Category Archives: Sales

How to get executives to dine at upmarket restaurants for lunch…

22 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Sales, social selling

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Today’s Throwback Thursday features two campaigns promoting fine dining restaurants in the Sydney CBD. These campaigns would still work today, 21+ years after they originally ran…

Fine dining restaurants located in 5 star hotels, are quite different to your everyday cafes and restaurants located on the high street or in food lanes. They have their own peculiarities, one of which is their location inside a hotel without street-front exposure.

They’re also expensive. Most are frequented for one of four reasons:

  • the chef’s (food/wine) reputation
  • celebrating a special occasion
  • the company/employer is picking up the tab
  • money is no object for the customer

Here are two case studies promoting fine dining restaurants to business executives:

  • The Astral Restaurant located at The Star Casino in Darling Harbour
  • The Galileo Restaurant located in the Observatory Hotel in Kent Street near The Rocks

The Astral Resturant was located in a separate top floor of the casino as part of The Endevour Room, the casino’s private gaming room. The casino is just too far to walk from the CBD for lunch – but it had free parking. The agency drew a map of streets west of George street down to Darling Harbour, with boundaries north and south in the CBD.

A list of senior executive contact details within the map boundaries was then rented and the names/job titles were qualified by phone. The mailpack is the size of a typical dinner plate and used the plate imagery within.

The mailpack had three incentives to visit and dine at The Astral:

  • $75 dining voucher for The Astral
  • $50 gaming voucher for The Endeavour Room
  • 1 month free membership to The Endeavour Room

So recipients could go for lunch or dinner, then get to gamble in the private VIP high roller room. Of course they probably weren’t aware that an entree cost about $75 and the minimum bet was $50, but the incentive worked its head off.

Front of mailpack

Rear of mailpack

Mailpack opened…

Letter

Letter, brochure, vouchers

Vouchers and membership card

The mailing generated a response of more than 25% and all respondents were put on a database for future mail/email communication. (email was just starting in the business world)

The Galileo Restaurant is also located on the fringe of the CBD. The agency hired people to walk ten minutes from the restaurant towards the city centre and create a map of the catchment area. Staff walked the floors of each building and built a list of senior executives for each company in the catchment area. A list of senior executives in North Sydney was also rented to so a split-run test could be conducted.

The mailing is an A3 piece of parchment card stock, folded into thirds and sealed with a black tape. It unfolds into a food art poster. There is an invitation with an excellent incentive:

  • Free lunch for two people – three courses plus coffee
  • The recipient can bring a guest along and enjoy lunch together

There is a reservation card to hand in when the respondent arrives at the restaurant. It captures the recipient’s name and their guest’s details. This doubled the size of the database and gave the restaurant a reference point for a ofllow-up mailing. This also generated more than 24% response rate. Local executives responded more than North Sydney executives, which was expected.

Front of envelope

Rear of envelope

Envelope folds open into an A3 poster

Reservation form, letter and menu

More importantly the staff offered the lunch guests a backroom tour of the hotel. While showing the guests around the inner sanctum, the hotel staff asked for the contact details of the person who books accommodation and events at the guest’s company. So the hotel built three databases – restaurant, accommodation and events.

Both these mailings would work today – the only difference is the reply device would most likely be a personalised landing page (PURL) supported by a confirmation email and/or SMS.

All this talk of fine dining is making me hungry. Where are last night’s leftovers?

The surprising thing Google learned about its employees – digital skills aren’t essential…

15 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in Advertising, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales, Social Media

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I have teenage children, aged 14 and 15, so an emerging topic of conversation is what career they would like to pursue. I find this interesting, particularly given I still haven’t a clue what I want to do in my career, even after working four decades in marketing and advertising.

Most schools hold regular updates about “the jobs of the future” and the skills our kids will need to succeed in the digital world. You’re probably aware of the need for STEM skills (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) that the career advisers and alleged experts believe are essential for a future success.

These skills are often quoted by the digital marketing virtue signallers, as part of their effort to position themselves as marketing experts (over marketers who really are marketing experts). They claim if you cannot code, you’re not a marketer.

You don’t need a marketing degree to be a digital marketer…

Well Google has done some research on its staff, as it was a STEM employer of choice. The results have been published in an article in The Washington Post and they are very surprising indeed.

The essence of Google’s research findings, and that of another piece of research conducted by the nonprofit National Association of Colleges and Employers (which includes both small firms and large ones like Chevron and IBM) is that STEM skills don’t count. Well not in the way they have been historically favoured.

The skills needed to succeed in the digital world are the soft skills, not the hard digital skills. These skills include being able to communicate and listen well; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

STEM skills are vital to the world we live in today, but technology alone, as Steve Jobs famously insisted, is not enough. We desperately need the expertise of those who are educated to the human, cultural, and social as well as the computational.

And go figure, to succeed in marketing you need marketing skills, not computer skills. Who’d have thought hey? Maybe this is why companies are starting to eliminate the word “digital” from marketing job titles.

It’s surprising how long it has taken so many companies to realise what type of people they should hire for success in the digital world. I mean, all they had to do was watch The Intern.

I spend much of my time consulting with and mentoring young digital marketers. It’s almost a fulltime business – and might be soon. The main reason I do so, is these digital marketers don’t know very much about marketing and are worried they are out of their depth. They know how to post on social media and use Slack to “communicate” with their colleagues about when to play the next game of Foosball, but not much else. They fear they will fail as they don’t have the expertise.

So next time you’re in a meeting and an alleged digital marketing expert claims to have a new secret sauce for digital marketing magic, lean over and clip them behind the ear – twice. Just so they know you’re serious.

Stop your digital B.S. and get a marketing qualification…

Gotta go now – I have an appointment with a careers advisor…

Retailers use innovative response to arrival of Amazon…

07 Thursday Dec 2017

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

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The arrival of Amazon in Australia has created a bit of a media frenzy. Some of the over-reaction would have you think the world is coming to an end, as Chicken Little believed centuries ago.

Amazon is coming, the end of retail is nigh…

Yet a day after the announcement that Amazon was open for business, some media turned against Amazon. Apparently the prices Amazon is charging for many electronic goods are way more than competitors are offering both in-store and online. Amazon is not the cheapest in many categories.

This is a reflection of how online stores like Amazon are damaging brands by commoditising them and reducing them to compete mainly on price, rather than other differentiators. But that’s another discussion.

However, there is a group of retailers using innovative technology to combat Amazon. Though the cyber-hustlers would claim the retailers have lost their mind. After all, this is the digital world.

These retailers are using printed catalogues delivered directly into letterboxes to generate Christmas sales. Many of them are also advertising on television and radio, as well as in press (inserts and ads).

What are they thinking?

Here are the brands that have reached my family’s letterbox in the last two days:

  • Woolworths
  • Big W
  • Coles
  • IGA
  • Supercheap Auto
  • Repco
  • Priceline Pharmacy
  • Harvey Norman
  • Officeworks
  • Target
  • Bunnings
  • Bing Lee
  • Pillow Talk
  • Zamel’s Jewellers

Retail catalogues in my home…

I wonder, given the whole world has gone 150% digital, why retailers would use the technology that impacts all five senses (print), rather than the technology that only impacts three senses (digital)?

Maybe it’s because online sales in Australia will only be 7.3% of all retail sales this year? Or to put it another way, 92.7% of all retail sales will not be online this year. So digital marketing is the equivalent of playing in the kiddies pool in the big game of marketing.

Maybe it’s because they know that as a result of looking at printed catalogues, people shop online, as well as directly in-store.

Maybe it’s because they know catalogues and inserts work, as they are the secret weapon of digital start-ups.

Maybe it’s because they listen to customers rather than cyber-hustlers when it comes to running a profitable business?

Who knows?

But I gotta go now and do my Christmas shopping – where are my catalogues?

You don’t become a brain surgeon by hanging around the casualty ward…

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

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

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And you don’t become a CMO by hanging around the marketing department either. It’s like those people who claim to be copywriters just because they can use a keyboard.

To really stand out from the crowd and get ahead of your marketing peers, you need to invest in yourself.

Furnish your brain with knowledge from those who’ve already succeeded (and failed occasionally). Tap into the expertise of those who’ve tasted blood. Learn from the experts.

High achievers don’t use hope as a strategy when it comes to their success. And they don’t fall for the fake thought leadership and definitive guides published by marketing wannabes and cyber-hustlers.

Which brings me to this unique opportunity in Australia. International legend of marketing, Drayton Bird, is doing his final ever events in Sydney and Melbourne.

Every marketer on the planet would kill to achieve a fraction of Drayton’s success**. And it will be a long time before any other marketer comes close to earning the same genuine industry respect. If he was any younger he’d be called a unicorn!

So if you want better results from your marketing, or to improve your career, I suggest you take the opportunity to spend 3 hours at Drayton’s final gig-  Cocktails with Drayton.

You won’t get another chance to meet, chat and listen to Drayton in Australia ever again. In his 90 minute presentation he’ll share his best tips, ideas and marketing secrets, compiled during a career spanning four decades, including 20 years of online marketing.

He’s also giving away 3 of his books FREE, including the 338-page international best-seller “How to write sales letters and emails that sell“.

So to quote a well known Aussie “Do yourself a favour” and book your tickets today. They are only $125, or if you book 5 or more people, they’re just $100 each.

That’s a damn cheap investment to get priceless information to boost your career and your marketing results.

Book Melbourne here: 15th November (5.30 – 8.30pm) Rydges Melbourne

Book Sydney here: 21st November (5.30 – 8.30pm) Rydges North Sydney

More information at www.draytonslasthurrah.com

See you there…

**P.S. Here’s just a snippet of Drayton’s resume:

  • The Chartered Institute of Marketing named him one of 50 individuals who shaped today’s marketing.
  • Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida
  • Founding member of Superbrands
  • One of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing
  • One of the first three people in the Direct Marketing Association of India’s Hall of Fame
  • UK magazine ‘Campaign’ called him ‘the only universally acknowledged point of creativity in the direct marketing world‘
  • His book “Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing” has been a global best-seller on the subject every year since 1982. It’s published in 17 languages and sold around the world.
  • Advertising legend David Ogilvy said “he knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world”

How’s yours compare?

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

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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!