The Marketing Consul

Decision making in marketing (or how to leave a meeting room really mad)

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:58:00 +0000

I’d suggest government agencies and other SME-related organizations to create two other indicators to categorize that type of business: decision making and corporate structure. Though I’m sure it would be very hard to quantitatively measure both, it certainly would make marketing a more respected discipline. The amount of casual, informal and own-minded decision in marketing is just unbelievable.

When you think that managers and other marketers are on the path to a more solid and less biased position towards decisions about communication, planning or anything else, it all comes down to what people think. The problem starts here. Marketing decisions are widely based on what people think on what other people say, and not what THINGS (the market, a research, a poll, results analysis etc) TELL people to do. I did study a little of psychology in marketing and it’s not that different from what see in people’s psychology. It’s just a human being thing. Well, wished I could always work with professionals, not human beings.

A number of decisions were taken right in front of me considering the past 30 seconds. You read it right. A decision, a Yes or No, an option A or B or C, was decided on an impulse of a question made on site. Is that what people learn and do at school? Answer with your heart? Decide with your intuition? Marketing is not a democracy so people would count the majority of votes in a room and then proclaim the winner.

Cancellation is not an online policy

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:58:00 +0000

In 2007 I read an article from a marketer complaining about the relation of existing customers and him, an old and loyal client from AT&T (sorry, I forgot to take not of the author and title). Well, he was ranting about aggressive new customer acquisition policies and even quoted an example of AT&T sending 80-dollar cheques to newly-activated individuals whereas he only received the customary monthly bill.

The article came to my mind again when I had to cancel my cable, telephone and internet services. First I called the company, and asked them to transfer my service to another person. Later it occurred I could try something online. These days a lot of companies offer the world in the internet. Even ordering pizza and DVD rentals are now online. I would imagine a big Canadian telecom corporation could offer something else, something differentiated. I was right about being wrong. It wasn’t exactly a surprise to see how Telus deal with that. My bill comes by e-mail. The opt-ins are always there in case you want to come back to paper, but not to cancel the service. There’s nothing I can do online if I want to leave them, and that sounds quite incoherent to me.

Firstly, all these services companies have the technology to provide an easy online registration and/or activation. Is it ask too much they create an easy cancellation button? Secondly, it is not difficult to imagine why they want to avoid online cancellations. That would give the customer a real time power to leave them anytime they wanted. A single aggressive promotion would be enough to drag people from the company to another player in the market. Fair enough, that only looks a way to shade a poor, bad or not cost-effective service package. If a product and its delivery are solid, the customer service works, why being so afraid to offer a cancellation button on their website?
On the other side, BCHydro, the energy provincial authority and service provider of British Columbia, offers a very simple and visible cancellation option at their website. One might argue that this case is absolutely different from Telus and it is indeed. We’re talking about two companies totally different, though the market is still the same. Some other details should also be considered, like the fact BCHydro is almost a monopoly in that market so there are no competitors to migrate – and that gives them a certain level of comfort. Another difference is the fact that household needs basic services like energy. The same doesn’t apply to cable TV or internet. However, deep down the principles I mentioned earlier are the same. I have no reasons to go a BCHydro competitor because their online services are great, their customer services is fast, objective and educated, on and offline. I also never had a problem with their services, not a single drop down.

Power of marketing II – Celine Dion

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:57:00 +0000

Everybody I know, from different countries, cultures, religions, beliefs and personal opinions would like to stay away from the subject “Celine Dion”. They just don’t want to talk about her, hear about her, comment about her and top of the list: listen to her sing. I don’t know a single person in the world who likes, or at least would bear to listen to Celine Dion’s music. Only mentioning the name is enough to make people frown and/or show disgust. Don’t get me wrong. She has a lot of talent and a powerful voice that would rank her among the best of her category, no doubt about it. Personally speaking, my problems with her are the repetitive and cheesy lyrics and melodies plus the constant habit of elevating the tone a little too much during performances (aka screaming).

However, how the heck
. She has sold 200 million copies worldwide up to April 2007?
. She was the highest paid artist in 2006 with more than $80 million dollars exclusively playing at a casino-hotel in Las Vegas – middle of an American nowhere desert?
. People would pay $200 dollars per concert (in average) to see her?
. A person would pay $200 dollars to see Celine Dion performing?
. Her new song (“Taking Chances”) is playing regularly in a lot of popular radios in Canada and probably worldwide?
. She appears in the hot spot of major newspapers, TV shows, magazine covers and ads all over North America?
. She performed at the prestigious and coveted American Music Awards, being introduced as the best-selling female artist of all-time?
. Air Canada paid a fortune to hire and promote Dion’s “You and I”, and had her as their marketing ambassador in one of their major campaigns a few years ago?

An absurd theory to consider is that only people from Québec, where Dion is originally from, could buy her music. The province of Québec has approximately 8 million people. Statistically speaking it means each inhabitant there would need to have bought almost 17 CDs from Celine Dion, which is impractica1ble and unlikely. Add a few selections, like the fact the bulk of her music is not in French anymore (a big impact in a Francophone place like Québec), and the average per person could triplicate. How does she sell so much then? What sells her? Her music? Her voice? Her personal life? Her legs?

Now consider another question: what would be Celine Dion’s music net selling? She sold 200 million copies, this is audited, but how many people threw the CDs in the garbage, had it stolen (including mine), gave it to charity, friends or acquaintances (to be thrown in the garbage once again)? In the end, total number of sold copies minus number of tossed copies would be 50 million? 35 million perhaps? It doesn’t matter, it would eventually be a big figure anyway. Mechanisms to calculate retention of loyal fans are still oblivious to marketers. Very likely they’re not even thinking about it. Once you stuffed an artist’s music to someone the work is done, at least until the next release. Such kind of product is all about acquisition, little back-end.

I shall get back to the point though. Can someone explain why or at least how she sells? This is one of those marketing contradictions who just don’t go away easily.

The beauty of uniqueness in marketing and vice-versa

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:56:00 +0000

Once I had the chance to receive a link that surprisingly made my day and probably my week and month.

http://www.responseproject.com/

The Response Project by New Page Corp was a grateful surprise in a world where people think PR is marketing (unfortunately including some marketers). It was like watching a bunch of rocket scientists walking in a catwalk during a fashion show in Milan. It sounds weird (meaning unique in this case), but eventually entertaining and educative.

Marketing dream

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:36:00 +0000

The other day I was reading a post by Peter DeLegge. He’s been absent of writing to his blog for quite a while, since early 2007. The latest post I saw was about Steve Jobs’ open letter to early Iphone buyers. Summarizing, some people were unhappy because Apple had just decided to lower the price on Iphones. Early buyers naturally thought this would be an unfair move since they paid a lot not too long for exclusivity. Had they known Apple would do something like that so early, a good deal of them would have waited more. Jobs frugally solved the problem. You can see the letter here (thanks, DeLegge). It’s a simple and brilliant piece of marketing, both for the company and its CEO.

I tried to think beyond Apple, Iphone and the letter. I thought about glory for a marketer. For a considerable while I was frustrated and sceptical about marketing. A lot has already been done and many personalities are real marketing scientists, something that really praises me and makes me proud of following a career in marketing. My problem started with a lack of purpose and objective. Seeing constant mediocrity and lack of really substantial ideas in articles, ads, blogs and comments made by marketing insiders just showed a gloomy scenario of how stupid and shallow the profession can be. Then came this letter from Steve Jobs.

If you read it, you’ll see his solution is very simple, though it could sound as a cheap bribe to some. Maybe not that cheap, it’s true. However, I humbly try to imagine myself as part of the Iphone developing team. By developing I mean everyone directly involved, but most especially the marketing and product managers. Apple had done it before, they shook the whole world with Ipod, like Google, Youtube and other mega corporations have done in the past. It wasn’t only a technological breakthrough. A whole generation was affected culturally, legally, socially… you name it. The legacy still remains strong up to date.

Thinking of Apple refreshed, renewed and restored my interest for marketing once again. Trying to imagine a small percentage of the joy and recognition these marketers at Apple got for changing the world making marketing is definitely an objective of life. It shows every single marketer that marketing can have a purpose as long as people believe in it. Developing a major structural product and marketing campaign is something worth years of hard work and effort put into. Above all, it’s the function and beauty of marketing exposed to its entirety.

Best of all is to realize you don’t need to work for Apple to make big projects become reality.

My impression of marketing (to Chinese) in China

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:34:00 +0000

I love being wrong, but that doesn’t refrain me from saying some things I think. In September and October I’ve been to a few places in China, including Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. Probably every single country in the world knows them as cheap manufacturers. You give a name, they can produce it, and they can produce it much cheaper than the cheapest available. Many foreign companies are based in China trying to guarantee their interests towards western markets looking for cost optimization and how to distribute products to their original and native markets. However, have you ever thought how it would be to be a marketer in China to Chinese customers?

Forget about Hong Kong and Shanghai for a second. It’s different there. Think of a more China-style place like Guangzhou and Beijing. My impression was that there’s only one winner tactic for making people buy things: sell it almost for free. Many times a day the media reports massive demonstrations of lust in China, like millionaires buying super expensive real estate, people going to mega concerts from international moguls like the Rolling Stones and Christina Aguilera or even images of beautiful and hi-tech skyscrapers being inaugurated almost on a daily basis. You know what? This is a legend. Though China is becoming increasingly wealthier, their population is predominantly poor. Sometimes they have shortages of food and a large portion of the population still is deprived from basic services like sewage. Also include there the official censorship. Many times I tried to access Wikipedia, but it simply didn’t work. Coincidence? Think again.

China also has its elite. It’s just a simple math equation. If in the US 1% of the elite represent 3 million people, in China the same proportion will give you almost 15 million really rich people. Just don’t forget the income distribution in China is definitely uneven, much more uneven than in the US. The wealth demonstration of Chinese individuals that we see in the media is represented by the 15 million. The total population has already surpassed the 1.4 billion mark.

The Chinese market is still very green in marketing terms. They will pay what they can pay, it’s not a matter of options. Credit cards are just badly accepted there. Cash is still the strongest paying alternative. After literally going to China, my perception changed radically. A foreigner in China has a cost of living usually much lower than in his own country. I’ve heard of people there who didn’t want to come back home because they lived like kings in China. The Chinese population is quite different though, even in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Shanghai is really an Orient Pearl, I’d love to live there one day as a marketer. But if there’s something I’d never think of is to be a marketer to Chinese customers. The challenge is enormous and that’s good. However, I can still see a lot of attractions on being a marketer for and in developed countries. One of them is the complexity of the market and the amount of variations one can actually deal with when thinking of how to sell a product to someone. The other is the amazing purchase power of a relatively great percentage of the population. That means a single customer can buy more, but at the same time he will concentrate a larger power of decision making it more difficult for a marketer to sell to him. I don’t see that happening in China. The ingenuity of the market only allows customers, the frequent ones, not the elite, to buy what they need. Needless to say it’s not what they want all the time. With more power comes more responsibility. Churchill was right.

CRM as never seen before

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:32:00 +0000

Not too long ago I had the chance to step in to a client I had never had access to. Among a lot of new information, I saw their business plan for the next year. Basically they needed to increase their revenues in order to comply with certain legal aspects defined by a local authority. One of the ways found by the marketing team was to go abroad, and by that I mean exploring markets other than their own local hub.

Everything seemed to be logic and made perfectly sense. However, the whole theory went down after I knew the company had a database of 500,000 local people who had purchased their product at least once, inquirers and other segments who’ve given them enough info to explore. From these 500,000 less than 20% actively kept a regular relationship with the company.

For many years I’ve learned and seen CRM happening, but this occasion was special for its more than self-explanatory clarification. Mentally, without a single supporting document I could see how easier would be to work with 400,000 people who had already consented to provide their personal data instead of going abroad and looking for a tiny piece of market in places the company has never been before.

Obviously there are other omitted details involved that would make the decision even plainer to see, but the scope of the problem was answering a simple question: what to do with 400,000 people who once said they wanted to exchange something with the company, but never again activated their profile? Nothing is something simply unimaginable these days. We were being paid to say forget about 400,000 people? That’s close to 10% of Norway’s entire population. If we didn’t work these people, someone else, a competitor, would. If that happened, how to tell the company’s board of directors that the revenue didn’t increase because we were lazy enough to leave 400,000 people sitting still? Involved in the process of suggesting alternatives to deal with these people was an American company. For my dismay, they said 500,000 was a small database.

What do you think about this?

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:34:00 +0000

“MARKETING STRATEGY

Friskies developed a new product innovation, Milk Essentials, to add to some of their SKUs in order to give the brand a stronger point of difference in the cluttered dry cat food arena. Milk Essentials combined the taste of milk cats love without the lactose that can give them digestion problems. It needed to be engaging and memorable, and had to be in the market in just nine weeks! “

The Global Knowledge Services Center E-Newsletter (Direct Marketing Association of America – DMA)

June 2007
Volume 6, Issue 7

I think this is not a marketing strategy. Friskies invented a product and branded it only to become a point of difference in the market? “Engaging and memorable”? “Had to be in the market in just nine weeks”? Doesn’t it look like a communication campaign? It certainly does.

This little “Marketing Strategy” paragraph describes two of my most criticized points in marketing. 1) marketing is not necessarily communication, but communication is part of marketing; 2) creating a product to have a “stronger point of difference”? Isn’t it too shameful to say “sell more”, “steal market share from the other brand” or “increase profits”?

Thanks DMA for not explaining to the poor ignorant people of the world what SKU means. For those SKU here goes a brief explanation.

SKU - A unit (part or item) of inventory that is carried as a separate identifiable unit. Eg A box of 100 ball point pens, although containing the same unit, is a different SKU from a single ball point pen.

www.tpacc.com/knowledge_base_dictionary.htm

Blogs, links and blogrolls

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:33:00 +0000

A couple of days ago I quickly reviewed The Marketing Consul’s link section and realized some of them are actually blogs, not only regular websites. In theory they would fit into a section commonly known within the blog world as “blogroll”. The blogroll is nothing but a specific link section for blogs. I even thought about creating one, but then started to wonder. What for?

This is connected to an ad I watched also a couple of days ago for the first time. Since I wasn’t paying too much attention, I cannot remember brands or manufacturers, only comes to my mind it was something about a shampoo. The ad played with one of the human nature’s most stupid characteristics: complicating things.

Sometimes it’s all about re-labeling. Things are sold differently so the manufacturer can add more “value” (where value doesn’t mean necessarily quality). Many times I saw a very famous and encouraging video produced by an advertising agency as part of their portfolio (Sunscreen, see on the bottom of this posting). There, one of the catches was about advice. Advice is actually a way to reshape old thoughts on a fashion way and sell them for a higher price they’re truly worth, the narrator said.

Hence I won’t create a blogroll. Links are links no matter what either they’re blogs or regular URLs. I frankly do not mind how one names them as long as they’re there for a real and useful purpose.

Measuring charlatanism

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:32:00 +0000

Charlatanism might be a very aggressive word, but honestly this is the way I feel about those marketers who claim to have the secret or the solution for one’s marketing needs. They don’t, as simple as that. With very few exceptions, I hated almost every single minute spent on workshops, luncheons or anything else people who are (well) paid to instruct those who pay (a lot) to receive these people’s advice.

Once I remember, among other cases, of a former HP marketing executive talking about strategies for EA sports. The content was highly sophisticated, very deep into details and the whole strategy made total sense. But please tell me how could I apply a marketing structure and resources coming from HP and EA to my “corner bakery” small employer?

If you think paying 100, 200 dollars for a day with these people will solve your marketing problems, just take a break and unwind because it won’t. They cost a hell of a lot more than that. Actually I even doubt this will some day lead to an insight.

Recently I spent some time planning a corporate blog and the publication of some articles, and it became more explicit that people who read these articles are looking for a free or at least cheap way to solve their marketing problems.

At least in some cases what is annoying can become entertaining. Last year I went to a workshop where the last speaker of the day was a major Canadian marketing and education character. The guy is really smart, and had a terrific oratory. I was even more surprised when he told all of his mental difficulties in his childhood and teens. But he prevailed after all.

I hadn’t checked the program, but at the end of his speech the host came up to the microphone and he seemed pale and very surprised. Then he said: “It wasn’t actually what we were expecting, but it was certainly interesting”.

The topic had been changed by the mental difficulties of the speaker. He was supposed to talk about customer relationship management, but ended up speaking about creativity and how the human being is losing the power to innovate.

The truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:31:00 +0000

I’m a person who loves to criticize things, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. I’m not usually fond of commenting other people’s statements, but this one below itched me until I started writing this posting.

“The first half of 2007 has been both eventful and productive for the Canadian Marketing Association.”
(John Gustavson, President and CEO).

The Americans love to invent names and nicknames. I took their mania and would call this statement a “useless-silly-not-necessarily-sincere-opportunity-to-make-PR”. Think with me. Would a president of s marketing association say something different from “we had a great period” or “our activities are soaring” or “we see no limits to keep growing” or anything similar? I don’t think so. His statement can be true, but what’s the point in saying something that is so obvious?

It seems marketers have an enormous eagerness to be all the time optimistic, as if showing some restraint or mentally forbidding more complex and complicated scenarios.

The power of marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:31:00 +0000

I’ve learned that the URL seniors.com was sold by $ 1.8 million.

Do you want to know a big mistake?

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:30:00 +0000

This happened twice in the same day. I visited two websites from totally distinct companies. One is a major clothing retailer in Brazil (Acostamento); the other is a powerful integrated marketing agency (Rapp Collins). What’s the resemblance between both? They care a lot about esthetic and design, but not that much about a visitor to the website. Do you know why?

Because both designs are based on swfs. Without the plug-in one cannot visualize it and that was my case. It’s very naïve to think every single computer on earth has this kind of feature. Other would say having a website totally designed in swf is a way of selecting the target. Well, I’m a person within the marketing environment and would love to get to know both companies’ work, but unfortunately had no chance at all.

Make war, make marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:29:00 +0000

I can say marketing is something that I love, but war is a subject I idolize as something to be studied. War came first for me. I’ve been studying it since my teens and only go deeper and deeper.

After all these years reading and theorizing both subjects, it becomes quite clear for me that they’re absolutely correlated. War, just like marketing, passes through countless shifts until it reached its modern shape. And that will continue so on and so forth. The same happens for marketing. On a casual or structured way, the subject is constant development for “ages”.

Marketing and war are two competition-based competences. It looks for me that they are far more than only the “Marketing Warfare” coined by Al Ries and Jack Trout. The true marketers should treat marketing as a real battlefield, with a clear objective (to fight for the customer acquisition and loyalty) and to make use of the right means. And this is just a basic, romantic vision of mine. Wars (and marketing) are really more complicated than that. Apart from these similarities I managed to find some others:

A marketer can fiercely combat, but “die” in the battlefield if his attention is not fully turned into the battlefield;
Manpower is a decisive factor;
Arrogance can bring disastrous results;
Reckoning plays a major part;
Creativity, resilience and perseverance should always be part of the mix;
Logistic coordination should be carefully watched. Marketing and war require a large concentration of efforts towards moving people and equipment;
A great deal of the success is based on the leadership. Hesitation, weakness or lack of confidence are frequently fatal;
Like the armed forces, marketing shouldn’t be a democracy but a highly hierarchical system;
War games (or marketing tests) are not only exercises. They can produce a lot of valuable lessons;
Talking about lessons, the one who learns faster in the battlefield can thrive faster;

I wonder why Gareth Morgan in his Images of Organization book didn’t think about including such a metaphor system. That could be of some interest to lots of marketers (including me).

Formula to marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:28:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking about all these people who promise to solve everyone’s marketing needs and problems or believe it’s all about a linear equation. So I’ve decided to prepare my own formula using concepts learned along the way. Bear in mind:

Marketing = Market in action

Marketing = price + product + place + promotion, hence marketing can be written as

Market in Action = price + product + place + promotion

Segment (S) = target

Target (T) = public / place

Let’s get started.

To better understand your market, divide it into segments

Market / Σ (Segment 1, Segment 2, Segment 3…) in action = price + product + place + promo

But segment is actually…

Market / Σ (Target 1, Target 2, Target 3 …) in action = price + product + place + promo

Target is actually…

Market / Σ (Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) in action = price + product + place + promo

Add CRM to your segments

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1 + CRM, Public 2 / Place 2 + CRM, Public 3 / Place 3 + CRM) in action = price + product + place + promo

Then it becomes

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) + 3(CRM)} in action = price + product + place + promo

If bad PR is the square of your problems, subtract it

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) + 3(CRM)} in action = (price + product + place + promo) - (PR)²

If you want to multiply your results, call to action

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) + 3(CRM)} in action = (price + product + place + promo) - (PR)²* call to action

At last, don’t forget to “ad” Communications and voilà! Here’s a “brand” new formula to make marketing (obviously if marketers are able to solve it).

Market / Σ {(Public 1 / Place 1, Public 2 / Place 2, Public 3 / Place 3 …) + 3(CRM)} in action = (price + product + place + promo) - (PR)²* call to action + Communications

Happy marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:28:00 +0000

The other day I was thinking how important it is for a marketer to be confident and happy about his decisions. Many times I read about statesmen that, in time of war or peace, needed to take harsh measures against their own people.

With this thought in mind I started to idealize what would be my next great marketing employment. It would certainly need to deal with strategy and business development, always looking forward to grow and to learn. But most of all, the thing I need the most is to join the professional part of marketing (plans, budgets, media etc) with the customer side of it.

During my years as a marketer, just one job didn’t offer me the opportunity to meet and talk to the final customer. Believe me, I felt it hard not to deal directly with those we really work for. It’s not that much about the business side of it and generating more revenue, increasing the company’s database or anything like that. It’s more about the experiences an individual that has no idea about marketing can involuntarily teach a professional marketer. It’s fun, more relaxed and easier to absorb than any given theory can explain.

Interestingly my best moments dealing with real and final customers came from telemarketing. Almost 6 months on a daily routine still make me think and laugh of some pretty good moments. As when a former friend and colleague of work decided to put down on a paper a list of weird names we could collect. He reached the 130^th before leaving the company. Or when I talked to a woman called Miss (“Excuse me Miss Miss”). There was also a drunken guy decided to apply for a credit card almost 11 p.m. He was drunk, spent 45 minutes talking to me and in the end invited me to go to his fabulous mansion in the beach to have a barbecue. At least he ended up applying for the credit card and I achieved my daily goal.

Live Earth on a marketing perspective – a.k.a. “Harry Potter is our saviour”

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:26:00 +0000

Reading an entry from the Canadian Marketing Association blog I felt a frustration that can be compared to a PhD student having its thesis and PowerPoint slides eaten by a beaver a couple of minutes before the presentation. The subject is the Live Earth event that happened on July 7, 2007. It was definitely something to be remembered in the next years given the magnitude of it. I totally support it.

Fine, but then I started to wonder about the whole essence of the event, its consequences and results on a marketing perspective. I’ll start with the numbers and facts, like I always rather do; then we move to the questions, assumptions and end up with conclusions. Well, here it goes.

There were 100 musicians, from major popular artists of the entertainment industry to locals

24-hour marathon
The main hosts were: Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, London, Hamburg, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and New York;
Organizers said almost 2 billion people watched or followed the event
More than 10,000 ‘friends of live earth’ events are now registered in 129 countries (source: Live Earth website on July 9th).

On a marketing perspective I asked myself

Price and place: Rio de Janeiro had free concerts paid for by the local city hall on a beach that hosted almost 500,000 people. Wembley Stadium in London was really empty, absolutely empty compared to Queen’s concert 21 years ago. Wouldn’t it be smarter and more impacting to use Rio de Janeiro’s formula of price and place to all events? What’s the point? Raising money or creating awareness? I know they want to raise money to foundations to fight global climate change, but how come the artists were being (well) paid. What happened to the Live Aid philosophy of the 80s?
Tracking: this is perhaps the most intriguing point. From a promotional point of view it was fantastic. A mega-coordinated event around the world. But honestly, can you see any value marketing-wise? Can they actually track the results? How the organizers will possibly count the percentage of people that

1) Absorbed the messages?

2) “Bought” the messages?

3) Will continue to “buy” the messages (means become greener or adopt tips to reduce the global climate change effect)?

Another point is tracking. It’s been more than five years now I see researches constantly showing marketers and corporate managers/director/VPs do not know or do not track results of a campaign. This is one of the most fundamental steps to take care of these days.

And that makes me think about the “10,000 Live Earth friends” (source: Live Earth website on July 9). This number is 0.0005% of the total people that watched the event. You have more people pre-ordering Harry Potter on a single day than this. Do you know what this means? Does it mean that people believe Harry Potter will be the savior of the planet, so much faith and attention are given to him. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Really, didn’t you expect a little bit more of marketing effort instead of a campaign highly turned to PR and awareness of artists and a foundation? I would expect so. Sometimes buzz only is not enough. You can have Pele and Payton Manning playing for your team and yet not be champion.

What about a little marketing exercise? The continuity of a campaign is also crucial. Al Gore’s been started with a much-publicized documentary that won an Oscar (and gave him 3 minutes of worldwide comedy exposition), he’s on TV everywhere, but frankly let’s talk about continuity and recall. But is it the right message really being passed on? Or is it just show business again?

If you answer the questions below without help then it’s because the marketing cause of this whole thing is not lost. Answers will come in a future posting.

- What’s the name of Al Gore’s Foundation?

- What’s the name of the other guy who co-signed Live Earth’s event (also an active activist)?

- What’s the name of the documentary mentioned above?

- What are they fighting for?

Ok, now try these

- Name three artists that played on Live Earth

- Name three cities that hosted Live Earth

- How did you hear about Live Earth?

Grammar and Business Development

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 03:49:00 +0000

I was doing an exercise to create a guideline on how to structure a business develop plan (for the records, it’s not finished). Doing a research I found a very interesting, well-layouted and comprehensive website/blog by Kilian Nakamura (www.kilian-nakamura.com). Among much useful information, there was one that particularly drew my attention.
Japan’s society is aging fast: By 2025, more than 30% of the population are going to be 65 or older. Japanese seniors are:
The most affluent demographic in Japan* Spending large sums on education, recreation, transport and communication
And so I started to wonder about grammar and how it could help business developers to go beyond the sentences above.

Subject: Japanese seniors
Descriptive sentence: most affluent demographic in Japan
Verb: spending
Direct object: large sums
Indirect object: on education, recreation, transport and communication

What could I ask myself to make a complete sentence and help me to develop a new plan to approach these people?

How to increase their expenditure?
Should they be pummeled more?
Should I offer new packages?
Should there be new ways to sell?
Should new products be introduced?
If so, which ones?
Should the company go vertical and offer new categories?

And this is just the beginning

Think "development" in business

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 03:49:00 +0000

Once Peter Drucker said marketing and innovation are the matrix forces of any business. Today I kept myself thinking by the thousandth time how the marketing world simply ignores this statement these days.

I see a constantly increasing difference between marketing and innovation among some companies. As a matter of fact, I see 2 types of marketing innovation for 2 different types of companies regarding marketing innovation:

Marketing innovation

On demand – when marketing is sparkled through a demand, necessity or anything that didn’t start within the ones responsible for marketing strategies (department-structured or not);

Natural – doesn’t need any “outside” encouragement or reason to start. It comes from an idea, an insight or simply a suggestion not necessarily attached to a situation. Unlike many people and marketers think, this initiative doesn’t have to come from the marketing staff.

Companies’ marketing

Whole flow – companies which lack a marketing department. Sometimes salespeople and/or administration personnel are responsible for marketing strategies. In this case they manage the whole flow of analyzing a demand by the market/customers, creating a strategy/solution, and implementing. This situation might happen either on new markets/products/plans or existing problems/gaps. It’s informal, it’s almost entirely concentrated on 1 person, it’s not all the time professional, but it’s marketing.

Total recall – big, fat, stiff marketing departments. They’ve got the money, the means, the structure and the professionals, but are not starters, only follow instructions from other departments. This is quite common to the big players, companies, and businesses in the market. This is also common to marketing companies (consultancies, media and advertising agencies).

How many companies do you know in the second category? Probably hundreds. Companies with a formal marketing department are frequently hostages of product departments. I wonder how close they put “create” and “innovate” together.

Hajimeru. This is the Japanese word for “to start”. Many meanings follow “to start”, including “to make”. But the best one I found for this case is below.

Allocate and then initialize
www.millennium.berkeley.edu/docs/mpi/gm_manual/gm_18.html

Reason why? Innovating is not only initializing something. Innovating is above creation and more complex.

Gal. Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 03:48:00 +0000

My first year at university was marked by many new lessons. One of them I remember the most was being or not being a generalist in marketing. Having the ability to understand and dominate different disciplines is the key to plan and execute marketing. I totally bought the idea.

But time’s passing by and every day it seems to appear a new and more specific position within marketing departments. You can find among others business analyst, marketing assistant, marketing administrative, marketing specialist, manager of new markets, online manager etc.

For me it is especially annoying to see companies are going so specific on marketing HR. Customers should be segmented, that is true, but for marketers too? Have they ever thought about the implications of creating a marketing Babel Tower?

It is clear specialists have wider control over their environments, but the general overview of marketing strategies loses a lot with such segmented professionals.

Unless...

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 03:44:00 +0000

I saw a very interesting quote on a website the other day, allegedly by David Ogilvy (one of the foremost people in creativity matters ever):

"It isn't creative unless it sells."

Just for the records, I totally support this.

Marketers, intelligent life and close encounters in marketing 2

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:44:00 +0000

This is a continuation of the previous article. I just meant to compare the movie and marketing for many reasons:

The core of marketing is not advertising a product (is it clear ad agencies?). Neither is promoting, pricing or distributing. The core of marketing is to sell a product. Sell more, sell better, sell frequent. Get used to it. A true marketer is not an artist in essence, but a salesman;
Remind you: without selling to a customer, either “B” (business), “R” (retailer), “S” (supplier), “I” (individual), “P” (peer) or “C” (consumer) there’s no marketing.
Being effective in marketing has little to do with big budgets, and has more to do about management. A wealthy bank account helps a lot, but don’t fool yourself with the idea one needs to be rich to make marketing;
Don’t think just because you’re a marketer every single plan you put on the table will work. Deal with failure possibilities before they knock on your door;
Selling a plan to the senior management once (“the money owners”) is easier than selling a product to a customer twice;
Your loyalty as a marketer is to the customer, not your boss; it can also be read as “the customer is your boss, not your manager”;
Spend more time with customers than computers who tell you an amount of data. Machines are very important to compile data, but your final target is actually human and won’t tell everything so easily. Besides, computers don’t make decisions (yet);
If you have a fabulous idea for a marketing plan, great! Now prove it before putting it into action. Searching for market information is a good start;
Hiding behind communication-only strategies is marketing cowardice; “the ends will justify the means” (Machiavelli), not the opposite. Communication is part of a whole. There’s no reason to desperately advertise without a purpose, a strategy and a plan.
Watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s worthy.

Marketers, intelligent life and close encounters in marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:43:00 +0000

Fortunately for marketers, customers are not the same anymore. There are thousands of ways of reaching them. And yet, we’re getting distant and distant. I’m talking specifically to companies or individuals who are responsible for elaborating marketing plans. If you or your company doesn’t prepare a formal plan (yearly, quarterly, bi-annually etc) jump this and the next posting.

Being a marketer and trying to understand customers is becoming very similar to the Close Encounters of the Third Kind movie. We, humans (marketers) know there’s intelligent life (customers) outside of our little planet (companies), but we’re not 100% confident yet. Some are sceptical to search for answers, others to accept the fact. We, humans are superior to anything outside our planet. Our planet rocks and we, humans know everything.

However, we have had signs of the intelligent life existence (prospects), some people even made contact with them (sales), but the out-of-this planet forms of life barely expose themselves. Now we’re curious, and must go after answers.

Then, after finding scientific bases (planning and strategy) and collecting enough samples (quantitative research and focus group), we, humans elaborate colourful and musical gizmos (print, TV ads, jingles etc) to attract them to our planet. For those who watched the movie, you know how it ends.

Initially the intelligent form of life shows interest for our gizmos (products). They can do whatever we tell them do to do (response, direct marketing). They experiment (free sample perhaps, giveaways), and even let some of us to go with them and understand their culture (customer services, ombudsman etc). They threaten to leave. We insist (pummel, up-sell, cross-sell etc). Suddenly, they close their spaceship doors and leave without a trace (churn).

Will they ever come back (reactivation)? We, humans will never know. Will they ever remember us (recall)? We, humans will never know. Will we ever get to deeply know them (segmentation)? We, humans will never know. Do we care? We, humans are apparently learning (CRM).

What we, humans know for sure is that our initial questions haven’t been answered. Worse, they will remain, instigate our curiosity, and soon restart the vicious cycle of not understanding the intelligent life outside our little planet.

Planning with Pivots

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 17:42:00 +0000

MS Excel has a fabulous, easy and fast tool for planning: it’s called PivotTable. I discovered it a couple of years ago and hasn’t stopped using ever since. But now I decided to turn PivotTable into a standard procedure for planning. I posted an article a while ago about the necessity of using data from different sources and a 3-D comparison. Pivot tables are great for concentrating large chunks of data segmented into different fields.

An example.

I wanted to map and understand purchase behavior of 30,000 customers. The client didn’t know anything about it neither used it properly. They had all the data, but didn’t plan anything over it. Some of the fields in the 27 MB-file were DOB, Postal Code, order amount, customer number, gender etc.

To find the pivot table control, go to the Data tab and select PivotTable and PivotChart. There, Excel will ask you a few details of your selection data. I often used the first option Microsoft Excel list or database, but you might have other options. In the end, create a PivotTable.

After your command, the computer will create a list with all the fields your data contains. From there you can control the most different comparisons. It allows you to sum or count quantities, among other features. This is perfect for any kind of data, from sales (you can have a total breakdown) or people (total amount of customers for instance).

I crossed and compared everything I could. My own data feast. In my case, 10 minutes after starting, results showed me male customers spend more than women and that some regions are more profitable than others. The table also told me how old my customers were and how much each age band used to spend. Guess what I’m going to do with all these conclusions?

Pivot tables are all about what computers were built for: concentrate on strategy and let the machine does the “dirty” work for you. Maybe I’m becoming a marketing geek, but looking at all that privileged information had a terrific impact on my planning beliefs.

A little of philosophy: results will never be new because they’ve already happened. However, the way you discover and how you will use them is what transforms regular marketers into masters of strategy. Dig deeper to find the treasure.

Canadian Animals

noreply@blogger.com (Thiago Andrade) — Tue, 29 May 2007 04:48:00 +0000

Ads in Canada are filled with animals (not the actors). Telecoms (three of the four major ones: Bell, Telus, and Fido), TP (Snub and the one from the bear I don’t recall), hand soap for kids (forgot the brand), mayo (Hellman’s, a dog preparing a sandwich, ), cars (Puss the cat from Shrek for Chrysler), you name it.

Interestingly they follow two “animal ad strategies”: single species and zoo. Bell and Fido for instance use single species; Telus goes with zoo. Bell, being recognized as the most traditional Canadian telecom invested in beavers, Frank and Gordon. The beaver is one of Canada’s national animals so it makes sense. But their tricks and jokes playing with Bell’s range of products (wireless, satellite cable etc) is overwhelmingly boring. But their PR is good, to the point a radio announcer spent almost 5 minutes talking about how cute and funny they were (liar). The same week a local news report was showing the ad on TV.

Fido deals with dogs, and dogs only. It doesn’t matter the breed. They (ad agency included) even had the cynical idea of copycatting one of the most acclaimed campaigns in world advertising (animal category) a few years ago. Recently Fido aired a campaign where the dog closely resembles its owner. Pedigree launched an offline campaign about 10 years ago using the same concept.

Telus is all about testing animals, the “zoo strategy”. That’s it, testing. They tried pretty much everything living and non-homo sapiens. The list includes monkeys, rabbits, ducks, giraffes, birds, exotic frogs, ferrets, badgers, and more recently flamingos. Indeed, flamingos. What it has to do with telecom services I don’t know, but the exotic rosy animal is there. It’s not even worth placing a link for you to watch.

We can’t forget some advertisers really need to use animals because it’s their target (or reason for existing). But in this case, Whiskas and Iams (to mention but a few) and humane societies are losing space to this whole fauna invading the commercial break. Their ads are becoming even boring for obvious reasons. Imagine the following situation: the first ad has a bear on it; the second, a flamingo, the third, a dachshund, a pug …Overexposure is psychologically and practically bad.

My tolerance is zero for companies randomly and irrationally using animals. This is not the case of Whiskas, who produced an excellent campaign using people performing as animals. The message was clear, the whole thing was very creative and they didn’t have to explore the image of a poor cat (except for a few seconds of him eating at the end of the ad).