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Entries categorized as ‘sales’

When a spoonfull of Sugar could turn your brand sour

Thursday 19 June 2008 · No Comments

I’m not really sure how well known Alan Sugar was to Joe Soap before his re-birth on the UK version of The Apprentice. I remember him and his Amstrad computers back in the seventies, but while it worked for him for a while he was sort of left out when the computer boom really took off just after that and today Amstrad computers tend to be bracketed with eight-track audio and Betamax video. I think he also supplied TVs and Sky set-top boxes. However, while I tend to think of him as a trader rather than an innovator there’s no doubt he has made a few bob and the Apprentice thing has certainly launched him into the public eye.

By and large, he seems to be handling his exposure pretty well. He always “dresses nice” and remains polite while managing to be blunt enough to maintain his barrow-boy cred. However, he may just have taken a wrong turn down Ratner Road with his support of an Apprentice candidate who lied on his CV.

Gerald Ratner, by the way, was a client of mine and owner of Europe’s largest retail jewellery business until one day at a dinner or something he “jokingly” admitted that his stores sold a lot of “crap”. Not a good move as it turned out because it hit the press and within six months Gerald was sans-business and bidding for a stall an Petticoat Lane market! As the man said - “Be sure your sins will find you out”.

The Sugar thing is about the guy who won the Apprentice this year a rough looking diamond called Lee who one of the more anal interviewers pointed out had made numerous spelling errors on his CV and included two years at college that he hadn’t done. A bit of a blow in the real world, you might say, but in the world of TV nothing to write home about it seems, seeing as he got the $100,000 job! Apart from the fact that even a recruitment consultant (You may surmise from this that I don’t hold them in high regard) could find him a candidate who can spell, what’s this say to Mr Sugar’s Investors, employees, customers and partners? Nothing more or less than “I condone lying” which is only a very small side-step from “I am likely to be lying to you”. He even said as much when the issue was raised “I’ve done it myself”. Case closed!

I’m not one of these people who place salesmen at the top of the heap and it has to be acknowledged that organisations worldwide are having a rough time these days overcoming the reputation that salesmen have as liars and cheats. Well earned reputation you may think and I’d tend to agree, especially now that Mr Sugar who is a lord (actually he’s a KBE) of salesmen tells us that lying is OK.

What’s it say to his employees though? I am sure that there are many far better equipped candidates for the Apprentice job already working at Sugar Towers for a fraction of the wage packet joker Lee is about to land. Now they know what they are doing wrong! And if I were an investor in his business I’d be having visions of Robert Maxwell next time I received my financial reports.

Having managed to accrue a fortune while largely staying out of the public eye this could be a lesson for Sugar in what happens when you thrust yourself into the spotlight (or TV lights). Everything gets magnified and scrutinised and it all reflects on your brand.

Altogether not Sir Allan’s finest brand-building hour.

Categories: Alan Sugar · Brand promise · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Apprentice · The Full Effect Company · brand development · brands · business development · candor · communications · customer · honesty · management · marketing · phil darby · sales

Maintaining eyeball-to-eyeball retailing

Monday 2 June 2008 · No Comments

The trouble with business success is that its like a computer game - you overcome one set of problems, arrive at a new level and then find that there’s a whole new set of problems to overcome. What’s more, because they are always new challenges, you encounter them with no experience upon which to base your response, so you are perpetually learning on the job. And its a treadmill that once you are on, you can’t get off - every level of success brings new challenges and every solution moves you to the next level.

Organisations in every sector will know what I am talking about and one of the major challenges that becomes bigger with every advance you make is that of just managing the day-to-day of your business. Those of you who know me or who take the time to read my stuff or turn up for my seminars and workshops will know that I’m no fan of routines or bureaucracy, but I’ll be the first to admit that you have to have a way of tackling the ever-growing challenge of the day-to-day. You’ll also know that one of my big things is the impact that apparently insignificant actions, that happen well away from the boardroom, will always have on your overall success.  This also highlights the demand for a way of passing information up and down the chain of command.

It’s a dilemma with a couple of possible solutions. The one favoured in the past and which is still, sadly, adopted by the head-in-the-sand school of management is dictatorship - basically you give nobody the space or the authority to do anything other than what you instruct them to do. The problem with this, as many organisations and a number of countries have spectacularly demonstrated, is that it involves a level of micro-management (and/or a degree of coercion) that no organisation can sustain and even if you succeed in controlling things you are going to miss out on a bunch of valuable and increasingly rare opportunities. The other route is delegation … Agaaaaaaaaaaaah! I can hear the muffled cries from below sand level in boardrooms around the world right now, but if you are one of those to whom this sounds like heracy, there’s no escaping it - its time you went cold turkey on those old habits, put down the stick and find yourself a carrot - yes, as the man said, your future is orange!

I spend a great deal of time in the retail world. One of the things that I have always loved about the sector is that its one of the last bastions of the entrepreneur, where you can actually get stuff done and try new ideas while they are still new. New stuff often represents less of a risk for a retailer than it does to other types of organisation because retailers have eyeball-to-eyeball contact with the customer and therefore understand them better and therefore have maximum scope for making a sale. That’s why when an fmcg company wants to understand customers one of the places they go for insight is the retailers who channel their products.

Retailers are big businesses these days. They have access to an unbelievable volume of data and partners who can analyse it inside-out and tell them the innermost secrets of consumer minds. However, its a two-edged sword. Because they are so big a retailer’s chain of command has lengthened. No longer can it be taken for granted that the folks on their front line have that retail blood, possess the corporate gene or really understand the objectives that you set for them - unless you tell them that is.

Did you ever play Chinese Whispers as a kid? You know, that game where you all stand in a line and the person at one end whispers a message into the ear of the second and the message is passed down the line from there, usually to arrive much changed at the other end? The famous example being “Send three and fourpence …” quoted from the first world war (so Google it!). The same applies to the instructions and customer feedback that is transmitted back and forth between the shop floor and the retail boardroom. Most organisations, retailers included, now acknowledge the need to give their sales people, at least, some discretion at the point of sale. The trouble is that in order to make the right choices the shop assistant needs a load of information and motivation and that’s where most organisations fail.

What I am talking about here is internal marketing. When I started my career in what was called the “Advertising, Marketing and Display Department” of a national retailer I tackled this by introducing a regular (weekly or monthly, I can’t remember) bulletin containing instructions and insights, which we mailed (can’t even imagine doing so now) to every manager of every one of our 100+ stores (that was a big retail chain then!). My contemporary take on this solution is a far more complex integration of things like Internet, direct mail, mobile training workshops and special events, based on my essential tool for all businesses the Full Effect Marketing Brand Model.

Internal marketing for today’s unwieldy companies, if tackled in this way, provides the essential two-way flow of information that’s the stuff of success and absolutely essential to retail and a few other sectors where entrepreneurship still lives. The Full Effect Marketing Brand Model establishes ten critical aspects of the brand, including the Brand Promise that will be an important basis of every decision in every corner of every business and the integrated communications routes that are Full Effect Marketing itself ensure consistency in message (in just the same way that your external communications should). If everybody in your business “gets it”, as they will if this is done properly, the decisions that they make in their every-day functions will be the right ones an you’ll get accurate reliable feedback from the shop floor that in turn will make the decisions you make than much easier.

It may well be that, given the number of employees involved, internal marketing is more complex for retailers than for other types of business, but we have the technology and its really just a matter of understanding how to use it. A typical retail integrated internal marketing campaign might incorporate in-store radio or TV, a LAN or WAN university and direct mail. I recently created a travelling circus for a retailer that took training to the shop floor in a way they had never seen it before and I created a plan for another retailer that involved a radical internal promotion/event that was never launched (due to unforeseen circumstances unconnected to the event) but which was exciting, colourful, competitive, contemporary and above all very educational.

I see signs all the time of retailers who are losing their grip. The ideas that are agreed on in the boardroom are not always being represented on the shop floor. Sure this happens in other sectors too, but for a retailer, building that up-close-and-personal relationship with customers is what its all about. So, get a grip. sort out your internal marketing and let’s not lose it!

Categories: Brand Model · CRM · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Retail · The Full Effect Company · advertising · below-the-line · brand · communications · community · consulting · corporate · customer · customer service · customers · decision · decision-making · efficiency · internal marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · retailer · sales

Since when was marketing the same as communications or sales?

Monday 19 May 2008 · No Comments

I’ve been having one of those weeks when the same question repeatedly turns up and this week it has been an old one that never ceases to surprise me. Early in the process of my Brand Discovery programme workshops we get around to defining marketing. Simple you might think, but you’d be surprised. There’s no lack of confidence behind the answers I get, but there are some very weird ideas!

The most common problem is that people - and remember the people I am talking to are supposed to be marketers so they should have this well and truly sorted - confuse marketing and marketing communication. Of course communication is a critical component of marketing, but it’s by no means the whole deal and if that’s your universe then not only is life going to be difficult and boring you won’t actually achieve much.

The other popular misconception is that marketing and sales are the same thing. We see the mistake made every day in recruitment ads. but just because some half-wit, or even a few of them don’t know their arses from their elbows doesn’t make it any less of a crime to agree with them. A crime, by the way, for which I believe perpetrators should be strung up by their delicate body parts and flogged with a copy of one of those marketing tombs that these people have on their bookshelf, but none of them (apparently) read!

You know what I mean. Read beyond the headline of an ad. for a marketing manager and the text describes a sales job. Yes, sales are a component of marketing, but they are just another bus-stop on the scenic route to profit. Marketing is far broader and more complex than sales.

If you Google definitions of “marketing” you’ll see the same mistakes time and again, but the dictionary definition and the one that thankfully you’ll come up with most frequently goes something like this:

“Marketing is the process of generating profit by identifying and leveraging an organisation’s resources to satisfy consumer needs.

Simple isn’t it? Well, yes and no. Its succinct for sure, but the implications are complex. Looking at it like this (which I absolutely believe is the correct definition - that’s why I wrote it!) it’s instantly obvious that marketing plays a part in every function within any organisation. Its about designing products and service offers that you can deliver using the resources at your disposal and which satisfy consumer needs, making sure that they are available and at the right price and telling potential customers about it and more.

While you are doing this you get to understand more about customers, competitors and market trends, which helps you identify your weaknesses (wrong manufacturing equipment, poor distribution and my favourite, people and recruitment etc.) and fix them, adding new people, resources and changing practices and structures. So, though this might sound like heresy to some people, marketing is well and truly a part of operations, distribution, manufacturing and recruitment for a start.

This same insight also enables marketers to understand the relevance of the product offer and define how to improve that too so (perhaps less radically) marketing involves a contribution to product design.

Even when you have the right product, life is such that there are probably a dozen alternative and equivalent products for consumers to choose from in their local store - Hey, I didn’t say this was easy! - and that’s where brands come in. Sure, you can begin to create an emotional differentiation in the cosmetics and packaging of your product - ask Philips Apple, Sony, Harley Davidson and pretty well all the auto manufacturers about this. However, that’s only a small step in the direction of branding and brand development and I’m not going to explain more - That’s what I get paid for!

In the “making sure you can deliver it …” department we get into internal marketing, which involves training and therefore brings HR into the equation. This is another of my favourite areas and one in which I think pretty well every business I see is under-performing. Delivery not only concerns the physical delivery of a product, but embraces the delivery of the emotional promise inherent in every brand. OK, you’ve heard me say this before, but its where most organisations slip up so I make no apologies for repeating myself.

Apart from not knowing what marketing is, the thing that prevents most organisations marketing effectively is their structure, practices and above all culture (I say “above all” because if the culture is right then the rest tends to get sorted). Most businesses are set up in silos representing different departments and that perpetuates a lack of cooperation between disciplines. Worse still, marketing is frequently viewed as one of the junior functions, sometimes even treated as separate to the mainstream business. Needless to say there isn’t much of a future for an organisation that doesn’t acknowledge the central role of marketing, but its essential for everyone on the team, whatever their specialisation, to be able to influence the work of other departments, which for most organisations means a new structure and set of practices. Thankfully I am increasingly encountering astute CEOs who create businesses with the cross-fertilisation and specialist accountability that is essential to business success in today’s competitive marketplace.

A structure like this works because it acknowledges that everyone around the table has capabilities or ideas beyond the boundaries of their defined role, but understands that specialists should call the shots in their own environment. For example, marketers tell the manufacturing/operations guys what they should make, the manufacturers decide how they are going to do this and identify what they need from everyone else in order to achieve that. This includes, for instance, the level of investment that the CEO needs to find. If to create the products, produce and deliver them requires a change in personnel the HR department either re-assign existing human resources or hire and train new people.

It works in reverse too. Having devised a strategy for delivering the necessary human resource, the HR people will hire the communications specialists to devise the communications that deliver the right people to the door and because communications is the essence of training the marketing people will be lending their expertise to this too. At each of these cross-over points there is opportunity for all parties’ input.

Part of the framework of HR strategy (as well as design, manufacturing and every other strategy in the organisation) will be the Brand Model that the Marketing Department has created with contributions from the board. No organisation is going to get very far from home without a Brand Model.

To bring us back to our second great misconception; a Brand Model is where marketing and sales rub shoulders because when the sales folks take to the stage in this business pantomime they will also have to be working within the framework of the Brand Model. The HR folks will have seen to it that they are the right people for the job and together with the marketing people will have created a training programme that will deliver them to their cue. Now its their turn to represent the brand and its promise - in fact, they could be the only flesh-and-blood manifestation of the brand the customer gets to see, so not only will they find it easier to sell if they work within the Brand Model and maintain consistency of message (see earlier [posts on consistency), but the organisation is depending on how faithfully they represent the brand promise for future sales.

Even though this is a very much simplified scenario the fact that marketing impacts on every area of every business should be pretty obvious. So, if you find yourself in one of my seminars or workshops and this question comes up, you’ll know not to tell me that marketing is the same as communications or sales.

Categories: Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · brand · communications · consulting · efficiency · management · marketing · phil darby · recruitment · sales · strategy

Consistency - the key to strong brandships

Tuesday 29 January 2008 · 3 Comments

ConsistencyMy friend’s wife suffers from multiple personality disorder.  He says its fine - like sleeping with a different woman every night!  It doesn’t work that way with brands though.  Deviation from the personality your customers have come to know and trust could mean the end of a beautiful relationship!

You know how it is.  There’s a chap at work who you see every day.  You know him well enough, he’s the guy in the smart suit with the latest haircut and all his facial hair in the right places!  You like him, he’s reliable and you don’t really think twice about trusting him with a project or a task.

Then, one Saturday, you are pushing your shopping trolley around the local supermarket and you come across a couple of loud kids with some bloke in jeans an a baggy sweater, hair all over the place and stubble on his chin, who looks like their Dad and a woman in track pants tagging along.  It takes you a minute, but you think its that guy from the office.  You’re not sure, but he’s seen you and looks as though he knows you.  You make a sort of non-committed nod of acknowledgment and take half a step in his direction - yes its definitely him.  Blimey!  You would never have recognised him in a crowd, though now you do its OK and you strike up a conversation straight away, but its that moment of awkward hesitation that’s significant.

Now translate that to a brand scenario.  What if a brand that you know and trust, one that you had been married to for years, suddenly acts out of character - a corporate inconsistency, new packaging, a different advertising message, a disappointing experience?  It probably wouldn’t make you want a divorce, but there would be that moment of hesitation.  And that’s all that your competitors need to step in and introduce themselves, maybe with a little incentive to break the ice.  “Hello, I’m just the kind of friend you thought he was, but I come with an extra if you take me home today”.  That’s the way longstanding brand relationships can come to a sudden end.

Brand relationships (or “brandships”) are all about knowing and trusting and its vital that you maintain the core character traits that enabled you to establish the relationship in the first place.  Of course, brands have to make changes from time to time, its essential if you are going to evolve with your customer base, but there are risks.  Avoid them by remembering that its like seeing the guy in the office in a new suit for the first time, provided he hasn’t gone from Gucci to grunge, its just new and interesting, not a complete change of character.

Having said that, it comes down to sensitivity.  Changes can be more radical that you might expect - David Bowie (one of my favourite examples of a strong brand) lived characters like Ziggy Stardust that he created and changed music styles dramatically while maintaining a very loyal fan base for longer than most performers, because the key character trait that drew us all to him in the first place was his creativity and character creation, not necessarily a particular persona.  Product brands can be the same - Apple, automotive brands, sports teams (different players, same philosophy).  In fact I have written recently that brands often forget that they can and should be constantly re-inventing themselves.  Be edgy by all means but be so within the framework of your core character traits.

A smart marketer will be able to maintain the freshness of their brand, like the spark in any relationship, without losing the fundamental values upon which the relationship was originally founded, but it works both ways.  If you are looking to steal customers from a competitor, wait until you know they are going to make a few changes and make yourself conspicuous.

Categories: CRM · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · brand · brands · consistency · consulting · corporate · marketing · phil darby · sales · strategy · tradition

CRM isn’t about technology.

Friday 4 January 2008 · 1 Comment

tesco-check-out.jpgOn the Tom Peters web site Steve Yastrow challenges us to define “Customer Relationship Management” without using the words “software”, “application”, “system” or “database”. Harald Felgner pitches in with his response on Harald Felgner and the Red Fez, although I’m not too sure that he hasn’t deviated a little. Now, I may be being simplistic here, but personally I don’t have a problem with this challenge. However, I think I see where Steve is coming from.

We humans are a complex mess of contradiction. On one hand we thrive on community yet on another we avoid relationships. We want to belong, but we strive for individualism. Throughout our lives, as Kevin Roberts explores in his Lovemarks idea, we struggle with the dilemma of rational over emotional responses, left-brain/right-brain thinking and a common manifestation of this is the way we use technology as a means of avoiding relationships.

You’ve undoubtedly done it yourself. Want to pass on some bad news? Need to talk to someone you don’t particularly like? Use e-mail. In fact we use e-mail all the time to avoid making a phone call or even popping down the corridor to talk to somebody. We use the rational/left-brain excuse for doing so - its “less expensive than a phone call” or “I don’t have time to get up and schlep all the way down there”, but the truth is that our emotional/right-brain wins every time and we just can’t be bothered to “relate”.

It’s worth highlighting the fact that relationships aren’t always good or positive. A relationship is nothing more than a connection between things or people (or things and people) and it can be difficult or even downright bad - its just a connection after all!

cnharris24.jpgBusinesses do the same thing on a larger scale. One of my business heroes is Lord Harris of Peckham, known to most of us as Phil Harris the founder of Queensway Carpets (Once the UK’s biggest carpet store chain) and more latterly the man behind Carpetright, which I think is the biggest carpet retailer in Europe. I was lucky enough to work with Phil for a while and discovered, what I believe is the main reason for his success. Sure, he’s definitely one of the smartest businessmen I know, certainly he demonstrates what Jack Welch describs as “candour” (one of my top ten requirements of any manager), but above all, he makes contact with people on a personal level. He could send mails to his store managers to ask them what was the buzz in their town this week, but when I worked with him he would instead, get in his car and travel the length and breadth of the UK turning up unannounced, at stores on any day of the week (including Sundays) to get on the shop floor and sell! And sell he does! His explanation for this behaviour (if it isn’t obvious) was that it puts him in touch with both his store staff (He seems to know them all by first name) and his customers. In other words, an important reason I believe, for his success is that he builds relationships - and he does so on all levels not just these two.

Most organisations understand the need for building customer relationships - they are good for business! - but most managers lack real commitment and see the task as just part of the job. They merely pay lip-service to the notion of CRM and because they adopt this attitude its very easy for them to slip into the left-brain/rational mind-set and use technology to tick the Customer Relationship Management boxes for them. The fact is of course that this is barely a relationship let alone relationship building,which is about emotional stuff at least as much as rational, it is purely doing the minimum required to maintain a status quo.

Technology can’t build relationships, its just a tool that you can use, with great effect, to help you organise yourself. I believe, and I think its Steve’s point too, that far too many of us confuse the “process” with the “tools”, which is why when asked, most managers will define CRM in terms that lean heavily on the use of words like “software”, “application”, “system”, and “database”.

So, to get to the point, at last - My definition of Customer Relationship Management would be …

“the process of staying in touch with, anticipating and responding to your customers’ needs”.

What tools you choose is up to you!

Categories: CRM · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · consulting · data analysis · management · marketing · phil darby · sales · strategy

“Integrated Marketing”. If you don’t know what it is, you probably aren’t doing it!

Tuesday 1 January 2008 · 4 Comments

I’ve been trawling the blogs this week and I’m amazed at just how confused some of the “experts” are about integrated marketing.  For example, it seems to be a  common misconception that “integrated marketing” is buying all your marcoms from one source. 

Apart from the fact that this is impossible anyway (the range of elements is infinitely wider than any one marketing firm could accommodate) its just utter bollocks!  Buying all your services from one place, if it were not complete fiction, might be a termed a one-stop shop, which is the band-waggon that a bunch of terminally unimaginative marketing services firms jumped on back in the seventies when they realised that their gravy train was heading into a siding, but forget it, you are not even close.  So let’s start at the beginning.

“Marketing” is the process of leveraging an organisation’s resources to deliver the solution to a customer need - right?  Its not advertising or any other kind of communication and its certainly not “sales” (Don’t all those recruitment ads for marketing managers that are really sales jobs just do your head in?) although both of these are components of marketing.

Conversely, “communication”, is not “marketing” but something that we all use, all the time, including when we are “doing” marketing, in which context it involves stuff like advertising, PR (That’s Press and Public Relations), direct marketing, web for sure (I wish I hadn’t started this list because all those that I don’t list you’ll think I’ve forgotten!  Please take it that we all know the traditional media routes).  It also means that often forgotten and massively misunderstood area - internal marketing.  However, it embraces stuff like the way your phones are answered, the way your company vehicles are driven, the look and feel of your stores, the attitude of your sales staff, your products themselves, where the are sold … I could go on, but the last time a workshop of mine made a list we had to stop at a hundred and counting.  Take it from me no organisation appreciates all the ways in which it communicates.

“Sales” come into it for the first time somewhere in the middle of the marketing process - the stages before are the lead up to the sale and the bits afterwards are CRM leading on to repeat purchases (which is where the investment really starts to pay off).

“Integrated”, last time I looked at a dictionary, meant “combining”.  I don’t think that’s changed.  So “integrated marketing” is (drum roll) “combining your marketing”!  Simple isn’t it?  Well, no actually, it isn’t.

“Integrated marketing” means taking all your marketing elements and making sure that they are all working efficiently and effectively together to achieve a common goal. 

So, if marketing involves every area of a business, to be integrated you have to embrace every aspect of your business with a single strategy that addresses every function - an integrated business and marketing strategy - and ultimately one management point.  However, the big obstacle to actually “doing” integrated marketing is the way that most businesses are set up.  The traditional business model encourages silos and ivory tower thinking, positions marketing as a separate, support function and therefore actually prevents  integration!

To achieve the kind of efficiency that is essential for a business today the organisation has to be built around its brand, marketing has to be the core discipline and firmly in the driving seat and the marketing department coordinates.  There is no other way, this is how it works and the organisations that have quit arguing and just got on with it are now reaping the rewards.  Great for them because they have established a new level of competition.  Using a soccer analogy its as though they are playing 4-4-2 when the rest are still using the 2-3-5 formation that went out with the introduction of the off-side law in the 1920’s.

The thought of changing their structure and introducing new thinking is viewed by many organisations as a step too far, which is why we see many businesses clinging on to the old ways.  However, they’ll either change or die and the sooner they start with a new approach the less painful and the more manageable the change process will be.  In fact, it needn’t be as traumatic as some people expect, as long as its done early enough and there’s just about time to get in on the act, although we are well into the eleventh hour already.

Its clear why a marketing services firm like an advertising agency isn’t going to be able to help you out - its a long way beyond their area of expertise, although it doesn’t stop some of them offering.  Its also nothing that  design group or branding agency can solve for you either, although we need these firms, who at least understand a little of the subject, to contribute their communications expertise to integrated marketing strategies.  There’s no getting away from it, its up to the organisation to take the initiative and prepare the ground.  Such an organisation should also be ready to handle the ongoing coordination and management, although probably with the support of a marketing or business specialist, but beware, there are a great many so-called experts out there who don’t really get it.

Categories: CRM · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · advertising · brand · brands · consulting · customer service · efficiency · internal marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · sales · strategy

So, it looks like marketing might be science after all!

Wednesday 26 December 2007 · 2 Comments

genes

With most of the human genome now discovered there are people in some quarters who would have us believe that genes drive pretty much any decision we make.  Folks have suspected for some time that things like aggression, happiness and depression could be genetic and inherited, now there’s speculation that there is a gene that determines conformity - yes, there are definitely people who like to be part of groups and those who like to express their individualism by owning niche products, apparently, its genetic! 

Maybe this makes the case for genetic testing as a part of the recruitment process?  You could identify people who think outside the box, or those who are natural leaders for management positions and others who are routine orientated who would be best suited to transactional roles.  Business success in the future could be guaranteed by the genetic make-up of your board, or even your work-force.

Just think, educational achievements could be of secondary importance on our CVs in years to come (I’ve been suggesting that for years) being relegated by your certificate of genetics, that would automatically qualify you for the top jobs regardless of what you have learned, simply because leadership is literally in your nature.

The potential is way beyond that though.  We know that brands are about membership to communities - large or niche.  Perhaps future marketers will be studying media data that identifies the genetics of their audience and planning media investment, message etc on the basis of a genuine biological propensity to purchase.  It’s well within the bounds of reason that we could identify groups of people who like to fit in and those that like to stand out and pitch brands accordingly.  Just think, there could be a gene or combination of genes that accounts for the kind of unshakable brand loyalty that we see with Harley Davidson or Apple computer purchasers or even religious zeal.

What really intrigues me though is the notion that we could implant genes to change behaviour.  In fact, its more than a notion, scientists are doing that kind of thing already.  OK so implanting genes is tricky to get right, but so was flight once and now its all too common. 

Apparently its not just about single genes, but combinations of genes.  The multitude of unique formulae that are possible with the estimated 20-25,000 genes in the human genome is represented by the different character traits we see among humankind and once you have the basics provided by the genes there’s still further scope for individualism, you can fine-tune them with social influences.  

So far I’ve only mentioned naturally occurring genes, but I’m sure someone somewhere is already working on creating entirely synthetic genes from scratch.  Just think what we can do with that idea.  A manufacturer could commission a gene that drives a tendency to purchase their product.  Then all you have to do is find a way to introduce that into a worthwhile section of the community and you are away! 

Where’s all this heading?  Well maybe the marketing consultancy of the future will be identifying markets for their clients by genetic analysis.  Brand strategies would be less about ensuring that your brand appealed to a worthwhile consumer segment and more about introducing genes into food products to create loyalty among those who ate them.  You would only have to organise tastings in supermarkets and it would just be a matter of sampling enough people to represent a worthwhile market - once they had tasted they would be hooked!  Sales would be assured!  Once that’s possible, food products will become the media with food manufacturers providing the opportunity to producers of non-food items and luxury goods to introduce their “buy” gene via the food chain.  Hey, you could polish off a plate of fish-fingers and immediately develop an irresistible desire to own a Ferrari, financed by some financial services group whose gene you had also consumed as a part of the media package!

When you consider the plan that the UK government had to add folic acid to bread to reduce spina bifida you have at least some of the ingredients for a society where the introduction of genes in this way is socially acceptable.  It would probably start with governments introducing behaviour modifying genes to control law and order, the next step might be religious groups working to convert non-believers and from there its just a small step to full-blown commercialisation!  And if you think that people wouldn’t stand for it, don’t forget that resistance could be reduced or eradicated by adding compliant genes to the water supply!

Then again, maybe it would just take the fun out of marketing!?

Categories: Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · advertising · brand · brands · consulting · design · gene · genetic · ideas · innovation · management · marketing · phil darby · purchasing · recruitment · religion · sales · strategy

Internal Marketing - Bringing down the cost of conversion

Tuesday 11 December 2007 · No Comments

It may cost ten times as much to sell to someone for the first time as it does to re-sell to an existing customer, but you can multiply the investment required by a far bigger number if you are trying to entice back to your brand community a customer that you have already let down. 

 

On a scale of one to ten a disappointed customer comes in at something like minus a hundred on the scale of likelihood to buy from you, but if you are fighting for market share and your reputation is tarnished you don’t have a choice, but to dig deep and accept high conversion costs.

 

You can piss customers off in many different ways. Make unrealistic promises, raise their expectations beyond your capability to deliver, fail to pay attention to customer support, stand for unpopular issues or demonstrate a lack of social graces – these days that seems to be about your carbon footprint.  All the areas that go to make up your total brand experience represent potential pitfalls for the unwary marketer.  And its no use deciding that you are not going to play this game – its not your choice.  That’s down to the consumer.  If they think that an issue is important, you’d better take heed.

 

So, if you want to keep your conversion costs to an efficient minimum you must look further than product and start thinking “Brand Experience” because that’s what its about and internal marketing is the key.  The trouble is that while we all nod in agreement at statements like this when it comes down to it the understanding that most businesses have of internal marketing is something like the understanding George Dubya has of Arab psychology. 

Internal marketing has one purpose – to increase your chances of delivering your customer promise first time, every time, and it should be targeting all your stakeholders – that’s partners, distributors, suppliers, investors not just employees.  The media that you use to reach them should be the same as those that you use to target your customers – press, DM, PoS, Collateral, web (especially LAN and Extranet), house mags, social promotions, competitions etc. It should be two-way and it has to be accountable, just like any other marketing investment.  Now if that leaves you scratching your head we should talk.  Get in touch and I’ll explain how The Full Effect Company create internal marketing programmes that really work.

Categories: Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · brand · brands · consulting · customer service · efficiency · internal marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · sales · strategy