Tag Archives: digital disruption

Uber Eats and Airtasker run amazing suburban launches using…

23 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Branding, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

As you know dear reader I like to keep abreast of the latest digital disruptions and the amazing “new rules” of marketing they have introduced. How will the old rules survive?

So I thought I’d share the most recent ads that launched Airtasker and Uber Eats in my suburb. Here’s an earlier post on similar disruption technology.

The brands are obviously on to something, as they used identically shaped die-cut cards. These disruptive cards included a discount to encourage people to trial the services. Such innovation.

The Uber Eats card was in my letterbox, along with at least a dozen non-disrupting brands. So now I can use my phone to order cooked food delivered to my home – unbelievable.

While the Airtasker card was shoved in my hand at the shops – I think I was on a customer journey at the time. Let me recall – I had my backpack, water bottle, GPS map, crampons (just in case any climbing was required – who knows where a customer journey will take you?) and my sunblock. Yes, I remember now. I was on a customer journey to buy some bread when a random stuck out their hand and gave me the card.

So there you have it folks – amazing insights into the new ways of marketing by the digital disrupters. Fascinating stuff indeed.

Have to go now. Am going on a customer journey to get some milk. Where are my hiking boots and personas?

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

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

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.

17th century practices drive dynamic digital disruption dollars…

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in Branding, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Once again this week, I saw another media article about the amazing digital disruptor, the Dollar Shaver Club. By all accounts it is a very successful company. And so it should be. It has taken a 17th century publishing model and used 21st century technology to digitally disrupt an industry. Amazing stuff.

After all, who would have thought people would order a product remotely, rather than walk into a store, and get the company to deliver the product to them by mail? This type of innovative thinking is digital dynamite.

To think that a company can completely disrupt human behaviour by applying one of the most continually successful analogue business models to a digitally-based business, well it’s just business gold.

Let’s analyse this shall we…

ANALYZE THIS, Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, 1999. © Warner Bros.

The business model is called the subscription model and it uses a negative option offer.

A negative option purchase is one whereby the customer agrees to have goods or services provided automatically, and the customer must either pay for the service or specifically decline it in advance of invoicing.

And this may come as a surprise to some of you dear readers, but Dollar Shaver Club was not the first to offer a negative option. Strange but true.

Columbia-House-Ad1-e1451096912812

Research indicates the subscription model first started in the publishing industry in the 17th century in the UK. Over time it expanded to the US in the 19th century when chapbooks (cheaply printed paper covered books) were sold door-to-door.

Regular readers will know that door-to-door selling is now one of the primary channels for digital distruptors like Uber, Hello Fresh, et al.

door to door

As markets grew and new technology disrupted society – automobiles, telephone, courier services, faster postal services – the subscription industry boomed. By the mid 20th century you could order books, magazines, vinyl records, plates, stamps, collectibles, vitamins, cosmetics and food – all delivered to your home, using a negative option payment method.

By the end of the 20th century in addition to the items above, I’d worked with clients selling wine, nappies, car washes, food, CDs, DVDs, education, tools, newsletters, coffee and more on a negative option subscription model.

In fact, any regularly consumed item is perfect for a subscription model – as long as the cost of delivery is not prohibitive. Many business software programmes are now sold on a subscription service – including this blog platform for example.

So let’s quickly look at Dollar Shaver Club.

shaving

In Australia they provide razors for either $4, $7 or $10 per month. They mainly promote their business using the digital medium of television. You select the offer you want from the website and then keep an eye on your letterbox. Your razors arrive by post and that’s one less item you need to worry about when you go shopping. Marvelous stuff.

These digital disruptors are bloody geniuses. Who’d have thought hey?

But congratulations to the lads who built the business. They understand that technology changes – human nature doesn’t. Humans all love a bargain and as the laziest species on the planet, we love things made easier for us. Tap into those two emotional triggers and you can make money.

Seems the adage is becoming standard practice – the more things change, the more they stay the same…

So in summary, here’s the lesson: if you want to go forward in digital disruption, just look backwards…

I’m off to a meeting, better have a shower – where’s my razor?

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

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…