader to continue to read/watch/listen.

Of course I don’t believe all content marketers should really be sacked – it’s merely a figure of speech – but hopefully, given the current trend in animosity towards content marketing, the headline will attract readers:)

Like many, I’m concerned about marketers being duped by the latest new-new thing in marketing – another label for something that’s decades old. This time it’s content marketing and if you follow Gartner’s Hype Cycles, it seems content marketing is on its way out as we read – making room for the next bright shiny digital object. Mind you Gartner predicted there’d be no mail by 2000.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Content Marketing heading into the abyss…in the trough of disillusionment

Creating content is not new to marketing. In fact, creating content has been in our culture since mankind stood upright. Think cave paintings to record content and communicate to others.

Check out this image from a 17th century book:

1742

The headline reads “Contents“. OMG dear reader – physical evidence of content creation in publications.

As you well know, the majority of books (including ebooks), magazines documents et al, begin by listing the content you will find in the publication. Who’d have thought hey?

So why do alleged marketers claim the creation of content is new? Whose interest are they really serving?

I can only go from my humble experience, as like most marketers I’ve been creating and curating (to us a digi-term) content since nappies. More than 30 years ago when a Marketing Manager of TNT I wrote a weekly editorial article in the Daily Mirror – an afternoon newspaper in NSW. The column was called Property Protection and gave tips on home security to readers. Accompanying the column was an ad from TNT Alarm Systems – one of the brands I managed.

So the reader saw the content in two parts – the paid content in the ad and the editorial content. The editorial wasn’t earned content – I wrote it free of charge as an “industry expert”.

Let’s move forward to 2015 and rewrite what I just wrote, but using “digital content marketing language“.

I published content in the Daily Mirror, alongside the paid media. Interestingly it wasn’t earned media because I published it free of charge. It wasn’t owned media, as Rupert owned the paper. And it wasn’t paid media because that was the ad below it.

It was thought leadership delivered as native advertising, as part of my content marketing strategy. WOW, WOW & WOW!!!

Not only was it all that – but the UX (user experience for the digitally challenged) was omni-channel wonderfulness, as the reader was able to turn the page using their finger and read both the paid ad and the native advertising in an integrated format, without having to leave the platform. Unf***gbelievable. The content was consistently presented on the user interface – that’s the page, in case you’re wondering.

You get the picture.

Yet despite all the evidence, a whole content marketing industry is booming.

There’s even a private company called The Content Marketing Institute. It’s nothing of the sort – an institute that is – but don’t you wish you’d invented that money-making-machine? Call yourself an institute and you gain faux credibility and get the gullible to part with money. Hats off to the founders for getting away with it – brilliantly I might add.

Interestingly, my mate Drayton Bird recently wrote that the founder of said “institute” believes content marketing is a fad and will only last another couple years. But hey, they’ve made their money.

So here’s today’s first lesson – if you think creating content for marketing purposes is new, you need to go back to marketing college or leave the industry – you obviously know little about marketing.

Lesson number two – if you think consumers have miraculously changed their DNA and don’t consume paid ads, you are deluded and need to go back to marketing college or leave the industry – see above.

Lesson three – if you think the future is about brands telling stories without any proposition to entice you to buy (short or long term) see lesson one.

Here are some insights from an earlier post:

Amazing Insight 1: Customers don’t really care about brands

Amazing Insight 2: Customers don’t want relationships with brands

Amazing Insight 3: Customers don’t want to engage with brands

Amazing Insight 4: Customers don’t want to join a conversation with a brand

Amazing Insight 5: Customers get pissed off if you irritate them with irrelevant content marketing about your brand

But maybe I’m preaching to an empty church?

empty church

I should jump on the content marketing bandwagon and open a content creation and curation company.

But I cannot call it a content marketing agency, as there is no such thing – it’s a commercial impossibility.

It’s against the law of natural commerce to call yourself a content marketing agency. An agency is named because it earns commission from publishers for placing paid media as their agent. This is why they are called advertising agencies.

Given the entire purpose of the content marketers is to create content that isn’t for paid media – only for earned and owned media – then by its very nature, a content marketing agency cannot exist.

There are no paid media commissions involved. So there aren’t any agents – which means there are no agencies. Simple really.

So any alleged content marketing expert calling their business a “content marketing agency” should therefore be sacked on sight for fraudulent misrepresentation – oops…

 

P.S. I’m running a content marketing seminar in Brisbane in two weeks. If you’re interested you’ll need to register today by clicking here.