confabulations

the future of email marketing? (cont, again)

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:15:00 +0000

as expected, i received this email form a US soldier serving in iraq who has found a load of saddam's money. apparently, i can get my hands on some of it. so that was quite a nice start to the day really.

the future of email marketing? (cont)

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:01:00 +0000

people not numbers

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:18:00 +0000

customers are not numbers.

they are living, breathing people with everyday joys and troubles. like a friend of mine, Sarah Jones: she’s just got a promotion at work; a friend recovering from serious illness; a child who’s made it to the hockey 1st XI; and a partner who has to leave home earlier and earlier in the morning to beat the rush-hour traffic.

in that respect, perhaps your audience is not so different from you. and you’re not a number, are you?

you could play an important role in Sarah's life. from saving her money to simplifying her life and putting a smile on her face. do it right and you'll be remembered. you'll have earn't the right to be part of her day.

so how do you start?

time to get closer.
personalisation has long been a technique used in the direct marketing industry. this has often been executed in an unsophisticated, heavy-handed way. then again, when it’s done properly, it puts the customer at the heart of the sales or communication process. to do it properly you have to know your audience. and I mean KNOW your audience.

go in search of insight.
to achieve this, seek insight from as many sources as possible. this will help you build up a clear picture of your audience. you’ll almost certainly find you’ve got more than one audience, unless you deliver a niche product. enlist the help of your customer-facing teams, research and data analytics. and bring on-board the creatives to assist in bringing your proposition to life.

stand out from the crowd.
your customer should perceive and experience a brand proposition that differentiates it from the competition. it could be detailed product knowledge, a dogged pursuit of crunch-busting offers or a family-friendly environment. whatever it is, find it and make yourself famous for it. you don’t have to be the biggest or most profitable brand to be great at marketing. out-think, out-smart, out-flank the competition and soon you could be the buzz brand on everyone’s lips

keep it consistent.
experience is crucial to a customer coming back for more. so align all your sales and communication channels to deliver your proposition. that way your audience has a consistent experience through all their touchpoints – from the phone to online; from the high street shop to the email updates.

the measure of your campaign.
try to put some form of measurement or metric into your customer touchpoints. direct marketing is built on the foundation of measuring response, whether that is a mail pack or viral campaign. your customer touchpoints provide an opportunity to add value (or measure) to that engagement. so, for instance, when a customer visits your website (or shop), open dialogue with them and, if they perceive a fair value exchange, gain more knowledge about them by requesting more information about their likes and dislikes. this can help you personalise your relationship with them and give you a way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing. look carefully, the opportunities are out there.

do something wonderful.
and never underestimate random acts of kindness. in a financially driven market (aren’t they all!), generosity, dedication and enthusiasm can go a long way.

i remember Sarah telling me that she was desperately trying to find a flight for her family to go to a wedding in Crete. no-one could help. or no-one wanted to. she finally spoke to an agent who listened to her plight. “Leave it with me,” said this helpful holiday angel. “I’ll get back to you first thing tomorrow morning.”

the next morning, as promised, she called back. “I’ve done it! You’ve got your flight,” the agent exclaimed.

sarah has used this company every year since.

oh! those crazy russians

noreply@blogger.com (kaptain kopy) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:09:00 +0000

an incident from "russia's got talent". so say.

is it real or fake? it has it be a spoof. doesn't it? doesn't it? tell you what, you decide. we laughed (though maybe we shouldn't have.)

personally, we think the guy should have just walked it off.

insight, insight everywhere but not a drop to drink.

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:28:00 +0000

from a creative point of view, customer insight drives a proposition.

using traditional techniques to find it, like data and market research, you'll tend to find where a customer has been, but that’s only part of the story.

what many brands are seeking these days are leaps – a jump in understanding the customer. for this traditional techniques are simply not enough.

to get the breakthrough you need new techniques or perhaps, more importantly a new person to approach the challenge.

ideally this resource is in-house, someone who can approach the issue with an intelligent naivety that allows you to see where opportunities lie in the future, rather than how customers have behaved in the past.

as marketers we have to realize that the audience has moved on. they sussed the techniques of the past and know how to play the game. and marketers think they are so clever with their teaser campaigns, money-off vouchers and bland ideas. so while traditional techniques can be used to help define who and when you communicate, they won’t necessarily tell you with what.

the resource that produces this insight may not use ‘techniques’ at all. the really good ones are born or bred rather than trained. they are obsessive people-watchers who are prepared to go out on a limb to find the real fruit. by taking a leap they discover where they can lead a market, not follow.

this skill provides the space to engage with consumers in new and exciting ways – driven by insight.

examples include Virgin, Lush, Apple and Ikea.

and the cost? if you want insight that create leaps, reframes the market and gives you a competitive edge – employ someone who can make the jump or find a good agency to do it for you.

it should cost and you should be prepared to pay.

the future of email marketing?

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:15:00 +0000

destination branding: bravery should foster competitive advantage

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:09:00 +0000

in a recent article ‘Destination branding: how marketing makes a country stand out’ Julia Berg of Charisma PR rightly said ‘ Country and region brands are everywhere, and each is aimed at helping the consumer see a destination in a different light’.

but my concern is do they?

with so many country brands competing for consumers’ attention, there is a tendency for messages to merge together in a swirl of words and images is the consumer actually still left with far too much work to do.

the purpose of marketing – and direct marketing in particular is to give consumers a shortcut. in effect reduce choice.

how often do you hear it expressed like that?

what happens to the senior client after the pitch?

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:07:00 +0000

permanently listed in the Top 10 of client gripes with agencies is ‘The team that pitches is not the team we end up working with’. worthy of a discussion maybe, but it does prompt another thought. an angle that rarely, if ever, gets mentioned: what happens to the senior client after the pitch?

picture an enthusiastic, passionate agency team rolling up at a company boardroom. in their shiny portfolios is three weeks’ worth of work by ten, delivered in five days by a team of four. there are handshakes all around for their audience, which includes the Marketing Director or even Managing Director. Pitch delivered with aplomb, the agency wait with baited breath for the call.

then, pitch won, the account team meet the client again to confirm the brief, develop processes and set the ball rolling. frantic activity ensues. the agency presents a tweaked strategy (probably), amended concepts (likely) and revised costs (inevitably). excitement abounds. results come in, strategies evolve, media gets changed and brand measures receive in-depth analysis.

and all this activity undertaken without ever seeing the board-level management again.

so is this a bitter gripe?

absolutely not. it’s about engagement. commitment at a strategic level where direct marketing can have its greatest effect. your direct agency will be finding the best way for you to talk to your customers, or helping you to find more. in a fiercely competitive market, what could be more important?

delivering outstanding work, with the customer at the heart of it, needs to be sponsored from the top. ideally, these deeper insights should be integrated across all the marketing activity and customer touchpoints. this means continual engagement at the most senior level has a vital role in creating campaign success.

when senior managers engage with their agency, the results are better. period. and the level of passion and commitment often engendered by the marketing director et al is invaluable for client and agency team alike.

so what stops senior client involvement? perhaps it’s symptomatic of increased time pressures or a worrying lack of representation for DM at the boardroom table. of course campaigns need to be delegated to managers and teams but, in my experience, the best work happens when seniors are involved from start to finish. I’m not convinced this common across the industry.

agencies are used to being beaten with the ‘pitch team’ stick, but that shouldn’t stop them from asking the same questions of clients. groundbreaking results come from ongoing commitment – from both sides.

we’re storytellers. Or should be.

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:01:00 +0000

if brands are an experience, then stories are an effective way to describe this experience to others.

stories are a part of all our lives, and they inform our goals, attitudes and behaviour; they serve as simple yet compelling guides.

you remember stories, not sales pitches, presentations or propositions.

is that it? are results the only way to value direct marketing.

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:54:00 +0000

we had a lengthy client meeting recently where a huge amount of time was spent discussing their brand and how we could articulate this, directly, to their audience. these discussions were intense and called upon the considerable experience of both client and agency to resolve.

turning a brand bible into a communication that actually moves a person to do something is no mean feat. it requires the skills of planners, creatives and client services to take carefully honed brand values to someone using the bridge of customer insight. then of course there's the data bods, finding, segmenting and targetting the audience.

i pondered later the strategic importance of those decisions, not just for our impending campaign, but for the way in which that brand will develop.

it brought to mind a conversation I’d had some months ago with Tony Spong of AAR and a few other industry luminaries.

direct marketing has defined itself as advertising with a ‘call to action’. I’m sure other branches of the advertising industry would believe that they could lay claim to that in their own way. But 'results' have become our USP – measurable results, as if that qualifies it further.

well, if that claim wasn’t under scrutiny before, it is now with the rise of the digital channel and the almost limitless amount of data (results) this can spawn.

the skills in direct agencies are so much broader, but do we promote them and are they recognised?

results appear to be the only way direct marketers can place a value on what they do. or perhaps results is the only value that clients will accept from us. surely, we offer so much more.

or is that it?

not to be sniffed at

noreply@blogger.com (E. N. Tire) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:31:00 +0000

they say it's gonna be a long, hot summer. fab news indeed, unless, of course, you're a hay fever sufferer.

this being so, we're very much enjoying kleenex using twitter as a means to alert britain's snuffle brigade to the nation's pollen count.

nose-streaming twitterers type in the first-half of their postcode and a pollen rating (1-5), along with a tag #atishoo, then, blow me down, it appears on the kleenex website on a flower-strewn google map of britain.

instant. immediate. inspired. and perfectly aligned to what the company flog.

check out the sniffers' map here.

four-ply man-size, anyone?

positive signs

noreply@blogger.com (kaptain kopy) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:59:00 +0000

check out this cracking little short film from down under. it'll warm your cockles.

to watch it - and it's only about 5 minutes long - click here.

salty seadogs

noreply@blogger.com (Mr P. Erfect) — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:53:00 +0000

is he, isn't he. we think resident data guru iain III has more than a passing resemblance to man of the sea - captain haddock.

this week we most humbly recommend

noreply@blogger.com (kaptain kopy) — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:50:00 +0000

what sports tells us about life by ed smith

here's the blurb:

why will there never be another bradman? how do you win 33 games in a row? why did zidane lose his rag on the world's stage? foraying deep into sport's leftfield, ed smith asks the questions we rarely ask of our teams and players. when is cheating really cheating? is the free market good for sport? can talent be a curse? does luck matter? his answers, often controversial and always thought provoking, will delight anyone who has ever wondered why sport matters.

we say: if you love your sport and have a life, you'll rip through this book. the former england batsman composes a beautiful wordy innings featuring scintillating sentences and swashbuckling paragraphs.

he is, by all accounts, one sharp cookie, who has an eye for storytelling and the enlightenment that accompanies it.

bad language just has to stop

noreply@blogger.com (mongrel) — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:45:00 +0000

i read with interest the inaugural speech of the new ipa president, rory sutherland. as you’d expect there is much to commend in the address; from a challenge to the industry to demonstrate its social as well as commercial values, to a rallying call for our various specialisms unite for the common good.

one bit that really caught my eye though was his reference to ‘human understanding’.

it's so refreshing to hear the word human in a marketing context, rather than consumer, target, or data – which is even less personable.

marketers, especially direct marketers, should never lose sight of the fact that the ultimate arbiter of our labours is our fellow citizen; a living, breathing sentient being, not a number on a spreadsheet.

so why do we trot out impersonal labels? and worse still, those ubiquitous bits of ‘marketing speak’, like the way some folks make strategy precede or follow another word to try and make their point sound more, well, strategic. i doubt some are fully understood judging by their random use. even common parlance, like ROI, can have several interpretations depending what you are measuring.

i suppose its part of our identification, a rite of passage, or tribal mentality. and miraculously it would appear that the higher you go the more phrases you can use and, quite possibly, the less sense you make.

refreshing our use of language could ensure our industry focuses on promoting and selling products and services in a way that puts people (and human understanding) at the heart of communication, not numbers. making it more straightforward and direct will also bring to the fore the responsibility we have to consider what value any given campaign may have to another human being. this should lead to even better and more relevant work. that way we might also save ourselves from the ‘junk mail’ jibe, whatever the channel.

this change in language can start whenever an agency and client meet. it should permeate briefs and presentations. every industry creates jargon to act as shorthand to facilitate sharing ideas and thoughts quickly. ours is no different. but over time the lectionary increases, meanings change and use becomes a barrier to real conversation. in my view it gradually dehumanises our endeavour.

sutherland goes on to suggest that human understanding is actually what we should sell in the future. again I am sympathetic to his view. but the challenge is that we can’t sell if clients don’t want to buy. so the industry, client and agency, needs to meet on this point together.

so will our next appointment at entire be a data planner, flash programmer or behavioural psychologist? therein lies the conundrum.

i firmly believe that we should return to real language – communicating clearly without the need for ‘marketingese’ that masks real dialogue.

fiat is driven

noreply@blogger.com (Mr P. Erfect) — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:40:00 +0000

something for those who like to do their bit for the planet and look good doing it. a really lovely website and has some clever data thinking too. eco drive has been round a little while but this little fiat beauty is sure worth the journey.

take a spin

The internet makes me want to rock out

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:01:00 +0000

Today is the day Wolfram Alpha went live. Some people have called it a Google killer, but these people are all journalists and haven't been paying attention.

Wolfram Alpha is basically a HUGE database compiled from loads of information on the internet. Instead of providing you with links to pages to answer a question, it just gives you the answer in a simple, usable format, along with any extra information you could want to know. Average age of someone called Nick, just search 'name nick'. Want to know what happened on your birthday? Just search it. Average salary for Finland? It's there.

It's definitely worth checking out the search examples page to get an idea of the enormous potential this engine has as I've inevitably quoted some really boring searches, there is LOADS of juicy stuff in there.

Google and WolframAlpha will sit alongside each other, both offering different ways of searching the web, each one subtly more suited to certain situations. It's certainly not the end for Google, but it is the beginning (or next step if you use Ubiquity) of the view that the internet is a single entity that can be directly queried, rather than have to be navigated using millions of incongruous pages.

Brilliant.

extend your reach

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:29:00 +0000

i love graphs. usually i manage to keep my enthusiasm for these beautiful creations to choice clients and colleagues, but every so often, a graph comes along that gets me so excited i have to tell the world. well, that 'so often' is today folks. marketing profs emailed me some facts today that i just HAD to turn into a graph. the excitement never stops for me.

So, without further ado, here is:

Years taken to reach 50 million market audience by channel!

is this man ian bates?

noreply@blogger.com (kaptain kopy) — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:40:00 +0000

we're very taken with the story that beyonce has been using a double on her european tour to fulfil some of her duller tasks. you go, girlfriend.

seems that just the other day, the bootilicious one sent her lookilikee to have an official tour of vienna's albertini musuem while she chose to go shopping with her mum. thing is, she got papped by the papparazzi at both places at the same time. they put 2 + 2 together... yadda, yadda, yadda.

interestingly, at the time, the museum bods felt there was something not quite right about their particular beyonce. well, they would say that now, wouldn't they! or, had they rumbled this ruse, but dared not to mention it as to not offend the 'pop princess' in their presence?

anyway, this got us thinking. we know someone who's particularly time poor: mister ian bates: creative director, entire board member, dma council member, opinion former, mover and shaker, visionary... there's just never enough hours in the day.

well, now, there doesn't have to be.

the search is on. is there anyone out there, a double, who could help ian take care of all those tiresome duties he doesn't need to be at? you know, those parties. those media calls. those long, meandering meetings. the endless rounds of handshakes and small talk.

batesy, meanwhile, can do that which he loves the most: spend time at the chaos of the coalface. the pressing deadline, the hunt for the big idea, the a3 pad and the big, fat marker pen.

so far, we've had one idea as to who can 'double up'. maybe you have others!

no-one over 5ft 6 inch need apply.

this week, may we humbly recommend...

noreply@blogger.com (kaptain kopy) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:41:00 +0000

madam hyde writes for the guardian. she is goooood. and very funny. and in this enlightened tome, she exposes one of the strangest aspects of contemporary culture: the emergence of often bird-brained celebrities as our new priesthood, dispensing wisdom and performing good works.

surprise announcement in aussie parliament

noreply@blogger.com (kaptain kopy) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 08:09:00 +0000

wow, jason wood, federal member for la trobe in victoria, makes a strange and surprise announcement in the chamber. quality buffoonery.

keep calm and carry on

noreply@blogger.com (E. N. Tire) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:19:00 +0000

in light of recent events down mexico way, perhaps it's time to reappraise the work of old-school ravers altern 8. obviously ahead of their time, they were.

books on demand

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:58:00 +0000

blackwells have recently revealed an "espresso book machine" in their Charing Cross store. the book is essentially a huge database of texts (mostly out-of-copyright, but new publishers constantly added) which you can select, print and bind on the machine within 5 minutes. that, in my humble opinion, is very very cool.

obviously we've all had access to sites like project gutenberg for a while now, but reading off a screen just doesn't compare to reading a book in print, and i for one would be willing to pay for a hard-copy. as more and more publishers come on board, and the machine is spread nationwide, it means any bookshop can begin to compete with amazon on a stock level, without any expensive storage costs.

the only downside i can see is that the machine, although I'm sure it has a browsing option, won't compare with wandering around a bookshop and picking up random titles (i'm easily attracted by flashy covers). but then, nor can amazon, and they've never seemed to struggle...

facebook releases more data

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:44:00 +0000

Heard from econsultancy that facebook are giving more power to marketers and developers by allowing access to users photos and other information within their API. all comes with the obligatory extra level of 'allow access' buttons, but that's to be expected.

read the full article here

lisa bonet ate no basil

noreply@blogger.com (E. N. Tire) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:23:00 +0000

re: the previous post which reminded us of this palindromic classic! very weird. very al. very yankovic. too clever by half.