Tag Archives: advertising

Ad agencies and marketers continue to live in a parallel universe…

09 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Marketing, Social Media, Thought Leadership

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Research released this week by ThinkTV claimed “people working for advertising agencies are out of touch, childless, share-housing, farmers’ market-loving, workaholic gym junkies, who overestimate the impact of social media and the internet on normal Australians.”

Me thinks it’s a pretty accurate persona, to use the modern vernacular.

Of course, the consequence of the frame of reference from which agency types view the world, is how it influences their creative and media decisions in quite biased and dangerous ways.

I was on the end of this type of thinking when talking with a marketer in charge of selling “enterprise solutions” for a telco. In layman’s terms this means she flogs large phone systems to big companies through consultative selling. The reason she was asking my advice was the fact her sales were tanking and she couldn’t get leads from her digital marketing in LinkedIn and banner ads on other sites. True dear reader.

I was showing her some interactive 3D mail examples from US telcos that worked really well to generate qualified leads, particularly when supported with telephone follow-up. She stared at me bug-eyed and said “mail and telephone for B2B marketing are just not on my radar, everything’s digital these days and the agency would never go for it“.

I was taken aback, because as she spoke, I saw something flapping outside her window.

Everything’s just digital these days

The real problem with this advertising agency parallel universe is that it’s not new. The industry has lived in it for decades and not learned from its mistakes. I remember a survey in the 1980’s that demonstrated how out of touch the people who worked in advertising agencies really were.

One revelation was that agency people assumed everyone leased cars and bought their groceries on their fuel card in Shell Shops and 7/Eleven stores. Why go to Woolies?

I also had a marketing assistant at that time, who eventually became a partner in an ad agency (must have been the training). She lived in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and abjectly refused to travel west of George Street in the city. “the only time I go west is to get to the polo and then someone drives me“, she proudly exclaimed.

So here is the latest parallel universe of Adland – it goes part of the way to explaining the massive amounts of money being wasted in digital marketing channels.

The key is as follows – view the charts and weep:

  • Adland = Yellow
  • Adland’s estimate of public use = Dark blue
  • The public’s real use = Light blue

This article in yesterday’s press let the facts speak for themselves. For example, when asked to estimate how many people watch Netflix weekly, Adland said 80%. Yet apparently only 28% of “normal” people use Netflix weekly.

Gotta go now and do my weekly mentoring of young agency talent. Where’s my Tardis?

Would you encourage your children to work in marketing? I doubt it…

20 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Digital, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Social Media, social selling, Telemarketing

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Some of you may have noticed I haven’t blogged for about three months. I decided to take time out to observe the industry through rose coloured glasses and find some positive examples of advertising to share – regardless of channel. I might as well have tried to climb Mt Everest naked. Sorry for that vision folks, but that’s how difficult the task is has been.

Because when you stop for a moment and take a gander, the sight is really sad.

I’ve spent most of my life working in marketing in one way or another – as a business owner, running marketing departments, running agencies and educating executives and students. Never in my experience have I known the marketing industry to be so shonky, shoddy, dishonest, artificial, delusional, self-destructive and downright on the nose.

Why would anyone want their children to get a job in marketing? It’s become an embarrassment to say “I work in marketing”. You might as well say “have you met my parole officer?”

The growth in deplorables (to steal a recent popular word) is directly linked to the rise of the digital marketing industry and all the charlatans it has attracted. It seems they’re all drinking the same kool-aid and believing their “owned media” to use a digi-buzzword. Their mantra is one of the oldest on the planet “a sucker is born every minute” and it’s easy to chant when the suckers, sorry marketers, are hooked on FOMO and fashion.

Everywhere you turn there are examples. And it’s been getting worse every year. I produced this parody video in 2011 to promote an event, partly because like many, I couldn’t find any facts to support the outrageous claims about online usage by consumers.

Then this book was a best seller in 2012. I cannot find any similar publications claiming analogue channels to be so dishonest.

The first abuse of a marketing channel was the telephone and this was countered by government and industry with “do not call” registers. The problem with telemarketing was not so much dishonesty, rather it was the frequency of unsolicited calls into people’s homes.

The spiral to dishonesty started with email marketing. The scams, abuse of privacy, illegal use of email addresses, spreading of viruses and frequency of messaging, created so many problems that governments created anti-spam laws as well as data privacy legislation. Email continues to be abused, with most people now having a daily ritual of deleting unsolicited or irrelevant messages.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the marketing industry as we know it today…

The fake internet is growing so fast it will be one of the biggest online industries in less than a decade. Bob Hoffman, another lone but increasingly louder voice in the wilderness, has been very vocal about the fraud in the online advertising industry. In a number of articles, he has revealed that the percentage of clicks on online ads by robots, varies from 30% and up to 90%. Agencies have no way of telling how much “traffic” or “clicks” are by robots, as even the publishers themselves don’t really know. Yet marketers are charged for this fraud.

Then there is the “fake profile” industry. Software can now create social media accounts for anything connected to the internet. So your grandmother’s new fridge, or your sound system running from an app, will be hacked and a profile created using the device’s unique IP address.

The fraudsters then buy fake followers, they cost as little as $2.00 for a thousand, and create a fake following. The “profile” then publishes fake content, either stolen, or created by slaves with no subject expertise, working in Eastern Europe, the subcontinent, or South America. Ad space is then sold on these “fake profile” sites to computerised advertising networks. Marketer’s ads then appear on the sites, with the marketer being none the wiser.

As the system is fully computerised and rarely has a human eye to analyse it, the ability to scam the programmatic ad networks to create fake sites and earn automatic “fake revenue” is huge.

But the digital marketing industry seems uninterested in addressing the issue. One of the drivers behind this lack of interest is that very few marketers care. They never look at their digital analytics. It’s more important to be seen to be “digital” and mediocre, than to be using digital channels profitably. An Australian report suggested more than 60% of senior marketers didn’t bother looking at or using the analytical data their digital marketing generated. So they have no idea what works or what fails.

Media companies have now admitted they have been falsely charging for online advertising and are returning $millions to clients, rather than face messy legal action. Dentsu was the first to raise its guilty hand.

I have one client about to go to court with its global media agency because the agency refuses to use the client’s programmatic advertising account. The reason is simple. The moment the client gets access to the account they will discover how much they have been ripped-off over the terms of the contract to date. It seems the agency is hiding behind a clause in the contract that says bookings must be on its account. The media agency would rather lose the client’s business across the globe than be found guilty of fraud.

Facebook admits it has overstated video viewing by as much as 80%.

Sir Martin Sorrell has called out Google for unwittingly allowing advertisers to subsidise extremist terrorist sites with their advertising.

Proctor & Gamble, the largest media advertiser in the world is threatening to stop advertising online unless the industry starts to act honestly and ditches its self-interest. P&G has already reduced its Facebook spend because it resulted in an appalling loss of revenue and market share.

While French media agency Havas has followed suit and pulled all advertising from Google and the YouTube platform until they “deliver the standards we and our clients expect”.

An active Twitter user is someone who accesses their account once a month – and there are more inactive accounts than active ones. #whybotherwithtwitter

FYI Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn remain the major publishers that continue to refuse independent auditing of their platforms. Whereas all the major analogue publishers have always participated in independent auditing as part of providing a legitimate service to advertisers.

How did it get so bad? I suspect that one reason is the fact so many people claiming to be digital marketers know nothing about marketing and just a little bit about binary coding. They have no respect for marketing, dismissing it as “just part of the process” for anyone who can use a keyboard. Or they’ve read a definitive guide and so have become a definitive expert.

I was in a meeting with a digital marketing manager who stated with authority; “a brand is just the logo taken to the next level“. But he did it with such conviction the juniors in the room took notes – I just shook my head and asked for more coffee, as it was the only drug available.

Creative thinking is not valued. Instead, you just need to Google “world’s best example of…” and then copy the ideas for your client or your brand. The result of following the “God called Google” has been a devaluing of creative talent.

And while BIG DATA is the latest trend, most marketers and their media agencies don’t analyse data. They don’t know what works and what doesn’t. They talk about data and even produce spreadsheets, but they don’t study the data to gain knowledge. Instead, they worship at the social altar of “likes” and “followers” and some nebulous term called “engagement”.

The digital channels allow you to predict the future, so you can make more money, or earn the same amount for a lower spend. They put more knowledge in the palm of marketer’s hands than any other channel. Yet nobody seems to care.

Though here’s what some major advertisers say about social channels after analysing them:

Unilever has said its social media results are about 50% as good as traditional POS advertising and other retail promotions. While Coca Cola ran its usual metrics through its social media and saw no difference in sales as a result of social content. Westfield shopping centres stopped social media advertising, as results and research revealed its customers preferred printed catalogues.

As Bob Hoffman published recently: in a study by the American Marketing Association, Deloitte and Duke University, more than 88% of marketers surveyed said they could find no measurable impact from social media marketing. While Forrester Research reported that only 0.07% of one major brand’s Facebook followers ever engage with one of its posts.

It can probably be best summed up by Coca Cola’s Head of Global Marketing, Marcos de Quinto who said; “Social media is the strategy for those who don’t have a… digital strategy.”

Yet in a recent industry debate with Mark Ritson about social media, Adam Ferrier, one of Australia’s brightest advertising talents, said “…These other two businesses – Uber and Airbnb – would not exist without social media.” I can only assume he said it because he was forced to support his side of the debate, as nothing could be further from the truth.

Uber has mainly used traditional public relations in mainstream media, plus social media to create awareness. Though as revealed here, Uber’s secret new business tool is good old-fashioned print. While Airbnb is a major user of TV advertising, email, network marketing, print and most recently talk-back radio targeting pensioners. The radio ads use pensioners to encourage other pensioners to top up their pensions by becoming an Airbnb host – strangely it says nothing about tax implications? Just as Airbnb pays no tax in our country.

So Uber and Airbnb cannot exist without analogue channels. Social channels are just a sideshow in the scheme of things.

Rumour has it, Unilever is removing the term “digital” from all marketing job titles, as they’ve finally woken up to the fact the job functions are about marketing, not about channels. After all, nobody ever called themselves a “Male Urinal Advertising Manager” just because they placed ads in the specialist channel of troughs in public and commercial toilets used by men. If you’re female and confused, ask a male colleague.

Smart marketers are realising that just sticking solely with digital marketing channels is more often than not, a mistake. For the best results, you need to promote across numerous proven channels, and run tests to determine the best ROI – just as marketers did prior to the internet.

Have to go now and prepare to teach young university marketing students. Might recommend they look for an internship at Long Bay Correctional Centre if they want a successful career…

 

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

The four essentials to developing brilliant creative ideas – and there are only four…

03 Wednesday Aug 2016

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

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I’ve lived in Melbourne twice in my life and visit most years. One thing I quickly learned was there are only four colours worn by the locals (apart from their AFL team’s). It doesn’t matter what time of year, it’s always the same four – they are:

  • Black
  • Black
  • Black
  • Black

grunge-hipster-quote

I was reminded of this when teaching the Principles of Advertising at university recently. I used an example for the students I developed years ago when training young advertising executives on the job.

There are only four essential things you need to develop brilliant creative. Without these four you will fail dismally. Yet you’d be surprised how many digi-kids don’t use them. They just use hope as a strategy for producing ideas.

So here they are dear reader – the four essentials to brilliant creative work:

  • The brief
  • The brief
  • The brief
  • The brief

Groping

Without a clear brief you are groping in the dark. You cannot work on the theory of “you’ll know it when you see it” when it comes to recognising a good idea – and usually without any connection to long term strategy or brand direction.

The obvious benefit of a written brief is that it eliminates the danger of interpretation which occurs with a verbal or no brief.

Lost+in+interpretation

Here’s another example I developed years ago for teaching briefing. I’m told it’s been used by others who also teach. Clear your mind for a few seconds. Now, what do you visualise when you read the word “rabbit?”

You obviously have an image of a rabbit in your mind’s eye? Is it white, brown, grey or chocolate? Hopping or sitting still? Nibbling on food? Being cuddled or sitting in the cross hairs of a gun sight? Maybe you’re a Monty Python fan and visualise a killer rabbit? Whatever you’re imagining, it will be very different from other people’s interpretation.

two-rabbits

A brief gives you direction. It’s your creative road map designed to save you wasting time going down dry gullies. Both David Ogilvy and his creative protege Norman Berry have been attributed to stating the creative ode: “Give me the freedom of a tight brief.”  This has nothing to do with budgie smugglers BTW.

mankini

Give me the freedom of a tight brief…

The tighter the brief the more relevant creative options you can create. Whereas a woolly brief (or no brief) sends you in too many irrelevant directions and wastes time, money and resources. That’s why a written brief, accompanied by visual stimuli remove confusion caused by interpretation.

My old boss David Ogilvy stated “search the world and steal the best.” But he meant it for inspiration, not plagiarism. Yet so many digital marketers use search engines as their creative resource. They enter “best <insert category> advertising” into Google and then copy what they can. This is not a bad idea as the starting point for inspiration, but if you don’t have a brief, how will it fit your brand? And there are limits to how often an idea or execution can be copied.

Every agency has their own version of a briefing document – if you need one, contact me and I’ll send you an example.

Then again, you could just search Google for “world’s best creative brief”…

creative brief

Hint to Telstra – Australia wants your service to work properly, Australia is not interested in your rebranding….

17 Sunday Jul 2016

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

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On Friday I received an email from a computer at Telstra. It was an announcement that mainly caused me to shake my head in dismay.

The subject line reads: See our new brand before Australia does

True dear reader. Apparently rebranding is the priority of the company that specialises in regular service outages, digitally disrupting businesses from functioning, preventing kids from doing homework and generally stopping people connecting in the connected world.

Someone needs to explain to Telstra what digital disruption really means.

The disruptions have happened so often that Telstra’s compensation offer of a free data day, now falls on deaf ears. Australia (to use Telstra’s collective noun for all people and businesses in this country) is fed up – we just want our internet and phones to work. After all that’s what we pay for. Well we pay more than that – if we want Telstra to mail monthly invoices to us, because we cannot rely on their internet to deliver it by email, we have to pay north of $3 an invoice. If this was a third world country there’d be riots in the streets.

film not video

The email content states:

There is nothing more important to us than our customers, so before we share the next chapter of our brand story with the world on Sunday night, we wanted to share it with you.

On what planet do these people live? What Telstra customers have bookmarked the Telstra brand story, anxiously awaiting the next chapter for their reading pleasure? Change hands please, we customers are begging you.

The message continues with a link to a video and a subtitle “Click to watch the film“. As they say, the devil is in the details and I suspect if you click you’ll watch a video not a film.

This ignorance of small data is what Telstra is famous for, apart from digital disruptions. Here’s an email Telstra sent to me two days before Friday’s rebranding message.

The subject line reads: Malcolm, here’s a hot deal on a Samsung Galaxy S7 and Tab A 8.0

Samsung offer

Samsung 2

There’s even a free footy pass for the two codes I don’t follow – just another small data glitch…

Samsung 3

Note to Telstra: I am currently about six months into a two-year iPhone plan with you. Why would I even consider switching to a Samsung now?

The computers at Telstra must know what phone and plan I’m on – aren’t I one of those customers referred to in the rebranding message – who are supposedly more important than anything else?

This is the simplest and smallest of data – a customer’s record. How does Telstra continue to get things so wrong? Why is mediocrity such a respectable KPI at Telstra?

But hey, why get the small customer data correct when you’re doing a rebrand?

In case you are waiting with baited breath dear reader, the rebrand is all about the magic of technology. And I must say it does reflect Telstra’s technology – it magically disappears when you want to use it.

You can watch the magic of technology here, or maybe you can put the garbage out, you’re call.

As a shareholder I’m so pleased Telstra is focusing on rebranding, rather than providing a service that works when I need it to. That’s sure to keep the analysts and the customers happy.

Gotta go – need to put the garbage out.

Uber and other startups starting to smell a lot like 1999 – again…

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

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

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I was working in New York just prior to the first dot.con collapse. I still recall the chancers and opportunists standing on street corners with suitcases full of business cards. They were literally handing them out to any random passer-by, as the primary way to get traffic to their websites. An early form of geo-targeting by the first generation of digital marketers.

business card

The activity reeked of desperation, but hey, they were heady times. Rich veins of gold were just waiting to be tapped by the dot.con zealots.

I’ve been reminded of those times again recently. It seems the street hustlers who harass you to support a charity, are now competing for sidewalk space with the latest cyber-hustlers selling online retail and App-based services.

Hello Fresh promoters are everywhere. I mentioned them in my last post – they are major users of print distributed by mail, letterbox, inserts and face-to-face (or hand-to-hand as some now call it).

hello

Interestingly, in a few short months Hello Fresh has moved from $30 off your first order to $50 off your first order. That’s not a good trend and indicates a very competitive market with too many suppliers. Watch this space for brand consolidation in the near future. Like 1999, the predictions are that some of these home delivered food brands won’t last.

hello fresh 2

Hello Fresh

And sometimes fate steps in. Just as I was finishing editing this post there was a knock at my door and a charming lady selling Hello Fresh appeared. She even agreed to a photo for my blog. I didn’t become a customer as we are well-stocked for food. But what an innovative channel – knocking on doors to sell things. Did anyone see that digital disruption coming? Well it certainly disrupted dinner.

Hello Fresh door knocker

Helpling also uses printed inserts, brochures in letterboxes and hand-to-hand via street walkers to grow its business. Like all online retailers, they use that amazing digi-breakthrough of giving away a discount with your first purchase. This is a disruptive technique used by marketers for, hmmm, since the beginning of time!

hello 2

helpling

And this week, outside a CBD train station in Sydney, an Uber street walker shoved this in my hand.

Uber 2

Uber 1

Now who in their right-digi-mind would have thought it possible?

The disruptive taxi booking service for the App generation, is resorting to handing out printed leaflets in the streets, with discount offers, to acquire new customers?

What’s really really really really old, is new again – again:)

SP_move-along

And just to clarify other digital myths doing the rounds:

  • Uber is not the world’s biggest taxi service. It’s one of the world’s biggest taxi booking services.
  • Airbnb is not the world’s biggest hotel – it’s one of the biggest accommodation booking services.

But why let the truth get in the way of a good digi-story about the disruption industry? It seems to me, the old quote applies more and more these days – “the more things change, the more they stay the same…”

Though it is ironic that by using fashionable marketing jargon like “disruptive” and disruption” I sound sooo 2016, yet these alleged disruptive brands smell like, umm well, so 1999…

The essential media channel most successful digital start-ups can’t do without…

31 Tuesday May 2016

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

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Here’s a quick quiz for you digital marketing experts:

Question: What do all these online brands have in common?

Google, Uber, Kogan, Catch of the Day, Deals Direct, The Iconic, Hello Fresh, Helpling, styletread, carnextdoor, suppertime, Charles Tyrwhitt, Naked Wines, Virgin Wines, Marley Spoon and loads of other digital retailers…
(Hint: Direct marketers have an unfair advantage here)

Answer: they all rely on print as their most valuable media channel for acquiring new customers.

That’s right folks – print technology. You know, that ancient old-fashioned relic of a media channel, arrogantly ignored by so many naive digital marketers?

inserts

printed inserts are key to new customer acquisition

FYI a quick piece of digital advice – if you are an alleged digital marketing expert who advises clients to only use digital channels, or a digital marketer who only uses digital channels, you may need to rethink what you do. Because if you are not using the proven channels and only using the (often) unproven digital channels, you really should leave the industry. You’re giving it a bad name and costing marketers a sizeable fortune.

I’ve written previously about Google’s use of direct mail. You’ve probably received some of their mailings. So let me share the ParcelPush story with you.

Bjorn Behrendt is a successful German entrepreneur with a background in online direct marketing – also known as digital marketing. He launched styletread, an online shoe store, in Australia. He then sold it for loads of money. Now he’s launched another three digital start-ups in Australia to service digital retailers. And these start-ups are all print-based businesses.

Gotta love it when one of the fastest growing digital start-ups, which exists to service digital start-ups, is providing print services to those digital start-ups!

If you’ve worked in direct marketing, particularly online retail or mail order, you’ll probably already use printed inserts in fulfillment parcels to acquire customers. This channel is at least 50 years old.

But if you don’t have any DM experience this channel might be new to you. Bjorn discovered printed inserts when he owned styletread. Loads of other online retailers asked if they could put their inserts in styletread’s shoe boxes when they were delivered to customers – for a fee of course.

Long story short, Bjorn partnered with Australian Craig Morris and launched ParcelPush – a specialist business owning the rights to access online retailer’s fulfillment boxes/parcels. They pay to insert a branded envelope into them. Then they sell inserts into those envelopes to other online retailers. For example, in the Aussie Farmers Direct fulfillment box, they insert an envelope branded “Aussie Farmers Direct” and it is filled with third party offers and samples.

logo

This has become one of the cheapest channels for online retailers to acquire new customers. After all, they are making offers to people who have already bought a product online, so these prospects don’t need to be educated to shop online. It’s the same process as mail-order companies that used inserts to convert existing mail-order customers to buy other products by mail-order. What’s old is new again – again.

More importantly they are using tactile media – the media that affects all five senses – sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Digital media only affect sight, sound and touch, so are relatively limited in their customer engagement ability. (I had to get customer engagement into a marketing blog to demonstrate my digi-credibleness). As I’ve said before the physical nearly always outperforms the virtual.

Most digital marketers struggle to make digital channels profitable for customer acquisition. The digital channels are much better for retention and repeat business.

Here are some samples of the inserts – all shapes and sizes:

Parcel Push 2

Parcel Push

In addition, and as a result of the success of ParcelPush, they’ve also launched two other print-based businesses:

www.letterboxpush.com.au – this is a competitor to the Yellow Envelope and other distributors of catalogues and brochures into letterboxes.

www.printpush.com.au – this is an online print business. Who’d have thought we needed another printer? But the ParcelPush print volumes have made it possible to offer good value printing – and distribution.

So if you want to succeed with digital marketing, here’s some career advice. Find a grey-haired direct marketer and buy them a drink. Then sit back and listen. They’ve lived through and created more disruption in marketing than anyone else in history. And they continue to do so. You’ll be surprised how fast your career takes off.

But remember, just because digital marketing techniques are new to you, doesn’t mean they’re new to the world. Technology changes, but human’s emotional reasons for buying remain constant…

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 NIB uses BIG DATA to rip-off small kids…

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Customer Service, Marketing, small data

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Continuing on this week’s posts about the rotten attitude of insurance brands towards the people who pay their salary – their customers – here’s how NIB lets any telephone sales clerk access your children’s personal medical records.

I’m an NIB customer – well my whole family is covered under some family policy. Each year they increase the cost and reduce the service. They advise this using weasel words and deceit, as I’ve shared before.

preexisting-conditions

Recently my 13 year old daughter went on a holiday with friends to the UK/Europe. Yes I know what you’re thinking dear reader, I went camping two hours up the coast at her age. The highlight being catching prawns with my father in the full moon run at midnight, at The Entrance – but I digress.

midnight prawning

Midnight prawning at The Entrance

We obviously needed to get travel insurance. NIB offer discounts to customers, so my bride rang them.

The sales clerk started asking a few questions and when my bride got to the part about ski cover, the clerk opened my daughter’s medical records and poured through them – all without permission of course – unless it was covered in some double-speak in the recorded message at the start of the phone call?

How can a sales clerk have the right to inspect children’s personal medical records? What a BIG DATA abuse.

file clerk

She noted my daughter had injured her leg a couple of years ago. And she was right. My daughter broke her ankle. But she was treated professionally in hospitals, by surgeons, nurses, specialists, physios and the like. In fact NIB paid the physiotherapy bills we received for treatment of the injury.

The sales clerk claimed this old fully-healed injury qualified as a pre-existing condition, so the policy would cost an additional $90.

pre-existing-coverage

My bride explained the injury had healed. My daughter has since gone skiing, plays hockey, basketball and runs cross country. But none of that mattered, because this clerk has now labelled it a pre-existing condition.

If you believe that ridiculous notion, then there isn’t an NIB customer who hasn’t a pre-existing condition. In fact, nobody on the planet could be insured as we all have pre-existing conditions.

I broke a toe when I was 7 years old. Does that mean I cannot get travel insurance? Imagine if I was to trip over while in a foreign country – it could be linked to my pre-existing condition? I could get an injury in the snow on a trip to Queenstown – it could be related to me getting hit by a snow ball in 1978, an obvious pre-existing condition.

preexisting

One has to ask NIB – do you trust the medicos to heal patient’s injuries? After all, they study for years at university to become doctors. And you pay the gap in the medical bills to your customers, so you must have some confidence in their ability to heal wounds and injuries?

Or NIB, do you believe the medicos can’t do what they’re trained to do and fix injuries? Do you believe they are incompetent and just pay their bills because, well, that’s the system?

Either way, allowing sales clerks to access a child’s personal medical history, so you can screw them out of a few bucks on a travel insurance policy, is a low grubby act at best. You need to respect people’s (particularly children’s) privacy and stop fabricating lies to make money out of non-existing conditions.

How do you people sleep at night? Maybe you could bottle it and give it to people who struggle with pre-existing insomnia?

insomnia

Some of you may know NIB loves its marketing jargon (and reality TV too) – it even has its very own hashtag #itsgoodtobehuman. As against #itsgoodtobealien? Or #itsgoodtobemammal?

If they really want people to believe their marketing speak, they should change it to #itsbadtobeaNIBcustomer. I’m sure the whole population – those people with pre-existing conditions – would believe them.

The only good thing to come from this was getting a cheaper policy from another insurer. They didn’t consider falling over as a kid to be a pre-existing condition to living a healthy life.