Naked fillies in the boudoir. Rampant heirs apparent. Provocative, yes – saucy even – but this was no frivolous sex-up. It was just thoroughbred royalty telling it like it is.
When a really big event shifts its annual calendar slot to make way for an even bigger event, it’s got to do it with abundant dignity. That, and a good measure of appropriate arrogance.
In ‘The Year of the Soccer’, the Vodacom Durban July had a choice to make: Remain in its traditional calendaring on the first Saturday in July and compete head-on with the final days of the World Cup – or move.
Says Neil Jackson, Creative Director at Synergy Marketing Partners: “I think our client Gold Circle was confident that its event had enough residual momentum to ably survive a postponement. But still, the World Cup is a tough act to follow – and rebooting Durbanites up to full party mode again was the challenge.”
Among South Africa’s iconic sport brands, the Vodacom Durban July is here now because it has been here before. Its traditions reach all the way back to 1897, releasing their thrill into Durban’s Winter sunshine across three centuries, racing on through two World Wars, social change, and economic uncertainty. It wasn’t going to choke on a date-change.
Still, Gold Circle’s PR effort for the event rolled out this year like a regiment of Sherman tanks firing paint balls. Horses. Fashion. Personalities. The message was forthright: the nation’s thoroughbred royalty is convening in pursuit of a three million rand purse – pause, pay attention.
“This is bigger than Durban,” says Jackson. “It’s bigger than South Africa. The Vodacom Durban July now has its place in the global horseracing hierarchy. The race is an abundant producer of horses that go on to quite spectacular international achievements.
“So, advertising-wise, we wanted to really remind people of the quality of racing on offer. Radio theatrically presented a ‘battle royal’ and positioned the event a ‘the most adrenalin-soaked two minutes in South African sport’. In print, the runners paraded amid the splendour of some of the world’s most iconic palaces. If you were going to pick your fancy, you were going to pluck nobly.”
Africa’s greatest horseracing event returned this year without missing a stride. Fabulous weather, a party like no other, and racecourse turnover strongly up.
Cheapest reliable alternative
For most products and services, most of the time, people sign up for the Cheapest Reliable Alternative Plan.
If everything appears to be the same, then of course they’re going to pick the cheapest one that’s good enough.
In the face of this understandable strategy, you have a few choices:
You can be cheapest (difficult to sustain).
You can be more reliable (great if you can figure this out).
You can redefine the playing the field to be the only one (most preferred).
Buying a new microphone or lights for your DJ business doesn’t do any of these three to your competitive status, it merely makes you feel good. Same with re-organizing your office, painting the parking spaces or buying a new laptop. They merely keep you where you were.
The scalable, profitable strategy is to change the game, not to become the most average.
Venture capitalists, Sequoia, use this criteria to select in which businesses they will invest. It also happens to be a good check list to apply to your own business, or business units.
CLARITY OF PURPOSE
Summarise the Company’s business on the back of a business card.
LARGE MARKETS
Address existing markets poised for rapid growth. A market with a $1 billion potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop.
RICH CUSTOMERS
Target customers who will move fast and pay a premium for a unique offering.
FOCUS
Stick to a simple product with singular value proposition.
PAINKILLERS
Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to a customer and delight them with a compelling offering.
THINK DIFFERENTLY
Constantly challenge conventional wisdom. Take the contrarian route. Create novel solutions.
INFERNO
Start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A big market with customers yearning for a product requires very little firepower.
TEAM DNA
Team members that are the best in their domain. A-Level founders can attract an A-Level team.
AGILITY
Stealth and speed will usually help beat out large companies.
FRUGALITY
Focus spending on what is critical. Spend only on priorities.
Source Business Day, StreetDogs. 10 December 2009
It never fails. You see a print, outdoor or online ad for a company, review it a couple of times, and still can’t figure out what the company does or sells.
That’s bad, and usually a waste of a company’s marketing resources.
While advertisements certainly need to be catchy and smart, companies sometimes go overboard, and even out of their way, to leave a lot for the consumer to figure out. In a world where people are touched by thousands of messages a day and are usually unengaged, especially with what you are trying to sell to them, don’t leave it to chance. You have to bang consumers over the head a bunch of times, as it is, to get their attention. Why make it even harder?
Don’t get this marketer wrong: You definitely want your ads to be compelling and memorable. A great photo with headline that grabs the audience’s attention is important. But you’ve always got to come home with your message. Make sure you say who you are, what you offer and how to find out more.
Less is usually more when developing copy for advertisements. Keeping ads elegant makes the words you do choose count. Don’t feel like you have to fill the entire ad with words. In fact, some ads that pack the most impact are often filled with lots of white space.
Effectively conceptualized billboards that are well-designed are the best examples of elegant, to-the-point-advertisements. If you can read an outdoor advertisement at 65 mph, that first gets your attention with a great headline or image, then in just a few words explains what the advertiser offers and how to buy it — that’s a simple message that gets the job done.
If you run marketing for a larger organization, take ownership of your company’s advertising. This is especially important when your organization seems to always turn into a bake sale committee of wannabe experts from every department, telling you to cram every possible idea into an ad.
Advertising needs to be compelling and resourceful. That means keeping it simple and not wasting money on ads that you have to be an MIT graduate to figure out. Get to the point. Consumers are usually too busy to connect the dots.
Remember, make sure your ads say who you are, what you offer and how to get it.
Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a leading Hudson Valley advertising and public relations agency. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com
A lot of money is spent chasing the ‘Customer Loyalty’ rainbow – but I suspect that few find the pot of gold,
Why is this?
- First of all, the underlying hypotheses that ‘customer loyalty can be bought’ is wrong. It can only be earned. When you do buy it, you probably pay more than it is worth.
- Secondly, most customer loyalty Programmes are actually advertising campaigns targeted to segments of the client database. They try to get customers to spend more – and have little to do with customer loyalty. Nothing wrong with this – it just needs to be recognized for what it is.
- Third – a customer is ‘loyal’ because they like your product and service – in other words, they like the brand experience delivered by your people. If this is working for you, you don’t have to buy their loyalty – they will give it willing and bring their friends. Many CRM programmes will claim to be rewarding this loyalty with discounts on future purchases – but are they not ‘buying’ business they would have got from a satisfied customer? Loyalty should certainly be recognised – but at what cost?
- Finally, Customers are not a homogeneous Group. So trying to communicate with each individual in a relevant way is going to be too expensive and complex for most Companies. And yes – there are a number of smart CRM software packages available, but I can’t remember ever being on the end of one! Can you?
Many years ago I came across this model used by Sears in the USA. I have no inside knowledge on how successful it was or if it is still used. But I share it here – because it just makes sense.
- Staff who are positive about their job and the Company will have positive behavior towards clients and will stay with the Company longer.
- The positive behavior of employees translates into service helpfulness and adds value to the merchandise with superior product knowledge.
- And hey! The customer is satisfied with the experience, recommends friends and returns to spend more.
- So higher scores in Employee attitudes and retention can be measured. They in return will drive customer retention and recommendations which can also be measured.
- These higher scores will correlate with improved financial performance.
It is possible that the secret to Customer Loyalty lies in Employee Loyalty!
If you buy into the idea that your Brand is an ‘experience’ not a logo – then who owns it?
The ‘custodians’ of most brands are the marketing people and the Ad Agency – but is the Employees who really own it. They deliver the experience- so in fact they are the real custodians.
This diagram illustrates the relationship – and the tension – that is always present between the promise and the delivery. Awareness and experience.
How often do we see great advertising creating high awareness of a poor experience? More often than most marketing folks will admit.
I’m sure there are others – but these 12 Questions will tell you most of what you need to know to measure Employee Attitude about their job and the Company. They could be the most cost effective solution to your Customer Loyalty objective. Because, if staff loyalty is low customer loyalty will follow.
- Do you know what is expected of you at work?
- Do you have the materials and equipment to do your work right?
- At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
- In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for good work?
- Does your supervisor or someone at work seem to care about you as a person?
- Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
- At work, do your opinions seem to count?
- Does the mission /purpose of the company make you feel like your work is important?
- Are your co-workers committed to doing quality work?
- Do you have a best friend at work?
- In the last 6 months, have you talked to someone about your progress?
- At work, do you have opportunities to learn and grow?
These 12 Questions come from the outstanding book “First Break All the Rules”. The Authors worked for the Gallop Research Organization, and they analyzed a million employee survey responses – and using various regression techniques were able to isolate the 12 Questions that provide the key answers.
The book has a lot of wisdom on how to apply the results in your own Organization – but that is not the purpose of this article.
Because we were fascinated by the Questions – we included them in a number of Employee Climate Surveys we have been involved with.
Here is a typical ‘South African’ result from one of the 12 questions – and interestingly, the Managers’ answers were the complete opposite. This was common across 8 large surveys we conducted – Managers frequently had a different perception to the staff regarding issues like ‘Praise and Recognition’. Managers universally believed that they gave praise and recognition on a regular basis - 62% staff disagreed. How do you rate?
Once we remove the ‘confusion’ of customer loyalty – there are great opportunities when you know who your customers are, how to reach them and what they purchase.
The 2 key skills here are:
- Segmentation
- Direct Marketing creative skills.
In this Post I will not tackle Creative skills as this is a big subject on its own. With Segmentation there are many solutions – but clearly there is little point in a Psychographic Segmentation which cannot be applied to a database. One form of segmentation that can be productive is shown in the graphic below.
This Segmentation focuses on the Total Value of a customer over time and the Frequency on the customer’s activities.
Pareto’s Law tells us that 80% of your profit will come from 20% of your customers and they live in Segments 1 to 4 [ high value and high frequency]. Most of your Retention effort can be made here – and most of your budget should be directed here. Segments 6 to 8 provide for growth with ‘Cross Sell’ and ‘Up Grade’ strategies. For example, Segment 6 in a retail clothing environment may well be someone who buys once a year on the Sale. Whereas Segment 5 could well be the frequent shopper who pops in once a month for the fresh fashion. They need different marketing propositions.
Segment 9 – which could be 30% plus of the customer base – may have limited future growth and may not justify expensive communication programmes? Low frequency and value due to economic circumstances! You may well find that they contribute 20% of turnover and 80% of your costs.
1. USE BRAINSTORMING TO COMBINE AND EXTEND IDEAS, NOT JUST HARVEST THEM
Andrew Hargadon’s How Breakthroughs Happen shows that creativity occurs when people find ways to build on existing ideas. The power of group brainstorming comes from creating a safe place where people with different ideas can share, blend, and expand their diverse knowledge. If your goal is just to collect the creative ideas that are out there, group brainstorms are a waste of time. You may as well stick to a Web-based system for collecting ideas. Even an old-fashioned employee suggestion box is good enough for this limited task.
2. DON’T BOTHER IF PEOPLE LIVE IN FEAR
Groups bring out the best and the worst in people. If people believe they will be teased, paid less, demoted, fired, or otherwise humiliated, group brainstorming is a bad idea. If your company fires 10% of its employees every year, people might be too afraid of saying something dumb to brainstorm effectively.
3. DO INDIVIDUAL BRAINSTORMING BEFORE AND AFTER GROUP SESSIONS
Alex F. Osborn’s 1950s classic, Applied Imagination, which popularized brainstorming, gave sound advice: Creativity comes from a blend of individual and collective “ideation.” This means building in time for people to think and learn about the topic before the group brainstorm, as well as time to reflect about what happened after the meetings. When I studied the IDEO team as they developed a new hair-cutting device, engineer Roby Stancel told me that he prepared for the session by going to a local hardware store to look at all kinds of cutting machines — lawn mowers, hedge clippers, and weed whackers — to inspire him before the group session.
4. BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS ARE WORTHLESS UNLESS IDEAS LEAD TO ACTION
Brainstorming is just one of many techniques that make a company creative. It is of little value if it’s not combined with observing consumers, talking to experts, or building prototype products and experiences that provide an outlet for the ideas generated. I’ve worked with “creative” companies that are great at coming up with ideas, but never implement them. I once studied a team that spent a year brainstorming and arguing about a simple product without producing a single prototype, even though a good engineer could have built one in an hour. The project was finally killed when a competitor came out with a similar product.
5. BRAINSTORMING REQUIRES SKILL AND EXPERIENCE BOTH TO DO—AND ESPECIALLY—TO FACILITATE
Not everyone can walk into a room and lead a productive brainstorming session. It is not a job for amateurs. In all the places I’ve seen brainstorming used effectively — Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), SAP’s (SAP ) Design Services Team, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, the Institute for the Future, frog design, and IDEO — brainstorming is treated as a skill that takes months or years to master. Facilitating a session is a leadership skill that takes even longer to develop.
6. A GOOD BRAINSTORMING SESSION IS COMPETITIVE—IN THE RIGHT WAY
In the best brainstorms, people compete to get everyone else to contribute, to make everyone feel like part of the group, and to treat everyone as collaborators toward a common goal. The worst thing a manager can do is set up the session as an “I win, you lose” game, in which ideas are explicitly rated, ranked, and rewarded. A Stanford grad student once told me about a team leader at his former company who started giving bonuses to people who generated the best ideas in brainstorms. The resulting fear and dysfunction drastically reduced the number of ideas generated by what had once been a creative and cooperative group.
7. BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS CAN BE USED FOR MORE THAN JUST GENERATING IDEAS
Brainstorms are places to listen, learn, and educate. At IDEO, they support the company’s culture and work practices. Project teams use brainstorms to get input from people with diverse skills throughout the company. Knowledge is spread about new industries and technologies. Newcomers and veterans learn about who knows what. The explicit goal of a group brainstorm is to generate ideas. But the other benefits of routinely gathering rotating groups of people from around an organization to talk about ideas might ultimately be more important for supporting creative work.
8. FOLLOW THE RULES, OR DON’T CALL IT A BRAINSTORM
This is true even if you hold only occasional brainstorms and even if your work doesn’t require constant creativity. The worst brainstorms happen when the term is used loosely and the rules aren’t followed at all. Perhaps the biggest mistake that leaders make is failing to keep their mouths shut. I once went to a meeting that started with the boss saying: “Let’s brainstorm.” He followed this pronouncement with 30 minutes of his own rambling thoughts, without a single idea coming from the room. Now, that’s productivity loss!
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