Monthly Archives: July 2010

Improving marketing

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Here’s the modern marketing conundrum: On the one hand it has become ridiculously sophisticated, and perhaps even over-engineered, -segmented and -specialised. And yet at the same time it’s ridiculed and its status with the consumer and rest of the business has never been lower.

Perhaps over successive decades it’s gradually lost real significance, has been chipped away and has become separated from the business. Gradually pieces of the strategic marketing role have been landgrabbed by CSR department, corporate affairs, HR and even finance.

Technology means that interested consumers can often hold more information than the marketeer about their company finance and reputational issues.

Marketing has almost become a dirty word, not just with consumers but with marketeers themselves. In one meeting I was at recently a marketing client used the term ‘too marketing’ – meant in this case as a derogatory statement implying that there was no evident truth to the idea or the campaign. Marketing has also become synoymous with the veneer that brands employ to hide dirty truths about themselves and the company behind them, or to fool us into thinking they are something they’re not.

And finally as if this wasn’t enough it also obviously suffers from the backlash against consumerism. Nowhere better summed up than by Jonathon Porritt: “The cumulative impact of billions of corporate dollars spent marketing their products, year after year after year, stimulating, reinforcing and exacerbating people’s consumerist fantasies, is almost wholly pernicious.”

Ask people randomly what the definition of marketing is and you’ll get a variety of sales, communication or even getting people to buy stuff the don’t need or want. As the business environment gets tougher it’s even harder to persuade business people that marketing is worthwhile. Marketing is struggling to justify its role and position at the top table.

But marketing is not just about offering more choice than is needed and persuading people to consume more. It also offers us a salvation and, in doing so, a way to be seen as value-creating again. To dispute the claim that marketeers ‘don’t understand other parts of the business’.

Marketeers of the future will excel by taking a stand – and more importantly an interest – in business. We have to avoid thinking myopically about category and promotion and think big about the context of this business in the world, and therefore the potential significance of marketing. The only way that marketing will succeed is in connecting business with a higher purpose, thereby creating enchanced value.

The definition of marketing needs to evolve from being language wholly associated with transactional elements, to take into account its new role in society and peoples lives as well as business.

Try this: Introducing new, improving marketing. All the consumer insight that you are used to but now with added strategic function. Not only does marketing stimulate and fulfil consumer demand, it helps broker change in people’s lives and in society as a whole. New marketing has the power and desire to turn consumption into a creative act.

We’re not talking about just another smoothie here folks. Finally it is something that the world needs.

Is insight outdated?

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Being ‘consumer centric’ and ‘insight led’ is everything these days. Unilever’s director of global marketing strategy was quoted this week “What differentiates world-class companies is a genuine culture of insightfulness.”

But when business and marketing people talk about insight, what actually do we mean? Or think we mean? Or think we want?

Every year over $30bn is spent globally on market research. That’s a considerable amount of money spent on getting data about consumers’ awareness, attitudes, lifestyle, usage, needs mapping, advertising response, market segmentation, competitive analysis, pricing dynamics, shopper experience, and increasingly now real-time monitoring of popular opinion in social media.

But how much of that data actually represents fresh, meaningful, actionable insight? Almost exclusively market research focuses on analysing people as consumers. Marketing became so self-obsessed it forgot that consumers, markets, business, they’re all social constructs. But it’s seemingly not yet world-aware enough to consider gaining wider insight about people and society from social science.

Two weeks ago the great and the good of the international social science community convened in Gothenberg for the 17th International Sociological Association Congress. The final plenary session focused on critical questions facing the discipline of sociology today. For instance, among other things, the implications of the fact that sustainability requires that new relations be intentionally established between society and nature. There’s quite a lot just in that thought…

Actually since the early 80s sociologists have had lots of interesting things to say about the implications of sustainability on society. In 1987, for instance, Prof. Michael Redclift (King’s College, University of London) published findings of extensive ‘market research’ into global public opinion on the trade-off between environmental protection and commercial growth, and the implications on consumer lifestyles.

More than two decades later we’re relying on focus groups conducted in airless rooms with artless questions being posed about artificial attitudes towards Brand X’s ‘exciting new sustainability concept’. Might not sociological research, and probably psychological too, provide something a bit more ‘consumer centric’ and ‘insight led’ than that?

A recent Accenture survey of marketing executives in the States and UK found that 70% have difficulty capturing the attention of consumers with their marketing campaigns. Well guys, here’s a chance to try something new. Maybe just $1m of that $30bn..?

The biggest reporting letdown in history?

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This Tuesday GE released its new citizenship report – less than one week after it launched its $200m innovation challenge (see two stories below).  Its ‘highlights’ are billed as:

* Details of a reconvened Expert Advisory Panel

* Updates on GE’s human rights statement of principles implementation, product innovation in emerging markets, public policy engagement, and reporting on greenhouse gas emissions and water use

* A letter from the Director and Chairman of the Public Responsibilities Committee

Ecomagination is arguably the most exciting example of large scale industrial sustainable revolution so far this century. In the first five years since launch, it has generated $70 billion in revenues, with GE investing $5 billion in R&D. It now represents over 30% of the company’s overall revenue, and it has sprouted an impressive portfolio of over 90 clean-tech products including localised innovations in developing markets.

And the report’s launch leads on the story of a reconvened advisory panel…

Why would such an important vision and such exciting innovation be presented with so little dynamism? How could such impressive capital expenditure be so poorly capitalised? And can the report’s writers really think this news is only relevant for ‘expert’ audiences – and that even they wouldn’t appreciate a bit more of an entrée?

And when, oh when, will companies’ CSR and Comms counterparts start working together on this stuff?

Meaning is the new search

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At the end of last year Simon Mainwaring wrote a fascinating article which posited meaning as being the new measure of a brand’s success. In 1964 Marshal McLuhan had made the famous statement “The medium is the message”. More recently Stowe Boyd stated “Meaning is the new search”. Now Mainwaring goes beyond that to suggest that “Meaning is media”.

As Mainwaring put it, the core issue is that traditional media silos no longer control content generation, and these days consumers are looking for meaning in content in many new and different places. As such, meaning must replace media as the lens through which we view the consumer landscape.

In a sense there’s nothing new here – everything that ‘matters’ in our world still revolves around generating ‘relevant differentiation’ for consumers.

But there is a new bit: It’s that consumers will increasingly decide what’s relevant to them according to stuff they hear and are exposed to in their lives, rather than just what’s piped through to them via managed media and controlled campaigns.

And the significance of that is that relevant differentiation will increasingly be generated around messages which aren’t so limited to what matters within a given brand’s immediate category context. Things in the ‘real’ world will come to matter more. Stuff relating to people, not just to consumers.

So the smart brands will work to establish meaning that goes beyond their categories, is unique to them, and relevant and compelling to their audience.

Nike’s Stefan Olander put it nicely when he said “If we can do something good for someone, no matter the product, it’s going to be good for us.”

The biggest innovation challenge in history

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For the country whose fortunes turn on a dime: Sustainable innovation doesn’t get much more straightforward or sensible than this…

Can brands offer creative consumption?

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Yesterday saw the launch of the TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) Report for Business. It’s a global study, initiated by the G8 and five major developing economies, focusing on ‘the global economic benefit of biological diversity, the costs of the loss of biodiversity and the failure to take protective measures versus the costs of effective conservation’.

The report’s leader Pavan Sukhdev began his summary: “Modern society’s predominant focus on market delivered components of well-being, and our almost total dependence on market prices to indicate value, means that we generally do not measure or manage economic values exchanged other than through markets. This is especially true of the public goods and services that comprise a large part of the benefits that nature provides humanity.”

The report goes on to identify how critical is has become to give an economic value to the currently largely unpriced ecosystem services that biodiversity provides us. For instance, using data from the Eliasch Review, it shows that through the services of re-creation, water regulation and carbon storage, ecosystems avoid GHG emissions by conserving forest and provide economic services worth $3.7 trillion (NPV).

Whilst measurement of biodiversity and ecosystem services is still challenging for business, it’s improving. This has been the major achievement of the CSR movement – getting companies thinking about their ‘external’ impacts, dependencies, risks and responses.

As far as we see it though, the challenge going forward is not one of reporting. (It’s no longer possible for a business that wants to succeed to ignore doing that.) The next challenge is about creating and evolving brands to offer what we call ‘brand ecosystems’ – proprietary models through which a brand identifies its unique environmental or social value, and brings it to life for the buying public in a way that’s relevant and compelling enough for them to ‘buy it’.

That’s the next phase. I guess it’s BSR – brand social response. It’s the turnkey to the ultimate nirvana: Brands representing business models offering net-positive outcomes.

Socially activated social networking

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So social networks have become the phenomenon that will revolutionise brands. Every client’s briefing their every agency to get them some ’social buzz’. It’s a bit like when every client wanted ’something viral’ for their brand.

Only now, more than ever, the challenge for brands will be to deliver meaningful content that’s actually relevant to people’s lives, and compelling enough for them to engage with because it has some degree of social utility.

Is this where social strategies come alive for brands?

Whatever happened to the heroes?

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Social innovators are heroes.

Because they feature in stories we hear, and stories we pass on; Because their lives carry meaning beyond those of ordinary mortals; And because, they write their own story about an impossible outcome, a fantasy fiction (what if.., why can’t..?) and go on to make sure it becomes a factual reality.

So is it my own limited knowledge that means I can only count on one hand the social innovators of our time (Yunus, Roddick…)? How can it be that, in an age when the context for social innovation is so stark, the need so great, so few brilliant stories come to light? In the age of stupid, where are the geniuses?

Actually, I don’t think they don’t exist. I think they’re out there, but we just don’t hear their stories. Also I believe the coming years and decades will recognise these people and their stories more and more.

So here’s one. It’s a story of a lady who studied atmospheric gases and got worried about climate change induced by human activities. (You can believe it again now – ClimateGate just got killed off in an independent hearing). Then she realised changing how we use energy at home would be the quickest route to the biggest effect. Finally, she figured out the only effective way to change how we use energy at home would be to build an energy company. Here she is telling her story.

Next time you hear a story about somebody with a mad impossible unreasonable idea, clock it. That’s a hero in the making… Pass the story on.

I need a holiday

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Chances are you are a consumer of the world’s biggest industry. Tourism. And it’s getting bigger. Predicted growth reflects the estimated 1.6 billion people taking a trips outside their own country by 2020.

Tourism on this scale has big social and environmental costs with issues such as over development – think Costa Del Concrete – pollution, damaging emissions and culturally insensitive invasions.

So it was really interesting to see Thompson and First choice launch their sustainable tourism brand Holidays Forever this week raising awareness for sustainable tourism. They found that 96% of holidaymakers they polled care about protecting the local environment and wildlife in the resorts they visit. It’s not all cheap package holidays, low cost airlines and places ticked off your list. Ecotourism is no longer a niche proposition.

These days we all crave authenticity and real experiences – urban workers are desperate to reconnect with nature – in search of deeper fulfillment and even personal growth. Ecotourism can address all of these needs. Companies like Virgin Holidays are already offering their customers amazing experiences, from joining Indian families for a real homestay experience to volunteer holidays or reconnecting with nature by joining the Masai tribes people.

This represents the new age of tourism and a new opportunity for tourism brands. They are no longer providing a straightforward commerical transaction but the possibility of a life changing experience to boot. This is travel with purpose and the benefits will last a lot longer than your sun tan. Brands must look to people’s need for self-realisation and fulfillment through travel and inspire and innovate.

Travel is far too important to us to ever give it up, but with our own needs we have to balance the need to preserve these amazing places for others to enjoy in the future. Brands that succeed in this space will be asking people ‘why’ and even ‘how’ they want to go before even starting on ‘where’.

UNWTO World tourism Barometer

Can creativity seduce us into sustainability?

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CSR is dead. Long live CSR!

Yesterday Jonathon Porritt, Anointed Champion of Sustainable Business, announced the passing away of the Old Way. He uttered “Bottom line: Science alone is not enough. The truth has not set us free. And nor will it.” as he called the Order of The Creative Industries to support the Accession of the New Way.

In its early years the Old Way had been full of hope and promised Guiltless Enterprise. It tirelessly brought to light the transgressions and shortcomings of the business world, imposed measures and checklists, departmentalised ownership of subject matter and awards entries, and to loud fanfare celebrated the Hierarchies of Achievers.

But in the later years it became evident that the reform would not go far enough. Whilst the Old Way has put into place the process of change in the business world, a New Way will be necessary if the nation’s subjects are to change their ways.

Addressing the Order of The Creative Industries, Jonathon Porritt CBE asked “Can the creative industries seduce us into sustainability?”