Today the retail supply chain is undergoing a game changing transition that will remove a number of established businesses that sit in the middle of any purchase. The raise of on-line trading will leave these businesses with eroded  brand values or worse, be road-kill on the side of the technology highway.

The origins of today’s modern marketplace can be traced back thousands of years. The opening up of distant trade routes led to multiple money making opportunities and a proliferation of middle men and women along the way.

The commercialization of the Internet in the 1990’s was a major game changer for the traditional retail model. Up until then the purchase of that ‘little black dress’ involved the gainful employment of numerous pairs of hands from farmers to shop assistants. While remote areas were serviced by catalogue shopping via direct mail the majority of goods followed the tried and tested route.

New financial vehicles have been deployed up and down the supply chain to help grease the wheels of business. Improvements to shipping, legal frameworks, marketing, local transport providers, warehouses, merchandisers as well as the removal of trade barriers have all had a hand to play in the endless pursuit of that perfect little black dress.

But nothing fundamentally challenged this well trodden business model like the arrival of the Internet.

Avoiding a mauling in the Mall

So what’s changing to cause this extinction of the merchant; the whole-hearted acceptance of purchasing on-line?

Gone is the fear of buying without trying first, now that the returns process has been simplified.

With one of the key purchasing demographic groups glued to their iPhones the need to visit the shop is fast losing its fascination.

The on-line shopping experience is today at least comparable with a visit to the Mall. This has been driven by better merchant facilities plus secure and dynamic websites. Fast and cost efficient inventory and shopping cart software like Magento and the maturing of complex shipping aggregation engines like Temando have all vastly improved the buyer’s experience.

Now we have the means to supply most goods straight to the door with a casual swipe of a finger. So what is going to become of that long list of traditional handlers in the middle?

Let’s take that LBD once more.

The Net-a-Porter model clearly demonstrates the changes taking place causing the elimination of the middle merchants. Previously an Australian purchase could be manufactured in Asia, shipped to the UK, then final delivery back to Sydney. Now with the opening of their Hong Kong hub the need for the UK warehouse and pick and pack facilities, the shipping of around an extra 20,000 km is not required. Today you can sit in the comfort of your lounge room on a Sunday night and order that must have LBD and be trying it on in the comfort of your own Sydney home by lunch time on Monday.

The rise of the Merchant of Suzhou

Ask yourself do we really need multiple warehouses and movements before that LBD finds its rightful place in the wardrobe. By removing the layers of warehouses and the physical shop costs the shutters will come down on a lot of businesses. Also, a contraction of unnecessary movements will also reduce the carbon footprint of these necessary commercial ventures. Re-zoning of empty shopping centres will clear the way for high density housing in all capital cities. But this is just one future scenario.

Naturally there will be major resistance by anyone within this middle layer of enterprise. ‘Adding value’, ‘ease of supply chains’ and ‘tried and tested business models’ will be rolled off the silver tongues to help shore up the interest of the vested.

The speed of understanding, deployment of new technology and the reconfiguration of existing logistics businesses, will dictate the timing of this streamlined delivery chain.

One of the major business risks holding back this transition of maker to door would have been the ability to ensure that the quality controls are in place to replicate the existing service levels.

Quality control requires special attention but in the garment industry this already occurs in the manufacturing industry therefore these learnings are already available at a local level.

Again with technology solutions it is now easier for the manufacture to deliver the goods directly to the customer. Companies like Temando take care of the processes, carrier relationships and customs paperwork to simplify the transition. Centralized distribution or drop shipping points will either be managed by tech savvy third party logistics companies at the point of manufacture or point of entry into any given market.

Streamlined inventory controls will also reduce the need to warehouse stock. Order-make-delivery to wardrobe within a matter of days will cut costs, dramatically reduce stock obsolescence and again, soften the carbon footprint on the planet.

What this means for Marketers

Marketers have moved at varying speeds to realize the opportunities that await them in this changing market place. If you are historically wedded to profit from an existing business model it is sometimes hard to convince the powers that be to alter course.

Online shops such as Net-a-Porter, ASOS and The Iconic have already captured the hearts and minds of fashion shoppers with price and service models that are superior to traditional bricks and mortar ventures.

These are all online shopping centres that promote other brands within their brand. Today are these more valuable than the traditional shops of Myer, DJ’s and shopping centres like Westfield?

The challenge for marketers is to understand and communicate internally the value of the brand and then position it in a highly dynamic digital marketplace. The ability to be able to reach out to customers who are now comfortable with not having to touch and feel the goods before they buy is now a truly one on one relationship. The world of social media means you will be praised and gossiped about so partner with businesses that truly understand the brave new world not just pay lip service to it.

While the marketplace changes goes through radical change the selection of your marketing partners also needs to change as well. It is not about a creative award winning graphically rich website. What a retailer needs is the equivalent of online merchandisers or window dressers. They need to understand the needs of the customer and make the sales process simple and fast.

Disclosure: Chris Sewell is the CEO of The Gaia Partnership whose marketing communications CO2counter has been deployed in the Temando offset to measure carbon in transport and supply carbon offsets. 

Here is a procurement practice that I will never understand. When managing the tender process at some point they get all of the agencies into a room for a question and answer session.

The idea is that this ensures a level playing field and ensures that no agency has an unfair advantage over any other. The problem is I have never actually seen this achieve anything except to have the procurement team tick off a step in their procurement process.

This is particularly popular in government procurement processes, where I am told it is mandated by the procurement policy of government to ensure due diligence and governance in the process.

Now I understand if the sessions are just to provide information to the suppliers participating in the tender process, but considering it is a meeting of competitors, I think it is naive to expect competitors to ask questions that could reveal their competitive strategy.

The best way to demonstrate this is with an actual example of where this process went wrong. In this particular case, the tender was not a government tender, but a pharma-company who were undertaking a creative agency tender.

The tender process was similar to the ‘traditional’ and rather ‘old fashioned’ creative pitch, with a Q&A process around the RFP, where the team shared questions and answers with all respondents and then those responding with creative concepts were all asked to attend a single briefing session.

Q&A Session

So having received the extensive RFP documentation, the agencies were given two days to review the paper work and submit their questions to clarify the requirements and the process.

The process issues and questions were fairly straight forward, but the procurement team were concerned that there were many more process questions than there were questions about the requirements.

When you looked at the questions, they were fairly prosaic in regards to process, but the agencies asked very few questions on requirements because the agencies knew that all questions and the answers would be shared with all the other agencies.

So it would be counterproductive to ask questions that would reveal the agency’s strengths by using the questions to probe the desirability of those strengths through the Q&A process.

e.g. With a requirement in the RFP for data analytics the agency my explore the desirability of econometric modelling, but in doing so they will then remind all agencies participating to offer econometric modelling, effectively eliminating their potential competitive advantage.

Briefing Meeting

The more strategic the process being evaluated, the greater the impact of this open process. At the time of providing the brief to the agencies, the response against which they will be judged successful or not has commenced. Even at the time of reading the brief any good agency is already exploring possible strategic directions and creative territories.

Yet when the agency is in the open forum of the briefing session, they are expected to ask questions to explore these strategic and creative directions in front of their competitors. It is not going to happen. So the whole process gets reduced to at best a point scoring exercise on trivial issues or a total waste of time.

In some cases I have seen agencies spend significant amounts of time actually formulating misleading questions to ask in the briefing session to try and throw the other agencies off their strategy.

Focus on what you are evaluating

If you are selecting a media, creative or digital agency, then you are really wanting to select them for their strategic and creative thinking. So why would you use a process that diminishes their competitive advantage by sharing their strategic and creative thinking with their competitors?

I know this may not be immediately obvious, but sharing questions and undertaking open briefing sessions is effectively sharing the agency’s thinking with their competition.

So with the desire to keep the process “open” and “fair”, to comply with guidelines and provide the level of due diligence, the process actually works against the evaluation of the very criteria that is central to selecting a suitable agency.

The frustration is that I have had this conversation many times with many different procurement people. In almost every case they agree with the logic of the argument. But they always fall back on the fact that these are in the guidelines that they need to comply with.

It reminds me of the definition of insanity – “Doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different outcome”. Is it any wonder there are so many complaints about these processes and yet nothing ever changes. Is it just procurement insanity?

What do you think?

I remember about 10 years ago, being engaged by a marketing team to work with a well known management consulting firm who had been brought in by senior management to restructure and improve the marketing process. The interesting observation was that rather then customising the structure and process to the strategic requirements, the management firm had a six-sigma developed process that they tried to impose on the marketing team in the interest of best practice.

What I also observed was there was little commitment from the marketing team to the process. The problem appeared to be there was little or no recognition that the current process was obviously functional. The team were not consulted to assist in determining the best way to improve the process of engagement between the internal team and marketing.

It was around this time that we developed the Engagement Agreement process.

The role of SLAs and KPIs in process

Around the time we commenced in using the Engagement Agreement process, I was also reviewing a large number of agency services agreements, that all contained either SLAs (Service Level Agreements) or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Many of the marketing and procurement people we were talking with seemed to believe that these contract clauses would assist in managing and improving agency process and performance.

There are two things that are misguided about this belief:

1. Most SLAs and KPIs are based on the assumption that the performance of the agency is simply due to the agency alone. But this fails to recognise that the strategic and creative components are co-created and that the performance of the agency is directly impacted by the performance of the marketer.
2. Many of the KPIs and SLA clauses I have reviewed do not go to the core of the process purpose and are often superficial and inconsequential and therefore have little or no impact on process or performance improvement.

Even as recently as last year a major corporation procurement team wanted me to sign a contract that would financially penalise us if we did not return phone calls within 2 hours 99.5% of the time. I was curious to see if the clause would be reciprocal (NO), wondered who would be monitoring the time lag between the call and the response time (NO ANSWER) and what impact on project performance did they expect from the KPI (NO IDEA).

KPIs and SLAs are great for places like call centres (where they were first used) but in complex relationships based on interactions and contributions from multiple parties to deliver the outcome they are far too 2-dimensional.

The Engagement Agreement Process

The Engagement Agreement process is a facilitated workshop involving all of the key stakeholders involved in the process. The workshop is a collaborative process that is facilitated to achieve three key outcomes:

1. Identify the core areas of interaction and engagement and prioritise these
2. Map the current processes and allocate roles and responsibilities at each step
3. Collectively review the current process to identify bottlenecks, duplications and inefficiencies

It is the collective and collaborative process that aligns the participants in defining the current process and diagnosing the issues. Participation in the process leads to a high level of commitment and commences the movement of the alignment process to deliverable.

The process has been used and developed by Sally Webster, Lecturer in PR and Marketing at Victoria University, who has been recognised with a National Citation for her work with Engagement Agreements.

An example of the benefits

Several months after a pitch we managed, I was contacted by the marketing team who asked if we could help sort out tension that had developed very quickly between the brand team and the new agency.

One of the issues was that, like many marketers post the appointment of the new agency, the marketing team simply leaped back into executing the marketing plan without actually engaging the agency in their expectations or agreeing on how to engage. (We had offered to undertake the Engagement Agreement but both the agency and marketers felt it was not needed.)

The Engagement Agreement process defined the areas of regular interaction including annual planning, campaign development and the like, but someone highlighted that the most tension was caused by the day to day interactions between the brand team, who were under high levels of pressure, and the agency.

In the workshop discussion it was discovered that because of time pressure the marketing team would regularly resort to email. And because the client was in the outer suburbs, face to face meetings were kept to a minimum. And as everyone was so busy it was almost impossible to find time for telephone discussions.

In discussions between the marketing team and the new creative agency it was found that this is where many of the tensions were rising. Emails were often misinterpreted leaving the agency confused.

The result of the workshop was that collectively they designed some basic rules of communication including the use of email, phone discussions and face to face meetings.

The result of this simple innovation was dramatic.

Just as Sally Webster saw an application of the Engagement Agreement process with her students, can you see anywhere in your business where this approach could give you better engagement with those you work with, either internally or externally?

Let me know by leaving a comment here.

How to re-engage with your audience in the new marketing landscape

In the first half of this diatribe, I explained my view that the changes in the media landscape are reducing and may even remove our ability to interrupt the audience with our brand messages. This led to the conclusion that advertising has to evolve into something that people actually want or need in their lives in order to survive. Something they will pull into their world, rather than have us push it. I believe that as well as working out what the brand wants to say and where it wants to say it, we need to answer a third question; why would the audience want to engage with it? In part two I will explore this idea of why in more detail.

My view is that marketing has developed and evolved into four different approaches or nodes. And that one of the key issues with managing audiences and engagement today is that people don’t recognise the existence of these four approaches and the inherent differences between them in terms of how and why consumers engage. We end up trying to fit square peg advertising into round media holes. In so doing we risk losing the audience and consequently our livelihoods.

These four nodes or approaches to doing the job of advertising in my view are;

• story telling
• relationship building
• system building
• ecommerce

I’ll explain each one briefly, as in isolation I hope they’re fairly easy to understand. Crucially I will give a view on WHY consumers might choose to engage with this node. I’ll discuss how ‘new’ media affects the approach in good and bad ways. I’ll then talk about what I think we can conclude from this seemingly trite observation.

Story Telling must be entertaining

Historically marketing has used a ‘story telling’ approach. Brands create stories (or ads) about themselves. Consumers have engaged when it’s been informative and entertaining. The best ads work when we create entertaining, unexpected stories people can relate to. This is the mechanism most under threat from the decline of interruption as an option. The only reason for the audience to choose to engage is if the advertising is entertaining. That’s why as an industry we prize creativity so much. Why when we actually do the hard work on analysing effectiveness we find that ads that win creative awards are also often more effective. The more entertaining the ad is, the more people will choose to engage with it, beyond the forced intrusion of the ad into their schedule.

The issue is that this form is reliant on the push mechanism. I can count the number of ads people will actually choose to seek out and sacrifice their leisure time to watch on the fingers of one hand. One hand that’s lost a few fingers. We might like to kid ourselves that our ads are so highly creative that they are genuine entertainment. I certainly have. Given that places like HBO spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to be entertaining and don’t always succeed, I think we might be somewhat delusional.

Integrated branded content is one solution to the issue. Can we make the brand part or all of the broadcast show? Networks and media owners are starting to grapple with this issue. I’m a fan of this approach when done well. When the brand has a real reason to be part of the show. When the show genuinely reflects what the brand wants to say. Some of the Masterchef integration has been first class. Some of it clunky and intrusive. Shows like Iconoclasts and the amazing stuff from Red Bull Media house show it is possible to do long form brand content, worthy of a place in a commercial schedule.

‘Digital’ media also offers up some real opportunities to counteract some of these issues. In recent years we’ve see the rise of a more participatory approach to story telling, like the “Share a Coke” and “Best Job in the World” campaigns. I think this more cognitive, behavioural approach to marketing has huge potential. If the audience is shrinking, how do we have a deeper impact with a smaller group of people?  Or encourage sharing and ‘virality’? The maths works. It is, however much more complex than the old ‘make ad, air ad’ approach. Nothing strikes more fear into the heart of the marketer than the agency saying, “don’t worry this one will go viral!”

There’s also a real risk that in the search for an engaging participatory approach we lose sight of the brand proposition. In the rush to be interactive we often forget that we are still in story-telling mode and that the story we are telling is the carefully constructed one of what the brand wants to say. Or we lose sight of how hard it actually is to get consumers to participate. Clicking ‘like’ is hardly a huge step on from passive media consumption. In some cases, we lose sight of the plot all-together. A tasty iSnack 2.0 anyone? All too often the mechanism cart gets so far in front of the brand horse, the brand is all but lost.

The owned media space also gives us a great platform to develop brand owned content and be ‘always on’. Can we command an audience through regularly producing and airing great content on our owned digital channel or site? Brand as publisher and ‘content marketing’ are certainly hot topics right now and rightly so.

Always on content, however, is hard, uncharted territory, many of us are unprepared for. Brands and agencies are not set up to deliver the sheer volume of content required to fill an ‘owned’ channel. Being genuinely entertaining, week in week out, to secure regular traffic to your owned space, is far from easy. Look how well some of our broadcast channels aren’t doing at this very game. At another time I’ll also outline my view that there is no such thing as a free media lunch. I believe there’s a cost to securing an audience, through whatever channel. Owned media audiences aren’t free. Look at the millions Foxtel, Nine, Seven and Ten spend promoting their own channels if you need indicative evidence.

Once you’re not entertaining in your owned space, however, you’re dead. The old approach of careful crafting between client and creative, of ad testing, high cost production and rock star directors cannot survive this world. Adam Ferrier recently asked in Encore magazine, if the days of big production budgets were over and if that was a loss? I wonder if instead of spending $1 million on one precisely constructed ad we might see brands spending the same money but getting 100 three-minute pieces of content that fills their channel.

The risks here are all the same. In all this proliferating and additional complexity, in this additive world, the job didn’t change. We still have to powerfully communicate what it is the brand has to say. It cannot be a balancing act between being entertaining and being ‘on brand’. It has to be both or nothing. This has always been a creative tension. Not always a healthy one. Certainly not one that has always been resolved. I refer you to any boring ad you ever saw. Or the raft of ads you like, but cannot remember what on earth they are selling or saying.

Nothing exacerbates my marketing OCD more than people talking about their latest ad as a ‘film’. I don’t make films, sadly, I make ads. The distinction is crucial and commercial. The pressure to be genuinely entertaining enough to command an audience can only make this tension even more difficult. As the need to be entertaining in our story telling rises, as the media in which we broadcast them gets complex, so the need for razor sharp brand strategy also rises or we risk forgetting why advertising exists in the first place. Being creative, being entertaining is an executional necessity, but it’s not a raison d’etre.

Relationship Management must deliver a reward

The second ‘marketing node’ is relationship management. Service businesses in particular have long used a relationship management approach and rewarded consumers in order to drive retention. They have developed quite a science and an infrastructure behind it. As well as a raft of specialist agencies servicing the need. What many brands who have tried to operate in this space have failed to recognise is that the audience, in return for agreeing to a relationship with you, demands some type of reward. If you want to ping me messages every week, I want something back from you. That’s probably not just a link to the YouTube clip of your latest ad, or a happy birthday on my birthday. To truly build relationships with consumers there has to be a value exchange. We are no longer in the entertainment space. We are in the realm of reward. That changes everything.

Technology has obviously had a profound impact in this space, allowing the data to drive apparently tailored personalised messaging, hence hopefully deeper engagement. A bit like content marketing, ‘big data’ is a hot topic, but knowing who I am, where I am and what I like isn’t good enough. You still need to use it to give me stuff I want!

It’s much easier to do data-driven relationship marketing when you own the billing and transaction relationship. Banks, telcos and other service businesses automatically own rafts of data upon which to base their relationship campaigns and offers. Most FMCG brands don’t have that luxury. Hence they haven’t really developed deep expertise in this field.

As the big data providers gain traction however, this becomes a much more real option for product marketers. Having worked in both service and consumer goods it has always struck me how poorly developed the story telling skills of many service brands are and conversely how appalling product brands are at retaining those consumers they have through relationship management and the delivery of reward.

What’s really interesting to me is seeing some major product brands getting into this space. Coke have developed a portfolio driven, multi brand loyalty space in Coke rewards. I think this is great, ground-breaking stuff, however simple it may look if you’re a bank marketer. I know just how hard it is to pull off portfolio-led initiatives in brand led business. To do that in the relationship / reward space is even harder.  It may be an acorn right now, but it’s really no surprise that one of the world’s most creative and innovative product brands is leading the charge on product relationship marketing.

System Building must create utility

Mobility and the rise of the ‘app’ in particular have driven real growth in a new marketing ‘approach’. This is the third node or the notion of system building or software development as marketing. Nick Law of R/GA talks far more authoritatively than I ever will about the rise of software as media and how that fundamentally changes the nature of the marketing that flows through this channel. I subscribe to Nick’s view of the world and believe this new approach of all of them has the greatest potential to change what we do. In my opinion, getting this ‘channel’, if we can call it that, right relies squarely on the notion of utility. If you want me to use your marketing rather than consume it you better make it useful, or you will be deleted. Commonwealth Bank have been doing some nice work in this space with their Effie winning Investorville campaign and their Property Guide app. Real usefulness that also delivers real brand messages.

Now some of you might be muttering the word gamification into your developer’s or hipster’s beard right now. Surely Investorville is a game? Obviously there are elements of gaming inherent in the design. They make it fun and engaging. But in my opinion gaming is not why this campaign works. It works, I believe, because it’s useful. Try selling Investorville as a product for people to play on their Xbox and you’ll see just how good a game it isn’t.

Gamification for me is mostly just another modern aspect of interactive story telling. If it isn’t entertaining it won’t succeed. Again, like HBO make content, EA make games. They are the new competition for consumer attention, not the agency down the road. Done badly, brand apps are just another form of lack-lustre story telling with no real reason for the consumer to engage, gamified or not. Done well however, brand apps and software create genuinely (often socially) useful applications that consumers will choose to pull into their lives.

In his article for Wharton’s ‘Future of Advertising’ program, “11 big trends that will reshape advertising in 2012 and beyond”, Max Kalehoff argues that a key trend is that ‘successful advertising will be about service.’ I think he’s right. This is a whole brave new world of marketing we have yet to master.

eCommerce must make transaction easier

The final node, which really needs little explanation is e-commerce. This space is currently dominated by the B2C brands that are increasingly using e-retail as a means of vertical integration by proxy. The likes of the big retailers bemoan the competition issues created by a globally connected shopping environment, but it is the new reality. A bit like the changing media landscape and the warming planet, we have to accept it, deal with it and move on. In my opinion, the harder Coles and Woolies push the FMCG suppliers on margin, the more and more likely it becomes that the product brands join in the e-commerce transformation. Sure the barriers and logistics are hard, but they are removable, if the incentive is high enough. The stakes rise daily. In the UK last month, my alma mater Diageo launched its first real online ecommerce site. Selling direct to consumer, bypassing the powerful supermarket chains and effectively vertically integrating its business. Another small acorn, but the way ahead seems clear.

The WHY is different at each node

Each of the four nodes then works in a very different way. And is perhaps best suited to a different marketing ‘job’.

Story telling MUST be entertaining in order to acquire new consumers. Relationship management MUST be rewarding to keep consumers loyal. System building MUST create utility in order to deepen relationships with existing consumers. E-commerce HAS to make transacting simple, easy and convenient.

Hyper Connected Advertising

Those of you who work as specialists in some of these disciplines may be looking curiously at the egg I am teaching you to suck, but there’s one further step that I think makes this approach genuinely interesting. That’s what happens if we connect it all together. I’m going to call this, with my tongue firmly in my cheek I might add, ‘the hyper-connected advertising system’. Here’s what happens if we start to think systemically about the whole rather than the parts. Let’s follow a hypothetical advertising development journey in our new hyper-connected systemic world.

We start with a story-telling approach, not radically different to what many brands are doing today. But we make it two way, interactive, telescopic and always on. We begin to collect the most basic data about who the consumer is, as they click onto our owned media channel to see more of our content. We add to this our relationship approach, inviting our consumer to receive rewards for telling us more about themselves. We collect more data. We use that data to push more relevant, entertaining content and stories into their feed. A mutually sustaining system.

Now we know a fair bit about our end users, so we build and get them to use our brand utility app. This transforms the amount of data we have about the base and further deepens and enhances our entertainment and reward strategies. Finally we take the last step and begin to transact with the base directly. Our data infrastructure is now substantial.

In building the ecosystem, we’ve attracted new consumers, made them loyal, kept them active and secured direct access to their wallet. Along the way we’ve also reduced our reliance on paid media as a channel and third parties for retail and distribution. Sure we’ve spent a lot on data management and software development, but we are spending less on production, media and trading terms. We’ve changed the business model, but most importantly we’ve retained the audience and they, if you remember, are ALL that counts.

Final Thoughts

The consequences of this for brands, agencies and media owners are transformational. This is advertising climate change. At a later date, I will explore what some responses to this new world might be, but for now the key observation is that unless we start to wrestle with the challenge of why consumers should bother to listen to what we want to say, they might just stop listening all together. Dramatically reducing the amount of fossil fuel we consume is not easy in an oil-driven economy. Dramatically reducing our reliance on interruption is pretty difficult with our current levels of thought leadership and a fragmented brand and agency model. Change will require a level of systemized, integrated thought that is currently beyond many brands and agencies. Only the best will survive, but change we must.

If this all sounds a little theoretic and hard to grasp, I’d leave you with a final thought. The best brands in the world today are already doing this. God I hope they don’t call it ‘hyper connected advertising’, but my model is based on observation and admiration of what the best in class in our business are doing. Not drowning in the rising tides of marketing climate change, but waving, thriving and growing. Brands like Nike, Nespresso, Gatorade and Apple are all moving rapidly towards this approach. It’s not just possible, it’s happening.

Unless all of us accept the new complexity and try and make advertising that consumers will actually be happy to pull into their lives, our business and our profession may well sink under the rising waters of technological advancement and the on demand media revolution.

Like finding the solutions to climate change, we cannot solve these problems with yesterday’s thinking, or through small step incrementalism. We need radical wholesale change. It starts with us all accepting we have got a problem. Interestingly one of the key symptoms of that problem, is the over reliance on metaphor and analogy. I am on the road to recovery. Are you?

At the recent WFA Global Marketing Week in Brussels I was interviewed on the impact cost reduction was having on innovation and creativity. Seeing the edited result here got me thinking about the impact I have seen in recent years where cost reduction became more important than the results and value marketing and their agencies were delivering.

From the first day of setting up TrinityP3 we have not accepted payment linked to savings because the easiest thing in the world is to reduce advertising and marketing costs at the expense of effectiveness and value.

“Cutting costs without improvements in quality is futile.”

—W. Edwards Deming (1900–1996)

The three examples that immediately come to mind are:

1. Media cost over media value
2. Reduction of agency fees at the expense of expertise
3. A focus on price leading to increased cost

These are actual examples and to protect the guilty, the naive and the stupid I have changed or eliminated the details that would identify who they are, but I am sure they will see themselves in these examples.

Media cost over media value

A global consumer goods company CMO  was talking to me about the performance of his media agency and wondering what I thought of them because he had doubts on their level of innovation and proactivity. The agency had a good reputation with their many other clients and within the marketplace so I was surprised he was having such a negative experience.

I asked about how the agency were remunerated and he told me that on the global agreement they had the typical small margin deal but that the bonus was quite substantial based on delivering very aggressive CPM (Cost Per Thousand) goals.

Typical of many global, and sometimes local, media agency deals is a focus on providing a bonus to the media agency based on achieving lower media costs and one of the easiest measures of media cost is CPM. The problem is that a media agency can achieve low CPMs by buying low quality inventory and avoiding the high quality, premium media environments that attract a premium price and therefore drive up the CPM.

I asked the CMO to describe the symptoms he saw as reflecting the agencies poor performance and he said that for their significant media investment he almost never saw his spots on air yet he always saw his competitors spots. And that the agency rarely came forward with innovative sponsorship or media properties.

We talked about when he watched television and this was when he got home from the office around 7.30 pm. This is zone 1 and premium time with premium viewers and rates. There is no way the agency could schedule in this time without compromising their bonus. But clearly the competitors did not have the same limitations.

Likewise, many of the exciting and interesting sponsorship deals are for premium properties and these invariably come with premium audience delivery costs. Even though they can provide excellent value in positioning, awareness and brand association, the measure of cost of audience delivery, CPM, does not take any of this into account.

Here is a prime example of where measuring cost and providing an incentive to lower cost has eliminated the opportunities to embrace the media value, leaving the brand in the bargain basement.

Reduction of agency fees at the expense of expertise

A global entertainment company contacted me to discuss undertaking a media agency pitch. It was felt that the agency had been under-performing for the past 12 months or more with little or no obvious strategic input and a high turnover of staff on the account.

Both of these are obvious symptoms of potential remuneration issues and so I suggested to the marketers we undertake a remuneration benchmarking prior to the pitch to get a baseline of the level of remuneration. Sure enough for the level of spend the mix and complexity of the media requirements the agency were paid about 35% less than benchmark.

Interestingly, on bringing these findings to the attention of the marketing team, we were informed that 18 months earlier the regional procurement team had benchmarked and reduced the agency fee by 30%. The agency accepted the reduction in the fee as the alternative was to have to defend the business in a pitch.

Instead, the agency took the 30% reduction in fee and effectively removed the senior account management and media strategy and planning from the account replacing them with the resources they could afford. They did not touch the buying / trading function as this is the area that was regularly checked by media buying audit.

On the basis that the average media agency fee is between 2.5% and 4% of media spend, they had effectively saved 30% off the agency fee and effectively put the 96% – 97.5% of the media spend at risk of underperformance. The problem is that they did not know this for 18 months as the only thing they were measuring was media buying cost and not the media value delivered.

A focus on price leading to increased cost

A financial services company had appointed an agency and commissioned us to assist with the negotiation and benchmarking of the proposed agency fees. A year later the contract was being reviewed by the company procurement team and I received a call from the procurement lead.

He was reviewing the production rate card and was questioning the rates we had negotiated. In his experience in the print industry he was aware of studio rates that were less than half of the rate we had negotiated. In the conversation I pointed out that the advertising agencies were typically more expensive than the production houses associated with print companies and brokers. The reason is that the agency is developing the creative work and that typically they utilise a better calibre of studio artist / designer.

He disagreed and went off to negotiate with the agency, convinced that our benchmarks were out-of-step with this objective of reducing agency costs. He came back several weeks later gloating about his results, especially on studio costs. The rate had been negotiated from $180 per hour to just $90 per hour. He had calculated that on the previous year’s artwork spend he had effectively saved the company more than a million dollars.

It was an impressive price reduction and I asked him to share the whole rate card. On this there was a ‘new’ charge being file archiving and file retrieval. Anyone aware of the Apple Mac OS and Adobe In-Design application know that this is effectively Command O and Command S. Yet here was a charge of $90 each.

Most of the jobs going through the agency studio for this client, and something we knew but he did not, are simple changes and corrections. These are typically billed in 30 minute increments. Because of the many stakeholders and the volume of work these changes outnumber the longer, base artwork costs by more than 5 to 1. So what is the cost implication?

Under the old system the price was $180 per hour. Five in one jobs are billed at 30 minutes which is a cost of $90 each. Under the new prices in the rate card those same jobs are now $45 for the studio time plus $90 for the file retrieval plus $90 for the file archiving being a total cost of $225. Reducing the hourly rate by 50% effectively raised the cost 150% in more than 80% of studio projects.

Even worse, it appears that the number of times jobs jobs were sent back through the studio for revision increased because the lower rate created the perception that the cost consequences were also reduced. He did not save the company more than a million dollars, he effectively cost the company money because the focus was on the price and not the cost or the value to the company.

Are you focused on Cost? Price? Or Value?

Here are three examples that come to mind when people are focused on price or cost and not value. Marketing is a value proposition. But so much of the conversation is based on cost and price. The results of this are often counter to the true objective to be more efficient and cost effective.

Do you have any examples of where cost reduction has been applied at the expense of value in marketing? You do not have to provide details, just share the basic premise as I have done. Leave a comment and share.

So we have all accepted that digital is an integral part of our commercial landscape.

If you have not accepted this view then it may be time to put down the device in your hand and pick up that stone tablet next to you…

If you want to stick around perhaps a description would help – and what better source than the ultimate content curator – Wikipedia:

‘A web content management system (web CMS) is a bundled or stand-alone application to create, manage, store and deploy content on Web pages. Web content includes text and embedded graphics, photos, video, audio, and code that displays content or interacts with the user. A web CMS may catalog and index content, select or assemble content at runtime, or deliver content to specific visitors in a requested way, such as other languages. Web CMSs usually allow client control over HTML-based content, files, documents, and web hosting plans based on the system depth and the niche it serves.’

So that is well and good but what is the best CMS system to use?

Depending on who your developer is will entirely dictate the answer to this question. It comes down to personal preference entirely. Get twenty developers in a room, sit-back, pour yourself a large one and let them debate for hours. Highly entertaining – if you like that sort of thing.

If you don’t have time for light entertainment here is a quick summary of 5 of the most popular Open Source systems.

Ratings (1-5 with 5 being excellent) are based on overall capabilities for a beginning to intermediate user.

WordPress

With over 60 million users this is the Mac-Daddy thanks to its ease of use and quick installation. The core software (now at version 3.5.1) is built by volunteers – hence their positioning ‘Wordpress is both free and priceless at the same time’.

Known as a bloggers best friend – as per its original purpose – the software has now evolved to include thousands of plugins and themes that can transform any site from a simple blog to a full e-commerce platform thanks to good page management features, media uploading and numerous features to assist in content management.

Like many Open Source systems, WordPress has often been of concern for the more security-minded who worry about the open access nature. This is largely unfounded.

WordPress is not just used by the stay-at-home blogger but has become a core component of the systems used by some of the giants of information and technology including Sony, Samsung, CNN and eBay. These guys are not known for their cavalier attitude to security.

Having said that, these companies and many others still primarily use it as a blogging platform – cue hysteria from some developers. Yes it is open source which means new add ons are being created all the time but this constant evolution means that some plugins may be become outdated and cease working.

Don’t get me wrong – I love WordPress like a cute Labrador puppy that just wants to please…but… it does have its limitations when required to perform against other systems more specifically designed for enterprise driven needs.

Best Use: Blogging

Rating: 4.5

Review

Concrete5

A powerful CMS that also doubles up as a strong framework for the development of web apps. It is largely designed for non-programmers who want a static site – About, Contact etc. thanks to easy set-up and ability to inline edit very simply handling links, images and other ‘blocks’ brilliantly.

This is designed with the user in mind and it shows. With the minimum of tuition even the most hapless of users will be able to change content with the use of simple front-end editing.

For the more advanced the opportunity exists to code your own themes with HTML Javascript and CSS templates and convert, whilst the less code-savvy start with a theme and then override styles.

Tutorials are readily available with some of the video offerings particularly useful compared to other systems.

In terms of add ons Concrete5 can be seen as pricey and has been accused of lacking the depth of choice of other CMS’s however this is changing at pace.

Although built from the ground up as a commercial CMS it has one of the fastest growing develop community’s within Open Source CMS (although still smaller than many other platforms) as well as an actual support facility if forums cannot assist making it a good choice for beginners to intermediate levels.

Best Use: Community

Overall Rating: 4

Review

Joomla!

Visit the Joomla site and you will see them claim of millions of users – no surprise given it is so customizable. It is a true heavyweight amongst CMS platforms and has a million module creators (yes you read that right). The problem with this abundance is finding one that suits your needs.

Joomla is perfect for developers looking for an extendable CMS with a lot of functionality. The basic product can provide a huge array of options thanks largely to the third-party extensions available.

In particular this is a platform worth considering if you are looking at incorporating memberships areas, forums, articles from external authors etc. giving you plenty of opportunity to set limits on time, length, author etc.

The basic stuff – colours, logos, themes etc. – is pretty easy to master however even the most seasoned developer needs some guidance once you start moving on from here.

However be warned that many of the smartest modules are not cheap if you do venture off of the range.

Should you get into trouble, as ever, the Joomla community is there to help – and what a friendly bunch they are…there is also a comprehensive admin section that is easy to use and there are a kaleidoscope of templates and styles, menu management tools and feeds so for this reason the likes of Citibank, MTV, Linux and Harvard use the system.

Best Use: Small/Medium Business.

Rating: 4

Review

Drupal

A close cousin in many ways to Joomla!,  in terms of purpose. It is another titan of the CMS world with enough modules to power almost any kind of site. These modules are (relatively) easy to customize and the majority of menus, sidebars and configurations can be changed without needing to change the theme.

Of course, reading between the lines, this means the basic system whilst easy to install is relatively bare bones – hence the need for so many modules in order to help build that kick-ass site that you have dreamed of.

Like those community-built sites listed above, Drupal has an active community to assist with problems and has even moved to hosting face-to-face Drupal events and forums.

This is probably necessary as the system can be intimidating given the volume of options and configurations on offer – there are over 6,000 modules – just don’t even mention the ‘creative/confusing’ names for some functions… This is a system that justifies a developers salary.

If you can find them, there are so many modules to choose from that the system can be overwhelming, complicated and slow. Beware – as can be the case with other community-built systems – unfinished modules lurk in the depths.

Having said that, a major bonus of the community-built system is the sense of collaboration that ensures there is always someone on the various forums willing to assist with any issues making it a popular choice with some big boys like Universal Music and MIT.

Hey, anything that is good enough for the Mr Obama and the White House is good enough for me.

Best Use: Big Business

Rating: 3

Review

ModX

An Open Source PHP application framework that is feature rich and allows almost full customization using templates in regular HTML/CSS/JS this system has been gaining increasing popularity from a passionate and vocal community.

Its interface looks impressive and provides developers with a vast array of options for customization that can make other systems look like tin-pot dictators.

On top of this ModX minimizes the need for SEO expertise being built with this critical factor in mind without the need for additional plugins.

This is a system that is really built for those with strong development skills who enjoy complete control over the CM included an integrated blog and varied features. Many users enjoy the ease of navigation with the left hand side menu that pops open with pages as well as incorporation of the newest technologies that help ‘future-proof’ the site.

However, some developers have complained that the system can be difficult to use for the uninitiated – which given the relative lack of documentation – can be a number of people. Make the wrong move and you can step on a landmine that explodes everything. This is something to be wary of when handing control to a client that lacks ModX experience.

Unfortunately the forums can often be of little help with ModX contributors having an unfortunate reputation for arrogance when dealing with new users.

As one reviewer so eloquently wrote – ‘if the caches fail it’s like having the Sword of Damocles over your head; you are provided nothing but ‘The White Screen of Death’’…

Best Use: Tech Sites

Rating: 2.5

Review

There are dozens of CMS systems to choose from depending on your requirements each has their own merits. For the vast majority of users WordPress is hard to go past – hence its popularity. Whilst it was designed as a blogging platform, it has evolved to become so much more. Whilst it can frustrate with its lack of flexibility on occasion, it is a system that all but holds your hand through each step – think of it as a ‘Benign Dictator’.

At the other end of the spectrum stands ModX that is a wonderful CMS system for those familiar with its capabilities but given its unforgiving nature it is not to be used for ‘P-Platers’.

Concrete5 is a great platform for developers and agencies working across a wide variety of clients as it is easy to use and once all of the addons are incorporated can really let you play to your hearts content.

Joomla! Is a thinker – it has great depth. Many users only skim the surface of its capabilities and can get frustrated with weeks of work and a sense of frustration however those who have broken through the pain barrier describe a developers nirvana.

Drupal really starts to move towards the bigger end of town and lends itself nicely to construction of bigger more complex sites thanks to impressive scalability without some of the barriers of ModX.

I encourage you to research as much as possible before making your final decision. Even the most cursory investigation will find a cross-section of views about every system so maybe the best advice is to try a few on for size and see which fits best.

Let me know which CMS you favour and why by leaving a comment.

If you have been following TrinityP3 for any length of time you may have noticed a gradual (or maybe not so gradual) rise in the brand’s presence online over the last couple of years.

In this post I am going to share a few of our strategy secrets and I am also going to demonstrate how the big increase in digital visibility has a significant and measurable impact on company revenue.

Many thanks to Darren Woolley, Founder and MD of TrinityP3 for allowing us to publish these results and to outline how we have achieved this.

This has been a collaborative project from the outset and has required a lot of belief and a lot of hard work from the team at TrinityP3, particularly from Darren, and a phenomenal commitment to a rigorous publishing and social media schedule.

Oh. yes… and a bit of courage. Being prepared to stand up and have your opinions published on trade sites that allow spiteful anonymous comments is not for the faint-hearted. This industry is rife with tall poppy syndrome and I think we all recognise this.

There were some tough times early on, particularly in the Winter of 2011 when traction was still quite slow. But, the commitment remained and as we gained momentum the rewards began to show.

How can you measure digital ROI?

There is a lot of debate about whether ROI is measurable with anything to do with digital marketing.

How do you measure it?

Should we be talking instead about ROE? (return on engagement)

Or should we be talking about ROI? (return on influence)

Or what about ROR? (return on relationship)

And many other permutations can be searched and found indexed on thousands of search engines. There is no shortage of new acronyms for digital return, that’s for sure.

In the end there is really only one metric any business should be concerned with:

Growth in revenue.

Simple as that.

Impressions, clicks, rankings, pageviews, subscribers, CTRs, actions, unique visitors, bounce rates, traffic sources, paid vs organic, social signals, influence measurement, conversions and more are crucial in measuring progress and in identifying areas to concentrate efforts or reduce emphasis…

But, these mean nothing if you are not seeing increased revenue and increased profits.

Without a measurable increase in revenue what is the point of all this effort?

The “How long is a piece of string” element is in how long it will take for you to see growth in revenue.

And this will depend on a very large range of factors and influences – your commitment, your expertise, your resourcing, your offline influence, your reputation, your investment, your networks, your agility, your team, your time…

So, let’s look at how we are able to measure real ROI for TrinityP3′s project.

I will start with the cold hard stats and this will give you a good picture of the relationship between growth in website traffic and growth in revenue. Then I will take you through a blow by blow account of some the strategies we have used to get here.

As an introduction, the project has been based on a combination of SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media and technical compliance. And there have been a number of shifts in strategy over the two year period covered.

Some seriously huge changes to search and the internet have taken place in 2012 and if your online strategy was not agile enough to cope with the shifting ground you would have suffered the consequences.

This has been driven by Google’s aggressive stance on search engine result manipulation and webspam. If you had SEO skeletons in your closet then they sure as hell came tumbling out after the infamous Panda and Penguin updates.

To clarify before we start, the growth figure I reference in the title relates to a 300% increase in “unique visitors” to the TrinityP3 website. This takes out repeat visitors which can be influenced by staff, consultants or agencies accessing the site for their individual projects.

It is difficult to manipulate either unique visitors or Google organic visitors so these can be seen as true reflections of the website rewards of our efforts.

TrinityP3 website results

First let’s look at how various sources and Google Analytics metrics performed when 2011 figures are compared with 2012:

Unique visitors grew by 303%, Google organic traffic grew by 284% and Twitter and LinkedIn saw phenomenal growth.

Visitor growth looks like this in Google Analytics’ Audience Overview data:

You need to know where your visitors are coming from so what were the most important sources of traffic to the website?

Anyone who doubts the market dominance of Google should do this little exercise using their own analytics. I have intentionally left out the long tail (lower traffic) of traffic sources – traffic from every Google geo-location in the world, multiple social bookmarking and smaller social media sites (StumbleUpon features quite strongly), trade sites – thanks Mumbrella, AdNews, Campaign Brief, and also visitors from colleagues’ sites or strategic partners’ sites among others.

Direct traffic indicates brand visibility and often comes from PR and offline strategies but will also include a healthy chunk of what is known as “Dark Social” which is traffic from social media sites, particularly Twitter, which Google is either unable or unwilling to share data on.

Now for the most important figures.

How has this growth in website traffic from a number of sources affected revenue?

This graph shows clearly what has happened in 2012:

As you would probably expect unique visitors is growing at a much faster rate than revenue but the overall trends are very clear. (I’m sure you’d love 303% growth in revenue but let’s get real).

The actual revenue growth is 38% during what many are calling tough times in the industry.

Interesting?

As the leading strategic marketing management consultancy in APAC, we are regularly approached by marketers and procurement wanting to discuss potential projects they are interested in engaging us to help. These projects range across the full gamut of marketing communications from media to PR and SEO to sale promotion and regularly include:

• Agency roster alignment and management
• Agency remuneration benchmarking and modelling
• Marketing budget setting and management
• Marketing department alignment and structures
• Media buying benchmarking
• Agency search and selection and Pitch management
• Television, digital and print assessments and management
• Agency relationship management
• Marketing process optimisation
• Agency contract reviews and negotiations

Occasionally the organisation will have a procurement policy that means that they cannot appoint us to assist them without a competitive tender and so I often find myself being asked to supply details about our competitors so that they are able to invite us to tender against one of more of them.

In the interest of complete transparency, we are therefore offering a list of our competitors in the category of marketing procurement and marketing management in Asia-Pacific and Oceania. It does not purport to be a complete list, although it is reasonably comprehensive. So I am more than happy to add the details of any suitable organisation that has been overlooked. Please just let me know their company name and URL as a comment below.

Accenture Interactive - What they do (from their web site) - Using proprietary assets, pools of benchmarks based on more than $14 billion a year of media spend and more than 170 dedicated media professionals, we help our clients increase their media value. Outperform the competition and achieve high performance in media management.

Agency Register – What they do (from their web site) – We provide ‘best practice’ thinking, highly transparent, accountable processes, and adhere to the highest ethical standards so that review/evaluation outcomes are: decisive, beyond reproach, align with the needs of the business as–a–whole. To ensure all outcomes are merit based and free of any potential conflict–of–interest each evaluator of the agencies under consideration is required to confidentially submit a Declaration of Interest.

APR – What they do (from their website) - We optimize your productions and the systems that surround them. APR helps International brands identify cost efficiencies and implement the latest processes & best practices to create the greatest possible value across the entire spectrum of their advertising  production spend.

Aprais - What they do (from their web site) - Aprais enhances business relationships. With a global network of experts working with proprietary, state-of-the-art evaluation software, Aprais offers a consultative, results driven process of in depth evaluation, global benchmarking, and actionable steps aimed at maximising relationship productivity. Relationship management is all we do – so there is no possible conflict of interests.

Bird Bonette Stauderman (BBS) - What they do (from their web site) - Founded in 1985, BBS has five offices worldwide and more than 45 consultants on five continents. BBS’ advertising production consultants are former TV, Interactive, and Print production and procurement executives, all recognized authorities in their field. Our goal is to increase and ensure the best advertising production value for our clients’ budgets.

Challenger Consulting - What they do (from their web site) - Our business philosophy is to put the customer first and provide high quality strategic plans and blueprints for effective implementation. We work with our clients to achieve real results, regardless of the challenge.

The Clinic - What they do (from their web site) - The Clinic helps advertisers get the best from their agencies by advising on agency selection, negotiating remuneration and servicing structures, and optimising the relationship to achieve exceptional performance. Part advertising agency pitch consultant, part financial adviser and part relationship counsellor.

Faulkner Media Management (An Ebiqity Company) - What they do (from their web site) -  Faulkner is a truly independent media consultancy, set up to answer the question “How can I get better value and greater effectiveness from my media budget?” For more than two decades we have been helping our clients drive continual improvement from their media. We work collaboratively with our clients and their agencies to demystify the whole campaign development process. We don’t just audit. We help drive improvement – genuine, quantifiable and sustainable… from Campaign briefing, strategy, planning and buying to post-campaign learning and agency relationships.

Enth Degree - What they do (from their web site) - At Enth Degree we believe that it’s easy to drive down costs, but it is more sustainable to identify appropriate cost savings whilst simultaneously improving the service delivery of a marketer’s communications agency partners. We value manage all disciplines in the communications process including creative, media, digital, PR and promotion. Our clients can choose services from both the ‘Qual’ and ‘Quant’ sphere to best suit their individual needs and maximise value from their communication suppliers.

ID Comms (Part of Marketing FIRST Forum) – What they do (from their website) - ID Comms is a leading provider of first-class media expertise, consulting and resources to brands. We are not an auditor or accountancy firm, which means we have the freedom to consider the value of communications not just the price. This is important in a commoditised media market where the greatest opportunity is to improve media performance rather than further reduce media cost.

Kenesis Media - What they do (from their web site) - Kinesis provides independent strategic consultancy services for marketers, media and communication companies who require expert guidance, new thinking, improved performance and sales results and understanding the fast changing, complex and dynamic communications world.

Maximised – What they do (from their web site) - Working globally and locally with marketing departments; advertising agencies (creative; media; BTL; Digital); stakeholders (sales; finance; executive; regional teams etc) and procurement to help maximise performance between internal teams and external suppliers/partners. Our focus is on improving processes; systems and attitudes to create environments that allow relationships to flourish and be maximised!

Murphy Cobb & Associates (MCA) - What they do (from their web site) - MCA are a multi-channel production consultancy. We find ways to put great creative ideas into action, whatever the platform, ensuring you optimise your marketing investment.

Navigare - What they do (from their web site) –  Navigare is a Sydney-based consultancy that provides confidential and bespoke relationship management advice to CEO’s, senior marketers and their advertising (digital, PR, promotional, print management) and media agency partners. Founded in 1996 Navigare has worked at a senior executive or Board level discreetly, behind the scenes, to solve the client / agency relationship and performance problems of many of Australia’s largest consumer marketing businesses . The Practice is also deployed by many forward-thinking advertising agency CEO’s with a genuine commitment to best practice client service.

The Observatory - What they do (from their web site) - The Observatory International offers the broadest toolkit for marketing procurement and relationship management. Today more than ever, marketers need to drive greater efficiencies and show tangible results. The Observatory International offers support at every stage of planning, procurement, resource allocation, agency selection and relationship management. You’ll work with senior consultants who understand the challenges and the concerns of all stakeholders – marketing, finance, procurement and communications agencies.

Portland Group (An Infosys Company) – What they do (from their web site) - We offer a range of services to support clients in their drive to improve efficiency and thereby financial performance (profit improvement and return on assets/capital). Our consulting services can be summarised into four key focus areas: Procurement Efficiency,  Supply Chain Efficiency, Asset Efficiency and Organisation Efficiency

R3 - What they do (from their web site) - R3 was established in 2002 in response to an increasing need from marketers to enhance their relationships with their agencies. Our core service offerings include proprietary tools and processes in all aspects of improving marketing efficiency and effectiveness, as well as in the areas of Agency Relationships,  Remuneration and Reviews. They combine thirty years of market testing outside of Asia with enhancements and improvements for this region.  In addition, we also conduct independent media analysis and other bespoke research projects around sports, stars and agencies.

Spatial Access – What they do (from their web site) - We work with advertisers in pursuit of continual improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of media and marketing investments. Spatial Access (SA) was launched on the 13th of October 2003 and has evolved into a measurement and evaluation specialist of media & marketing investments. Today, we provide a wide range of audit, advisory and analytical services. Our team of over 30 talented individuals services more than 120 clients across 7 cities in India and 6 countries across the globe!

This is a work in progress – To the best of my knowledge this is a reasonably comprehensive list of companies in this niche category in the Asia Pacific and Oceania region. If you know of any more, please leave their name and URL here as a comment so we can check them out and add to the list where appropriate.

How to re-engage with your audience in the new marketing landscape

I’ve got a dirty secret. It’s one I share with many marketers. I’m an analogy addict. Try
saying that fast, five times in a row.

I can’t resist the lure of a good related story to dramatize my point. I find it impossible to just say what I want to say. I need to find a parable, a metaphor, a simile or even just a piece of urban mythology to dramatize my point. I guess that makes me a drama king. See even when trying to talk honestly about my addiction I use a bloody archetype.

No surprise then, that I can’t rid myself of this affliction when it comes to writing down
what’s on my mind about marketing. Marketing after all is littered with metaphors and
analogies. The worst thing, however, is that I genuinely believe marketing is at a moment
in time when it’s all about to change.

We are at an inflection point. A crossroads, would be the more obvious of popular symbols to pick to represent where I feel the profession and industry are at. The problem is that history is littered with analogies for the hero, facing impending doom. There’s a million metaphors to choose from. I feel like a kid in a toyshop. Yup there I go again, even when talking about how to pick analogies, I use an analogy. I tell you it’s a disease.

One oft used story is that of the boiled frog. Its urban myth that the frog gently heated in
a pan of water will not leap out. But it serves to make the point. In a somewhat cruel and
unusual way. As marketers I do believe we are being gently cooked, as the consumer
landscape heats slowly up and we stay resolutely still.

Canute is another powerful tale that represents where I think we are. A true one to boot.
I’d use the traditional spelling of his name but it wreaks havoc with my spell check. I do
genuinely see many of my colleagues and friends standing resolutely on the shores of
advertising as the seas of change roll steadily in.

So how to pick one? How best to exemplify my point. How do I light the blue touch
paper, set the platform alight and put a rocket under the ass of Aussie marketing?

I’ve ended up with Climate Change. It’s a really good metaphor for what I want to say.
Not that I believe the challenges facing marketing are the same scale or impact as our
environmental crisis. They’re much bigger than Al Gore’s little temperature problem for
God’s sake. But I do think the marketing environment faces some of the same challenges.

• The data is indisputable. There’s a seismic shift underway.
• A large number of people, especially the manufacturers of marketing fossil fuels,
are in total denial about what’s happening.
• There are a heap of snake oil salesmen selling the marketing equivalent of windfarms
and hybrid cars.
• Nobody has a clue about what to do instead.

So I’m going to try to talk about some of that. A bit like Al Gore, I’m probably going to
ask as many questions as I answer, but I’m hoping to leave you no longer in denial and
somewhat hopeful that you don’t have to be underwater in 5 years time. Here’s how I’m
going to do that.

1. I’m going to set the platform alight. I’m going to re-present the data and hope
that you draw the same conclusions from it that I have. That the crucial question
to answer is no longer what to say in our marketing, but how do we get anybody
to listen?
2. I’m going to talk about how advertising and marketing has evolved as new media
have emerged and try and explain WHY some things have worked and others
haven’t. Why does the audience respond to some things, not others?
3. I’m going to hang it out there and suggest how it might have to evolve further to
really deal with the challenges and access the opportunities the new environment
has to offer.

Five years ago I used to describe myself as a marketing expert. I knew how to do
marketing. I’d been well trained at Mars, Diageo and Virgin and I knew my stuff. It may
just be the descent into senility and the onset of my second childhood, but nowadays I
don’t feel I can say that. Nobody I know, knows how to do marketing anymore. I’ve gone
from marketing guru to marketing novice. So of course I’ve started my own consultancy!

The best I can say in a pitch or an interview nowadays, however, is that I am an expert in
re-learning how to do marketing. I’m not living in denial. I know the world changed and I
need to play catch up and play it fast. I’m going to talk about why I feel that way. As
always with these things I make no pretence of being right. I gave up the illusion that I
might be right, about the same time I gave up on the idea that I could dance.

But I hope to make you think. Maybe you can start where I have got to and make some sense of it all. First though, I think it’s worth reminding ourselves that not EVERYTHING has changed.

In and amongst all this turmoil, the job has not changed. Marketing’s role is to change the way customers and consumers behave, usually in order to make more money for the organisation. If we can focus on doing this for the long term, not just the short, we are doing our job really well. Whilst that may seem a trite truism it’s always worth restating, as the real world gets in the way all too often and we end up focused elsewhere. On things like awareness and likes and awards and a whole heap of other things that might be good measures, but aren’t good reasons.

As we break that truism down there are some other constants in all this change. The tasks we need to perform haven’t changed. We need to acquire new consumers, get the current consumers to buy more, keep those consumers and persuade them to pay a higher price. I also believe the fundamentals of the way to change long term behaviour also hasn’t shifted. We need to create a true, differentiating and motivating brand positioning, wrap it in a powerful brand identity and then find ways of communicating it to the people who we want to affect in a comprehensible, impactful way.

Our purpose, our goals and our message haven’t shifted. But the medium has. It’s shifted
radically and fundamentally and it’s going to keep on shifting for quite some time yet.

Most call it ‘digital’ to try and contain it in a box, but I think its much, much more complex
than that. The medium is not defined by the transmission technology. For me its about
the changing way our audience consumes media, not how the media arrives into their
lives. It’s my opinion that we are still mostly trying to fit square peg advertising into
round media holes. I realise that’s yet another analogy, but I think it makes the point quite
clearly.

The way we connect to people, the way we communicate our message, the way
we engage with an audience, has to change fundamentally, because the audience is
changing its media consumption habits. If we keep trying to blast out a message to an
audience that isn’t listening and doesn’t care, we won’t achieve the same results. At that
point, marketing will no longer make the organisation more money. Then the analogy is
simple. You and me and the rest of the marketing profession are then royally,
fundamentally and irrevocably screwed.

So let’s talk about media and just for a moment let’s leave the world of metaphor behind
and talk about some facts.

The media landscape has changed, but worse than that it’s still changing. This is where I see a whole heap of climate change deniers clinging on to the past in the hope that we are just having a slightly warm media summer. The issue is the same as the environmental one. We are not yet at crisis. We have not yet sunk under the ocean. But I think the data, like Al Gore’s famous long-term temperature chart, shows us which way we are heading.

Let’s talk TV. It’s still the best way to deliver audience we know of. I think that’s why it’s
so easy to warm ourselves by the cosy fire that’s burning under the mass broadcast
medium. It’s still operating pretty well. Television is more memorable than any other form
of advertising medium (Deloitte 2010). Even in 2012, broadcast TV still reached 87% of
all Australians (Nielsen, 2012), that’s a pretty seductive number. But when you look a little
closer, all is not well.

Listen more closely to Mr. Nielsen for a second. One third of all those viewers, are
watching time-shifted TV. And we know that 86% of time-shifters skip through the ads.
Don’t believe the snake oil salesman who tells you that people still retain key information
from fast-forwarded ads. It’s just not true. Perhaps even more surprisingly online TV
watching already has 43% penetration. That’s already half the reach of broadcast.

Whilst the media climate change deniers will tell you that TV is still effective as a broadcast
medium, they are only telling half the story. There’s an on demand narrowcast tsunami
right behind the TV beach. Once the audience is on demand, we can be sure the one thing they are most unlikely to download and watch is the advertising.

The other great claim of the sceptics is that nobody consumes media in any depth
‘online’. That watching a two minute YouTube clip isn’t the same as watching primetime.
But it’s just not true. If we look at consumption data we can see that online viewers watch
as many hours of content online as broadcast viewers. What you watch online isn’t that
different it seems, but where you are watching it and whether there’s any advertising in it
is totally different.

The change is also about to get faster. In Australia, we are managing all of this online, time shifted, ad skipping TV on an internet infrastructure so outmoded that it struggles to handle content rich email. Once the NBN arrives, get ready for some real change.

So what about putting all those lovely ads onto our YouTube channel, owned media
space and buying a raft of banners and Facebook ads? A bit like TV, some people will
watch them. It’s not a total waste of time. In fact it’s probably necessary to do it. It’s just
not sufficient. It’s necessary to have toilets in your office. It’s just not sufficient to make
your business succeed.

As the head of advertising for Tooheys, Hahn and XXXX in Australia I needed to sell over
1.5 billion drinks per year. Doing that by relying on the 150k Facebook friends of those
brands was never going to be sufficient. You do the maths.

I’m no futurist. Nor am I any kind of tech expert, or early adopter, but it seems to me that
if I can watch exactly what I want, when I want and not get interrupted by the ads, I will. I
have Apple TV and Foxtel IQ at home. I don’t watch ads. And I LOVE ads. I make ads. I’m
an ad advocate. I truly believe that within a very short time frame the nature of scheduling and channels as we know them will change beyond recognition and in so doing our ability to interrupt the audience with a juicy ad will be at best hyper-diluted, at worst over.

So if the old way of beating the audience over the head with the media stick is almost
over, but the digital messiah might, today at least, just be a very naughty boy, what do
we do instead?

In my opinion we need to start by changing the question. Historically we have asked ourselves, “what shall we say and do?” and “where shall we say and do it”. The ad agency and the media agency. These are still important questions. They are necessary. But not sufficient. For me the key question to ask now is “why would anyone want to listen and engage?”

The issue as I see it is we can no longer rely on our ability to interrupt the audience with
our messages in ANY medium. Digital or analogue. And audience is EVERYTHING.
Remember we are in the behaviour change business. We need an audience whose
behaviour we can affect. To really understand what’s going on then, we need to reexamine
WHY people might CHOOSE to engage with marketing in the first place, and
work out how to replicate that every time we take a new campaign or idea to market.

We seem, as an industry, to be worried about the wrong things. We obsess over the
WHAT of advertising. Is it creative enough? Pretty enough? Dramatic enough? Award
winning enough? We debate HOW to get the message out. Spreadsheet after
spreadsheet of media planning detail.

Again these things are necessary. But not sufficient.

We need to turn our attention to WHY. WHY will an audience choose to pay attention to what we want to say? If we cannot demand they pay attention, we have to know WHY they might do so voluntarily. In order to make work they choose to engage with.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts (and analogies). Please leave a comment.

There is a lot written on time management, but I think I may have stumbled on a relatively easy and simple way to help marketers manage their time more effectively.

Let me go back a step.

In recent months I have noticed that although I arrive for our meeting at the appointed hour, especially with senior marketers I will often need to wait up to 15 mins for them to arrive. This is a fairly regular occurrence, and while they are full of apologies for keeping me waiting, the cause is always the same,that they were caught up in the previous meeting.

It has become a bit of a joke in some cases, like the marketer I meet with every six weeks, who even at 9 am is running 15 – 20 minutes late. It is because he starts at 7 am as this is the only time he has to ‘do work’ other than sit in meetings all day.

You often hear marketers talking about how they have back-to-back meetings all day and complain that there is therefore no way they can get their work done, except after hours.

The problem:

The problem is Outlook, or whatever calendar they are using. I noticed with my Busy Cal (I am a Mac user and have been since 1988) that the default meeting time is one hour. So if I schedule meetings, as they are invariably out of the office I allow 30 mins to prepare and transit and then one hour for the meeting. But in the office, the easiest way is to simply schedule one hour blocks back-to-back.

The problem here is this leaves you no time between meetings. At the end of each meeting there are tasks that need to be done and preparation for the next meeting. Just the transiting from one meeting room to the next takes time. And we have not even contemplated the phone messages and the emails that pop up throughout the day. On an average working day I get between 200 – 300 emails, which I feel confident is not unusual. I am sure in large organisations some people get many more as email has become the default mechanism for keeping everyone in the loop.

The solution:

The solution is of-course to make the meetings shorter to create time between each meeting. Why do meetings have to be 60 minutes? (Even the current affairs show 60 Minutes runs only 44 minutes with ad-breaks and station promos). Scheduling 45 minute internal meetings (meetings in your office) means there is always 15 minutes to: make phone calls, reply to urgent emails, prepare for the next meeting and, god forbid, collect your thoughts.

No I am not suggesting 30 minute meetings as it is to easy to schedule these back to back and end up in the same mess. Now there is a very solid reason for shorter meetings.

Why this works:

First, it has been proven that the human brain can sustain concentration for around 20 minutes maximum. In 45 minutes, with some effort, you could have two bursts of sustained concentration. But in actual fact even if it is only one that is around half the time wasted, compared to two thirds of the time wasted currently. (I would submit that most one hour meetings are currently 45 minutes once you take out the time you wait for everyone to turn up)

Second, shorter meetings require people to be focused and organised and so are a better use of the time and the resources available. After all, how many times have you been in a meeting where there was no clear agenda, no defined objective and after an hour of more, no specific and agreed outcome or at a minimum agreed next steps and responsibilities or timelines?

Too many meetings are held simply under the guise of achieving collaboration or alignment, while there are many other ways of doing this.

Interested to hear your thoughts. Have you found other ways to manage this issue?