Think Nick

Moving hosts

2009-06-03T09:52:00.005+01:00

We're moving. The ThinkNick blog is now on the Neon Nelly site at www.neonnelly.com/ThinkNick, and that's where new posts will go. If you have been following us here, then thank you, and hope to see you in the new place soon.

picture: alleenski

Journey planning

2009-05-13T12:25:00.002+01:00

A little research in recent days has unearthed some fantastic ideas and examples of where we could take data-driven personalisation. Most of the ideas are from the US, but there are some in Hong Kong and Australia too - here's one of them from Eliot Harper. I would love to bring them to the UK. At the moment, some of the ideas are so far ahead of our practice in this country, that they'd be seen as gimmicks with no possible application by almost everyone. And that 'almost' is the encouraging part, because there are a couple of clients and agencies here that do understand. It's good to see that there is a pathway to the future.

picture: Jan Tik

Taking a stand

2009-05-12T14:38:00.001+01:00

Watching - and sharing - the anger at the abuse of privilege shown by the UK's MPs, it's remarkable how much time it's taken for any of the main party leaders to take a credible position. Today, as the second set of details of his members' expenses are made public, the leader of the opposition has declared that he will consider imposing penalties on his party. Meanwhile the Prime Minister has finally managed to say sorry, but has made no public statement about restitution or punishment.

At the moment, the leadership opportunity is to mitigate and minimise damage. Whilst Gordon Brown lurks, not just his party's, but parliament's reputation continues to freefall.

picture: OakleyOriginals

Glazing over

2009-05-06T13:49:00.002+01:00

Third call today from Everest, telling me that 'they are in my area' and offering an appointment. Fair enough, I did get a quotation from them some months ago. Unfairly, I've asked them each time not to call me again. Today, they say 'oh we have more than one list, so we can only take you off one list at a time'. Tried to point out that this is at best a mis-reading of current law, asked to speak to a supervisor, all the usual stuff. They are not listening. They (and note how I've already objectified the company as some kind of personal enemy) are not prepared to accept my feedback or my request, and that means I'm going to look for other ways to tell the story. Everest, there is a better way of doing this, and you could start with your permission policies and codes of practice.

picture: vlima.com

Complaints

2009-05-01T10:11:00.003+01:00

Two pieces of news, next to each other in the same newsletter: one talks about a rise in the number of complaints from consumers about direct mail, and database companies; the other is the launch of a new data management service aimed at 'data novices'. It's worse than ironic. How do we get in front of the data novices to make sure they don't create even more complaints from inappropriate, or even illegal use of data? The best service we can offer the novice is education and skill. It's not just cheaper than a new database tool, it's much more cost-effective, and a lot less risky.

picture: Andrew Currie

Time warp

2009-04-17T15:07:00.003+01:00

There's an interesting exchange going on at LinkedIn about one-to-one personalised marketing.

This is the line from one of the US contributors that rocked me back in my chair:

"About 4 yrs ago I worked at a DM agency and every campaign included a personalized VDP print DMailing, a minisite with a trackable specific URL, followed by an eblast and finally another call to action printed 4pg brochure drawing them back to the website to buy the products.

I am now starting my own business and without even giving it any thought this is exactly my marketing plan...of course scaled down."

And here I am in the UK looking at a grand total of 4 published case studies of work that looks like this - one of which, by the way, increased marketing ROI by more than 500%, and generated £1m in incremental profit, and won awards - and talking to lots of people who think it's a good idea but aren't doing it yet.

It's time to catch up, there's money to be made out there ...

picture: greenishseal

What is direct marketing?

2009-04-14T12:31:00.003+01:00

I am a big fan of Wikipedia, and of the thinking and spirit behind its invention. I've seen claims that Wikipedia is just as 'accurate' as some of the big encyclopedias. In a world where many students now equate 'research' with 'google', it's a popular resource.

So I wondered what a 'googler' would find if they looked for a definition of direct marketing. I read the Wikipedia entry with dismay. I read the comments behind the page as well, and was relieved to find I wasn't the only person who thought it a million miles off the mark.

Who in the commercial world feels they have a responsibility to the world of collaborative 'free to air' knowledge sharing? It is a little scary - and embarrassing - to think that such a partial and misleading description of our world is still out there, waiting for one of us to put it right.

picture: Wikipedia

It's not about the medium, it's about the conversation

2009-04-14T08:49:00.000+01:00

I may not - quite - be the last person to talk about Twitter. It has its fans, advocates and devotees. It is used by some fearsomely intelligent people, and it is being tested and cultivated by a growing number of marketers. New businesses are starting which advise clients on how to use it. And here I am, Luddite, suspicious and sceptical. I've been wrong about things like this before.

And yet, I do think that the excitement about Twitter is masking a basic misconception. Twitter at the moment is about social interaction and networks. Maybe it will come to rival or overtake text messaging, and maybe soon. Perhaps it is already starting to create new ways of sharing information and working together. But from a marketing perspective, please let's not set up yet another medium that operates in isolation from all the others. If Twitter is to be of any use to the marketer, then we have to look at it as part of the conversation, part of the mix. I'm a long way from convinced we've understood this yet with conventional media such as direct mail and email, never mind the Next Big Thing.

Who do you work for

2009-03-24T08:09:00.002+00:00

It's such a common question that we hardly notice its meaning. 'Who do you work for?' We barely notice it even when we talk about someone - as I did yesterday - who 'works for me' or 'used to work for me'. Yes, mostly we take it to mean 'who do you report to?', or 'who pays your wages?'. Let's be clear though, its implications are quite different. The real answer may be that you are working _for_ yourself and your family, you are saving for a house or for retirement, you are making your contribution to society. In a few cases this might be entirely consistent with the answer you actually give when someone asks you the question. For many of us though, I suspect the answer we give is 'I work for Derek / Sheila / your boss or company's name here': and that just isn't true.

NLP people will tell you that our brain believes what we say out loud. Even if it's not true, even if that's not what we really think.

So when someone asks 'who you work for', think about your answer, and say out loud something that you want your brain to believe. And when you start to talk about an ex-colleague as 'someone who used to work for me', then maybe we could think of a fairer way of saying that too.

Managing complex data-driven marketing projects

2009-02-27T17:49:00.004+00:00

Part of the reason for setting up my business Neon Nelly, is to promote the use and understanding of integrated cross-media direct marketing campaigns. They work better for clients, they make more sense to customers.

They are not difficult to manage, but they are different. So I've just published a template on the web to help manage data-driven direct marketing campaigns. There's a pdf version for download too. Happy to hear comments and suggestions for improvement, and very happy for you to pass on the details to others.

Rapid development

2009-02-19T16:05:00.002+00:00

You probably know I'm on a mission to make a step-change in return on investment for direct marketers. Combining the power of data and design, and working in a new way to deliver fast, effective campaigns that just work.

The current issue of the journal from the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) includes a review of some of the techniques and tools I am using to support our service delivery (and if you're not a member, then the journal alone should persuade you to join).

So I thought, perhaps, my timing was about right for the launch of this new service.

Then I looked up a company called Blue North in Canada. There's a salient, passionately argued piece there on personalisation from one of their founders about the importance of these developments, and the different operational model it demands. It's dated 2003.

I think I'd better get a move on.

photo: chadh

Director as leader

2009-02-09T11:37:00.002+00:00

Fascinating to watch the director Danny Boyle on television coverage of the BAFTAs last night. He was gloriously happy when his colleagues won awards. He was anxious and eager for them to speak well and say the right thing in their acceptance speeches. There was not a single moment where you could see him thinking about himself or about his own chances of an award. Then listen to the humility and humanity of his own accpetance speech.

One of his colleagues, the production designer I think, said of him that 'he pushes me forward, and he trusts'.

Sounds like a great leader.

photo: marioladeira

Social Networking: The New CRM

2009-02-03T14:25:00.004+00:00

Oh. It's happening again. Last time it was CRM, which started out as a really powerful idea and approach to marketing, and finished as an almost meaningless acronym that signified nothing more than an attempt at intelligent marketing. As if there were any other kind ...

Now - already - it seems to be Social Networking. Lots of excitement and discussion, yet already it's being diluted and diverted. For a great explanation of Social Networking, and how it works, see Chris Brogan's blog today. Meanwhile on the BBC television news today, they talk about receiving thousands of pictures (of bad weather in South East England) from their audience as a 'fine example of social networking'. Full marks for picking up on a hot topic. Not very many marks at all, in my view, for actually understanding it.

photo: artnow314

Lines of communication

2009-02-02T15:20:00.003+00:00

I asked my MP a question, and he has replied. He didn't answer the question, but he did reply, which is pretty much what I expected.

So I now have an envelope from the House of Commons and some headed paper, and his own signature in ink. Which is nice.

Except I didn't write him a letter. I left a message on his website, which included my email address. So I rather thought I might get an email back. Instead of which he's wasted someone's time composing, printing and posting a letter, never mind the cost of postage. Which is ironic, given that his reply was about getting the best value for government money.

Listening to customers means more than listening to what they say, it also means listening to how they say it.

photo: skype nomad

Tending the greenery

2009-01-21T21:37:00.002+00:00

Earlier today I attended the official launch of a new standard for the environmental performance of direct marketing.

There is some very good news here. There will be a proper BSI kitemark which can be included on qualifying material to demonstrate to consumers that something is being done. There are assessment tools, progressive levels of qualification, and a system that's got the independent credibility of the British Standards Institute. And it ties in with the Royal Mail's launch of Sustainable Mail (although this hasn't actually been approved by Postcomm yet) where there's actually a price advantage for doing the right thing.

One of the tools - see the greendm site here - might cause a ripple for companies who have spent considerable time and effort developing their own bespoke tools to calculate environmental effects of marketing campaigns.

Next step is to see how this works out in reality. A couple of financial services clients are lined up to run pilot projects very soon, and doubtless there will be lessons to learn.

The bit I don't understand, is why the DMA is not making compliance a mandatory requirement for membership. DEFRA (who were part of the launch) made it clear again that it would intervene if the industry did not take sufficient voluntary action to meet its targets for waste prevention and reduction. Yet the DMA people talked about the 'competitive advantage' which would accrue to businesses who followed the new standard, and that compliance was voluntary.

There's a disconnect here. Surely if this initiative is the DMA's best shot at satisfying DEFRA, then they should enforce it across their membership? If only a few companies go for this 'competitive advantage', then we don't meet our targets, and DEFRA will have to step in. DEFRA is unlikely to work with the DMA the second time around.

Once I've had a chance to read the technical details about the scheme (there were about six printed copies available this morning, and I was at the back of the room ...) I will post again.

Who's in charge?

2009-01-12T16:03:00.004+00:00

Apparently there's a reduction in DM spending.

Well, yes, but ...

A large agency network has lost 14 projects in the last couple of weeks from a single client. The agency would have needed to hire freelancers to finish the work on time, and the agency's FD had told everyone he/she needed to give approval of anything which couldn't be done in-house. When a week later the agency still hadn't said it could do the work (because they couldn't get an answer from their FD), the client quite understandably gave it to another agency. Note, the client spend did not change.

It is entirely possible to create your very own recession, if you really want to.

Photo: chefranden

The ship that didn't launch

2009-01-12T11:35:00.005+00:00

Just caught up on some news from Australia (an excellent blog called VeeDeePee), where Vodafone has decided that nobody will get printed statements any more, and they will all be online.

For those of us looking at the opportunity to improve the effectiveness of transactional mail by including relevant marketing messages in customer statements, it's a helpful reminder to think about the whole media mix.

Of course there is still an opportunity to introduce relevant marketing messages online. In fact, there's also the interesting idea of being able to change those messages over time - so that if you are reviewing an old statement, the marketing message can change from the one that was there when it was current.

Nonetheless, this is a wake-up call. Some clients are moving a lot faster than their agencies and service providers expect.

Photo: bobster1985

Balancing act

2009-01-12T10:44:00.004+00:00

Important time now for the new business: some serious interest from some seriously interesting people; need to work on funding (which needs business plan); need to work on the network who will help deliver the service; need to set up meetings and generate some business. All are important. The balancing act, is to devote the right amount of energy and time to each. The mental balancing behind that, is to do the important stuff first, even if - especially if - it's the stuff that I enjoy least (like say, picking a completely random example here, setting up meetings).

Fortunately, I've decided I have to write a blog posting first.

Photo: tourist_on_earth

Two million mistakes

2008-12-16T11:30:00.004+00:00

So, a marketing agency has been fired because of innacuracy in the statistics it used in its mailings. According to the report, 2m out of 184m of the letters mailed in the last few years, have been 'wrong'.

You could argue that this is a special case, because it involves the BBC, which has become supremely sensitive to any allegations of impropriety after various episodes of phone-vote rigging and lapses in editorial standards.

Or you could look at the absolute numbers, and say two million letters with avoidable errors constitutes a great deal of damage to public trust.

Or look again, and see that the whole story is based on one complaint to a national newspaper, a newspaper which had already embarked on a campaign against the BBC. And the complaint was triggered by the receipt by one person of duplicate mailings which carried different statistics.

So actually the _real_ mistake was to mail the duplicate, with different data.

How much do you trust the process you use to ensure you only mail people once? Do you think you need to understand it a little better?

photo: www.ClownInsurance.co.uk (yes, really)

Basics

2008-12-15T09:44:00.003+00:00

A couple of weeks ago, those nice people at British Gas decided to send its customers a heartwarming message about its commitment to the environment. I received a small box containing four low-energy lightbulbs, and a nice leaflet explaining how much money they might help me save.

Except - and stop me if you've heard this before ...

1. I got two boxes, a couple of days apart
2. The name on one of the letters was wrong
3. The salutation on both letters was gibberish
4. The postman had to knock on the door each time, because the box would not fit through the letterbox (or indeed _any_ letterbox, so his round that week was taking a very long time indeed, about which of course he was rather upset)

Arrange the following words into a well-known phrase or saying: foot, shoot, the, in, yourself

I think I understand how this has happened. At the same time I am speechless at the waste, ignorance and arrogance the whole thing betrays.

The letter was signed by the Managing Director. I may not be the first to be writing him a slightly more carefully crafted response.

Crunch?

2008-12-08T19:06:00.003+00:00

1. The local coffee shop says it has never been busier, and they are surprised, as they expected to be an early casualty of people cutting back on discretionary spending.

2. A household name in doors and windows quoted us a laugh-out-loud high price for a replacement door, admitted that 'they don't sell many of these', and ended the call.

3. One of our many local charity shops is dutifully offering '3 for 2' packs of its (charity!) Christmas cards.

It's a confusing picture of the economy at the moment, almost as if we don't quite know how we're supposed to behave.

Picture: 30cakesin30days

Utopia

2008-12-05T14:40:00.003+00:00

Attended a briefing session yesterday from the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Not only was the content fascinating, it was also interesting to listen to the language being used.

One initiative in development, Utopia, is actually an exercise in the management of the complete customer lifecycle (the Chief Exec calls it the 'patient experience', and acknowledge that they are at the 'foothills' of this approach).

They are developing a programme of 'Evidence Based Design' which will involve patients in the re-design of the way care is provided.

There is acute awareness of the challenges of the marketplace which has been created by the changes in funding and oversight of the health service.

It's a hugely complex organisation, with 700,000 patients / customers a year. And it's starting to talk about the patients' perspective, and how to incorporate that into service delivery. For an organisation whose processes were mostly built in the 1940s, it's impressive stuff. What are you doing at your company?

photo: Frank C Muller

Trousers

2008-11-21T12:03:00.004+00:00

So after all the prohecies of doom, the UK figures on retail spending last month showed a very small drop. All that noise and frenzy, and maybe things aren't really that bad. Except we've had our attention distracted by the noise and frenzy.

Walking the dog yesterday afternoon, I passed a mother and child. The child was probably three years old, dressed warmly against the chill of the early twilight. The mother was on her mobile phone, and had been since they came into my view. As our paths crossed, I could hear the child saying "Mummy my trousers are falling down", as she continued to chat. He was right, they were.

Beware the distant voices, they might be distracting us from the real business at hand.

Posturing in the wilderness

2008-11-17T14:24:00.002+00:00

In the last few days, three friends have expressed their amazement and frustration at the way in which some marketing agency people work (time management and ego seemed to be a common theme).

That's not entirely a revelation, since it's been that way for a long time. It is amazing though that someone hasn't changed the prevailing model to fit better what clients want, and how the world is starting to work (collaborative, peer-to-peer networking, rather than sequential hierarchies). What a huge opportunity for an agency prepared to make the change. Or to build something new.

The idea for a specialist service around data-driven, media-neutral creativity and execution, is starting to look more like an idea for a new kind of marketing agency.

Photo: Yogaslackers.com

Falling

2008-11-13T12:54:00.003+00:00

Word is, direct marketing response rates are falling in many sectors. Some companies are starting to talk about reducing or even cancelling their dm spend.

Or ... what you could do ...

... is be smarter with the spend. Use your data and your insights to create marketing that is better targeted, more relevant, data-driven, to strengthen customer relationships, and improve lifetime value.

We should be doing this anyway. With tighter controls being put into place, and sharper eyes on the budgets, all the more reason to do it now.

Photo: George Johnson