by admin | Aug 27, 2012 | Blog
NO!
Of course a marketing consultant is not going to admit that the profession is dying as proposed by the now famous article that appeared in the Harvard Business Review blog, titled “Marketing Is Dead.”
This particular marketing consultant is certainly jealous of the controversial title of the article and the publicity it has received but has to disagree vehemently with the proposition that marketing is dead, not just to defend all marketing consultants and our profession, but because the claim is simply not true, especially when you examine the small business segment, which is yet to get a handle on the basic principles of marketing in general, let alone the more complex issues.
Firstly, lets recap the main points made by the article and then look at the so called evidence, to see whether I personally and my fellow marketing consultants in fact died on the fateful day of August 9th when this outlandish claim pronounced us dead.
Proposition 1:
Studies have confirmed that buyers are no longer paying much attention and traditional marketing communications (Traditional marketing as defined buy the author — includes advertising, public relations, branding and corporate communications)
Buyers are checking out product and service information in their own way, often through the Internet, and often from sources outside the firm such as word-of-mouth or customer reviews.
Rebuttal 1:
You don’t say! Wow, we marketing consultants have had our head in the sand all this time!?
For SME’s, based on the 2011 Hubspot Study, Inbound Marketing (prospects find you; Social Media, SEO, PPC and Blogs) has a 62% lower Cost Per Lead than Outbound Marketing (Direct Mail, Trade Shows, Telemarketing).
The situation is similar at the top end of town, with more and more companies investing less and less into traditional media and more and more into online and social media marketing, where dialogue can be had with their customers and prospects.
And whether the author, Bill Lee, likes it or not, all of these in-bound efforts still need skills of advertising, PR, and marketing communication professionals, albeit skills that now need to be upgraded through ongoing professional development, but again this is nothing new, it’s called change!
Additionally, Mr.Lee needs to be reminded that ‘branding’ is not a ‘traditional marketing communication’, but the result of them. Here are 2 articles on ‘what is branding’ – the most misused and misunderstood term in business today!
http://www.qubepartners.com/blog/and-then-there-was-brand
http://www.qubepartners.com/blog/what-is-a-brand-in-the-words-of-a-few-good-men
Proposition 2:
Studies show that CEOs have lost all patience with marketers and say they lack business credibility and the ability to generate sufficient business growth, are tired of being asked for money without explaining how it will generate increased business, and are sick of all the talk about brand equity that can’t be linked to actual firm equity or any other recognized financial metric.
Rebuttal 2:
Marketers are losing out to the bean counters in the boardroom, however assuming brand equity can not be linked to organisational success, which it actually can be:
http://www.slideshare.net/coolstuff/the-brand-gap and
http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/Best-Global-Brands-2011.aspx
the CEO’s and their distinguished consultants do not have anything to replace the old world marketers with!
Additionally, and especially after the spate of recent global meltdowns, everyone is questioning the value of these overpaid CEO’s. So who cares what they think? Let them like sheep cut their marketing budgets which they regularly do during every economic downturn and they can then watch their competitors who keep investing into marketing pass them by:
1. A number of studies conducted since WWII showed something that marketers have known all along – keep marketing through the downturn. The following quote is from Professional Marketing, Oct-Dec 2008 – article titled “All Hands On Deck”: “…companies that increased marketing spend (relative to market size) during a recession, increased their return on capital employed by 5% in the recovery, compared to a 1% decline for the budget cutters”
2. Recent UK research, “Values of Design FactFinder by the Design Council” has shown that:
- Rapidly growing businesses are nearly six times as likely as static ones to see design as integral.
- Shares in design-led businesses have outperformed the FTSE 100 by more than 200% over the past decade.
- For every £100 a design alert business spends on design, turnover increases by £225.
- Businesses that add value through design see a greater impact on business performance than the rest.
And design is an integral part of the brand communication process, the very process that Bill Lee proclaims as a dead discipline.
Proposition 3:
In today’s increasingly social media-infused environment, traditional marketing and sales not only doesn’t work so well, it doesn’t make sense, because organization hires people — employees, agencies, consultants, partners — who don’t come from the buyer’s world and whose interests aren’t necessarily aligned with his, and expects them to persuade the buyer to spend his hard-earned money on something.
Rebuttal 3:
This one is the simplest proposition to shoot down. Obviously the problem is not hiring the right marketing people! Part of being a good marketer is the ability to get into people’s minds and hearts. Regardless of whether the marketing consultant is a user of the product or service they are promoting, the value of a marketing consultant is to be able to see challenges from the customer perspective and bring new solutions to the problem. If Apple asked their customers to design an MP3 player and a new phone they may have ended up with better products rather than the revolutions that were the iPod and iPhone. Great marketers have been able to give something of value to customers that customers didn’t even know they wanted.
The author then proposes solutions that every marketing consultant would certainly agree with as they have always been the backbone of successful marketing such as building passionate communities or tribes around your brand, targeting customer influencers, looking after VIP’s and assisting them to become advocates.
Marketing is evolving!
In conclusion, let’s put things in perspective – Marketing is not dead or dying, it like most other professions has some problems in the board room, but at least we don’t have a problem of image in the bedroom, as marketing is still seen as a sexy profession, albeit probably for all the wrong reasons.
by admin | Feb 14, 2012 | Blog
90% of SME Communication not only does not maximize ROI, but is WASTED because it doesn’t build or have a cumulative effect!
Most SME business owners do it themselves or let the job be done by the media or designers. Their expenditure lines the pockets of media companies, web developers, designers, printers who are not aware of simple and proven Scientific Advertising Principles.
- Develop an Advertising / Marketing Communications Brief
- Designers need a good brief from a marketer / advertising professional.
- Great advertising / marketing communication is a result of a collaboration between: Marketing Professionals (Strategists – on the Client or Agency side, or both!) and Advertising Professionals (Creatives – Creative Directors, Copywriters, Art Directors, Designers)
- Great advertising / marketing communication provides Hope and Optimism, and in general in a recession customers will block out messages based on FEAR. Emphasize reasons, especially Functional Features, provide evidence that the Brand delivers value and emphasize “family values” if applicable.
Here are are our best marketing resources, free of charge, use them to satisfy the needs of your clients and surpass your competition.
by admin | Feb 10, 2012 | Blog
Here is a checklist for all your marketing communications. Ask yourself the following questions and see whether your marketing communication achieves the following objectives:
- Does your marketing communication grab Attention?
- Does your marketing communication clearly identify your brand? Does it do so immediately and throughout the advertisement?
- Does your marketing communication reinforce your brand identity?
- Does the your marketing communication clearly communicate your brand’s unique promise?
- Is your marketing communication tone and style true to your brands Essence and Personality?
- Does your marketing communication have a Positioning Statement that reinforces the brand’s Promise?
- Does your marketing communication connect with the reader / viewer on an emotional level? Fear? Hope? imagination?
- Is your marketing communication significantly different from that of your competitors? Could another competitor make the same claim? If you inserted a competitor’s logo would it make no sense or be unbelievable?
- Does your marketing communication have a good Offer?
- Does your marketing communication make the reader/viewer believe they will be better off by purchasing your brand?
- Does your marketing communication have a strong Call To Action?
- Do you have the process in place to capture (and measure) responses? E.g..: Keyed Ads?
by admin | Jan 12, 2012 | Blog
Take a look at the websites of 2 similar categories at different stages of maturity:
1. The General Home Services category and
2. A sub-segment of this category ‘Cleaning’
The first is much more mature in terms of marketing communication. Its’ websites project a much more professional and corporate image.
The second is less professional and looks like it is a “small” business, which it is compared to the larger Head Office Marketing driven Franchise!
by admin | Jan 11, 2012 | Blog
First of all, we should acknowledge that marketing in general, and branding in particular, for any professional service organisation has its own unique challenges. The offering is intangible, so you can’t pick it up and compare it feature for feature with a competing offering. The service also relies on humans to deliver it each and every time; it is subject to a lot more variability in quality than a physical product. This means that the quality of a service offering is based mainly on perceptions and external artifacts such as expensive offices, tailored suits and a difficult to complete degrees. The business is also based heavily on personal relationships and the collective intellectual property/knowledge base that a firm can build.
“…branding, a word misunderstood and misused more than any other in business”
Acknowledging these challenges, however, does not change the fact that the major role of branding is still fundamentally about articulating a clear point of difference, one that is valuable to a clearly defined audience. Now let’s examine branding, a word misunderstood and misused more than any other in business. The goal of branding is to become the name people think of immediately when they want what you sell. The purpose of a Brand is to differentiate between products and services and meet aspirational needs as well functional requirements. Brands are the source of a promise to the consumer.
Exhibit A.
The following is a quote from the 2nd of March 2007 Australian Financial Review article, titled “Skills before Thrills” and worse still made by a principal of a marketing firm that conducted research into the marketing of law firms in Australia:
“Over the last 5 years law firms invested significantly into building their brand….While buyers of legal services are more aware of the number of firms they can choose from, they don’t know what these firms stand for, what differentiates them.”
Do we need to shout it out loud? – BRANDING IS DIFFERENTIATION! Maybe the author shouldn’t have skipped Lecture 2, Marketing 101!!! Maybe what they meant to say was that these firms ‘misdirected a lot of their marketing investment’ or ‘have spent a lot of money making prospects aware of their brands’ which is not the same as ‘building their brand’, in fact in fairness, the author alludes to this by calling it “empty awareness”. Building a brand means that your prospects know the difference between you and your competitor so well that they can clearly articulate it!
Why is it not surprising that the so called ‘branding efforts’ by the aforementioned law firms yielded poor results? Could it be that the advertising agencies and marketing consultants involved also missed a few lectures in Marketing 101? Or is it that they do not have the professional fortitude to stand up to their clients and insist that all drab, boring, chest beating ‘corporate speak’ communication must go?
It seems that Australian commercial law firms have either confused branding with visual image which is only a very small sub-set of the branding discipline (but hell who can blame them, marketing fraternity from practitioners to journalists don’t seem to understand the difference!) or they are collectively too conservative (scared) to really take a stand that makes them different and superior.
Exhibit B.
An article from Lawyers’ Weekly May 2008 cites a number of “re-branding case studies”, one of which is:
“We were keen to come up with an understanding a meaning of the brand that related to everyone. It really came down to two things that were really important to the firm. One was the quality of the work that we do and the second was how we do that work and how we relate to the people we’re doing that work with,” he said. “So for us [the issues were] excellence in terms quality of work we’re doing and building real rapport with our clients, with each other, and with other professionals involved with our work.” Blake Dawson worked on the project with brand consultants, Principals, for the best part of 18 months and it was officially unveiled on November 5 year. The effort paid off, and the re-branding was recognized as one of top five of the year in the 2008 ReBrand 100 Winning Brands awards.”
Is this another case of “Emperor’s New Clothes”? We tried to find evidence of the 2 key messages – quality of work and rapport with clients – that supposedly make Blake Dawson unique, communicated on the company website but with no success. Furthermore, the firm’s Positioning Statement “Would you like to grow a little faster?” unfortunately in no way reflects these 2 key messages. But at least the firm has a Positioning Statement and maybe this will focus the efforts of the company to deliver on their promise and assist clients in growing their bottom line. Additionally, Blake Dawson – www.blakedawson.com is one of the few firms to have at least tried to establish some kind of differentiation by incorporating cartoons in the firm’s marketing communications; however this great idea seems not to have been given enough oxygen. There are only 2 pages of the company’s website graced with this simple, humanizing and differentiating concept – unfortunately allowing a great opportunity go untapped.
The trouble is, all the big commercial law firms seem to be working from the same play book and to have taken the road more traveled – and have ended up being both boring and unfocused in their message.
Little wonder market research suggests that clients don’t know what differentiates one firm from another. Now, at the risk of offending people who know how to sue us for defamation… go to the web sites of the major players and look for a clear positioning statement, or anything that is “benefit focused.” If a first year copywriting cadet from AdSchool submitted any of these web sites for an assignment, they would fail because its “all about me” copy doesn’t give any clear differentiation from the competition.
What’s more, they generally try to be all things to all people. They all say, in effect, “we have a bunch of smart people and lots of offices and know the law and care about excellence…” yawn.
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