Britain must be the worst place in the world to be a biker. Not only do we have to contend with the arcane rules about rights of way, footpaths and bridleways (give me strength!), public transport restrictions and their inconsistency from one operator to another pretty-well kill off any attempt to take up biking as a passtime or a practical means of commuting.

If only we had government with the vision to liberalise cycling at least to the level of other European countries where you can hop on or off a train, or even a bus, with your bike at will and get out of town and hit those trails.

They have it even better it seems in Australia where the rail operators are looking at installing Bike Pods with showers and secure lock-ups, care of a great organisation called Penny Farthing, at railway stations.

We poor Brits can only look on in envy. Where is the green lobby when you need it?

I had an interesting meeting in London last week, with a few people from one of our bigger and better-known global organisations, who, like everybody else right now are looking for ways to stretch their budgets.

I have been saying for years, the difference between successful companies and unsuccessful ones is efficiency – nothing more or less.  Its a matter of what you can do with the resources at your disposal. What’s happened in the last few months to make this issues more critical is, of course, the recession.  Now the race is really hotting up and even the most successful organisations are racing to find ways to maintain or even increase pressure on their competitors while reducing their investment .  In other words everyone is desperate to increase efficiency in every area of their organisation and that puts Full Effect Marketing bang on target.

The people I was talking to were by anybody’s standard successful and their efficiency is probably about as good as it can get using contemporary practices, philosophies and models, but as more and more organisations have discovered recently this just isn’t good enough.  They cited three issues that they are struggling with right now, all of which boiled down to the same thing.

• Too many short-lived propositions – or as I would express it, campaigns with no legs – so they were wasting time, effort and money setting up and running a continuous stream of short tactical propositions that are going nowhere.
• Missed opportunities brought about by failing to recognise and plan to exploit all their options ahead of time.  This sometimes means that they have had to hold up launches while forgotten elements were nailed on (with the kind of compromises that you have to expect when this happens), occasionally they effectively plan-out potential that they have missed, so that to reinstate it later means cumbersome and inefficient delivery and also, from time to time they just miss opportunities altogether.
• Inefficient execution or just failing to engage all the expertise within the organisation early enough to ensure that campaigns are delivered on time with all the Is dotted and Ts crossed.

As they said, no longer can they afford to invest in promotions and propositions that don’t milk investment for all its worth.  If only a few more organisations recognised that.  Their problem is that they were viewing these problems as training deficiencies, when the truth was far more fundamental.

Its a fact that executives in most organisations, like policemen, are much younger than they used to be.  This has its advantages, such as high energy levels and enthusiasm (although I sometimes wonder about this), plus, of course younger managers are usually cheaper to employ and hungry for success, which enables employers to apply the carrot principle with greater success.  However its not all pluses.  There are disadvantages too and the biggest and most significant, as far as the scenario we are talking about here is concerned, is a lack of experience.  While business is becoming more complicated with a full-hand comprising more and far more diverse disciplines, executives, because they are younger, have experienced fewer (simply because they just haven’t had time to acquire more) and as careers develop, the focus seems to be on depth rather than breadth of experience.  This limits both their understanding and their management capability and adds to the reliance many larger organisations (and this one was a case in point) have on processes, the only purpose of which is to overcome experience deficiencies, but, which, in the process, limit scope for free-thought.

The thing about establishing the perspective that allows us to see all the implications and opportunities of an initiative is that its pretty well impossible, to processise.  The vision that enables an executive to see all the opportunities and identify all the departments, specialists and skills that need to be engaged in efficient delivery is simply a product of experience.  So, if you can’t processise this stuff the only option left is to employ people with the experience.  I’m not saying that youth has no place in the modern recruitment strategy, but there’s no getting away from it, if you want to up your game to the kind of level that we all need going forward from today, you need experience too and that means creating a blend of young and older executives and creating a culture in which they can work together, combining everyone’s skills to deliver the solutions a modern business needs.

So, British parliament is learning about branding?  Or at least one of it’s fundamental principles.  With MP’s expenses becoming the subject of the worst scandal in British Parliamentary history, we should all take heed of the consequences of failing to deliver our promises.

Even in the current financial environment, most cases of poor brand performance and maybe most business failures, can still be attributed to failure to deliver Brand Promise.  Yet, if anything, the incidence of firms that I come across who focus on making their promise, regardless of their ability to deliver it, is increasing.  But in these difficult times this cavalier attitude is a recipe for disaster.  Current financial constraints mean gearing is very high indeed, there’s a hair’s breadth between astounding success and abject failure. If ever there was a time to review your brand and what it stands for, its now.

The position of British parliament has always been one of solid reliability, straightforwardness, behaving as one should.  Much of what is Britishness (or Brand Britain) has been the self-assurance that allowed us to poke fun at other nations whose corrupt governments and politicians made world headlines.  Now the joke is on us, our erstwhile trusted representatives have made us a laughing stock (even among nations that we have held to be fundamentally corrupt) and its no fun!  Now that we all now know for sure that Brand Britain has been a facade and the institution has been rife with self-interest and corrupt practices our management (Parliament) has been shaken to its foundations.

The most lilywhite of PM’s and the institution as a whole now face the daunting task of winning back the trust of voters, who, if last night’s BBC Question Time was anything to go by, are determined to strip the entire institution down to its foundations and start again with an entirely new build.  And who can blame us?  I for one believe that the system of PM’s expenses, should be devised by an independent body, employed by the people, with no input at all from MPs, who should be told what the system is and decide whether they want the job, based on these and other constraints.  At least this would reaffirm our position as the employer in contrast to the belief, apparently common among MPs, that the people are here to do their bidding.  So, how does an MP set about winning our support?

The answer is, of course, the same way that any brand is built and the first step in this process is to establish what you are capable of. Unsurprisingly, this is where my Brand Discovery programme kicks off.  We start by creating a Brand Model that pin-points the critical elements of any brand on eleven parameters and sum it all up in a Brand Promise that will be reflected in every action the organisation takes thereafter.  This is marketing operating where it should be, in the driving seat of a business.  Of course a brand model isn’t set in stone, it will change because any marketer worthy of the title will constantly review end-user needs and competitive positions and introduce initiatives designed to bridge between what customers need and what the organisation is able to deliver.  This might mean, among many other things, new products and services, a new pricing policy that will dictate manufacturing processes or new distribution routes.  As I said – marketing in the driving seat.

However, the big difference between Brand Discovery and what many people take to be brand development programmes is that once the Brand Model is established we introduce an ongoing corporate process, incorporating internal marketing and training elements, processes, brief formats and judgement tools, designed to ensure that the Brand Promise is represented consistently at every level of the organisation.  We go even further than this, in fact, by working with the organisation as it migrates from the old management paradigm to a marketing-centric approach.

It seems to me that this is just what British parliament needs right now, but as with many commercial organisations that I encounter, its hard to imagine how we will get ourselves on that track when the same self-interested politicians/managers who got us into this mess in the first place, are the ones who make the decisions about how we fix it.  On the other hand, if parliament does vote to re-invent itself, rather than just go through the motions, I suppose it will mean that by definition the majority of MPs are honourable and trustworthy, which is a rather better starting point than might appear to be the case right now.

While the politicians get on with their task, my advice to all managers is to take the opportunity to review the way you operate too.  A marketing-led business, with its consequential strong brand community, is by definition, more efficient than one that isn’t and the only real difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful one is efficiency.  What the recession has done is make the line between success and failure very narrow indeed, so its a no-brainer really.  You’ll only gain in the long-run and you certainly won’t lose short term either.

I have never been able to resist a bargain.  That is why I love guerrilla marketing – Hey its usually free or almost free, who could say no?  Especially when you can build it into any integrated strategy to such good effect.  I have never understood why so many organisations look down on guerrilla as though it was appropriate only to small businesses.  I was working with an on-line publisher last year and came up with a neat little initiative that demonstrates just what can be done.

Our target was English-speaking businessmen with an interest in Central European markets.  The problem was one of awareness and the need to increase subscriptions.  I’m not a great fan of trade shows normally, partly because the cost of running a stand that is professional enough to give the right impression, more often than not, makes the idea non-viable.  However, if you don’t need a stand …

There was no doubt about it, major Central European trade shows were the most likely places to find the people we were looking for in any numbers, so we identified those with the highest visitor numbers from the most appropriate sectors of industry and called the organisers with a simple proposition – We would run advertising for their event in exchange for a free go-anywhere pass for our group of promoters and the go-ahead to distribute a card promoting a free offer that was bound to enhance the value of the show (In fact we ended up with a whole lot more than that).  The offer was a free limited period subscription to our publication (providing local CE market intelligence), which, if people signed up to it, would give us a great database and the opportunity to up-sell to paid-for subscriptions or just add permanent free subscribers with limited access who would add value to our offer to advertisers and sponsors. The show organisers, to my surprise and delight, nearly snatched our hand off!

Another great thing about initiatives like this is their flexibility.  We had no idea how this would perform so we opted for a two-month test-phase with an extended programme set up and ready to go the first month looked good.  Buoyed by the enthusiasm of trade show organisers, we decided to test a secondary target – employees of international firms that congregate in the large office complexes that you see around major Central European cities – and approached the largest property management companies with an offer similar to that we had made to the trade show organisers – free advertising in exchange for access to the lobbies of their buildings at peak times.  Same result!

That gave us two full months of promoter activity, with the office complex element filling in between the trade shows, which made maximum use of the promoters that we hired and trained for the client specially for the campaign.  Of course, the design of the material that the promoters were handing out and their sensitivity in selecting targets from the thousands of visitors to these shows and offices were critical factors in the efficiency of the first level of the campaign, but from there by funnelling responses through a carefully constructed CRM programme, we could generate revenue from subscriptions, boost readership/site visits and therefore enhance our value to advertisers, as well as sell ongoing advertising  to show organisers and exhibitors.  Every card we handed out carried a unique promotion code designating where and when it was handed out,  respondents entered the code to sign up for their trial, which gave use useful data too and we used that to strengthen our argument to the trade show organisers and exhibitors when we sold them advertising.  We also included all respondents in our new “recommend a friend” promotion, which caused a snowball effect. We did the whole thing for the kind of cost you could cover from petty cash – literally and the payback was way beyond anything that marketers would expect from a traditional campaign.

Guerrilla marketing definitely isn’t the reserve of small businesses and I’ve used all forms in many different ways over the years.  Taken seriously and partnered with the capability in other areas that large organisations always have, the effect of any investment can be magnified many times over.  Elements such as those that we used on this initiative have such a high pay-back level anyway, that they can’t help but improve the average ROI of any marketing strategy.

I’ve been in the UK recently, among other things dabbling in the Public Sector and with never before seen pressure on public spending it should be a particularly interesting time to be hanging around the black hole into which our hard-earned is pitched, but is it – interesting that is?

A recruiter friend of mine told me this week that his firm is busier than ever right now handling briefs from the public sector, which he assures me is falling over itself to adopt a private sector mindset.  Discounting for a moment the fact that we have heard this before and putting aside the obvious need for the struggling recruitment sector to give a positive spin on recruitment opportunities, as a UK taxpayer, I find this news encouraging, but if the public sector is to undergo the kind of culture change it must, there is a long way to go.  The dilemma is, where to start.

I know that there are success stories, but there’s no doubt about it, the public sector generally really does need to get down to business.  Among other things it seems they have been slow to realise that the difference between success and failure in any sector is efficiency, but even when the penny drops, there’s confusion in the ranks between efficiency and bureaucracy or systematisation which, as any private sector chappy knows, are different things entirely.

Without fundamental efficiency, little else counts, but in order to measure efficiency, you have to start with a clearly-defined objective to aim “efficiently” for.  And in my experience its right here, at the very first step that things usually go wrong.

Despite the progress that has already been made in some areas, the public sector’s greatest impediment to what we private sector jocks would consider best practice, is its own culture.  Like all big organisations, the sector discovered early on that the easiest way to make things happen consistently on a large scale was to bureaucratise and, in a short-term sort of way, it worked for a while, but as commercial organisations worldwide realised pretty quickly, long term, bureaucracy is a recipe for disaster.

The Communists in Central and Eastern Europe, kept things running for a while by giving people in every area of life step-by-step instructions on the minutiae of their life (A bit like Labour have done in the UK, come to think of it), leaving nothing to chance and preventing anybody from using initiative.  Its an idea that might fly provided the dictators are smart enough to predict every possible eventuality and legislate for it, but the reality is, nobody’s that smart and we couldn’t possible hope to envisage every eventuality, so ultimately the system breaks down at the first sign of something unexpected.

However, even that doesn’t necessarily spell curtains, provided the people at the sharp-end have the initiative to respond to the situation in a way consistent with the overall objective.  But there’s the rub.  Having created a community where you could leave your brain at home when you leave for work each morning and not realise until you came home and had to turn the video on, it stands to reason that the people who make it their home and settle in for the long term are those who aren’t really that good at the initiative thing.  I could expand on this thought, but it would take for ages and I think we are probably on the same page already.

I’m not suggesting that there’s no place in a modern business for processes.  Of course we need them, but we equally can’t afford to be totally reliant upon them.  To achieve efficiency these days requires that operators at every level of the organisation are smart, have the initiative and are empowered to apply what they know, equally to both predictable and unforeseen situations.  Migrating to this point from a bureaucracy doesn’t happen over night for any organisation, but the (some might argue unnecessary) scale of most public sector organisations makes it a daunting task for them.

If you get the opportunity, as I have, to talk to the people who are supposed to be making strategy and setting objectives – our MPs and senior civil servants – you would find that intentions are as admirable and awareness of issues is as high as you will find in the best-run commercial organisations. The initiatives that they launch however, because of the weakness of the bureaucratic process, become ineffective and inefficient at the point of delivery.  That’s why we get situations such as that which I heard of where a guy responsible for the web site intended to drive private sector involvement in a government scheme was adamant that it was inappropriate to have a proposition on the home page because it ” … commercialised the subject …” and in his world (wherever that was) social isues should not be sullied by the “C” word.

I have also recently come across a public sector new business leader and a sales team actively chasing sign-up targtes for a programme that there was no resource to deliver and another where targets for a three-man “sales” team required no more than one sign-up between them every two days when more than that were already walking in the door every day!  I have also just seen a business plan that by its own analysis was fundamentally un-executable. Room for efficiency improvement I think!

The problem is everyone is working to different objectives.  For example, the web guy sees the role of his organisation as being to enrich people’s lives rather than to drive business growth.  The new business guys see their task as being to get as many meetings with potential clients as possible and the sales guys are chasing a sign-up target with no thought to resourcing or what happens when they achieve it.  The bottom line is that programmes fail on every level, leaving disillusioned stakeholders in their wake and wasting sheds-loads of taxpayers cash.

There are two things missing from this picture.  One is a Brand Model that clearly defines the organisation’s philosophy, character and what they are there to do, neatly summed up in what I call the Brand Promise.  The second is an internal marketing programme designed to ensure that everyone in the organisation understands and is on-board with the objectives, equipped and fully committed to playing their part in the delivery of the Brand Promise.

One of the founding principles of Full Effect Marketing is that an organisation will only maximise ROI when a proportion of their marketing investment is diverted from making a Brand Promise towards the task of delivering it.  That’s an internal marketing strategy and I have created more of them than I care to remember.  Its not particularly difficult and, because my approach involves key employees in the process, just going through the strategy development starts the paradigm shift.

Organisations that do this well are people like Southwest Airlines, who prove that its not just a marketer’s latest plaything by succeeding dramatically on just about every measurable commercial parameter.  Happily, we now have consensus that its the only way to go, so, as a UK taxpayer I’d like to see our public sector jump on this particular band-waggon post haste.

If anybody from the public sector is listening (yes, I know, but I’m an optimist!), I’d be happy to help out with this particular cause.

I have absolutely no doubt of two things.  Firstly that “marketing” means leveraging the resources of an organisation to satisfy the needs of end users and, secondly, that as marketers it is our fundamental responsibility to go places and do things that nobody had gone to or done before. These are the two basic truths upon which I base my work.  I’m happy to debate this with you, but I will win! However, I have come across a few illustrations recently of  woolly, cop-out thinking by marketers around the world that makes me fear for our future.

Firstly I became involved a few weeks ago in a discussion on LinkedIn, that might become its biggest yet, which started with a member asking if anybody was interested in setting up a “consultants’ group”.  The responses that followed were horrendous and I quickly came to the realisation that the relationships between a lot of consultants and their clients must be a bit like the blind leading the blind.  I was simply staggered by the narrow thinking of many of those consultants who contributed.

Then came the response on SimpliFlying.com to a report on the BBC interview last week with RyanAir’s Michael O’Leary.  SimpiFlying is a knowledgeable and highly respected blog that focuses on marketing within the airline sector, so you would expect that the majority visitors would be airline marketers.  That being the case, many of the contributions served only to underline O’Leary’s premise that airline managers are a bunch of sad, uninspired old gits (My words, his sentiment).  I’ve never been a particular supporter of O’Leary, but that might change after this interview.  I have, however, always admired his business and brand development nous, and I’m delighted to hear that his inspiration was Southwest Airlines in the US who are a case study that I use in many of my seminars and workshops.  O’Learly clearly understands branding far better than most of the contributors to this discussion.

The final nail in the marketer’s coffin was a recent campaign by Naked in Australia, an agency that I have always thought was quite OK, for their mens’ fashion client Witchery.  Appropriately, this was drawn to my attention by Adam Broitman on iMedia.com under the heading “Interactive’s Most Offensive Campaigns”, but the offense I took wasn’t that it was rude or in bad taste, but the fact that the production of such utter dross was sure to have incurred some level of carbon footprint.  Naked seem to have totally forgotten that for a viral campaign to work at all the material that’s seeded has to be interesting enough for someone to care enough to forward it.  I am used to clients thinking that a viral campaign is a solution in itself and forgetting, like any other medium, that its only as good as the content, but for any marketing specialist, let alone an agency of this standing to completely miss the point like this is unforgivable.  I fought to stay awake through the movie, only because I wanted to see why it was supposed to be so offensive.

As I said in my opening, we marketers are supposed to be taking our organisations or those of our clients, to places and getting them to do things that they would never dream of.  That’s our primary responsibility and when times are tough, as they are now and we all really need to be brave, its our job to save them from their natural tendency to dig a pit and wait for the flak to pass.  Our clients and colleagues should be beating a path to our door just to recharge at our power-point of creativity, innovation and entrepreurialism.  If they aren’t its our fault not theirs.  It means we are just too boring and that’s something a marketer should never be.

Thanks to Michael O’Leary for calling time on the old farts of aviation and talking up his ambition to pay us for travelling with him rather than the other way around and shame on those like the people who, whether RyanAir is their cup of tea or not as a carrier, aren’t smart enough marketers to recognise that this is how you build a brand (and the world’s biggest carrier).

I have just been reading through the comments on a LinkedIn Post, which started when someone asked whether Michael O’Leary is right to charge a quid to pee on his RyanAir flights.  The comments, as usual range from the amusing to the folks who just don’t get it from any perspective, but that’s life.  So too are brands and, putting aside for a moment the misassumptions and misunderstandings of what Michael O’Leary actually said and in what circumstances, there couldn’t be a better example of what branding is all about.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again – brands are communities and we interact with them in a way that mirrors the relationships we have with our friends. – that’s why I call the relationships we have with brands “Brandships“

Its a fact, think about it.  I bet the people who you know who have a large circle of close friends all have vivid personalities.  Insipid people, though they may not upset a lot of people, equally don’t enjoy large communities of really close friends.  You know, the kind of friends you really love as opposed to those that you just hang out with because there’s nothing better to do.  And these are the ones that count.  They are the friends who, when times are tough, rather than just sympathise with you, will rally to your assistance with practical help and support.

When I think through the close friends that I have I see a number of people who sometimes piss people off with their views or style, but could never be accused of not telling it like it is.  I know where I am with them.  I’ve been put in my place a few times by some of them and I genuinely value their criticism, unlike the acquaintances I have who are always very politically correct, inoffensive and full of platitudes.  The latter group are motivated by the fear of rejection.  They just don’t want to piss anybody off and therefore succeed in neither annoying nor endearing anybody.

Brands are EXACTLY the same.  Look, around.  There are  insipid brands everywhere that people buy, simply because there is no alternative.  They are often brand leaders, which means both that they have been able to get away with this approach and why they are vulnerable to lighthouse brands that emerge.  The lighthouse brands being the strong characters in this scenario.

Right now the economic downturn has created a level playing-field and we find ourselves in the era of the lighthouse brand.  Its going to be difficult to succeed just because you don’t piss anybody off (although size and resources alone will enable the biggest to weather the storm).  Today friendships really count, we value the genuine help and support that comes with a close friend.

Of course, its not enough to just go shouting your mouth off, you do have to back it up with actions and those actions have to be consistent with what you are saying.  That way you reinforce your message, live up to your promise, reassure people that you are genuine and transparent.  Its that reassurance that you are someone who others can know and trust, derived from consistency, that makes for a really great friendship … and Brandship.

I’ve been thinking about this for a lot of years.  Full Effect Marketing with Brand Discovery at its core is firstly a process of self-discovery for brands.  Getting to understand the real you, not the “you” that you may have been trying to pass yourself off as for years because you felt that’s what people wanted to hear.

If it turns out that you don’t have what it takes to be popular we can set about addressing the issues, but we won’t create another veneer, instead we’ll make fundamental changes.  Its rare though that there won’t be something about you that’s interesting or attractive to others and that’s the foundation upon which we will build your new community of Brandships.

Making it work will involve firstly getting all your stakeholders behind the promise (your “Brand Promise”) that is inherent in your personality, and gaining their commitment to playing their part in its delivery.  Brand Discovery is the process that I use to achieve this.

So, how does this relate to Mr O’Leary and RyanAir?  Well, firstly I have to clear up the usual mess that has been make by the press, by pointing out that it wasn’t quite as reported. It was a TV interviewer who asked Mr O’Leary how far he would take his stripped-down travel model and suggested that he could charge for using the loo.  O’Leary took the chance to reinforce the RyanAir personality, which embodies fresh thinking, anti-establishment, not taking the press as seriously as they take themselves and a load of other stuff, by saying, in effect, “why not?”

Because you can’t be all things to all people, being true to your inner brand means that people will either take you or leave you, but at least their choice will be real and the result will be strong Brandships that’ll take you through thick and thin.  You’ll succeed if a lot of or most people like you, or if a minority that take you to their bosoms are able and prepared to pay handsomely for your product or services and, as I said, over time you can make adjustments.

Michael O’Leary did a great job of reinforcing his Brandships and in the process gave everyone a choice.  The facts speak for themselves.  RyanAir is an outstandingly successful business, with a very clear Brand Promise and a lot of people who just love them.

I’ve lost count of the number of times over the years that I’ve come across businesses that have allowed data and analysis to get in the way of their business development, but in the last few weeks I’ve come across two. 

Don’t get me wrong, data is my friend, but I have a great deal of experience too, which, if the data should tell me to jump of a high building, will warn me that it will hurt!  Way back when I started in this business a wise old advertising sage introduced me to the principles of research with the words “This is a light to guide your way, not a lamppost to lean on”.  He was right and the same applies to any form of data, yet I’m increasingly finding people who won’t take a pee unless the data tells them to.

There are simple reasons for this of course.  The stakes are often high and there’s big money and jobs on the line, so its easy to see why we have become risk-averse.  Its made worse though, by inexperienced managers, both in SMEs and in the large corporates.  Its a fact that today’s managers are younger and less experienced than they were twenty years ago, and experience is the key to success.  To make things worse, there’s even more to know now.  Its no wonder managers look for data to support their decisions.  But supporting decisions is fine, its when it makes the decisions you are in trouble!

I liken it to the debate over teaching schoolkids basic skills like how to do sums and write.  The purists argue that they’ll need this stuff when … wait for it … we don’t have computers anymore!  Now there’s thought!

Its important to recognise that the law of diminishing returns applies to any investment in data and analysis.  The more you do, the greater the investment required and the fewer point-gains you’ll get from it.  If you are Proctor and Gamble or Unilever the optimal point is much higher up the investment scale than it would be for your local corner shop.  That’s simply because 0.001% improvement on a gazillion dollars turnover will pay for the investment (probably a few times over) while if your turnover is that of the vast majority of businesses, that kind of improvement wouldn’t buy you a decent lunch, so there’s no point.

While large and unwieldy organisations tend to lose the advantage that data (potentially) gives them when the time comes to turn insights into action, at the small and medium enterprise (SME) end of the scale, there is no shortage of modest, easily implementable initiatives you can introduce to great effect without data and analysis, if you have experience.  But that’s a problem too, because, by definition, SMEs have less experience and a narrower skills base.   While someone like me will help a larger concern to interpret data and plan appropriate responses, when I am consulting for SMEs is more likely to involve filling in the gaps in their basic skills and experience.

When I first started my business, as an introductory offer, I promised any prospect a bottle of champagne if I couldn’t find ten ways to increase their ROI, but I never had to make that trip to the off-license.  Every business makes mistakes and its too easy for someone with broad enough experience to spot them and come up with a remedy.  I guarantee I can make significant improvements to the performance of any enterprise, large or small, and in the case of SMEs, usually without spending months wading through data and setting up programmes and analysis processes.  All that comes later and will undoubtedly help magnify the results, but the gearing is such that if you are running on three cylinders, getting the fourth to fire makes a hell of a lot of difference.  The introduction of simple sound practice, based on experience and observation, can bring a significant improvement in the bottom line for most SMEs in no time at all.  The expense is in the fine-tuning that’ll have you humming like a Ferrari. 

I have developed Full Effect Marketing to the point where any business, of any size, in any sector, anywhere in the world can plug in and play it.  I purposely stripped away the mystique that some of the big consultancies seem to like, so that it makes perfect sense to anybody and before somebody from a big organisation says, if its designed for SMEs (which it isn’t) its too basic for them – bollocks!  Marketing is basic, Full Effect Marketing just strips away the frills that have been added over the years by insecure marketing people who have thought that by dressing it up, it’ll appear that they are extra smart!

The two examples I encountered recently were both businesses sitting on the recession time bomb.  As I have said before, the game now is all about survival of the fittest – Business Darwinism – and if you aren’t fit you won’t survive.  Neither of these businesses had the basics right, yet they were fixated on data and research and locked into a kind of commercial catalepsy, waiting for the data to tell them what to do.  The answer was obvious to anybody with the right experience.  I don’t blame them for not knowing, it wasn’t their area of expertise, but what was frustrating was when they had the answers they still couldn’t bring themselves to take action, because they were stuck in the data-habit and didn’t have any to support the actions.  As a result, the one has sadly and quite avoidably, bitten the dust already, simply because it didn’t move quickly enough and other is teetering.

Maybe the fact that I have seen two such cases so close together is a symptom of the current business climate.  As I said, things right now, happen fast to businesses that aren’t in shape and there are a lot of them around.  Why is this?  Well apart from the experience quotient (which if you read the research is lower these days than twenty years ago because managers are younger) its because increased entrepreneurship and a boom market have resulted in a lot of businesses getting this far even though they were half-cocked.  Its just a build-up of failures waiting to happen.

I can’t pretend to be sorry to see a few businesses disappear – recession is cathartic, but I still think that there are tremendous opportunities in this recession for smaller businesses and challenger brands and I’m really excited at the prospect of seeing new names and ideas emerge.  Most of all, I’m looking forward to working with businesses that are made of the right stuff, getting the basics right, making things happen and then adding the data analysis that will scale those things.

I’ve spoken long and often over the years about “the big idea”, and with everyone fighting for survival right now we all need a big idea more than ever.  So how do we recognise one when it pops up?

The popular marketers’ interpretation of  ”the big idea” focuses on communication – the creative solution that cuts through the noise of the marketplace and carries your message, to the willing ears of a grateful marketplace.  A big idea in this context can enhance a great product, service or brand and even put a less than great one in the frame.  Big communications ideas come in the shape of Lowe’s “You’ve Been Tangoed” or the old Allen Brandy and Marsh campaign “Milk Has Got a Lotta Bottle” or Cokes “Real Thing”.  You’ll have a few favourites of your own I am sure.

Level two is about the tactical offer.  I had the latest US campaign for Hyundai brought to my attention by Kathy Sharpe at Sharpe Partners.  This is a brilliant example of the big idea in action – talk about a bold response to consumer need!  This it my kind of marketing.  It uses a short term tactical offer as evidence of the brand promise.  Apart from providing a very compelling reason to buy, it says, “you are understood and protected when you are part of the Hyundai community”.  Exactly as it should be done!

On another level entirely the big idea is about the product itself.  We’ve been getting sloppy over the last few years and awarding the big ideas rosette to things that were far to low down on the “really necessary” scale, but all that is changing.  Today’s evidence points to the emergence of a new more critical consumer with a clearly more practical and rational agenda.  I’m not sure that X-box and Wii would be the success they have been if they arrived on the scene in the next couple of years, but a device that allows you to travel further on a litre of fuel or a means of prolonging the life of fresh food (without chemicals of course) now, there’s a big idea.

Then there’s the level where the big idea is the one upon which a brand culture is based.  My belief is that if you get this one right, all the rest just happens.  One of my personal favourites in this respect is SouthWest Airlines,  but you could add FaceBook, Google, Apple and many more.

The fact is that the BIG IDEA has to be big on all of these levels, but whichever level you are focusing on, there is a judgement criteria that I was introduced to by a colleague at the start of my career and which has stayed with me to this day.  Its based, not by accident,  on the acronym SIMPLE because, of course, all the best ideas are just that.  As well as interrogating your briefs and concepts with your Brand Model criteria try asking these questions to decide whether your idea is worth pursuing.

Is it Striking? The big idea always stands out.  You can’t walk past one, it sort of smacks you in the face its so outstanding.

Is it Ingenious? Its always a really neat solution.  One of those things that leave you asking “why didn’t I think of that?”

Is it going to be Memorable?  If people aren’t going to be talking about it long after you’ve shuffled off this mortal coil, forget it now.

Is it Pertinent? Is it an idea looking for a reason or a genuine solution to a need?

Is it Long-lasting? Especially now that nobody wants credit, who will part with hard-earned cash for something that they’ll have to replace soon? And you can definitely knock it on the head if its influenced by fashion. 

Finally, it just has to be Envied by the competition.  I mean the CEO of your competitor is going to be so green that he’ll fire his marketers and product development people and sent them off with a flea in their ear and a picture of your big idea to remind them what one looks like!

Sadly I’m seeing evidence that the current economic climate is causing some businesses to cut back on the development of new ideas and concepts.  Its a pity, because if you study your history, you’ll quickly realise that this is just when the development of new ideas plays biggest dividends.  Ideas don’t have to cost a fortune to develop and every business has hundreds of  ideas and concepts that it doesn’t even tap into.  My advice to any organisations is launch an internal campaign right now to unlock the potential that already exists within your workforce.  You might finds ways of increasing efficiency that will save you from the bankruptcy courts and you are bound to come up with something that you can spend this fallow period preparing for launch when the economy improves.  Ralph Halpern who brought the Burton Group from within days of bankruptcy to become one of Europe’s most successful retailers, made a policy of always having twenty or so pilot concepts on test.  The philosophy is that if only one is successful it pays many times over for the cost of those that fail.  Business is about ideas.  Striving for new, bigger and better products, processes, concepts and offers. 

I have worked with organisations around the world, helping them to leverage their brand communities, by adopting new ideas and a different perspective on their business.  It works.  I’ve seen organisations in the depths of  recession, create new business units that have become businesses in their own right, in some cases out-lasting the original trading concept.  So I know it can be done.  And the starting point is understanding what  big idea looks like and not wasting time on ideas that don’t measure up. 

So, make sure you have your Brand Model up-to-date and in shape, create your own equivalent to the SIMPLE judgement criteria and go to work on building your business, even during recession.

I caught an interesting piece in Marketing Week last week by Paul Benady.  He was reflecting on the current struggle between retailers and fmcg brands for control of consumers’ purses.  He made a number of good points and clearly highlighted the need for us all to get a grip of the relationship between our brands and the lives of consumers.

This isn’t really a struggle between retail brands and fmcg brands.  Its just the usual struggle between marketers and a test of how well they work with the resources they have.  In other words, how well they do their job.  Sure the big supermarket brands (not necessarily their businesses) are in good shape these days and the odds are in their favor because of this.  Yes they are close to consumers minds and could levage this advantage easily, but its by no means a done deal.  As Benady says there is a great deal of value in the fmcg brands – tradition, reassurance, longevity, reliability and quality. It would be ill-advised for them to pitch into the price-point battle, but I believe they have what it takes to win the war, if only they focus.

The danger, as usual, is that marketers may not see the wood for the trees.  There are rational and emotional elements to any brand relationship and marketers need to understand these and define clearly in their own minds which are which.  The two questions I ask brand guardians is

1. Do your rational arguments strengthen your emotional relationship with your customer?
2. Is your tactical activity reinforcing your strategic message?

Whilst it sounds logical, I see all kinds of brands where the rational argument is out of kilter with the emotional aspects of the relationship and I suspect that in an attempt to apese the price sensitivity of consumers over the next few months we’ll see a few brands throw the baby out with the bathwater in clumsy attempts to raise the price element in their value equation.

There’s also a good chance, because it happens too frequently anyway, that in an effort to protect what they see as their brand values some fmcg marketers will lose the message by wrapping it up in creative cotton wool.  This is no time to be shy.  If your point is valid and in line with your brand message, make it straight, not obliquely.  Its a chance for real smart creatives to show what they can do to reinforce the message.

Taking a swingometer view of things my feeling is that we’ll see a sharp swing towards price over the coming weeks and months, followed by an adjustment back towards quality that will result in a new value optimum.  Of course, this is where the supermarket brands are aiming with their presitge sub-brands, so to some extent they are already there, but they have arrived from the direction of price whereas most fmcg producers who venture there will be coming at it from the quality end of the scale, so there’s a clear difference and a variety of opportunities there.

The other decider will be how flexible manufacturers can be.  One of the great strengths of retailers has always been their ability to respond quickly. Of course, everyone should have seen this coming way back, so hopefully it won’t be a factor, but it will be interesting to see, over the next few months, who can deliver timely solutions that customers will respond to  and that are consistent with and will leverage their established brand values.

As I have said many times over the last few months – “Interesting times”.