The Must Have DM Check List

February 21st, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

My email address has somehow been included in a direct mail sales list, used by London-based media agencies. So, two-to-three times each day, I receive an email by X person at X agency, politely asking if I would consider using their services.

The Must Have DM Check ListThis is unfortunate, because it seems almost all agencies in London has wasted money on renting the wrong DM list, because:

  • Since all agencies are using the same list, what are the chances that the targets (in this case me), are interested?
  • I am not, or have as far as I know, ever been based in the UK. Obviously I’m not relevant to them.
  • Since I don’t know where the original list came from (nor would anyone else on the list), I am forced to opt out of every e-mail manually.

You would hope that the agencies you use for your campaigns know their targeting. However I am here to help, so without further delays, here is my personal checklist before engaging in any direct mail campaign (email or post), free and without obligations for you to use:

Before engaging in a DM campaign:

  • Decide the type of industries that are relevant for you.
  • Decide what roles in the organizations you are targeting. Who makes the decision you need? Is it HR, Finance, marketing, purchasing or someone else?
  • Decide the level of the person in the departments. Should it be director, manager or coordinator? Perhaps the personal assistant is the one you need to get past?
  • The DM should never be sent to a blank name. Blank name = bin.
  • If you buy or rent a DM list, ALWAYS check with the list provider that:
  • The list is current. Ask when it was last used and updated.
  • It is not a spam list. Ask how often it is used, and when it was last used.
  • It is relevant. Ask what type of organization last used it.
  • You aren’t wasting money on people who are not interested. Ask what the opt-out rate is.
  • It is professional. Ask how the people/organizations on the list got there.
  • It doesn’t contain duplicates. Ask when was it last checked.
  • It is relevant. Ask when was it last updated (Everyone hates receiving mail for someone who left the organization two years ago).
  • It includes title and /or gender.

There are plenty of other things to check, such as creative, specs, fit to brand, offer, redemption mechanisms etc. I won’t go into those here.

If you happen to be working at an agency in London, please read the above list again.

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The Downside of Celebrity Endorsements

February 15th, 2013 § 1 comment § permalink

Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Oscar Pistorius. Three international celebrities with the drive, strength and appeal to inspire millions of people!

One other thing they had in common until recently. They were all sponsored by Nike.

Nike paid hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor these three athletes. The Nike brand is largely built on celebrity endorsements and getting the absolute most equity out of the deals. These three represented some of Nike’s biggest deals.

pistorius15n-8-web

Oscar Pistorius – Sponsored by Nike

Brands choose to sponsor high-profile celebrities because of their appeal off track, as much as on it. The associate imagery is what matters. What fans see in Lance Armstrong, they see in Nike; the power, determination, will to fight, comeback and a family dad. That is what Nike bought into. In Pistorius they also saw an underdog. Someone who, like Armstrong, beat the odds and inspired admiration.

The problem is that the closer you link a brand to a celebrity, the higher the risk of damage to the brand, when the celebrity messes up.

The more a celebrity is (paid to be) associated with a brand when everything is great, the more that brand is associated with the celebrity when it all goes bottom up.

Celebrities are people, and people mess up. There’s no way to prevent that when signing a sponsorship deal. It’s just the way of the game.

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Budget Spent on One-way Media, Not Interaction.

February 12th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

It’s hard to be in marketing without having some appreciation for seasonal advertising. Most retail chains make more than 75% of their annual budget during the last month of the year. Gym chains they make them during the first two months of the year, because that’s when consumers are most likely to go on a diet.

During January and February the largest gym chain here, are spending a big chunk of their annual ad budget, on building their brand promise of helping people achieve perfect health (accompanied by one-off special offers to get new customers in the door). They are spending big on TV, print and web, even placing brand banners at all their centres, sharing with customers how many hours a week their staff spends on coaching, cleaning and otherwise helping customers achieve more at the centres,  all in the name of the brand.

Traditional media and web advertising is one-way communication. So are posters at the outlets. This particular chain therefore also maintains individual Facebook pages for each centre, plus a corporate page. The local centres do great jobs in managing their pages, as the staff eagerly communicates frequently, and personally with their local customers.

So, who manages the corporate page?

No one.

If customers have questions about timings, classes or equipment, they seek out their local Facebook page. However if they have a question about offers, campaigns, pricing or perhaps an issue – they go to the corporate page. They do this because annoyed customers tend to take their issues to the corporate brand owner.

And so, the corporate Facebook page sits largely unmanaged, and the 60.000+ members are all free to view how innocent questions from fellow customers, become issues, then complaints.

I wonder how often the managers check their own Facebook page?

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How Consumers Think. Three Fallacies of Consumer Research.

February 9th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

80% of new products die, or significantly fail to perform as budgeted within six months of being launched.

But that’s why you do research right? To ensure that the products you put to market will be successful?

According to Harvard Business School: 80% of consumer research is carried out to reinforce existing conclusions, rather than to test new possibilities.

Put in another way, if not careful, you will find the answer you look for.

When it comes to research, there are three fallacies many organisations fall into. From me to you, here they are, converted into easy three to remember facts:

  • Most of our actions come from our subconscious mind, which means that;
  • People do not think rationally, which means that;
  • We often cannot readily explain their thinking, and why we act in a certain way.

One of the best examples of how those fallacies, can translate into the wrong decisions for a brand, is that of the ‘New Coke’.

Bill Cosby ad for 'New Coke'.

Bill Cosby ad for ‘New Coke’.

In the 1980ies after extensive research and taste tests on almost 200,000 consumers, the Coca-Cola Company had developed a new and better taste for their most successful product. And so, ‘New Coke’ was launched and replaced the original tasting Coke. It was the first taste change to the product in 99 years.

The problem was that while the product may have tasted better, taste was not what consumers bought. They ‘bought into’ the Coke brand, and the familiarities, the feelings, values and experiences it offered them. They may have liked the new taste. But they didn’t want their Coke to change.

Before ‘New Coke’ hit the stores, consumers had already decided that they were against it. The ‘New Coke’ one of the biggest marketing failures of the Century and only lasted a few years before being pulled from the market and replaced with, guess what! ‘The Original Coca-Cola’.

Take Out
Do your research, but keep the three fallacies of consumer research for brands in mind. Because sometimes, there’s a different between what consumers tell you they want, and what they want from your brand.

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Buying or ‘Buying Into’?

February 5th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

Two different people are in the market for a laptop. One does his research, comparing technical specifications, warranty information, prices, checks reviews and recommendations. The other goes directly to an Apple reseller and buys a MacBook.

Same scenario, different people:

Two people have been trying to lose weight for years. One tries different diets, books etc. but remains unsuccessful. The other watches an episode of Oprah, where she recommends a specific weight loss program, then tries the same program, and succeeds in loosing 10 kg’s.

The difference is simple. You buy products but you buy into the brands you connect with.

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To Succeed, Your Cows Should Be Lilac

February 1st, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

In the early nineties, 40.000 young children in Southern Germany entered a competition to color out pictures of cows. More than 30% of the children entered paintings of lilac cows.

Why?

At the time the most famous chocolate in the region was the Milka brand. Although owned by Kraft, Milka’s brandmarks have not changed since being created in the 70ies. And rightly so, because back then a smart designer suggested that in order for the brand to stand out, their main brand mark should be a lilac cow.

The Milka Cow

The Milka Cow

Fast-track 20 years forward, and 30% of young children either thought cows were lilac, or loved the brand so much, they preferred cows that way.

If the brandmarks of your closest competitor is red, you may choose yellow to be yours. If it is green, you may choose blue. In the end to be unique you have to be different. Kellogg’s has their rooster, Qantas their kangaroo. EasyJet uses a big, bold orange on white typeface and Apple, well…

You could break or smash-up all of those brand marks, yet still recognize, which brand they belong to.

Can you say the same about your brand mark?

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A Word On Customer Engagement

January 31st, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

I like the word engagement. It’s in blogs, talked about in forums and brainstormed in marketing meetings. I even use it from time to time.

Often engaging customers is important, because it hints at the fact that marketing is no longer one-way communication.

But engagement is not for everyone. If you are privileged to work for a brand that people care about, like to read about and spend a significant amount of money on, fine. However if you represent relatively low involvement products, say toothpaste or copying paper, – or a problem removal product, such as ant control, customer engagement probably isn’t something you want to put at the top of your marketing plan.

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Who Owns a Branding Project?

January 31st, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

In short, the face and owner of the project should be your CEO.

Although the need for a branding project may come from the marketing department, the driving force should be top management. This means;

  • CEO
  • Board, if you have one
  • Senior managers or at least the primary influencers of key departments that will be dealing with the brand (customer service, sales, field staff…)
  • Naturally the marketing and communications department, AND
  • … Some wild cards. Non-managers but well-connected on-ground staff, who understand the day-to-day business and can help spread the message through the organisation

If senior management is not on-board and devotes serious time, dedication and budget, I’m willing to bet that your brand will not take off.

There’s no recipe for how small or big your project team should be, but in my experience, anything over 8-9 in the key team is overkill.

And here’s a hint; Branding consultants, like most other external resources come and go. You may pay a big pile of money for someone to guide you the right way in your project, but consultants are very rarely responsible for the end result and financial implications of you making (or not making) budgets a year down the road.

So, make sure that everyone in your team are fully on board, know their action points and are empowered to take responsibility to implement the work you have done.

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The 4 Ways Brands Fail

January 30th, 2013 § 2 comments § permalink

It takes a lot of work to maintain or grow a brand. Even so, almost all brands at some point in time experience weakness. It is therefore fortunate that brands fail over time, not overnight, giving you time to react and adjust.

Here are the four ways your brand can end up if you don’t take care:

Hollow Brands

However great they look and appear, these brands are struggling to mean something at their core – perhaps because times have overtaken them. The glittering emirate city of Dubai is such an example. That brand was largely built on the promises of all-out-luxury, bigger, better and a land where the word impossible didn’t exist. But when the financial crisis hit, construction stopped and hotel rooms stood empty. All of a sudden, the brand seemed hollow

Question Mark Brands

When a brand’s internal belief and capability to deliver no longer meet, consumers start questioning what it stand for, and whether it can deliver. One brand that risks falling into this category is Apple. There are indications that the innovation that drove the company to success is no longer as strong. The brand has gone from being for the select few, towards becoming mainstream. Competitors such as Samsung and Google are starting to be seen as more innovative by teenagers, and overtaking iPhone and iPad by being more innovative.

Blind Brands

Even if a brand stays true to its essence, it may lose touch with how consumers go about their lives – simply misjudging the mood of the times. Burger King and B&O seem like this may be the case for them.

Irrelevant Brands

Kodak, Nokia and RIM (Blackberry) are examples of brands that became or started to become irrelevant. They failed to follow the technology and understand the competitive landscape.

Note: If you are interested in this specific topic, I recommend reading the book ‘Creating Passion Brands’, by Helen Edwards and Derek Day.

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Finding The Right Channels To Manage

January 27th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

To do a good job in managing your brand, a big part of your effort should into reputation management. And managing your reputation first of all means knowing, which channels to manage.

I’m not talking about Facebook or Twitter here, but about the channels that are directly relevant to the type of service you are offering consumer, and those your customers use to find and evaluate your brand.

If you were managing a tourism brand, the top channels to manage would likely be hotel review websites. A damming review on a site would be seen by thousand of people in your core, ready-to-spend target audience, and cost both bookings and reputation.

For a global brand, there may be 100 different sites in 20 different languages to manage, but you need to have a clear understanding of the top sites.

Are you across which channels are relevant to your brand, and can you hands on say you are on top of the right ones?

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In Branding, Everything Communicates

January 24th, 2013 § 0 comments § permalink

There’s one message that I’ve been communicating over and over since starting this blog. It is that in branding, everything communicates.

Your brand is the combined assets, benefits, beliefs, feelings, perceptions and images that are linked to the brand in the mind of the organisation and the consumer. Yes, your brand does include your logo and website, but it continues across the way you communicate, the way you are percieved in the media (something many banks sadly forget), your delivery trucks and even your business cards.

Today I had the opportunity to spend the afternoon in the company of branding extraordinnaire and author Martin Lindstrøm. Martin is widely regarded as one of the top influencers of branding globally, and his presentation reminded me of how important it is to start at the base, and remember that everyting communicates.

Today’s talk reminded me that the problems and opportunities faced by large organisations, are not that different to those faced by small businesses. Even if you operate as a one man business, you need to deliver on everything you promise, in order to be ‘on brand’. If fact, the smaller your set-up, the larger the risk that a small miscommunication will end up loosing you business.

And here’s the slightly surprising outtake of my experience from today. A small, but important experiment showed that out of the 400 people in the room, not one single person had a business card that accuratly communicated the brand and promise of his or her business. As the person sitting next to me beautifully summarized it: “If I remove the logo of any of these cards, I end up with what looks like business cards from an accountant”.

So remember; use every opportunity, -however small it may seem, to make impact and communicate your brand.

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Calling Yourself an Expert

January 22nd, 2013 § 2 comments § permalink

What type of person do you look for when you need something built or your car fixed? You would look up a carpenter or a mechanic right? And you’d probably ensure that he was authorized to do that work.

Either way, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t look up ‘expert mechanic’.

In 2007 Harvard Business Review published research, which estimated that it takes on average 10.000 hours to become an expert at something. That includes playing violin, being a management consultant and anything in between.

Put in a more realistic manner, this equals 3 hours a day for 10 years.

I don’t think I know anyone who calls himself or herself an expert. My dad built houses and roads for 40 years, but I never heard him use the term. Yet the web is full of people calling themselves Social Media Experts and Internet Marketing Experts.

A (successful) brand is a promise delivered and if you are a consultant, your brand = you. What you say about your brand is what you are evaluated on. If you live up to your brand promise, you deliver. If you don’t, you need to make some changes.

Perhaps its time to stop using the word expert.

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