The Absolute Truth About Marketing

Where's Geoff? (Dixon, CEO, Qantas)

2006-11-16T05:09:00.000-08:00

(This post is about my experience trying to get an answer from Mr Geoff Dixon, CEO of Qantas. I am asking him if he has flown economy lately and endured the 'torture' Qantas - and most other airlines - inflicts on its customers because 'economy is economy'. I have included the string of correspondence leading to this email. Start reading from the bottom, to get the full story.)

Hi,

“We’re not going to answer your questions,” said a pleasant voice on the telephone. It was Marianne Hedl, Executive Communications, Customer Care Executive, Qantas Airways Limited. Marianne read to me a section of their procedures manual that described how all complaints were reported ‘high up’ in the organisation – to the Board, no less – in aggregated form. The same day I got this one line email from Malcolm, a friend and ex-colleague: “May I ask what sort of response you were expecting?” I’ll tell you a story. I once wrote a lot of letters to companies , suggesting ways they could improve their marketing and advertising, hoping to get noticed and break into advertising. One afternoon the telephone rang and it was Brian Walsh, the managing director of David Jones. He made it “there’s no other store like David Jones”. I asked him did he respond to many letters. “All of them” was his reply. He also insisted that his management team spend time every Friday behind a cash register. He could identify a DJ’s shopper at 500 paces. It was not long after this that Waters & Peterman made “Management By Walking Around” a watchword. The book they wrote was In Search of Excellence. David Jones was an excellent company. Is excellence a relic of the 80s? Geoff, Google “Qantas Sucks”. Your customers and your staff are talking about you. “Where’s Geoff?” they wonder.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS – A THOUGHT-A-DAY EMAIL

Hi,
The Qantas Poll currently stands at 10% "Unreasonable" 85% "Go Get 'Em". (5% "WHat's happening?") So, continuing the lessons learned from this exercise (It's like a field trip into Customer Experience Land, isn't it?) Big Company had an opportunity to identify a case of "complaint" that required individual attention, to engage the customer and give them the sort of response they expected, and failed. Now the problem escalates, and leaks into the blogosphere where it becomes a permanent part of the online brandscape, accessible easily via Google. If they mishandle their response to this phase, the result in many cases could become a "www.F---Qantas.com" of "www.QantasSucks.com" site of the type attracted by McDonalds and other multinationals. (Lesson: Make sure your company has bought every combination of URL of this type to block their use by feral activists and disgruntled customers. DO you think Qantas owns QantasSucks.com? Go check it out.) The overall lesson of this excursion has been the importance of managing expectations. In the US they warn you "It's gonna be soooooo bad..." before you get on the plane that you're pleasantly surprised that the hostesses don't spit at you when you're boarding...
Geoff, if you're reading this, it's not personal. We're just observing your company's behaviour, like entimologists would. (From the point of view of the insects.)

Cheers!

Michael

DUDE, ECONOMY IS ECONOMY – A THOUGHT-A-DAY EMAIL

Hi,
Jay, one of your fellow Thought-A-Day recipients, replied that he thinks I am being unreasonably hard on Qantas. You might think so too. Here was my response to Jay's note:

You are so right, Jay. I am being unreasonable. When we paid a pittance for our tickets we knew what we were in for. But the collective sense of misery in that cabin was something to behold. Toyota would never inflict it on customers, even on the most economy of economy buyers. It’s not in their nature. Ford's marketing staff used to have their cars serviced at the factory in Campbellfield. They never entered a dealership as a customer, so they didn’t know how bad things were. Holly Kramer changed that when she was Director of Marketing, and consciousness of the customer experience started to seep into the corporation. Even Qantas flight crew fly business class when relocating for a shift. I guess what started as a bit of a joke has developed into a demonstration of how a fine corporation can act like a machine from the customer’s point of view. I think it also demonstrates how dangerous it is to ignore the danger signals. I told the company I was sharing their response with you and the list of 450 readers, as well as the world via my blog. They obviously did not read my note. We live in a viral world; a dangerous world for service companies. I am waiting for Qantas to react in a human way, with or without Geoff.

Am I being unreasonably unreasonable?

Cheers!

Michael

I RESPOND FORMALLY TO QANTAS

Marianne Hedl
Executive Communications
Customer Care Executive
Qantas Airways Limited

Dear Marianne,

Thank you for your reply, attached below. Did Geoff see my note? Can you ask him these questions for me?
1. Does he reply personally to any customer communications addressed to him?
2. Has he heard the old story about the cockroach letter?
3. Do all customers complaining of the same issue receive the same letter?
4. How long has it been since he flew economy class? (10 years? 20 years?)
5. Does he ever eat the food served in economy?
6. Does he have to play 'elbow scrummaging for the arm rest'?
7. How can narrower seats be more comfortable? (Is Geoff a fan of Monty Python?)
8. Will the refurbished aircraft feature more legroom? (1cm? 2cms?)
9. How does Qantas decide how much space there will be for the economy class passenger? Does each technician sliding the seats closer together wear an executioner's hood?

Cheers!

Michael Kiely
PS. "The cockroach letter" is an old story about a man who had encountered a cockroach in his hotel room. He wrote a letter to the management and received what he felt was a thoughtful reply that strongly stated their regrets and determination to address the problem. Then he noticed a memo in the envelope. It said, “Send this pain in the ass the cockroach letter.”

QANTAS RESPONDS OFFICIALLY TO MY EMAIL

Hi,
Remember my inflight letter to the CEO of Qantas? (Attached below.) Well I sent it to him, telling him I had sent it to you and blogged it... and this is what I got in reply:

Ref No: MH/93051893
08 November 2006

Dear Mr Kiely

Thank you for taking the time to write to Geoff Dixon, Qantas’ Chief
Executive Officer. I have been asked to respond on Mr Dixon’s behalf.
I was disappointed to learn about your recent encounter with Qantas.
We strive to offer our customers a comfortable and enjoyable inflight
experience. I am sorry that this was not your experience on your recent
flight.

We have recently refurbished our aircraft with improved seating. This has
increased the space between the rows, and the ergonomic design of the seats
enables them to mould around you to make your journey more comfortable.
Although the seats are slimmer, the design offers the same width as before
and our legroom still compares well with other major airlines.

Qantas is committed to acting on what our customers tell us, and we closely
monitor customer feedback. We run a continuous improvement program, which
uses customer feedback to help resolve and improve our product and service.

I appreciate you taking the time to write. I hope we have an opportunity to
welcome you aboard Qantas in the near future.

Yours sincerely

Marianne Hedl
Executive Communications
Customer Care Executive
Qantas Airways Limited

LESSON: Qantas customer complaint strategy: 1. Don't respond yourself. Flick the task to a functionary so there's nothing personal in the interaction. 2. Don't admit fault. 3. Dismiss the issue in a couple of lines, then spend the rest of the letter celebrating the joys of using your product.

Geoff. Remember the comedy routine that has the punch line "Send them the cockroach letter"? I think I just got one.

Cheers!

Michael

MY RESPONSE WARNING THEM IT WAS LEAKING INTO THE BLOGOSPHERE

------ Forwarded Message

From: Michael Kiely
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 20:51:47 +1100
To:
Subject: Re: About Qantas - Our Company/3767862

BTW I blogged it on http://michaelkielymarketing.blogspot.com

On 1/11/06 2:28 PM, "websupport@qantas.com.au" wrote:

THE INITIAL RESPONSE FROM QANTAS TO MY EMAIL

> Dear Mr Kiely,
> Thank you for your correspondence.
> I have forwarded your email ont Customer Care for their attention.

> Regards

> Kate

> Qantas Websupport
>
michael@newhorizon.au.com
To: websupport@qantas.com.au
>
cc: 01/11/2006 01:29 Subject: About Qantas - Our
> Company/3767862
PM
Please respond to
michael
>
>
> Reference number: 061101-000171
> E-mail submitted by Mr michael Kiely on Wed 1 November 2006, 12:29 (AEST)
> Region of Residence: Australia
> State: NSW
> Phone: 0294846761
> E-mail: michael@newhorizon.au.com
> Frequent Flyer Number: 3767862
> Category: About Qantas
> Sub-Category: Our Company

> Question:

> I sent the following under the title "Qantas tortures its passengers" to my
> regular email newsletter list of 450 marketing executives, and many of them
> asked me "What did he say?" So I am sending it to Geoff to give him the
> opportunity to respond.
>
> To:
> Mr Geoff Dixon
> Chief Executive Officer
> Qantas Airways

> Dear Sir,

> Have you flown your own airline economy class to an overseas destination
> lately? I can’t believe you have. No sane person would knowingly subject
> fellow human beings to such discomfort. Only the rich and the footsoldiers
> of the rich can afford comfortable air travel today. Forget the toxic food
> and queues for the toilets. I can live with that. It’s space I need. As I
> sit here on QF129 to LA (13 hours) I cant open my laptop far enough to see
> the screen and type.
> I know who decides how much space I have. You. Because you set the revenue
> targets and they determine how many rows of seats you put in each aircraft
> and therefore how little space is available to the passenger in each seat.
> I can see those little rubber strips on the floor covering the train tracks
> you slide the seats along. How do you determine how much space to allow
> between seats? Measure out how much a normal human being would require for
> a comfortable experience, and then shove it back far enough to guarantee no
> sitting position is painless? If the aim is to cause sufficient pain that
> you force us into business class for a fat margin, I can help you there.
> Why not hire some really hard bastards with big sticks to whack economy
> class passengers on the head until we agree to pay for an upgrade? This is
> only slightly more ridiculous than what you do to us already.
> Cheers!

> Michael Kiely

> www.michaelkielymarketing.com.au> 0417 280 540

> Http User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en)
> AppleWebKit/418 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.9.2

THE ORIGINAL ‘THOUGHT-A-DAY’ EMAIL

Hi,

My apologies for missing yesterday. I lost a day (and my mind) over the Pacific flying to the USA for a study tour of the carbon credits market, a special interest of mine. As I am paying my own way, we flew cattle class which inspired today's "marketing thought".

To:Managing Director
Qantas Airways

Dear Sir,

Have you flown your own airline economy class to an overseas destination laytely? I can’t believe you have. No sane person would knowingly subject fellow human beings to such discomfort. Only the rich and the footsoldiers of the rich can afford comfortable air travel today. Forget the toxic food and queues for the toilets. I can live with that. It’s space I need. As I sit here on QF129 to LA (13 hours) I cant open my laptop far enough to see the screen and type.
I know who decides how much space I have. You. Because you set the revenue targets and they determine how many rows of seats you put in each aircraft and therefore how little space is available to the passenger in each seat. I can see those little rubber strips on the floor covering the train tracks you slide the seats along. How do you determine how much space to allow between seats? Measure out how much a normal human being would require for a comfortable experience, and then shove it back far enough to guarantee no sitting position is painless? If the aim is to cause sufficient pain that you force us into business class for a fat margin, I can help you there. Why not hire some really hard bastards with big sticks to whack economy class passengers on the head until we agree to pay for an upgrade? This is only slightly more ridiculous than what you do to us already.

Cheers!

Michael Kiely

“An Opportunist’s Guide To Global Warming (and How To Make Money From It By Doing The Right Thing)”

2006-10-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

Is your brand "Carbon Credited"™ yet? The time to start thinking about Global Warming is now, when your can gain maximum leverage by early mover advantage in your category. Our "Carbon Credited"™ program is an advisory service that covers mapping your organisation's carbon footprint, developing options for becoming a 'carbon neutral' brand, developing opportunities for engaging your brand's stakeholders and helping them learn to manage Climate Change in their own lives. You and your clients can avoid being lost in the upcoming rush of 'me toos', and be seen as visionary and proactive. Make a buck while making a name for yourself for making a difference. Email me or phone 02 9484 6761. You don't have much time. The issue is getting hotter.

....

That was the ad. Sandy from a marketing communications agency in Melbourne, Australia asked me to explain the issue and how he can help his clients. This was my reply:

...........

Every company and every individual has a “carbon footprint” or CO2 load that is shed on their behalf as a result of their energy consumption – whether it be a power company burning coal to provide electricity to run their lights and appliances and equipment... or the car they drive or the bus they ride on... or the factory burning carbon in the form of coal (for electricity) or oil (for combustion engines). Just by living a modern consumer lifestyle we are emitting greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, etc), either directly or by proxie. This would not be so bad if the carbon cycle remained in balance. Carbon cycles through the air, is sucked into the soil or the ocean by photosynthesis and other processes, released again by plants at night or by farmers ploughing fields or burning stubble, or people burning wood in fireplaces, or green waste rotting, etc. The world was able, until 200 years ago, to keep the CO2 in balance. But 200 years ago man’s impact on the atmosphere increased as he started spreading out across the face of the globe after the Industrial Revolution gave us the power to do more labour with fewer people. The machines were powered by wood, then coal, then oil. Coal and Oil were once organic matter – plants and animals are mostly made of carbon – that was locked up under the earth’s crust, retired from the cycle. Man released it and the world was incapable of sucking up (“sequestering”) enough of this ‘free radical’ CO2. And the natural level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, for so long held at around 250 ppm (parts per million), rose to 300+ ppm. It is climbing inevitably towards 400ppm. This is a problem for the earth’s atmosphere because there is a natural layer of greenhouse gases which regulates how much of the sun’s rays bounce around on earth and how much passes back out. When this layer gets thicker, more of the sun’s rays are trapped, like in a greenhouse. The result: the temperature rises. If the mean temperature of the earth’s atmosphere rises 1°C we get unusual weather events and ice caps at the poles start to melt. If it rises 2°C, we encounter severe weather events, higher temperatures, lower rainfall in some places, higher/heavier rainfall in other places. Greenland could melt and the sea level rise to inundate low lying islands and coastal regions. If it rises by 3°C, a major ice melt in the North Atlantic could completely stop the ‘conveyor belt’ in the oceans that distributes warm water around and maintains the water temperature. The last time this stopped, it caused an Ice Age in Europe. Extreme weather events such as typhoons, catastrophic landslips and wind storms are likely... At this level, crops could fail, transport and distribution infrastructure is destroyed, the complex economies that underpin our lifestyles could break down, millions of people are displaced and converge on other countries, causing a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions. A leaked scenario document from the Pentagon predicted that Australia could be invaded by a flotilla of people from Asia forced to search for living space. Our military forces are not large enough to withstand the sheer volume. The world’s scientists have agreed among themselves that, no matter what we do, the temperature is going up at least 2°C. What can we do to avoid 4°C? Two things: 1. stop emitting as much CO2 as we can asap. 2. Suck up as much CO2 out of the atmosphere that we can (Sequester it) asap. The nations of the world spent 10 years negotiating the Kyoto Protocol which would phase in limits on what companies could emit, hoping to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2030. 167 nations signed and ratified and two nations refused at the last minute: USA and Australia. All the others agreed to start a ‘cap and trade’ system. (Some developing nations were allowed to stay out of round 1, ending in 2012, and join round 2. Australia and USA objected to this because China and India are fast becoming the world’s 2nd and 3rd largest emitters. The USA is responsible for around 35%-40% of the world’s emissions (when you factor in their footprint in other countries which manufacture goods to be imported into the USA.) Cap and Trade means you are given your target as a nation and the nation in turn gives its industries their caps or reduction targets, and the companies get their caps. And they set about finding out what their emissions are and how they are being produced. They look for ways to cut down emissions, eg. reduce power usage. There are lots of ways to do it. But few can meet their caps, so they “trade” carbon credits with companies or organisations who have ‘sequestered” carbon. This can be done by growing a forest, setting up a wind farm, and there are other techniques. These ‘credits’ enable the buyer to become ‘carbon neutral’. By doing this the company or family or individual have done their bit in the global effort to avoid the worst outcomes predicted for the earth if we allow the temperature to rise much more than 2°C. But other steps will need to be taken to prepare for the expected disruptions to business as usual. Risk management projects could be launched within the organisation to develop responses to potential threats, ie. Loss of power, increased temperatures, disruption of transport systems, and the like. Insurance companies will want to know what their plans are. SO stakeholders (shareholders, customers, suppliers, regulators, financiers, insurers) will need to be engaged in the ‘story’ of carbon and how it could affect the company and them. Companies that act early based on a vision and a sense of leadership will gain a brand bonus. Those who do it because they are forced to do it will not. Cap and Trade is a reality in NSW and VIC. It will be a reality as soon as Bush steps down (if he is not shamed into it sooner) and John Howard will follow. Industry (including some power companies but no coal companies) are demanding a market-driven regime to help them plan their liabilities and gain certainty. The majority opinion in the USA is that it is inevitable because, try as they may, Governments cannot control the weather. The upcoming elections for the US Congress and Senate are expected to deliver control back to the Democrats, who are in favour of cap and trade. Corporate leaders, such as the CEO of the world’s largest financial institution, GE Credit, are planning for it. Many companies in both countries have voluntarily entered into arrangements to reduce their emissions. It is better to start now when demand factors mean carbon credits are less expensive than they will be once the tsunami arrives.

What we offer:

We help companies like yours introduce the concept to their clients.
We help your clients determine their carbon footprint.
We help them analyse their potential emission savings.
We help them choose ‘abatement’ instruments – Clean Development Mechanisms, Renewable Energy Credits, Carbon Credits.... There have emerged a range of vehicles. Some of them are kosher. Some of them are ‘junk’. Some of them will blow up in their buyers’ faces when the environmental lobby ‘outs’ them. We know which is which.
We help companies plan their stakeholder engagement process.
We help their communications suppliers to put together the education platform for each stakeholder group.
We help the company start the journey confident that they are on the front foot.

There will be no marketing

2006-10-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

There will be no marketing if our governments don't take real action on climate change. All the experts agree, a cap and trade market is the most cost efficient and effective solution. It moves companies and emitters to take action quickly. It doesn't destroy economies - the EU is still afloat. John Howard and George Bush are arguing over the price of lifeboats on a sinking ship. Already the US media has tagged Bush as "The worst president in history" for his track record of bad decisions: Rumsfeld, Iraq, climate change, mega-deficit, allowing Osama to escape during the Afghan War, the erosion of the Bill of Rights... the list goes on. The worst is yet to come - the humiliation of defeat in Iraq, the economic crisis due to trillion dollar debt, the extreme weather events, all will come home to roost after he has stepped down. The American public have finally seen through their 9/11-induced paranoia and decided the President has no clothes. He is just a poor, ruthless, dumb redneck mofo with spin. What's Howard's excuse? Obsessed by right wing ideology, blinded to reality, he too will go down in history as the Prime Minister who took us into Iraq and Global Warming.
Here's a question for all you Clever Conservative Climate Sceptics:
How much stuff can you sell to people when the rail system shuts down because the rails buckle in the heat and the road system falls apart because the surface breaks up... when cities run out of water for industry... when a relative of Cyclone Catrina slams into a coastal city in Australia... when, as the pentagon predicted in a leaked secret report, a huge flotila of refugees from Asia and the Pacific arrive in such numbers from their sunken lands that our military forces are overwhelmed?
WHy are climate sceptics all conservatives? Why are conservatives unable to understand the environment as anything other than as something to be pillaged as a source of wealth and a dumping ground? Such intellectual homogeneity. How is it possible? Do they have a gene missing?

Qantas tortures its passengers

2006-10-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

To:
Geoff Dixon
CEO
Qantas Airways

Dear Geoff,

Have you flown your own airline economy class to an overseas destination
laytely? I can’t believe you have. No sane person would knowingly subject
fellow human beings to such discomfort. Only the rich and the footsoldiers
of the rich can afford comfortable air travel today. Forget the toxic food
and queues for the toilets. I can live with that. It’s space I need. As I
sit here on QF129 to LA (13 hours) I can't open my laptop far enough to see
the screen and type.

I know who decides how much space I have. You. Because you set the revenue
targets and they determine how many rows of seats you put in each aircraft
and therefore how little space is available to the passenger in each seat. I
can see those little rubber strips on the floor covering the train tracks
you slide the seats along. How do you determine how much space to allow
between seats? Measure out how much a normal human being would require for a
comfortable experience, and then shove it back far enough to guarantee no
sitting position is painless? If the aim is to cause sufficient pain that
you force us into business class for a fat margin, I can help you there.
Why not hire some really hard bastards with big sticks to whack economy
class passengers on the head until we agree to pay for an upgrade? This is
only slightly more ridiculous than what you do to us already.

Cheers!

Michael Kiely

Opportunity knocks?

2006-10-16T17:02:00.001-07:00

Alan Jones calls global warming "pretend science". (LOL)

I just spent 3 weeks in the States where the papers were full of two topics: Congressman Mark Foley's follies and Global Warming. We met with some of the top scientists dealing with climate change in the USA and here's a fact they all agree on: no matter what we do about global warming, we can't stop it. We can only hope to reduce the speed of its increase and the maximum temperature it eventually hits. It won't be long before the real 'crisis' of Climate Change sets into the public mind. Inevitably we will have a fearful consumer. Lacking confidence in the future, they will be less inclined to spend. They will spend on entertainments (the Great Depression coincided with the rise of Hollywood's dream machine) and protection (survivalist products for coping in extreme weather events). Some areas will boom naturally. Some will be caught like rabbits in a spotlight. But the brands that have engaged their customers in the Climate Change story and shown they understand the issue, these brands will endure and contribute to the important work of maintaining morale. (See "Carbon Credited Opportunity" below.) As Winston Churchill told the people of Britain in their darkest hour, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Cheers!

Michael

Who's taking stupid pills?

2006-10-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

I stayed in a hotel on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus. The hotel was named after a high profile professor of marketing whose name I forget, but he's a prolific author. The Hotel was part of the Fisher School of Business which promotes itself in a way that calls into question the marketing smarts. It declares proudly in posters and brochures that Business Week magazine ranked it 13th Business School in the world. 13th? You can hear the marketing department struggling to convince the Head of School to use their higher ranking in the USA as the headline. But no, the good professor insists that his institution is world class and should be presented as such. Who wants to be known as 13th, to go to a school that is 13th? You're either top 10 or you're not telling.

For my daily email "marketing thought", sign up at www.michaelkielymarketing.com.au

Blurred Vision In The Land Where Nothing's Free

2006-10-12T16:56:00.000-07:00

This is the head of the queue waiting to register to have their luggage sent to them the next day after American Eagle unloaded their bags on the runway at Dallas Airport when the pilot decided the aircraft was overloaded. After waiting more than 6 hours for a flight, having been bumped several times off several flights, after arriving in College Station, Texas 2 hours after kickoff time for the Texas A&M University home game for which they were all coming down to see, they were told they had to wait while a clerk could be found to take their details. Everyone was pissed off. But nothing surprises me about the US airlines.

We heard them appealing to passengers waiting to board flights to surrender their tickets in return for ttavel vouchers because they had overbooked the flights - how does this happen in the era of real time computing? It was pure Seinfeld. No wonder they ahd to put signs in the bars in the airport warning people carrying guns to behave themselves.

Why put up meaningless Vision Statements about reliability? Why not tell the truth: "We are only human. They don't pay enough to get really good people, because you won't pay enough for an airline ticket. If you get shitty service, it's all you can afford. Don't take it out on me."

Sign up for my daily marketing thought at www.michaelkielymarketing.com.au

The lynch mob and Alan Jones

2006-09-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

Alan Jones is hurt. Alan Jones is angry. He harbours a lot of bitterness. You can hear it when he is burning a hole in someone with words like white phosphorous. He is conflicted. He longs to be a leader. But he can only be the leader of a lynchmob. He is a divider. A man of prodigious talents, he is content to spend them ranting against minorities. "Going off," as one of his station managers once told me. "They tune in because they love to hear him going off." I guess every white city has at least one. Like pornographers, they grow rich by appealing to the worst side of human nature. It's a living. Yesterday, Alan was pushing the view that all immigrants should learn to speak English and uphold Australian values. It was the Lebanese this time. His broad implication was that they all rort social security, can’t speak English. His greatest moment was just before the Cronulla race riots which really put Australia on the map. He was whipping up audience fury against the Lebanese, and proudly declared “I have led the charge on this one. No one was interested before I got onto it.” In Mr Jones's Orwellian view of the world, the Lebanese provoked the riots. The white rioters' behaviour was 'understandable'.

Contrary to what many people believe, Alan is not a racist, nor does he hate people from Asia and the Middle East simply because they are here, like many of his listeners appear to. No, Alan clearly has a business model that includes inciting hatred for marketing purposes. Some may call it unethical. The owners of 2GB - John Singleton, I believe - call it business. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Alan Jones does so much good on a micro-level. He does a lot on the quiet for charities. He'll take up the cudgels for the little person. But at the same time he does so much damage at the macro-level by dividing the community. He is divisive. Imagine what a nation we would have if he put his talents to uniting us as a community. If he focussed his immense power as a communicator and leader on celebrating that which unites us rather than those things that divide us, he would be a nation-builder of greater influence than any prime minister.

The tragedy for Australia is that we have lost a great leader in Alan Jones.

Truth has many faces

2006-08-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here is the last 2 weeks of "Michael's Marketing Thought-A-Day" email ezine ethingy. If you like what you see, sign up at www.michaelkielymarketing.com.au
..............

Confucious, when asked for a blessing that could contain a curse, hidden within its folds like a dagger, responded: "May you live in interesting times." We live in such times. Old securities are swept away. Living conditions are shifting. The world is in crisis at so many levels. But Confucious would tell you that the Chinese script for the word "crisis" is made of two characters, one representing 'danger' and one representing 'opportunity'. Instability creates opportunity. Every silver lining has to have a black cloud. The Industrial Revolution, which made our modern consumer society possible, was itself made possible by the Black Death, the plague which killed a third of the population of Europe. This disaster in turn made possible the agricultural surpluses which were converted into capital and invested in steam engine technology and factory production models. Shakespeare wrote: "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so." The lesson: look for the silver lining, and patent it, secure distribution for it, promote it and sell truckloads of it.

..............

This is not about politics. This is about marketing. The Australian public prefer as their leader a PM who they believe tells lies over his deputy who they believe tells the truth, according to a recent survey reported in the media. (Uh-oh...) Forty percent of Australian journalists say they can’t report the truth, according to a recent survey published on crikey.com. They have to shape their reports to suit their media company’s interests. The only organizations required by law to tell the truth are marketing companies. “Marketing” is a synonym for ‘rip off’, ‘rort’ and ‘con job’ in Australia. Yet if politicians and journalists were subject to the same regulatory regime, they’d have little to say. The Lesson: each one of us decides the price of truth and either pays it or is paid it.

..............

I go through an interesting process coming up with these 'Thoughts". Occasionally something will come up in my daily work with agencies and clients. Yesterday an agency asked me to help them formulate a "Mission Statement". I think the statement that came out of the process should be adopted by all agencies:

"Our mission is to make our clients famous."

That's it. All other statements to this effect are merely derivative. What does the individual marketing executive want, in the final analysis? Not just successful campaigns and high ROI and profits. They want to be recognised as the author of that success. They ultimately want to be heroes and rewarded as such. Career progress, esteem of colleagues, industry profile, and a feeling of having achieved a new level of personal growth - arriving at a new self-image, breathing the pure exhilarating air of success. The agency shouldn't try to take all the glory. (But they all do. Fools.) Reflected glory is all any agency can afford or deserves.

..............

There was a book written in the 1970s called 'The War of The Flea' about guerilla warfare of the type waged by the Vietnamese against the Americans and by the Iraqis and the Afghans and the Palestinians and the list goes on. Why the flea? Because there's and old story about a flea that could drive an elephant insane and send it packing. The little guy uses unconventional tactics to disrupt and eventually deter a much larger opponent. This is the strategy Richard Branson employs. Pick on a big, lumbering, self-indulgent market leader and harass his columns, set fire to his tents and destroy his baggage while his main force is arrayed in its splendor on the main battlefield. The guerilla decides where and when to engage the enemy, usually when they least expect it. He uses low cost weaponry. Branson's use of publicity stunts is a means of creating his own low cost media (eg. His law suits against British Airways, his round the world balloon flights, Sherman tanks down NY's Broadway announcing Virgin Cola's attack on Coke, etc.). Guerilla warriors use brain against brawn.

..............

Who is your best prospect? Can you describe them? Can you say, without looking, what shoes they are likely to wear? Most companies don't know this fundamentally important piece of information. So you cannot afford expensive market research. There are alternatives. One is "marketing by walking around." At DJs, Brian Walsh - the man who ushered in "there's no other store like David Jones" - insisted that senior management man the tills for several hours per week, serving customers. American Express have been known to use senior management as telephonists when contacting large numbers of cardmembers by phone. Brian Walsh was able to spot a DJ's shopper walking down the street. Can you spot your prospects at 100 yards?

..............

10 years ago Brandweek magazine offered the following seven tell-tale signs that a company is not marketing:

1. Sales are driven by price.
2. There is no other way of differentiating the offering from the competition.
3. A steady stream of disconnected sales gimmicks is used.
4. There is no unified plan for communicating the company's message to customers, the trade and the public.
5. Most sales leads come from the sale staff. Marketing exists to create a selling environment and generate prospects.
6. Longtime customers say "I didn't know you did that."
7. There is no customer or prospect database which can be used for marketing.

Now, are you in marketing? The key is having a plan and a program which aims to build equity in your business via growing customer relationships. Every tactic you employ should in some way promote your move in that direction.

..............

The earliest form of ambient advertising was discovered in the ruins of Pompeii. A prostitute had 'stamps' made of the soles of her sandles which pressed into the dust of the streets of the city the words "Follow Me, Boys" wherever she went. The fresher the message, the nearer she was to be found. Lesson: Guerilla marketing makes a lot out of a little. Where are your sandals?

..............

Choosing a name for a baby or a brand is a left brain/right brain thing. Emotion and Intellect. On the one hand it's a little bit practical - we first developed names for each other so we could tell each other apart from the others and talk about you behind your back (literally). Otherwise conversations would be cumbersome. "Go and tell that caveman with the beard and the club to come and help us kill the sabre tooth tiger." "Which one?" "The one who smells like he needs a bath." "But we all smell like that..." SO a name is for differentiation. (If you want a little differentiation - to say 'we're in the category, but we're the same as everyone else' - choose a name like all the others - the way pharmaceutical companies do: Zanadec,Zabadec, Zordec, Zordex, etc. If you want a lot of differentiation, call your son Sue and your airline Virgin.) On the other hand, choosing a name is a little bit creative - the name expresses some of the emotion and colour and personality of the child or brand. When it is to have emotional associations you have to think of the following: what are they? Do they fit the tone and manner statement attached to the Brand Positioning Strategy? (What? You don't have one? Better get one quick!) The name... What does it sound like when you say it? What does it look like on paper? On a business card? Does everything about it fit the image you want to portray? Because a name is forever...

..............

I always wanted to call one of my kids "Fantastic". Fantastic Kiely. Now there's a name to live up to. Everyday they'd have to be Fantastic. "And who might you be, sonny?" "I'm Fantastic, Sir." A name is something you have to live up to.

Other babies' names I'll never get to assign to my children: Fabulous, Special, Loveable, Always Right, and Wow!

ACTU lead with their balls, and get kicked

2006-07-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

The brainiacs at the ACTU got a clobbering by John Howard when he was able to "reveal" that the people appearing in the ad campaign against the Government's labour laws were not telling the truth. Greg Combet took a public kick in the balls when his failure to investigate the stories of his "talent" left the campaign open to a devastating attack. The Honorable John Howard was able to discredit the campaign by exploiting the smallest of discrepancies and accepting the employers' word in each case, not even consulting the employees concerned. The Office of Workplace Services concluded that none of the workers in the campaign had been sacked illegally. It said a worker who claimed to have been sacked via text message had previously been advised twice by telephone that her assignment had ended. And it found that a worker who was not paid redundancy did not have that provision in his work contract. The Government wins the encounter, even though the PM is saying it's alright to sack someone by telephone and to force workers onto contracts with no redundancy provisions. Lesson: don't give your competitor a free kick.

Closet sexuality and right wing politics

2006-07-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

(ERNST ROHM, HOMOSEXUAL LEADER OF HITLER'S STORM TROOPER TERRORISTS, WHO ATTACKED HOMOSEXUALS AS 'PERVERTS')

Are closet homosexuals a danger to democracy? Sounds ridiculous. A closet anything has reasons for their lack of openness. Many homosexuals feel shame, others fear lose of face and position. Many homosexuals suffer the complication of self loathing - which comes about because they have internalised the broader community's homophobic attitudes as correct (especially when they were young). Persons suffering low levels of self respect and high levels of self loathing can become substance abusers or people abusers. Attacking themselves and attacking others.
Self loathers are often repressive in their politics, basing their world view on fear and their belief that human nature is essentially evil. Or they are often cruel to others to compensate for what they see as a cruel world's attacks on them. Could it be that the indnvidual believes homosexuality is not right, yet he is a homosexual by nature. (J. EDGAR HOOVER AND HIS LIFELONG COMPANION CLYDE TOLSON, CLOSET HOMOSEXUALS AND OPEN METROSEXUALS)

Famous right wing ideologues who were closet homosexuals include J. Edgar Hoover (who kept dossiers on prominent Americans and used the FBI to spy on US citizens and destroy their public reputations if he suspected them of being leftists), Senator Joe McCarthy (whose name was given to the era when he led a politicial lynch mob called the Committee for UnAmerican Activities, and destroyed the lives of many innocent people) and Ernst Rohm (Hitler's leader of the Brown Shirts, the terrorists used by the Nazis to destablise the Weimar Republic and seize power. Hitler had Rohm executed as soon as he was no longer of use to him.) MCCARTHY AND HIS SELF-LOATHING SIDE KICK ROY COHN (BOTH GAY GAYBASHERS) The life and times of Roy Cohn, McCarthy's aid, a gay gay-bashing New York lawyer with Mafia connections who had photographs of McCarthy and Hoover in drag makes instructive reading. Google him. Could there be a link between extreme right wing ideology and self loathing and repressed homosexuality? Does it matter?

Eddie and Channel 9 take the greatest hits

2006-07-02T21:50:00.000-07:00

How fast did Channel 9 lose its iron grip on the Australian TV market?
Eddie Everywhere - the CEO of Kerry Packer's Earthly Kingdom - Channel 9 - and host of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" - has got some Packer traits and not others. He sees no conflict of interest hosting the AFL version of the Footy Show while he is President of Collingwood. Very Kerry.
He talks tough. "I've got a long memory," hs said in response to being Watergated about his comments on 'boning' Jessica Rowe. Threatening, bluffing, huffing, puffing, now he's got to blow their houses down.
But the only house that appears to be losing bricks is the House of Packer.
Eddie Maguire looks like a Shakespearian tragedy about to happen. Hubris hurls him down.
Eddie's not tough. He only talks tough.
I saw many of his bullyboy type at the Christian Brothers school I went to. Eddie is an old boy of the CBC.
How to succeed in small business - start with a big one.

Farting in a lift. IS that you, Sanjay?

2006-06-05T22:57:00.000-07:00

" WHAT DO YOU CALL SOMEONE WHO CALLS YOU AT HOME AT DINNER TIME?" A. A PAIN IN THE ARSE? B. SANJAY? C. A TELEMARKETER? The answer: "All of the above". Some telemarketers would defend their right to fart in a lift..........

I have just put the phone down for what seems like the umpteenth time, the calls from companies that I don't know wanting to get me to buy something from them. Most of them have foreign accents and sound like they are calling from a distant, exotic land. It brought to mind a recent incident. I serve on the board of the association that represents, among other marketers, those annoying people who call you at home during dinner. I used to own a call centre and, as a matter of policy, we didn't call anyone who didn't know us and welcome the call. It's not hard to structure your marketing to avoid pissing people off. Some cheaspskates don't want to do it. [I just took another call.]
I am also the chair of the branch committee that organised an entertainment event to coincide with our national conference recently. The event was a quiz show and I helped write some of the lines on the invitation. Little lift up flaps revealed the answers to questions posed on the cover of the invitation. The question I wrote was:" WHAT DO YOU CALL SOMEONE WHO CALLS YOU AT HOME AT DINNER TIME?" A. A PAIN IN THE ARSE? B. SANJAY? C. A TELEMARKETER? The answer was "All of the above". Pretty funny, I thought. But a fellow board member wrote to complain to the executive director in the following terms: (Note, the reference to 'customers' means companies that hire them to call you. There is no reference to consumers.):
"I received a mail piece yesterday promoting the , specifically the event on at Darling Harbour. is an Outsource Contact Centre that provides Inbound and Outbound Contact Centre services, including Telemarketing for a number of well known blue-chip Australian brands. We provide those services in Australia to Australians. We are (Association) members, and have been since we started our company some three and half years ago.From very small beginnings we now have over 200 operational contact centre seats, with 120 of these involved in Outbound Telemarketing across a number of industry groups, products and brands. We, and our customers, see our involvement as being an integral part of the whole Marketing and Direct Marketing mix. We are professional in all that we do, and work with professional organizations that understand marketing, direct marketing and telemarketing. Put simply, we’re not a back-yard, off-shore bunch of fools working with dodgy companies on dodgy deals. And, within the industry, there are many who are like us.
"Consequently, I take a significant amount of offence at the question and answers that are on the bottom left of the mail piece for this event. I figure, that if I was to show this piece to the 150 telemarketing staff that I have that they too would take a significant amount of personal offence to it, as I’m sure many else within the industry would.
"Simply, the inference that any telemarketer that calls you during dinner is a “Pain in the arse” and “Sanjay” is not funny – it’s just plain offensive. We have 150 people that, due to the wider marketing and direct marketing initiatives of the companies that outsource their work to us (and we do a damn good job of it) that are not a “Pain in the arse” or named “Sanjay”. God only knows what those who are actually named Sanjay and work for us or similar organizations in Australia would think!"
SO he admits to calling people at home during dinner and employing someone called Sanjay who is a telemarketer. But he's not farting in the lift. [I just took another call.]
My dissenting position: Unsolicited telephone calls are offensive to the vast majority of those people whose opinions are sought. It damages brands and it is damaging our industry's image. Ban them!

How will global warming affect your marketing plan?

2006-05-22T00:54:00.000-07:00

“It don’t feel any hotter to me.” US President George W. Bush is reported to have said this when asked about the threat of global warming. Did he say it? Does it matter? It’s what he thought for a long time, until earlier this year when he admitted that global warming is a fact.

After the Tsunami, Katrina and Larry, global warming is now real because people believe in it. It has entered the Common Mind, so now marketers must deal with it. What opportunities and challenges lie ahead in a globally warm world?

For a start, the car companies are turning defence into attack by promising to plant a tree for new car buyers (to offset their polluting behaviour). They think they are safe responding to the superstition that trees will save our skins – superstition because in certain conditions trees are net emitters of greenhouse gases. They should guard against the day that the debunkers in the popular press reveal that one.

Until that day you can offer consumers the illusion that they are doing something good for the environment by promising to plant a tree for them. They get the same warm fuzzy feeling American consumers get when they separate their garbage into recycling categories, despite the fact that it’s pointless now that refuse management techniques make separation after collection simple and easy. More superstition. Like hanging garlic around your neck to ward off vampires.

Water saving devices will become popular, with low water use washing and dishwashing machines fetching a premium as water prices skyrocket. Swimming pools will seem like an extravagance. Lawns and gardens could become the preserve of the rich and famous. The rest of us might pay to watch grass growing.

The dire predictions of green activists have the sea advancing inland – shifting the beach at Bondi 150 metres. This will play havoc with property prices, pleasing those who did not pay for a waterfront home but might get one, and devastating those currently enjoying waterfront views.

Wind and other non-coal generated power should increase in popularity, with consumers likely to be more willing to pay for green power. Hybrid cars could take a slice of the market, putting Honda and Toyota out in front. The hydrogen cell vehicle, whose only emission is water vapour, could become economically feasible.

But perhaps the biggest shift in consciousness could be made in the perception that, given they were right about global warming, the greenies are right about everything else. This might not happen overnight. But global warming is going to get worse before it gets better. What would life be like in a Green World?

De-industrialisation would follow the depletion of energy sources if we were to cease using oil and coal and were unable to switch to nuclear energy. (The USA has enough coal to burn for 250 years and considers it a matter of national security that they be able to burn it.) The global economy would contract as transport and distribution systems wound down through lack of energy. Economies would have to become more localised and crafts and cottage industries flourish.

The reduction in earning power for the average consumer would see discretionary dollars disappear and, combined with reductions in use of petrochemicals and plastics, would bring communications technologies into an ice age. The computer era would become a page in history. The same shrinkage of consumer spending and taxable incomes would see many services that provide personal security and wellbeing scaled down, such as law enforcement and medicine. Security issues could see the emergence of medieval walled cities (an expansion of the gated community concept) and private armies (as seen on the streets of US cities). A Mad Max scenario.

Unlikely? If global warming speeds the depletion of the natural resource base on which agriculture relies – superdroughts and massive erosion of topsoils – the house of cards we call modern civilisation could disappear as quickly as the Mayan cities did, abandoned almost ovenight and left to be consumed by the forest.

Now nothing ever happens according to the way things are predicted. But perception is reality. If the market believes in a likelihood, it effects the way people think and act. Books like Jared Diamond’s Collapse, Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers or The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock are well-researched and convincing and scare the hell out of readers.

Whatever happens, global terrorism and global warming together means it is a very different world we’re selling into.

Email marketing mistakes

2006-05-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

We make a lot of mistaken conclusions about email. The truth of the matter is this: spam works. If it didn't work, there wouldn't be any of it. How do I know? Because they can count the replies... Junk mail works or there wouldn't be any of it, for the same reason. (What I want to know is, how do they know about the size of my penis? And the Viagra?)
The vast majority of cold-call email I receive is spam. Some of it I like. I never open it tho, just laugh at the headings, many of which must be written in Azerbejani or Russian, then translated into Moroccan and then into English.

Here's a selection of my favourites:

"you 2 small" (To the point.)

"You think you need a crane to lift your dick?" (If I was that big I wouldn't need all these enlargement pills.)

"aAre you tired of your fr1end bragging about having wonderfuI sex every
night?" (I don't have any friends. my dick too small.)

"Make her worship you!" (After all, the only thing a woman wants is a good rogering.)

"Ejaculate like a porn star!" (I am a porn star, you fools. My screen name is Buck Naked.)

"You always wanted to use your penis as a billiards cue." (No. It wasn't me. I'd settle on using my penis as a penis.)

Then came the evidence that the Russian mafia, which sends out most of this stuff, had kidnapped a country and western songwriter:

"Make her scream from the surprise ˆ of your new gigantic size. Try Virility Patch Penis enlargement pills."

"Your dick is your visit card, so
make it big and make it hard. Tr y Advanced Gain Pro Penis Enlargement Pills"

Imagine trying to fit this into your pants: "Virility Patch Penis enlargement pills will make your penis as long as the
river Amazon." (Try getting that past the Advertising Standards Council.)

When all this failed, they got personal:

"For your wife‚s last b-day you gave her a vibrator because of your hopeless Erectile Dysfunction." (Are they watching me?)

But my all time favourite, with a propositon that is every man's dream:

"With our Soft Cialis Tabs you can have sex:
Anytime.
Anywhere.
With anyone you want.
As long as you want.
As often as you want."

(I'm having trouble believing this.)

Why don't respectable companies and big brands use spam, if it works? (Because they can't find someone to write copy like that.)

Web site optimisation: fire your ad agency

2006-05-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

WHen an ad agency does direct marketing they often forget the basics. It's not that they forget them. They never learned them.
They don't like them when they do learn them, because the rules of direct marketing often contradict the rules of advertising.
The same is true for online and offline. You can tell a website designed by an ad agency - go to a few of them and you'll see - their own sites. Elaborate flash designs that make you wait while you admire their creative brilliance. Wankery. The online agency understands the principle of ACCESS. People visit websites for access to content and information. You come to the Opera House for what's on the stage. Not for some bullshit performance by the doorman.
This is not an ideological divide. It is a paradigm shift. There can be little understanding between people operating under different paradigms because the past cannot understand the future and the future cannot talk to the past in terms it will understand. Online is different to offline as direct marketing is different to advertising. If you want results, seek specialists in each field.

Fast Eddie loves little kiddies

2006-05-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

EDDIE DRESSED LIKE HE WAS IN MIAMI VICE FOR HIS TV APPEARANCE (I wasn't quick enough with my camera to capture his sartorial blunder for you)

Tip for today: try not to look like a hoodlum when you run child care centres.

Another gobsmacking performance by an Australian “business leader” on TV last night. A Current Affair did a hatchet job on ABC Learning Centres, the 900lb gorilla of the Australian child care centre industry. According to the report, ABC is a bully in the playground and doesn’t look after the kiddies. The main charges were: 1. using market power to suppress competition and buy up or destroy small independents; 2. refusing to discuss with a parent why their child’s arm was broken at one of their centres; 3. refusing to take responsibility for the actions of their employees.
EDDIE ABC’s “CEO Global”, one Eddie Groves, fronted the camera as the spokesman, dressed as Dan Johnson from Miami Vice – black T shirt under a black coat, 80’s hairstyle (Eddie must be from Queensland’s Gold Coast where this look lives on), and a machine gun mouth that spruiked right throughout the segment. His shareholders and other board members must have been shaking in their slip-on shoes.
Eddie did not take a back step. Agreed ABC was “very competitive” when asked was it overly aggressive. Denied it had done anything wrong. And revealed he has a thin grasp on the responsibilities of a company when he said ABC was not responsible for the actions of its employees or what happens to one of the kiddies as a result of employee negligence. EDDIE'S BOARD. NOTE HIS BOOTS.
Eddie confirmed the viewer’s suspicion that ABC are guilty as charged. Eddie, what possessed you to wear the Miami Vice look?
We find a clue on ABC’s website. Eddie also owns a basketball team. The Brisbane Bullets. And only 2 of the people on his board are child care people. The rest are hardbitten businesspeople. And ABC Aquisitions - the division that takes over the little independents - is described as the 'engine of ABC". And - laast clue - Eddy wears cowboy boots.
EDDIE WEARS COWBOY BOOTS:NICE LOOK
Though I've never heard of him, he is described as being "renowned as one of Australia's business leaders". He is also described as having "industry acknowledged skills in acquisition strategy, centre location and design, business development, and corporate strategic planning." But not childcare itself.
Nice job, Eddie. You get the Stan Zemanec Award for Self Foot Shooting for this week.

2GB or not 2GB

2006-05-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

Mistake #2006: Don't move. Radio as a broadcast medium is going to die a low, agonising death. In the 5 or so years since the industry revamped and brought in the current leadership and change the name and logo of the industry association, radio's share of advertising revenue has shot up from around 9% to around 9%. It is still a creative wasteland and most radio advertising stinks in the ears. The reason for its inevitable death is that young people interested in new technology are not interested in radio. So radio promotions by stations for the young become more outlandish and tasteless, and programs for the aging baby boomers and their parents become more extremist or bland. The industry is desperate.
Case in point:
A bus stop poster for 2GB says: "Change someone's mind. Air your opinion." (LOL) For the uninitiated, 2GB is a whitebread AM radio station in Sydney, Australia which exploits the anxiety of the over 60s to generate advertising revenue. As such, it is a mild form of hate radio, carefully disguised as 'common sense', but big on bigotry. It's leading light is Allan Jones, a former speechwriter for right wing prime minister Malcolm Fraser (now a lefty), who chose radio because it gives him the power of a major political leader without the need to share the microphone with opponents or opposing views. This is why I choked on the propaganda line "Change someone's mind". There is no freedom of expression on 2GB, only the pre-digested views of Mr Jones and his band of imitators. They only let a dissenting voice throuigh on the lines so they can ridicule and humiliate them. Their aging and increasingly irrelevant listeners think in lockstep with their radio heroes. What makes Jones dangerous is that he has extraordinary intellectual horsepower and oratory to boot. He could perform miracles insolving the problems besetting mankind were he not so ideologically rusted onto a world view that sees the white bread middle class as the master race and anyone below them or not homogenised into a white bread "Aussie" is the source of all our problems. His worldview was dominant among the white warriors at Cronulla who 'cleaned up the Lebs'. He could entirely understand how they felt. Mr Jones and his ilk choose radio because of its peculiar psychological dynamic - it is a medium that works at the most personal, initmate level. Listeners can grow emotionally dependent on their radio relationships. Hitler discovered radio and used it to amplify the Numerberg rallies, to bring all of Germany to kneel at his feet. Goebells said the Nazis would not have succeeded without the power of radio in carrying the Nazis 'spiritual' message into the hearts and minds of the German middle classes. That was then. This is now. Digital radio is not due for release in Australia until 2012. By that time iPod and Internet applications will have engulfed the space it was to fill.
So, Radio. Remember the words of the famous thinker whose name escapes me just now: "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." 9%. And with the Internet debuting at 6%, look out. That's where the techsavvy next generation of spenders the ad spenders are after will cluster.

An idea to wake up to (or wake you up)

2006-04-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I started sending a small number of people a daily email containing a single marketing idea. Moving out to live on the farm, I didn’t want to lose touch with people. This was one way to stay connected to the intelligent conversations I enjoy when I am in the City. (Sheep have limited social horizons.)

The ideas I send are not new. They are the collection of principles and truisms I have collected in 25 years of marketing. I am dusting off the entire collection and making it available via email. Many of them are “Hits & Memories”, but they spark new perceptions when they are unwrapped.

I get many return emails with questions and additions to the original idea. It’s all part of the fun. And, let’s face it, many people get by with no ideas. So with one idea a day, you’re that far ahead.

Below I list the first series of “ideas” for you. If you want to join the list for a daily “idea”, visit www.michaelkielymarketing.com.au and register.

………….

In the beginning... was the END. Start with the end in mind. Express your intended outcome as though it had already materialised.

Then act.
………………..

Visualise success.

If it is a new product concept, write the ad for it. If it is a launch, write the news report. If it is a presentation, picture shaking hands on the deal.
Then act...
………………

"Act boldly and mighty forces will come to your aid." I found this statement in Reader's Digest. Don't be put off by that. The statement is true. The difference between success and failure is not that you got beaten by someone else or circumstances. Most of the time we fail because we don't even get on the starting blocks. Woody Allen says 85% of success is simply turning up.
Look at the great brands. Not one of them has been built by meekness. Aggressive self-belief and dramatic action typifies success in marketing.
Zigging when the others zag. Risking ridicule. Almost inviting it.

……………….

FISH WHERE THE FISH ARE.

This sounds like the bleeding obvious, but you'd be amazed at how many companies spend money talking to people who can't or won't buy their products. How does a television advertiser know there is anyone watching their ad? They don't. They are fed crap by television stations called TARPS (Target Audience Ratings Points) that are measured by some witchdoctor's formula that says it can tell if the lounge chair in front of the tv set is empty during the breaks. Ratings, schmatings. It's amazing how much faith some marketers have - truly religious zealots - in TARPS. I say show me the money. If I'm gonna spend a fortune keeping some zillionaire’s kids in a manner to which they've become accustomed, I want proof that Channel X actually sells something. I'll believe it when a viewer calls a telephone number on the screen and goes on to buy my product... Either right there and then or soon. "Real Response TV" is a great new idea of mine - invite people to call or email or dial up a web site and interact with the brand. D'uh!

…………

Zag when they zig.

Imagine a room full of people shouting at a person standing on a stage, trying to get their attention. That's what it is like when you are trying to get your message across to a prospect in a market. The one who stops shouting and quietly peels off their clothes and stands naked (or does the equivalent) will stand out.

………………

"Trying to run a business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark."

Now, try using that in a presentation these days...

……………..

When you look at a group photo that you are in, whose face do you search for first?

Your own? Don't be so surprised. We are obsessed about ourselves, by nature. How much can we hear about ourselves? Endless amounts?

So who does a prospect want to hear you talking about in a sales letter?
Themselves? And how much of the letter should you devote to them and how much to your company?

I'll let you decide...
…………….

If you want to hide in a forest, look like a tree.

If your advertisement looks like a tree in a forest you have failed the first test. It will pass like a ship in the night. Clients without courage force their agencies to produce wallpaper.Clients who refuse to maximise return on media dollar invested are committing the crime of negligence against their shareholders. Looking around you can see that the majority of clients should be fired.

…………..

WAKE UP!

GOODMORNING!

I'M SHOUTING TO WAKE YOU UP TO AN OPPORTUNITY!

The babyboomers are inheriting. Right now. You can hear the assets being transferred all around you.

We are in the middle of the greatest transfer of wealth know to mankind. Trillions of dollars are sluicing around - all of it unearned and most of it not ear marked for anything.

IS your organisation getting a slice of the action?

……………
Is there a gap in the market?

You see that juicy big opportunity in the market? Quick! Let's move on it fast... Oh, no. Where did all our money go? Yes, there is a gap in the market. But is there a market in the gap? Why hasn't someone else seen it? Chances are they have. Proceed, but proceed with caution.

Beware the Bavarian Beer Cafe at Manly

2006-04-22T03:32:00.000-07:00

We had the worst dining experience we can remember at Manly today at the Bavarian Beer Cafe. For out-of-towners, Manly is a famous beachside 'village' in Sydney, Australia. The Bavarian Beer Cafe is a tourist trap, situated just where you get off the Manly Ferry, the most popular way to reach Manly from the City.
What was so bad about it? The food. The beverages. The service. The hygene. Did I miss anything?
Louisa and I both ordered the beer-battered flathead, normally a succulent eating fish. What we were served may have been flathead, but it was heavily disguised as reconstituted fish-like material. The chef had managed to dry it out, either by buying it frozen or by overcooking it. It was tasteless and inedible.
The beer. I ordered a "Hell" and a German lager. The "Hell" was Ok but the lager, all half a litre, was warm. Premium prices charged for undrinkable beer.
The service. We asked the wait-person who took our order for an additional small plate to share my chips with the grandson. It did not arrive with the food, so we asked for it again. No action. We asked another wait person. Nothing. In the end I had to go to the bar and ask a waitress (whose command of the English language was such she couldn't understand me) to get me a plate. She did so, with a look of bemused contempt in her eyes.
By this stage I was starting to believe we had wandered onto the set of a new version of Faulty Towers being shot in Australia.
The hygene. My wife took our grandson to the toilet, lifted the lid and found either faeces or vomit all over the seat back.
She warned the staff.
And now I'm warning you.
Beware the Bavarian Beer Cafe in Manly if you like good food, cold beer, smart service, and clean toilets.

Two offices, One team!

2006-04-19T14:09:00.001-07:00

I couldn't work it out. "Two offices working as one team!" said the real estate agent's sign... WHat offices? What's the big deal?
I asked someone what it meant, because it started to spread from agency group to agency group.
It means two separate franchised offices would cooperate to help sell your home.
I was astounded! Wouldn't a seller expect that when they are dealing with a branded organisation they had at their disposal the resources of that organisation?
No. Normally these officecs would compete with each other. It is a fundamental flaw in the franchise system, it is anti-consumer, and here they are making a big deal out of the fact that they are acting in a way most consumers would consider normal and fair.
It's like a bank telling you it is reducing its fees or American Express offering to discount its joining fee.
"Great news, long suffering customer! We are going to stop assaulting you for a short period of time!"
.

Was Ogilvy wrong about reverse type?

2006-04-12T13:37:00.000-07:00

Mel from Hamburg sent us a link to a site which reveals that Ogilvy may have been wrong.

"World-renowned for his contributions to the world of advertising, David Ogilvy was nothing if not generous with his opinions. That he loathed reverse type -- white letters on black background -- was one opinion Ogilvy vociferously made clear," it says. But it was more than an opinion. Ogilvy was relying on reading comprehension tests conducted by Colin Wheildon while he was publications manager at the National Roads and Motorists Association in Sydney Australia. Scientifically rigorous methodology was employed to demonstrate that readers find it hard to read text set in reverse and remember less of the content that they read in that format compared to conventional typography.

Now I knew Colin Wheildon and I knew David Ogilvy and to classify their views as mere 'opinion' is dangerous.

The website report is from Lighthouse International, a "leading resource worldwide on vision loss and vision impairment". Lighthouse research found that reverse type seems to make no apparent difference to people with normal vision. Bullshit, I say, until I see the report and the methodology used.

Aries Arditi, PhD, vision science expert, said: "Our research shows that for many older and partially sighted readers who have reduced visual image clarity, white letters on a dark or black background are easiest to read."

This may be true. Barbara Silverstone, DSW, President and CEO of Lighthouse International, makes the brash statement: "By denouncing the use of reverse type, Ogilvy overlooked a large and growing population of potential consumers -- people who, like theater-goers reading in the dark, benefit from the enhanced readability of white letters on a black background. Knock-out type helps communicate a message to a wider audience -- thus, its use can only serve to expand the reach of advertisements."

My advice to you: tread warily when setting type in reverse. If it is essential the reader read it, set it black on white in larger type. If it's not so important, set it anyway you like.

DO you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 14

2006-04-10T15:11:00.001-07:00

[ ] Wallpaper advertising – This kind is invisible because it’s too bland. Safe advertising, that makes you feel comfortable, won’t even be noticed. It will, as David Ogilvy put it, be like a ship passing in the night. Your advertising should make you sweat with fear if it has any chance at all. DO also said the purpose of your copy was to demoralise the copywriters working for your competitors' agencies. By the way, being noticed is only its first task. Being consumed and understood and finally acted upon (conveniently forgotten by many agencies) are equally essential.

[ ] Me-too offers – If the competition is doing it, we should too. Wrong! When they are zigging you should be zagging. Me-too offerings give the customer the opportunity to price shop you down to the ground. They reveal a lack of imagination. And they are boring for the staff involved. Inspire your people with originality and passion generated by the new - by innovation. You cannot bore people into buying.

[ ] Failure to brief frontline staff (or involve them in planning and brainstorming) – Often you can be met with blank stares when you ask serving staff about advertised offers, especially in channels that aren’t well managed. Frontline staff are where the rubber meets the road – they are a useful source of ideas and they simply must feel part of the team for implementation. All your investment of time and money goes down the drain if they aren’t 100% behind the idea.

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 13

2006-04-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

[ ] “Fill in the boxes” marketing plans – Many marketing graduates have learned the headings for a marketing plan by rote, but fail to understand what should go under them. For instance, in a SWOT analysis, you will invariably find under the heading “Opportunities” a list of tactics the organization can adopt. But in a SWOT analysis, Strengths and Weaknesses are attributes of the organisaiton and Opportunities and Threats are characteristics of the external environment. Opportunities are unfolding events that can be exploited to utilise the organization's Strengths or mitigate its Weaknesses. Most marketing plans do not have any strategic strength. There is no big idea behind them – no leap of intuitive brilliance that pulls all the strands together into an explosive whole. Most are ‘colouring by numbers’ exercises.

[ ] Poor graphic design – It is possible to design a piece of communication so that it is impossible to consume. Tiny type faces are favourites of art directors. The baby boomers all need reading glasses and would appreciate bigger type. Type reversed out of black or colours – there is research done in Australia which proves conclusively that reverse type is harder to read. Comprehension tests reveal san serif faces are tiring on the eyes. Headlines should appear above the copy because they eye has a habit of following a certain pattern around a page. There is an entire science based on the concept of ‘reading gravity’ – I defy you to produce a single art director who has heard about it.

PS. Since posting this, a valuable addition to our knowledge has arrived from Mel Schoen of Insight Driven Brand Consulting & Communication GmbH in Hamburg. "The research on typefaces ...also shows that older people who need a larger typeface can actually read it better when it is reversed out, say white on black. Apparently, the greater contrast helps where it used to get in the way."

Thanks to Mel and other members of our enchanted circle for pointing out my sloppy proof reading. This will be rectified forthwith. (Talk about mistakes in marketing. I'm an expert.)

PPS. How many of you noticed SWOT was spelled SWAT?

Politicians give marketers a bad name

2006-04-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

"Don't tell my mother I'm in marketing. She thinks I am a prostitute." Old gag.
Why do advertising types, politicians and sales people wind up down the bottom of lists of trustworthy types when such surveys are conducted? Because we are seen as liars. Some people in marketing are liars. Many people in sales are liars. And everyone in politics is a liar.
Case in point: the Australian Government's "Work Choices" legisation. Sold to a gullible public as giving workers more choice and flexibility and as creating more job opportunities for them, the public sees now what it really means after the legislation came into effect.
It means more choices and greater flexibility for employers and fewer choices for workers.
The boss can now fire you because you didn't laugh at his joke. Or because he doesn't like your attitude. (Or because you won't have sex with him?) Bosses don't have to give a reason.
The lies told by Australian cabinent ministers and the Prime Minister about their knowledge of the Iraq food for oil scandal are now on the record... Australians don't care if their politicians lie. After all, what do you expect?
Levels of cynicism are high enough in our society without enshrining them in the public psyche as the ethical fabric of decent society.

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 12

2006-04-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

[ ] Letting your agency do your thinking for you. When all you hold in your hand is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Ad agencies are not capable of giving strategic advice about anything other than advertising. I’ve seen it time and again. They are consulted about a brand issue or marketing issue, and the solution is always a 30 second commercial.

[ ] Not capturing your corporate knowledge. Most organizations let their intellectual property walk out the door every night. Sometimes it doesn’t come back. Particularly if you are an ideas-based organization, you need to do the boring bits of recording projects and their results and building a corporate masterfile. Or you are like a leaky bucket.

[ ] Failing to turn over your marketing minds. It is not good for an organisation to allow the marketing director’s seat to be occupied by the same person for too long. I recently came across a case where the same guy had been in the job for 17 years. It’s not good for him – he is so busy defending the status quo (looking backwards) that he can’t move forward – and it’s obviously not good for the organization.

I couldn't believe my ears

2006-03-30T02:02:00.000-08:00

When I heard it on the radio news, I thought i'd slipped through a tear in the fabric of the universe and arrived back at 1986.
"The Commonwealth Bank expects its share price to rise rapidly as a result of its new strategic direction focussed on customer service."
Customer service? What's that? This is 2006, when companies - especially telcos and banks - treat people like s---, as though the customer service revolution had never happened.
It goes like this: there was this guy called Pareto who worked out that 20% of your customers give you 80% of your business.
You could work out who they were by looking st your books This came as a revelation to many companies, who used the 80:20 principle as a means of allocating resources.
For the fortunate 20%, times got better, but for the 80%, things got worse. Prices and fees went up, service levels fell.
So now these companies are working on a principle that it is good business to p--- off the majority of your customers.
S----- f----- i-----!
The bank admits it has monstered custmers if you read between the lines in the press release: "The Commonwealth Bank today released details of its ongoing strategy with a refreshed determination to excel in customer service... a fresh emphasis on delivering to our customers the standard of service they appreciate."
That's spin code for 'we failed'...

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 11

2006-03-27T09:05:00.001-08:00

[ ] Changing marketing personnel too often – Some companies allow corporate memory to walk out the door when they churn their marketing staff for whatever reason. It can take 12 months to learn an organisation’s capabilities. What is the average lifetime of a marketing manager these days? 30 months? They leave for opportunistic reasons or because the role is unfulfilling. A good marketing chief has the corporate DNA embedded in their genes and knows where the bodies are buried. Marketing is one role that needs stability. Otherwise your customer facing operations take on the stop-start, knee jerk personality of an organization that is unsure of whjich way to go.

[ ] No metrics in marketing plans – Nothing meaningful can be done in marketing unless it is measured. How can anyone be held accountable for their decisions without metrics? How can ROI be calculated? How can a marketing manager assess the value of an activity and apportion budget? Everything a marketing department does can be measured one way or another. Even dodgy metrics are better than none at all.

[ ] No plan (nothing meaningful written) – Some organizations believe that simply having a marketing function is enough. But a meaningful written plan is essential – so everyone can know the direction and where the goal posts are. The word ‘meaningful’ is meaningful in itself. See the next entry.

Brand loyalty is bullshit, love

2006-03-22T03:54:00.000-08:00

I sit in meetings. I hear people talking about loyalty. Ugh!
Brand loyalty is a figment of the imagination of marketers – a wet dream. It starts in the mind of the young marketing executive who falls in love with their brand. And why not? They live it 24 hours a day. It means more to them than a football follower’s favourite team. Because it is their livelihood, their future, their identity … and they become dislocated in their thinking. They can’t understand how anyone could not love their brand. They can’t understand what sort of evil gets into those who choose their competitors’ brands. And they believe those who choose their brand think the same way they do. Brand loyalty, brand passion, brand love. But they are like young German troops invading France in WWII and seeing the normally passionately-free French giving the Nazi salute as they marched on by and not seeing the guns behind their backs. Deluded.

Brand loyalty is a behaviour. Consumers can be brand loyal for many reasons other than love. (Some idiot calls brands “love marks” – only an adman could be so foolish.) Fear is a stronger motivator than love. Habit and inertia drive more buying decisions than love. But it is easy to delude marketing executives that their brand loyals love their brand. They might hate it, but there is nowhere else to go.

Coke's agency f**ks-up big time

2006-03-21T02:40:00.000-08:00

There's a special kind of unreality that exists in an agency. They are places where the laws of gravity and physics don't apply. Take the Coke Zero debacle. Aimed at the most ad-savvy, cynical market of them all - young males - the agency thought it could get away with a fake blog site that pretended it was a authentic expression of young-male-on-the-street opinion and angst. The efforts at creating verisimilitude (the appearance of truth) included fake dates on blogs and fake comments by fake visitors.
One problem: the target audience is also the most net savvy segment in the market. They saw through the bullshit, and blasted it, setting up counter-blogs - zeromovement.org - and anti-web sites - www.fuckzerocoke.com - all of which created a viral anti-zerocoke movement.
The first mistake - revealing Coke's lack of authenticity - wasn't as revealing of the agency's stupidity as its second mistake - not registering all the anti-coke URLs imaginable to block the humiliation the brand now enjoys.

Get out of your own way

2006-03-20T03:31:00.000-08:00

Given the number of mistakes marketers make it is amazing anything gets sold at all. Think of this: if half the retail outlets closed tonight and did not re-open, the same amount of goods would be sold tomorrow. If half the competitors is any category were de-listed do you think your job would become easier? No. Because the greatest competitor any marketing company has is itself. Get out of your own way and you’ll succeed. Surrender to the consumer and you surrender to success. Sounds like fun.

More marketing mistakes to avoid

2006-03-20T03:16:00.000-08:00

[ ] Product focus vs customer focus: You don’t believe me? This still happens. It is easy to believe in products. They sit there, like a stone, saying “I am your product. Love me or die.”
Customers come and go and leave no trace. They disguise themselves. And besides that, they’re scary. They might say something baaad about our product. And we love our product. How many of you meet customers, spend time with them, listen in on the call centre calls, read the letters that come in. Admit it. None of you do. But how many of you spend your time getting to know and then talking about your product? All of you? Case closed.

[ ] No proactive PR plan – A big mistake, this one, because you have public relations, whether you manage it or not. The media and observers are spreading stories about you unchecked. You have no power to stop them. All you can do is try to direct the content of those stories towards the positive side. Your most powerful public relations is generated by the actions of your organization everyday in contact with stakeholder groups. A truly ethical, customer-centric company would rarely find itself the subject of bad PR.

[ ] No contact management strategy – How much money is wasted because client-facing staff do not collect and make available or do not have at their fingertips the essential data about the individuals they hope to impress? Data is flying past you every moment of the day, especially the soft, personal data a good sales person remembers, like the client’s favourite entertainment, family background, etc. Tactfully used, this data can build and seal relationships forever. And gathered and managed through a tidy piece of software, it can empower one representative to have deep relations with a large number of individuals.

Can you smell the money?

2006-03-15T02:55:00.000-08:00

There is a pig in the python, a lump in the demographic chart, and it's coming your way. Too late! It's arrived. It's called the Baby Boomers. They are the biggest, most self-indulgent group of free spenders the planet has ever known. And their parents are conveniently popping off and leaving these spendthrifts the family home and a small parcel of shares - all of which they convert into cash and spend spend spend. It is the largest intergenerational shift of wealth known to mankind.
And just how are marketers responding? Are they pursuing these plump pidgeons, designing products for them, redesigning packaging for their failing eyesight, targetting campaigns at them?
No. That would be too much like intelligent.
In fact, many big brands, frightened by the aging of their customer base, are aiming at hip young things, although they are a small market and can only watch as their partners spend the family loot.
They are spending spending spending, but not with you you you.

Lessons from OzJet's crash

2006-03-12T12:42:00.000-08:00

How to lose an eight-figure sum in only 4 months of trading as a new business:

1. Launch a budget airline into a market in which two big budget operators are cutting each other's throats on pricing already.

2. Launch an all-business class airline into a market where less than 5% of travellers fly business.

3. Try to build a business-class brand with an economy positioning and daggy, budget-barrel name.

4. Ignore the real reason people fly business class: so they can feel superior to the rest of us who have to walk past them sitting up front as we make our way down the back of the plane. No economy passengers to sneer at, no fun.

Like a tired whore calling from a doorway

2006-03-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

There was a time when radio was the coolest thing in town. Not any more.

Commercial radio is a creative wasteland.
When was the last time you heard a good commercial on radio? You can't remember? It's because you haven't heard one.
I know commercial radio. I conducted a brand audit for the Australian industry several years ago.
I graduated from the Radio Marketing Bureau's Radio Copywriting School more than several years ago.
I know radio and I know good creative when I hear it. But I never hear it.
No self respecting copywriter in an advertising agency wants to write radio.
So it's left to the hacks at the stations. The same people write all the commercials you hear on your favourite station.
That's why they all sound the same. Like a tired whore calling out from a doorway to anyone passing by.
The creative content in radio is confined to the big-mouthed smart-arses (I think they're actually professional comedians) employed as DJs on the 'hip' (vs the 'hip-replacement') stations.These idiots feel the need to fill every second of air time with some asinine remark that could only be construed as funny if you are braindead or have an IQ of 15 (like half the listeners who call talkback radio).
The fact they can make a living talking such shit says more about the average moron than about themselves. In fact, radio's greatest contribution to man's knowledge of mankind is that it reveals how petty and stupid and small we are. The most creative thing the ad copywriters from the right wing shock jock stations can think of is a live read by one of their "stars" - appalling people you wouldn't talk to at all if it wasn't for their great power with the rabble. As it is, one takes their calls and one laughs at their jokes when one is in their company because one knows how vindictive they are and how prone to using their soapbox for personal ends.
There was once a time when radio was a creative medium - The Goons, Stan Freiberg, Jack Davey.
There was a time when radio was the no.1 medium.
It was creative then.
I wonder if there is a connection?

If you want my feedback, pay me!

2006-03-09T23:04:00.001-08:00

I recently bought a book through amazon.com from another bookshop in the USA, Elephant Books. Way out here in Australia we use amazon a lot, and the freight usually negates any savings. But they can get anything for you, when the local bookstore idiots claim it's out of print. So I'm a fan of amazon, but I've got to bitch about this "Feedback" request I got. How satisfied was I with the transaction?
Now, they're asking for my time and I charge for my time. If the information is valuable, how valuable is it? Filling out customer satisfaction surveys is a tax on a customer's time. Nice to know they care, but if they really did care they'd offeree me a discount voucher or an entry in a sweepstakes.
But what capped the request off was the message that if I had any problems with the order, stay away from amazon and deal directly with the other bookseller.
SO they ask for a favour then tell me they won't do one for me. Some creep in the Customer Service Department OKed this.
Oh amazon, what a heatbreak old ebookseller you are.

The customer is always wrong

2006-03-09T05:07:00.000-08:00

This was the name of a talkback radio segment hosted by a left-liberal pussycat named James on a public broadcasting network in Australia. He attracted the usual queue of bellyachers and miseryguts complainers, the standard fare of those with too much time on their hands, who don't mind calling radio stations in the boss's time but scream blue murder when on occasion they're asked to work 15 minutes longer than the award stipulates.
By now you can tell whose side I'm on, unless you're as thick as they are.
Why are service levels down the crapper? Because you idiots want everything for free! You don't want to pay for anything. You let the seller cut their own throats, then you complain when they bleed on you.
Listen up. If there's no margin in the deal, there's no money to pay for service staff. You end up with a nice Indian man being paid a few rupees an hour in a call centre in Mumbai instead of a live human being somewhere within 1000 kms.
One of the callers complained of crap service from Dell. What did they expect? Ya pays ya money, ya takes ya chances...
Customers rule. You'all created this mess by your greed and avarice.

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 9

2006-03-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

Continuing our series on new ways to shoot yourself in the foot, we have these three doozies:

[ ] Management by committee: Fear of taking a decision (because of a lack of knowledge) is often masked by a committee system. Marketing is like war. It requires generalship. The best generals take advice, then take decisions. The worst take cover behind their colleagues. A committee is the best way to kill a marketing initiative that can bring dramatic gains because it precluded boldness. A committee is as brave as its most fearful member. If you want action that causes dramatic change, appoint a person with courage to lead the marketing team. When some mealy-mouthed sycophant complained to President Lincoln that Ulysses S. Grant drank a bottle of whisky every night, Lincoln asked the complainer what brand of whisky it was. “Why do you want to know?” came the stunned reply. “Because I want to send a case to each of my generals.”

[ ] Investing time and resources in creative but rushing together offers and lists: This is standard practice. Everyone feels qualified to criticise creative (because they are consumers). But few know anything (or bother to learn) about the other dimensions of a direct marketing proposition (or any marketing for that matter). There are only 3 variables in a marketing campaign: the list or media, the offer or deal, and the creative. Direct marketing testing reveals that the list or media choice is 100% more influential than the offer which in turn is 100% more influential than the creative. Given this, the devotion of time and effort to creative is in inverse proportion to its importance. But it will always be thus. Go figure.

[ ] Failing to integrate campaigns: Oh, they say it’s integrated. Because they use the same images in the tv commercial in the mail piece, and the slogan is the same in the publicity sheet. But integration is more than that. A truly integrated campaign need not look like it came from the June Dally Watkins School of Deportment for Brands – so long as the spirit of the campaign, the passionate statement of belief that it reflects, is demonstrated at every level. So much “integration” is colouring by numbers by unimaginative, single dimension agencies who hanlker for the days when the tvc was all they needed to make. Media fragmentation is irreversible and human diversity is infinite, so a campaign should express itself in an infinite number of ways. Just as a person does.

When you're selling 'cool' you'd better be it

2006-03-07T02:27:00.000-08:00

Quesiton: Why did VW fail with this car?
Answer: Because cool design might sell Apple Computers, but the shape has to do more than cover up same old same old.

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 8

2006-03-04T12:13:00.000-08:00

[ ] No crisis management plan. You’ll get one only after you need it. Like security bars on the windows, they are usually installed when the damage has been done. A crisis management plan is essential risk management discipline. Who speaks to the media when something catastrophic like a product tampering or major customer incident happens? Who is on the response team? What does an employee do if they uncover a potential public relations disaster? It’s in the plan. But where’s the plan?

[ ] Locking your customers out by poor packaging design. How often as a consumer have you had trouble opening a “fast moving packaged good”? Some products are impenetrable without the aid of a sharp object. The type size is so small on the instructions only an ant could read it, and the ant market is limited. Packaging that ignores the average person (forget the baby boomers who have declining dexterity and eye sight) is a bad joke… How often does a failed product owe its demise to inhumane packaging? Some companies in overseas markets will film a family opening their packaging and trying to assemble and use the product, searching for barriers to satisfaction. Wise. How do you lock your customers out?

[ ] Failing to court your best customers; chasing new ones instead. You’d think this was a given in these days of CRM but marketing is still a male-dominated profession and the lust for the chase of fresh prey still throbs in the loins of the warriors. It is so much more satisfying to bag a new segment (at huge cost) than to consolidate and grow an existing profitable segment. Of course, the hunter usually doesn’t know the profit contribution from existing customers. He is looking for a new one night stand and it’s hard to turn a man away from the new to romance the familiar. Women should lead marketing organizations, if only in the interests of their financial health.

I am gross and perverted

2006-03-03T09:18:00.000-08:00

When Stan Zemanic appeared on my tv screen extolling the virtues of a weight loss drink on A Current Affair, the words of Frank Zappa's song "I'm The Slime" came to mind.

Zemanic admitted on camera he was being paid by the company making the diet drink to spruik for it on tv. What was A Current Affair doing running an ad disguised as a news report?

It's one of the unmentioned legacies of the late Mr Packer who had no concept of the public interest when it came to turning his publications and stations over to those who would pay the highest dollars.

You can't expect a radio shock jock to have any ethics when it comes to perverting the content of the media they use to enrich themselves - do you remember "cash for comment"? Laws, Jones, et. al. And you can't expect a PBL news outlet to have any either.

So why am I so angry about it? Because of the sick-making, forelock tugging to Packer as they 'buried' him a few weeks ago. His ghost haunts us. It was on A Current Advertisement last night. In the form of Stan Zemanic and his weight loss drink.

Does it matter? Yes, it matters. Every time the slime gets away with hoodwinking the public by perverting the independence of the spaces between the ads, they chip away at two important institutions: the credibility of the news media and the right of people to know what they are consuming as news is in fact news.

The PR industry preens itself and proudly boasts that 80% of what appears in the media starts as a press release paid for by some company. The brain dead Alan Jones listener doesn't want anyone to respect their intelligence. They simply have a need for "Daddy" to tell them what's what, like the German middle classes responsible for the rise of Hitler. These same moral folk will vote for John Howard no matter how often he lies to them. Research revealed in the press this week that the white bread Aussies who keep Howard in power believe he lied to them about children overboard and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the wheat board. But that won't stop them voting for him. Because he makes them feel secure. His word is worthless. He will say anything to slip and slide out of trouble. He's proved that he can't be trusted. But wait! They trust him.

My Mum would say "There's a special place in Hell for that person." If there's any justice, there's a few special places reserved down there for the gross and perverted.

..............

I'm The Slime
by Frank Zappa

I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I'm the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks . . .
Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin' room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin' room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

Then act!

2006-03-02T03:10:00.000-08:00

Start with the end in mind (continued).

Visualise success.

If it is a new product concept, write the ad for it.

If it is a launch, write the news report.

If it is a presentation, picture shaking hands on the deal.

Then act...

With no attachment to the outcome.

This is the second daily MICHAEL'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY. You can sign up for it on our NEW WEBSITE www.michaelkielymarketing.com.au

In the beginning...

2006-03-01T00:42:00.000-08:00

... was the END.

Start with the end in mind.

Express your intended outcome as though it had already materialised.

Then act.

--
Cheers!

Michael Kiely
The Marketing Wizard

..............

This is the first daily MICHAEL'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY. You can sign up for it on our NEW WEBSITE www.michaelkielymarketing.com.au

The introductory blurb goes something like this:

"The source of every solution lies in the field of infinite possibilities."

The answer you've been looking for is waiting for you here.
It's not in my head. It's not in yours. It's somewhere out there, in The Field of Infinite Possibilities; waiting for us to summon it.
You see, no one "has" an idea. Ideas choose us...when we are worthy of them and ready to receive. As the word suggests, you become 'inspired' when some "spirit" comes into you. Bob Dylan didn't write "Like A Rolling Stone". He said a voice in his head dictated it to him. Michaelkielymarketing.com is not a factory. It is a delivery room. I am merely a midwife. Some people I have worked with in multinational and local agencies believe firmly that clients cannot have ideas.
Some of my best ideas have been clients' ideas.

Are you a digit? Do you do digital?

2006-02-25T05:19:00.000-08:00

Fred Schebesta from Freestyle Media, a wundekind of the digital space, likes to get to the root of the matter on "Uamby" when he comes to visit. Fred - Rico to the boyz - is a digit. And a good one.
He knows that a button is not a sales pitch. This
post is about the type of people you find in the digital technopolis.
..............
Are you a digit? Do you do digital?
Don’t be afraid to admit it. Some of my best friends are digital. Not terminally so. It will pass, but will they? I hope not.
My digits are nice people. The males are a random mixture of sensitive new age digitalis and modern insensitive macho cool. Metrosexuals, trans-decade dressers and slightly-better-than-billabong (Sydney skew). The femails are not gender-specific in their demeanour. They are postfeminist, ranging from retiring geekgrrls (with flashes of underlying supersanity) to high-confidence pixel maidens and neurosexual strategists, pioneers on the frontier of relationship simplicity seeking to offset the complexity of technopolis by connecting to blank emotional spaces that offer creative potential. They don’t want anyone or anything with a history.
I like all of them. I also like small, furry, poisonous animals. They have nothing in common.
Digitalia work in ‘spaces’, where I see only empty space. They are addicted to the cool, where I suspect fashion parading as business strategy. They appear self-satisfied, but I see only insecurity and bunker-bolstered bravado. They are good at what they do. But no one can tell if what they do is good to do. They (the clients) do it because others do it. They (my digits) feel misunderstood, but fail to understand that it is because they fail to understand the understanding of those from whom they want it (understanding, that is).
What they want is some good old-fashioned understanding, both personal and professional. They are invariably sensitive and searching. For each other, for respect, for answers. They suffer from a hunger they can never satiate – a lust for the new. Their dreams are forever on the bleeding edge, the blood being their clients’ (if they can get away with it.) Their hands are always full of communications devices that carry media. McLuhan was right – the medium has become the message. IPods, mobiles, PDAs, (here insert the latest splinter category of this genre)… all of which conspire to turn us into an autistic society. Self-contained and living in a bubble.
Despite this they are optimistic and garrulous. Confident of the future of technology, if nothing else. I look forward to the era a-comin’ when we will have lived out our digitalia nervosa and emerged from this fog of infatuation with platforms and bandwidth and applications.... and learned some basics of response dynamics.
A button is not a sales pitch, and a link is not an argument. A 'cool site' is a costly expense until it returns revenue at a better rate than all alternative uses of the funds. Digital media's legendary data capabilities is worthless if it only reports on the behaviour of anonymous visitors. Hits are little more value than TARPS. Track it to a sale to reveal cost per sales lead or don't capture it.
Live or die by the scoreboard.
Then there'll be less terror nervosa digitalia because you'll have something solid to stand on. Real sales data. That'll scare the client. (Being held accountable usually does.)

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 7

2006-02-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

[ ] Confusing “creative” advertising with effective advertising. Ad agencies talk about cut through and impact as if that is the only task a commercial must perform. And the logic is impeccable: if they don’t notice the ad, they can get the selling message. But how often does the attention-getting device devour the commercial, win an award and do zip for sales?

[ ] Burying the offer. The offer – the deal, the proposition, the reason to take action now – is far more important than the creative in stimulating response. Yet often you find it relegated to the back of the mailing or the tail end of the ad. If you want action and your offer is good, lead with it. Put it in their faces.

[ ] Poorly promotes sweepstakes and promotions. Smart contest enterers know which promotions to enter – the ones that are nearly invisible in the marketplace – because they will have a better chance to win with such a low entry rate. If you are going to run a promotion, give it enough air to fly. On pack promotions are often invisible.

A bright idea for a rainy day

2006-02-17T15:55:00.000-08:00

Here's a nice idea, found at the Australian Museum. A machine that wraps your dripping umbrella in plastic so you don't have to check it at the door. Simple. Low cost. Convenient. And a silent reminder that the Museum cares about you (and doesn't want you drrrrripping on the exhibits. One bright spot in a dissappointing visit. (The dinosaur exhibit was closed and the aboriginal performance was called off at the last minute. Bah!)

The most powerful word in the English language

2006-02-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

... is "FREE". Tests have proved it, copy-writers know it, consumers can't resist it, and mail order marketers rely upon it. In Australia we even devote special days to celebrate the consumer concept of FREE.

Where we live in Sydney we have "Clean Up Days" when the Local Council collects any old crap we've got lying around the place. And not just old crap, but practically new stuff as well. All the good cons-umers in the Hills District throw out their no-longer-useful stuff and the good citizens from less fortunate districts cruise our streets pillaging the booty they find on the footpath.
Some of them are obviously profess-ional traders, some of them seem to have a shopping list of stuff. But there's an unwritten rule: if it's out on the footpath, then it's fair game. I have put three old dining room chairs out the front one evening when it was not a "Clean Up Day" and they were gone before I got back in the house, such is the hunger for other people's stuff among the citizenry of Sydney. While we're making room for more stuff, other people are gathering up our crap to fil up their homes with moree stuff! Because it's FREE.

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 6

2006-02-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

[ ] Poor management of corporate entertainment program. Companies spend squillions entertaining people at sporting and entertainment events. But how often are those seats empty or warmed by a low value bum? The last minute ring around by sales people to fill the stadium seats for important matches is a familiar pre-event event. Map the year with the events you are attending, assign valuable names to those events (based on data you have collected on entertainment preferences for each client contact), and get the invitations out to them in enough time to replace those who cannot accept with clients or equal value. Or simply watch your entertainment budget frittered away for little return.

[ ] Self-indulgent sponsorships and corporate entertainment. You know the type: the boss likes golf or marlin fishing, so half a mill goes towards it even though the clients/customers don’t give a toss about it. Ask the CFO for advice on how to break it to the CEO. I wonder what the shareholders would say if they knew.

[ ] Poor targeting of sponsorship dollars. Sponsorship is a big hole into which marketing budgets can disappear for little return. Sponsorship should be judged like awareness advertising and measured as such. Who are you targeting? It can be used creatively to tie in staff, channels and customers to help achieve objectives against several target audiences.

More mistakes in marketing Part 5

2006-02-11T15:31:00.000-08:00

[ ] Failing to leverage word of mouth by using brand community techniques. Each brand has a small, dedicated cluster of devotees and advocates who are a powerful advertising force. Engage them in behind-the-scenes activities, advance news of new products, etc., and they will spread the word through their networks. Smart companies foster a ‘fan club’ approach with activities that celebrate the brand. See Harley-Davidson go.

[ ] Needless brand extensions. Simply having a tick in the matrix box is not a good enough reason to launch a brand extension, even if the competition has one. Extensions can erode brand values, erode profitability, drive overheads up, and confuse the market and the channels of distribution. You should have good profit-driven reasons for stretching the brand. Read Trout and Ries on extensions.

[ ] Untargeted use of premiums (giving stuff away for the sake of it). Many companies give umbrellas and pens and a gaggle of items away to people willy nilly without a communications plan or objectives. They did it before and they will do it again…. By why? Because we’ve always done it. Unless there can be a measurable objective attached to it, drop it. Every item of expenditure must earn its place on the marketing calendar.

The customer ain't always right!

2006-02-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

The Americans are spreading democracy throughout the Middle East, based on the theory that the customer (voter) is always right. But the President doesn't like their choices. Hamas wins power in Palestine, the Shiites win power in Iraq, the mullas win elections in Iran. Throughout the Middle East the voters are turning to extremists, and the US can't accept that the voter is always right. On those grounds there'd be a lot of people in Louisiana and Mississippi who agree, about the US voters who chose Bush.

More mistakes in marketing Part 4

2006-02-07T18:22:00.000-08:00

[ ] Allowing unqualified people to make marketing decisions. By unqualified, I mean CEOs, sale managers, design engineers, and even CFOs. Not that they can’t take decisions – they must be made aware of their marketing implications. CEOs forge strategic alliances. Design engineers decide on product specs. CFOs influence budgets. The marketing department is forced to live with these decisions. But it is the customer who pays all their salaries and delivers the shareholder their profits. When is the customer consulted?

[ ] Failing to automate salespeople. The productivity issue is reason alone to invest in systems that track clients and their activities with your company. But an even more sinister threat than poor productivity lurks in your sales force. If you allow the sales reps to control the relationship data, they control the account. IE. they can walk away with the account, because the link is their personal presence rather than your institutional connection. Automation can help you monitor the relationship and run CRM applications.

[ ] Failing to leverage contributions to charity. Most companies have an unmanaged series of donations and support programs for which they fail to maximise ROI. The causes appreciate it when donors get value for their money because it means they’ll continue to give support. There are creative and tasteful ways to ‘be seen to be doing good’ including partnership programs, staff programs, advertising support, etc. Don’t let this money be blindly scattered.

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 3

2006-02-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

[ ] Failure to test. Marketers who roll out a response campaign without first testing it are so common, the word ‘testing’ is like ancient Greek in most marketing departments. But it is the only way to predict what response you will get. Predict the future? Yes, it’s possible and it’s easy. But it requires effort. Serious deficiency here.

[ ] Changing the advertising creative too soon. Boring your agency and yourself is the right way to extract maximum value from your ads. The VB campaign is a good example. It takes viewers 10 times as long to get bored with ads as it takes you and the agency (who have a vested interest in new creative.)

[ ] Failing to train salespeople. Apart from the basic assumption that your sales people are equipped with the best skillset they can have – would you send a soldier into battle without training? – there is a subtle power training can have. It turns the gypsy salesperson into a brand delivery vehicle. Like your brand, their selling style and messaging should be unique.

Rewriting DM Rules for the Web? Rubbish!

2006-02-03T20:58:00.000-08:00

I’ve been around long enough to have heard every third rate sales pitch agencies can make as to why you should choose their type of advertising or their particular brand of creative brilliance. Ever since David Ogilvy wrote “Confessions of an Ad Man” and set himself up as the expert on advertising - his book written solely to attract more clients - less talented followers have attempted to cloak their new business strategy in the robes of a serious contribution to knowledge of the discipline.

The pea and thimble trick has now moved online, the home of the arrogant young things who believe they have discovered a world where all the rules of life are new and different. Paul Epstein, described as “CEO of High Voltage Interactive, the internet's premier lead generation and customer acquisition company”, has rewritten the rules of direct marketing for the Internet “space”. (Note to the uninitiated: there are no rules of direct marketing. There are only human reactions to communications that have been repeated often enough to become expectations.)

Writing on the emarketing hub imediaconnection.com (worth a look), Paul has a go at hijacking the old list/offer/creative impact formula, seeking to reweight it in favour of what he’s good at: creative and technology. Here is a heavily-editted version of Paul’s argument:

“Ed Mayer literally wrote the book on direct marketing. In the 1960's, after 30 years as a mail advertising pioneer, he popularized his "40/40/20 Rule," the formula that still guides most of the world's direct marketing campaigns. By his assessment, successful direct marketing campaigns should be built by focusing one's attention on audience, offer and creative in the following percentages:
• 40 percent audience
• 40 percent offer
• 20 percent creative

Ed Mayer died in 1975, when the internet was still the stuff of science fiction. He probably couldn't have predicted how, in a mere quarter century, our lives would revolve around personal computers…Any company that bases its interactive marketing strategy on 40/40/20 is missing a critical piece of the 21st century's direct marketing equation: technology.

Is there any real comparison between sorting through a handful of paper from your mailbox and interacting with the online world? With that as a starting point, we propose what we'll call the "4-Way Split Rule:"
• 25 percent audience
• 25 percent offer
• 25 percent creative
• 25 percent technology…

The nature and delivery of creative content changed dramatically when a whole new world began happening on a screen 18 inches in front of our eyes. Online consumers are under such heavy data bombardment that offers lacking creativity simply cannot penetrate their defenses...

The 40/40/20 Rule assigns a mere 20 percent of the pie to creative content because, in Ed Mayer's time, the main variables in creative messaging were limited to font choices and background colors. Under our 4-Way Split Rule, however, interactive marketers are free to play with an increasingly versatile media array…

Pual invited feedback on his article. So I sent him this email:

Dear Paul,

I know where Ed Mayer got his data. From testing in the real world of response. I have even more real world data on the split. When I was with Ogilvy & Mather Direct, our London office ran a 12-cell test program to measure the relative contribution of the three basic elements of response to the final outcome of a campaign. When the List was made the variable, the Offer and Creative being the same in all three cells, the difference between the best and worst performing cell was 700%. When the Offer was the variable, the difference was 300%. But when the Creative was made the variable the difference was only 135%. This test produced a split of 62:26:12. I believe these percentages are more accurate that Ed's rule of thumb. For reasons of logic. Get even a mediocre offer to the right person and you have a chance to make a sale. Get the world's best offer to the wrong person and it's no sale. Deliver the world's best offer via the world's best creative solution to the wrong person and it's "NO SALE"... These are not DM "rules". They are facts based on human nature.

Your introduction of "Technology" as a variable is not supported by evidence that the creative mechanisms of the Internet are different in essence to those of traditional DM. They are new ways of doing the same old thing - attracting attention, getting interaction and engagement with the communication long enough to register with the prospect what the deal is and how it will benefit them. Direct mail is "Technology". It is a delivery platform. The Internet is another delivery platform. I can't see the logical distinction between "Technology" and "Creative". If you have data which challenges the splits presented here, please correct me quickly... because I don't want to be giving people wrong information when there is data to set me right.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Kiely

I’ll let you know if he replies…

Mistakes in marketing, Part 3

2006-02-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

Continuing our series of blunders and booboos in marketing:

[ ] Poor targeting. Are you still using demographics? Young females, 18 to 24? As a target for your advertising? Knock knock – it’s the 21st century – hello! Giving a stupidly crude target like this is asking everyone to imagine the target from their own limited experience, especially ad agency people who think the world is full of people like them and their friends.

[ ] Poor IT integration. The silos of your business are separated by jealousy, fear, politics and a chasm called ‘IT integration”. Yet customers don’t see the company as a collection of warring factions and little empires. They think it’s one company. And they are bewildered when they can’t get seamless service and standardised responses.

[ ] Lack of Internet strategy for e-commerce. This is not a nice to have anymore. Consumers expect you to be available 24/7 and more and more they expect to be able to transact online. Why can’t I buy a new refrigerator online?

WHy not contribute your own blunders by posting a comment?

Do you make these mistakes in marketing? Part 2

2006-02-01T17:17:00.000-08:00

[ ] Missing sales opportunities via bouncebacks. If you deliver a product or service, the best opportunity for the next sale is the moment of delivery. Do you make a follow-up offer? Remember, the first sale is the door opener.

[ ] Failing to focus on the 80:20. If you think all prospects and customers are worth the same amount of effort, it’s time to ‘get real’. Some are 10 to 100 times more worthy of your investment than others. How do you find them? It’s simple. Ask your database for a list of the customers who have spent the most with you, then look at them closely. What characteristics do they share? What separates them from the others? How did they get to you? Can you find more like them?

[ ] Brand diffusion. Letting your brand speak with many tongues. It’s easy to get the logo right and colours, etc… ducks in a row. But what happens when the real brand building starts – pricing policy, public statements by company reps, structure and usability of web sites, customer experience, staff management…. Do these things reflect the brand promise?

More to come...

Taking the piss

2006-02-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

This is not a blunder. It is a beautiful use of humour by a hotel group to add interest to a rather tedious activity. An example of excellent customer 'intimacy'. Bravo the Sofitel, Queenstown, New Zealand.

Do you make these mistakes in marketing?

2006-01-31T08:09:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I set out to write a list of “397 Marketing Mistakes Most Companies Make” as a promotional piece for my consultancy and got to 84 before collapsing from exhaustion. Rather than letting the list rust in my files, I offer it to you as a health check for your marketing. Who knows, there might be one or two mistakes you make.

[ ] Advertising without capturing leads. You buy the airtime or adspace – why not maximise ROI and capture sales leads by making an offer and including a response device. It is not uncool to sell stuff.

[ ] Not mentioning the name of the product until the end of the TVC. The big reveal. Dramatic. And forgettable. You’ve got 30 seconds to make people aware of who is paying for the time and what they sell. “Big reveal” commercials have the highest ‘wrong attribution’ score – ie. they are often recalled as ads for the competition.

[ ] Renting mailing lists. This might be controvercial for a direct marketing practitioner to say, but most lists aren’t worth the disk space they occupy. Some are. Can you tell the difference? Renting lists is gambling, so stack the odds in your favour by sampling the list for accuracy by calling a number of people on the list

Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them

2006-01-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

A company in the USA has grown to US$100m turnover selling T-shirts with anti-boys slogans like "Boys tell lies, poke them in the eyes!" and "The stupid factory, where boys are made." Todd Goldman started David and Goliath Inc. in 1999 to sell "Boys are Smelly" T-shirts. The "Boys are stupid..." merchandise, includes clothes, mugs, key chains, posters, and a book with the same title. A campaign by men's rights activists boosted sales. Los Angeles radio host Glenn Sacks - a men's rights activist - launched a campaign against the shirts two years ago, claiming they are part of a mood in society to victimize boys. The T-shirts have been described as "hate speech". Several retailers, covering 3000 retail outlets, have removed the shirts. Womens' rights activists do not support the campaign against the T-shirts, agreeing with Mr Goldman that they are merely humorous. THE LESSON: Try to get an activist group to seek to have your product or service banned.

How to grind your customer's face in the dust

2006-01-26T21:27:00.000-08:00

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face - forever." Thus said George Orwell in his book 1984. He was predicting that totalitarian governments would wear the boots. instead it turns out it's the banks who are grinding their boots in the faces of customers. Not content with acting as a cartel to introduce higher fees while reducing services - all in the name of user pays, not in the cause of the obscene profits they have reported for the past 10 years - they remind us we are powerless in the face of their bastardry by jacking up fees remorselessly. The banks say they care about customers, a farce given the way we are treated.
Westpac has intoduces a punitive fee for customers who access their Westpac accounts through ATMs of other organisations. They will skim $2 off your account everytime you use the most convenient ATM. "We're trying t affect the behaviour of our customers," said the mealy mouthed weasel, er... spokesperson, who was given the job of defending the indefensible. Obviously customer convenience does not matter when compared with corporate profits. "Go off looking for a WESTPAC ATM, if you can," says Westpac. "We don't care if it screws up your plans," says the Bank. "After all, we're a bank. What do you expect?" Westpac is confident to make this move because it knows its competitors will follow suit"
If the government cared about its citizens it would call a royal commission into the banks. If I remember rightly, it was a federal government that established the Commonwealth Bank because the other banks were preying on citizens like a pack of wolves. We citizens owned that bank, until a federal government sold it to a bunch of opportunists called shareholders (Marx called them capitalists). Another federal government is selling off the telecommunicaitons carrier we own to a bunch of opportunists. It is effectively delivering the citizenry - especially those in rural and regional Australia - into the hands of another pack of wolves. I didn't vote for it. I don't remember being asked. Maybe the boot is a government's and the face is your and mine.
Chifley was right. Nationalise the banks.

Are Indian marketers liars? (Or just comedians?)

2006-01-26T06:24:00.000-08:00

BLUE WATER BESIDE THE TAJ MAHAL?
I came across this ad for Indian tourism and thought someone was committing a hoax. What do you notice about this image of India? That's right. The water is blue and so clean near the Taj Mahal. Anyone who has been to India will tell you the place stinks like an open sewer (especially around the Taj Mahal) and the water, wherever you go, looks like it comes from an open sewer (with turds added for effect). India is beautiful in many ways, but it is disgraceful for the way its land has been polluted, especially with plastic bags and crap. And the solution is so easy. If every Indian person picked up one piece of plastic a day for a week they'd clean the place up in 7 days. Get the "Clean Up Australia" guys over there. Then get the "Do The Right Thing" guys over there. India is pointed to as the perfect example of what happens when you let population run rampant. But it needn't be that way. If they had respect for the land, India would become a powerhouse of ecological purity. As it is they haven't even started flexing their muscles as polluters yet. If the emerging middle class in the two most populous countries in the world - India and China - demand the same wasteful consumer society privileges that we westerners enjoy now, greenhouse gases will burn the skies and the earth will choke on its own vomit. But we westerners face a dilemma: what right have we to deny them the same opportunity to pollute that we enjoy? That's what Kyoto Protocol is about and why the US and Australia - the self appointed ethical leaders of the white race on the globe - object to the way it allows developing countries to pollute while advanced countries must reign in their demand for polluting energy sources like coal.
INCREDIBLE.? BEGGARS BELIEF

It's ironic that the term "wog" was coined to describe people of different colours who came to our shores, including Indian and Chinese people. It is an acronym of "westernised oriental gentleman" and referred to those immigrants who sought to assimilate. Now the word 'westernised' bears a new and dangerous meaning. And you can't help thinking that God's a joker.

Blog posted on The Spirit in the Soil (http://envirofarming.blogspot.com), The Absolute Truth About Marketing (http://michaelkielymarketing.blogspot.com), and qwerty business (http://qwertybiz.blogspot.com)

Is Microsoft evil?

2006-01-25T15:13:00.000-08:00

Like Imperial Storm Troopers invading the Green Planet, Microsoft's probes continue to crawl around in cyberspace, seeking to crash through our defences and invade our computers, spying and eavesdropping. It's not enough to be the richest man on the planet. Bill wants to be Emperor. Chief Dalek. Like robber baron monopolists before him (Carnegie, etc.) he wants absolute control, absolute power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It reminds me of the Apple Macintosh tv commercial called '1984' in which Big Brother harangued an audience of prisoners until a woman with a mallet runs in and smashes the screen. In 1984, Big Blue was the evil empire. Now it's Big Bill. Do people like him suffer from a obsessive-compulsive disorder, a control syndrome?

Is Marketing evil?

2006-01-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

Thank you to the anonymous visitor who left the following comment on the blog "Turning human beings into revenue streams":

Anonymous said...
If you're lying on your deathbed thinking about work - at all - you're fucked anyway.
Yes, it would be nice to look back and feel that you didn't waste your time selling crap to people.
But, if you're in marketing, that's exactly what you're doing. Whether you're selling Happy Meals or the Bible. It's part of the gig.
You think religous guys aren't in marketing? If you're getting paid, you're guilty.
Do it from the heart (and for no payment) and you may get a seat at the good table.

My response to that is:

But if no one's getting paid, Anonymous Visitor, how can there be anything on the table? Is it only people in marketing who should not be paid for what they do? What makes marketing 'selling crap to people'? Is a Harley Davidson crap? A Martin guitar? What about a decsion to stop smoking? A decision to stop using highly toxic chemicals in a water catchment area? A decision to stop supporting wars in foreign countries? You think political and environmental activists aren't in marketing? And they're getting paid. Are they guilty too? So is it the process we call marketing that is so evil, or is it the particular products and services some people sell that offend you? My point about the death bed realisation was that spending your life accumulating money is a pretty empty way to live when it means you see other people solely as sources of revenue. But when you look at people and respond to them as individuals seeking fulfilment, you can connect with them in a more satisfying way. The process called 'marketing' is used to compete for a person's attention and custom. It is value neutral. The content - the products and services it is used to promote - is not value neutral. From my values I could not actively promote alcohol, tobacco, unhealthy foods, polluting manufacturers' products, products derived from mistreating people or animals, products that cause people to neglect their families (gambling), and organisations that support socially regressive behaviour like gun ownership and wife beating and child abuse. But that's just me. I also object to organisations which bullshit people about the state of the world for political ends - and by these I mean the modern equivalent of Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome and similarly irresponsible environmental organisations who predict that the world will run out of (here insert the commodity of the moment) food, fuel, oxygen, water, etc. sometime soon, that some environmental catastrophe is about to befall us... and when it doesn't are nowhere to be found, replaced by the next set of environmental jeremias touting their chicken little scary scenarios. And the scientists who distort the facts to support these ideologues (it is always the free enterprise system and corporations at fault, always corporations, a curious common thread). Paul Ehrlich, who made a career out of predicting that the world would run out of oil in the 1970s, shamelessly denies today that he was making predictions. The Club of Rome was a self-appointed bunch of self-described experts who scared us all into thinking we'd be living in caves (those that were left after global environmental holocaust) by 1985. Every generation spawns its own crop of chicken littles. Now do these people get a seat at the good table, I wonder? But again, that's just me.

I welcome vigorous debate in this blog. Thank you, Anonymous Visitor #1. (I'll call you AV#1 until you supply a different pseudonym. Are you the guy who left a comment about McBadExperience, about McDonalds being evil? I detect a similarity in your writing style.)

How to tell customers you don't care, by an Apple Dealer

2006-01-22T03:22:00.000-08:00

I got a letter from NextByte Apple Centre where I have bought, in the last 21 months, 2 Powerbook G4's and an iPod, carry cases, accessories, etc. and whatever else. Probably $10,000+ worth of stuff. The letter wants to sell me extended warrany for $500 on the first G4.
Why do I feel they don't care about my business, or about me, or if I am happy?
Just tiny details:
1. "We trust it has performed well..." They don't know.
2. "complete the attached form and fax or post it back to our Adelaide office"!!! This is Apple. I am in Sydney. The outlet is in Pymble. And they want me to wrtie on a piece of paper and send it snail mail to another State?
3. The order form has a range of products with tick boxes beside them. It seems I have to tlel them which one I own, although thaey show its serial number on the covering letter. They pretend they don't know just tomake it easy for Adelaide.
Richard Chapman, Service Manager, addresses me as "Dear Michael..." It's Mr Kiely to you, Chapman, until we get acquainted.

Oh Apple, don't let them do this to your brand, to your loyal customers......

Or don't you care either?

Turning human beings into revenue streams

2006-01-20T20:03:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been talking to groups of marketing people about issues that run a little deeper than the latest mail marketing gimmick or sponsorship opportunity. Issues that go to the heart of what we are doing as individuals when we are “marketing”. Issues that drill down to our personal ‘philosophy’ of life as it applies to marketing activity. And the response has been significant, astounding even.
The phrase that resonates most powerfully with people is “turning human beings into revenue streams.” That is my definition of the objective of marketing most of us follow. It is the clear intent of loyalty and CRM programs. Since Day 1, Marketing has been the same top down, linear, one way, self-centred, ego-driven, male, mining-mentality, exploitative, dehumanising process of shoving things down consumers throats. It reduces human beings to revenue streams. How could it be otherwise when our definition of the purpose of marketing is ‘to move product’ in order to achieve our chosen definition of the purpose of a business: ‘to make profits’. Consumers in this process are the passive recipients of whatever we decide to send them or sell them. Consumers are “outside the circle of trust” (from Meet the Fockers.) The fact that we call them consumers should be proof enough of our attitude towards them.
But once we describe the dominant paradigm, weautomatically reveal another alternative: a bottom up, lateral, omnidirectional, other-focussed model. This may take some thinking about, but the place to start is – as always – with the customer. Bring them inside the Circle of Trust and see what happens. Look what happened to Harley-Davidson when the company chose to follow product design innovations introduced by customers, such as the Hell’s Angels who first ‘chopped’ the bike and attached extended front forks, creating the Easy Rider look that is so much of the bike’s brand.
Harley-Davidson was, for a period of its history, in the hands of professional managers, not the bike enthusiasts who started and built the company. Naturally during this period the brand became irrelevant to ardent followers because they knew these guys in suits didn’t get it. The company went broke and was bought by the sons of the founders, who returned to the good old neighbourly ways. And profits returned. Not that profit is the company’s most dominant motive. The individuals who work there love the bikes just like the customers do. They are enthusiasts making and selling bikes to enthusiasts.
Which leads me to an 18th century Hasidic saying I think holds the answer: “When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you – and then they are purified and become and holy fire in you.” This may have several meanings, but what it means for me is that we are not separate individuals, like atoms, making our lonely orbit around some centre of gravity. We are living parts of a living organism called the human race and an organism called Planet Earth. What we do as individuals affects everyone.
How can you 'do' marketing in a way that synchs with this reality. How can you plan for marketing ina way that brings the consumer inside the Circle of Trust? There is a way. it's called Holistic Resource Management – a radical methodology invented by Zimbabwe’s Allan Savory* for managing farm enterprises. It brings all stakeholders inside the circle by getting them to contribute to an “Holistic” Goal – a vision of the enterprise and the community it lives within and serves as they will be after a period of time. It is a shared goal, not something dashed off in a minute. Everyone must contribute and sign off on the Goal which is consulted each time a major decision is made, and is revisited as time passes to ensure it remains relevant and resonant within the hearts and minds of stakeholders.
The Hasidic saying contains the powerful truth for people in business today. What you carry in your heart determines that value and validity of what you do. The same action, done for exploitative and non-exploitative motives will have significantly different outcomes, if only in the heart and the soul. If you think of your customers as so many sheep to be sheared or suckers to be fleeced, eventually that attitude can’t remain concealed. But if you ‘love’ your customers and genuinely want to serve them, the feeling shows.
Richard Branson strikes me as someone who genuinely wants to help people, and does it by doing business and offering them services. That old bastard Henry Ford had a genuine feeling for the people he was serving by inventing the modern production line which gave him the power to make cars the ordinary family could afford. Both men appear to want to make a contribution more than to make a name for themselves. (The latter is impossible to avoid when you do good things for people.)
Bringing the customer inside the circle means relinquishing power to them. Letting them dictate company policy. Most companies are too scared for their future to try something different. After all, managers have to manage, don’t they? Managers make decisions, not customers (except whether to buy or not – pretty much the most important decision taken by anyone.
Again the deathbed story: while lying on your death bed, dying, will you look back on your life and say,”I sold a lot of people a lot of crap.” Or “I made a difference in many people’s lives for the better. I helped a lot of people.”

FOOTNOTE: *ALLAN SAVORY, a former national parks ranger, fought beside Robert Mugabwe to liberate Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) from the British. He became a politician, but, disillusioned, left to pursue his vision of global redemption via saving the soil, the productive base on which all complex civilisations stand. His "Holistic Resource Management" has grown into a worldwide movement of farmers who manage to regenerate the biosphere. The management principles are also applicable to non-farming enterprises.

The Philosophy of Marketing, Part 2: All you need is love

2006-01-18T16:38:00.000-08:00

Recently I spoke at the Marketing Week conference in Adelaide. The theme of the conference was “Convergence”. What does it mean? I asked the organisers, the attendees, and marketing professionals I met in the weeks prior to the event. No one could tell me with any certainty. I suspect it is the next hot buzz term. It will have its day in the sun – books will be written about it, conferences will be held, sales organizations such as advertising agencies will use it to put a new spin on the same old stuff they sell… until the next buzz term arrives.

Convergence joins a long list of terms - including CRM, integrated marketing, relationship marketing, database marketing, niche marketing, interactive marketing, digital marketing, loyalty marketing, segmentation, customer service, direct marketing, the 4 Ps, brand marketing, even the term ‘marketing’ itself, advertising, channel management, incentives marketing, public relations, sponsorship, etc. etc. – that claim to have an independent life in the ‘field of marketing’. But they are merely new labels for the same old stuff and, as such, they obscure the nature of marketing rather than teach us something new about it.

What do I mean? These terms – like ‘convergence’ - all refer to the same top down, linear, one way, self-centred, ego-driven, male, mining-mentality, exploitative, dehumanising process of shoving things down consumers throats. It reduces human beings to revenue streams. How could it be otherwise when our definition of the purpose of marketing is ‘to move product’ in order to achieve our chosen definition of the purpose of a business: ‘to make profits’. Consumers in this process are the passive recipients of communications which beguile them into buying what we choose to sell them.

Immediately, you can see, simply by describing the dominant paradigm, we almost automatically reveal another alternative: a bottom up, lateral, omnidirectional, other-focussed model. This is what makes the study of Philosophy useful. It reveals schools of thought and therefore alternative ways of seeing the same old stuff.

What is your purpose of marketing? Why are you doing it? What do you hope to achieve? When you are lying on your death bed, will you look back and say, “I sold a lot of widgets for XYZ company! I made the shareholders happy.” This is not a stupid question because what is a company? It is the sum total of the personal ambitions and values of the individual people who make it up. Companies are created new everyday by the humans that live and work in them. People. Humans. Not business concepts.

Furphies that the dominant model has perpetrated on the industry include the following: People have relationships with brands. The high point of farce was achieved with this concept by the author of Love Marks, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Kevin Roberts. Naturally it had to be an ad agency. Flash as a rat with a gold tooth. People do not have emotional human relationships with brands. The assertion that they do can only be made if you mistakenly deduce attitudes from behaviour. Clearly people can hate brands and yet appear to be in love with them by their continued choice. Another furphy perpetrated by the same shallow thinking is this: brands have a life of their own. They don’t. A brand is simply an agreement between a group of people to act in a similar way. A logo then becomes a standard that they march behind. No people, no logo display. No brand.

Marketing, therefore, is people doing things to and for people. What are people? What do they need that we in marketing can do for them? People are complex bundles of emotions and intellect whose greatest need is self respect and whose dirty little secret is that they don’t like themselves. Super models do not like what they see in the mirror. Do you? Given this analysis, an incident of bad customer service does not offend because it causes inconvenience. It deeply offends because it confirms the individual’s own self assessment of worth. “You are worthless” says our action of poor service. “You are right, and I hate you for reminding me,” says the victim.

Do people feel ‘bigger’ after dealing with you? Or do you reduce people to dwarf size? In other columns I have covered the highest level of human need on Maslow’s hierarchy: self actualisation. Growing into a bigger, better human being. “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier,” said Mother Teresa.

If marketing is about people, not brands, let’s go one step backwards and ask: why are people born? What is the purpose of people? I believe we have three reasons for being here: 1. To learn who we are. 2. To fulfil our potential. 3. To learn to love and be loved. Christ said our task is to “Love one another as I have loved you.” The story in the Bible says He sacrificed his life for people. Was he asking us to do the same? In another place he says, “The greatest among you shall be the servant to all.”

Where will a consumer’s patronage and contribution to profit go? Toward those whose purpose is to reduce them to a revenue stream? Or towards those who genuinely feel love for them and express that love in a spirit of self-sacrifice and service of the type Mother Teresa described? As a race, people aren’t happy; they are haunted by existential angst and fear of being alone. How much will they cling to someone who proves by their behaviour that they are not alone?

NEXT: Bringing the consumer inside The Circle of Trust.

What is your Philosophy of Marketing?

2006-01-18T16:01:00.000-08:00

Would you buy a used philosophy from this man? My next 3 blogs will introduce the concept of Philosophy of Marketing. The first is a gentle introduction. The second should disturb you. And the third should send you running out of the room.

PART THE FIRST: PIERCING THE SURFACE

In another incarnation I taught at university an obscure subject called ‘the philosophy of history’. The philosophy of anything is the study of what it is, why you do it, how you do it, etc. Pretty academic, you’d say. Curriculum filler for keeping academics in their comfortable ivory towers, I can hear you thinking.

But studying the philosophy of some practical activity can have profound impact on the people in the field. For instance, it can reveal what your basic assumptions are, what schools of thought there are in the field that are based on these assumptions, and which camp you fall into. There are at present two warring camps in marketing thought: Globalists and Granularists (see “The Tribes of Marketing: where do you belong?” in Marketing*, December 2003). Globalists are mass marketing warriors who see the world from above the line and Granularists are data-driven individuals who live below it. Each operate on the same consumer but with vastly different beliefs about who and what that consumer is. Knowing what camp you are in, that you are governed by assumptions, that you have made a choice that affects the outcome of your work and knowing what camp your new boss comes from, can be critical.

Unless you know what assumptions you are making and how they a ffect your outcomes, you are a sitting duck for a good case of “future shock”. For instance, there are many answers to the question “what is marketing?” that reveal the assumptions of the holder of each answer. For some, marketing is a process of demand management that aims to soak up manufacturing capacity. For others, it is a system for transforming an organisation’s output into shareholder value. Yet another answer would define marketing as the function of identifying and satisfying consumer wants and needs. An even wackier definition is that marketing is the practice of creating communities of common interest, ie. enabling people to share a passion for, say, Harley-Davidson motorcycles and lifestyle. An even more extra-terrestrial version would say marketing is a means of making the world a better place to live in.

The basic orientation of the ‘demand management’ people is product focus – the engineers rule the roost. “Sell what we make,” is their credo. Consumers are targets to be hit, suckers to be sold to, sources of revenue to be controlled, etc. “Push marketing”, relying heavily on promotion to even out poorly-aligned supply chains, is the dominant technique used by these people. These companies often make unattractive products and sometimes make a profit.

The ‘shareholder value’ operators will make a buck by following the ‘spread’ or the size of the gap between the cost of making a buck and the size of the buck. Marketing includes new product development (product innovation). Marketing is the means of harvesting or making hay while the sun shines, entering markets as they become explosive or at least differentiatable. They live by ROI. They make and sell hot items and what they think will be the next hot item. To them consumers are fickle maniacs who can make or break you overnight.

Those who believe in ‘satisfying consumer needs and wants’ often slavishly follow consumers and, as a result, are rarely innovative, because consumers have no means of imagining what they would like if it existed before it exists. Consumers do know one thing: they like low prices. The consumer is king. The price is cut.

‘Community builders’ see consumers as fellow consumers and share their view of life. Dream the same dreams. For them, marketing is not an arm-wrestle with an unwilling buyer, but a love-in. Price is often not an issue. These people are enthusiasts. The brand is a tribal totem.

Those who want to ‘make the world a better place’ are disrupters. Consumers are not in control, but they are the beneficiaries of the ingenuity of these operators. Disrupters innovate around consumer needs – inventors, people who take risks on new technologies or processes or management systems. They provide new solutions for old problems or give access to previously unobtainable experiences.

Few companies are purists – ie. totally dominated by one camp or philosophy of marketing. There is also a bit of crossover between camps, especially among the consumer-focussed types.

But this rough thumbnail depiction of the schools of thought and the operational implications that arise from their basic assumptions reveals how important it is to be aware of your prejudices (that you inherited from whoever taught you first principles). I guess this is a plea for The Philosophy of Marketing to be taught in our academies of learning and churning out marketing operatives. (Once they catch up to the needs of Granularists for training in direct and database and CRM issues.)

The choice of marketing as a profession is not the end of the game. You’ve got to choose your school of thought (or have it chosen for you by the job market). You also have to choose which ethical base you will build your career or company upon. (This involves the ‘dharma’ and the ‘karma’ of marketing – which I will have a go at in a future column.)

PS. I am a Granularist with Globalist sympathies, and I have a foot in the following camps: ‘better place’, ‘community builders’, and ‘shareholder value’.

*Australia, not Britain.

McBadExperience Again

2006-01-13T14:52:00.000-08:00

McDonald’s has lost that lovin’ feeling. Yesterday I had another typical ‘don’t care’ experience. Usually they forget to put either serviettes or sugar or milk sachet or tea bag – or all of the above - in with my drive-through order. When you drive though again to get them they don’t care. McDonalds Mudgee, Lithgow and the one on the M5 compete to out-“don’t care” each other. Yesterday in Lithgow I stopped for coffee and ordered a travel cup (an extra expense for me and profit for them). The surly, red-headed hardfacedbitch who served me at first said “I don’t think we’ve got any left,” in a tone that accused me of stupidity for asking. There were lots left. Then I waited and waited and waited as others who had ordered from the McCafe after me were served. In the meantime a young girl walked past me with a travel cup which, it turns out was mine. The system – not signposted anywhere – was order at one end of the counter and stand around to collect your order at the other end. They simply left my order standing there until a young thief stole it. When I finally asked where it was, hardfacedbitch said “You must’ve left it there and someone has taken it.” That’s right folks. I caused McDonalds to lose a travel mug. In a sulk, she made me another cup of coffee. I was so enraged and full of bile for McDonald’s that as I left I forgot to pick up my muffin that I’d paid for. As a side experience I had stood in the slowest queue in history (at this allegedly fast food outlet) only to be told in an insulting way that fries weren’t available until 10.30am (Stupid, everyone knows that.) Well, the kind of droogs who live on the crap McDonald’s serves and who will tolerate these pitiful levels of customer service might know that. But I don’t make it a habit of studying the rules of modern grazing for the masses. Why can’t I get fries when I want fries? They were for my grandson to amuse him for a few kilometres. I sympathise with the character in Falling Down played by Michael Douglas and wished I had the freedom they have in America to deliver the same message.

Are you locking customers out?

2006-01-11T23:07:00.000-08:00

Have you tried opening your packaging like a consumer does? I'm a little less dextrous since passing the 50 year mark 3 years ago. Either that or Packaging is getting harder to get into. Consumers want instant gratification. EVEN the time spent looking for a knife can be a major inconvenience.
Oh, and by the way, the Baby Boomers - remember them, the largest segment ever? They need help reading type. So why do the idiots who design packaging put instructions in the smallest san serif type face. Curse these idiots and the idiots who approve their work.

Ford's agency in Australia should be fired!

2006-01-09T18:50:00.000-08:00

If you watch a lot of cricket over the break (and I do) you are also forced to watch a lot of commercials. Id like to nominate three commercials for a special citation for causing the maximum discomfort for the largest number of viewers most often during the summer viewing season. (I'd like to hear yours...)
First we have coming in at third every commercial for the post Xmas sales. No one got any communication value from their investment in air time and cheap vomit bombs on screen because everyone was doing the same thing. So the viewer got the message: pretty well every outlet is having a mega-humungous sale. SO why advertise the fact if they can assume you're part of this frenzied orgy of discounting anyway? So next year don't waste your money. Just put up the sale signs and open the doors.
Second place goes to the federal government's "Every cigarette is toxic" campaign. Guys, when will you wake up to the fact that smokers will not be scared off by nanny state finger waggling. In fact smokers are in most cases intent on self harm due to their self loathing and lack of self love. You telling them it will kill them is just what they want to hear. Government advertising is uniformly stupid because governments are uniformly stupid. And by governments I mean ministers who dictate the message and the medium. If they would leave it to the experts surrounding them and not indulge in amateur advertising antics...
But our big winner for 2005/2006 is Henry Ford's crowd of bunglers, for their 2005 Runout Sale campaign. I single out for special mention the weaklings in Ford's agency who let them run this stupid, stupid campaign. It features a marlin fisherman jumping overboard just when he's hooked a big one and presumably swimming to shore then running into his nearest Ford dealership, trailing seaweed, to buy a crappy out of date Ford, while someone in a blue coat, presumably a Ford employee, is by turns applauding them and preening by stroking their lapels. A woman runs away from the delivry table having just given birth, and streaks in to a dealership. WHere's the afterbirth? That's what I was concerned about, not the bloody cars. Can you hear the mentally-deficient account director seling in the concept to his or her equally challenged client? "This script says, contrary to the real situation, that your crs are popular and you're not having trouble getting rid of them at all. Look, real people running into the dealership, just like they do every day... because Ford cars are so popular. Get it?" Now how hard is that to sell? No, because clients are so up themselves about their product that they'll buy any old shite that panders to their insecurities. And agencies know it.
If the Advertising Standards Authority were to live up to its name just once, it would ban our three winners or at least banish them to the regions where nobody cares what they watch. They think informercials for pimple creams and other snake oil is actually real programming out there. They have no self respect. They deserve what they get. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Let's watch some shite on tv...

How to really piss people off

2006-01-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

Last night Louisa and I decided to see a movie at the "megaplex" at Castle Hill. We tried booking online and found it was easy. We wouldn't have to queue for tickets and we could pay for our snacks as well. When we got to the "megaplex" the queue to collect tickets booked online was empty - all good. They are running a "Jump the queue" campaign to encourage people to book and pay online. Why? Because it costs them a lot less when I transact online than when I transact with a live human being. But get this... they charged me a booking fee of $2. They rewarded me for reducing their costs by increasing mine! That really pissed me off. Then we get 30 minutes of cheesy ads before the show we came to see (honestly, local advertising in cinema is so badly made and poorly presented, I resolved never to use any of the companies I saw advertising there last night -their ads said they were cheap and nasty!) As if to remind me of the $2 insult, one of the advertisers - Rydges Hotels, owned by the same crowd that owns Greater Union - promised that I'd get the lowest available price when I booked online with them. That's more like it. Greater Union - your online strategy sucks! And why is it not possible to get anything vaguely edible or drinkable at the concession stand? Does everyone going to the movies have to be condemned to high fat, high sugar, high salt death? And having to fight the person next to me for the arm rest after paying $40+ seems a little primitive for 2006. I won't be rushing back to the movies after that experience. I guess I'm not in their target audience: people with low service expectations. (The movie - Rumour Has It - was great.)

By the way, here's what the company says about its services on its website: "Traditionally, Greater Union Organisation was in the business of exhibiting films. Today we're in the entertainment business. "We're in the services industry," says Alan Rydge, Chairman of AHL and Greater Union Organisation. "Our company aims to make people have a good time while they are using our goods and services. We try to focus on what tomorrow's customers want and to provide it for them as soon as possible."

Wrong, Alan. Focus on today's customer today. How often do you have the Greater Union experience yourself, to know what it's like?

All marketers are liars Part 2

2006-01-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

There's an old joke in the ad biz: "You only need one thing to succeed in thed advertising business: sincerity. And when you learn to fake that you've got it made!" The truth is not so far from the exaggeration. Anyone who has (like me) been in the ad game for any amount of time (I've done 20 years hard labour) can tell you that not only are the ads insincere, the people are too. Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon cosmetics said "In the factory we make cosmetics, but in the store we sell hope." That's all any markter can sell.. You can only hope what they sell you works as promised! "Promise, great promise is thr soul of an advertisement," said Dr Samuel Johnson. When he was auctioneer to sell a departed friend's brewery, he made the famous statement from the podium, "We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." Not quite the truth, not quite a lie. Advertising people aren't allowed to tell blatant lies, but they are allowed to gild the lily. Like the sales person in the clothing store telling you, "This makes you look slimmer..."
Advertising people aren't ethically challenged. They are rarely challenged by anything or anyone. Ask anyone who has been a client of an ad agency. Did they laugh so hard at your jokes when you ceased being a client? Did they fawn on you and buy you amazing gifts and take you to expensive restaurants once your hand no longer fondled the purse strings? Surely they weren't being insincere all that time?

How to reduce crowds at a rock festival

2006-01-01T16:21:00.000-08:00

If the organisers of the 3-day rock festival on Phillip Island over New Year wanted to reduce the crowds coming to next year's event, they've done it. Make the punters wait in a queue of cars - stationary, in temperatures up to 40 degrees - for up to 7 hours to get in to the venue. How do you do it? You have security search every car for alcohol, creating a bottleneck. Fools! It created a traffic jam that lasted all day for holiday makers on the Island. It pissed everyone off, not just the punters. I can hear the idiots stammering now: "We had no choice... They made us do it..."

RULE #1: There is always an alternative to screwing up your customers and stakeholders. You just have to work at it...

(PLEASE tell a friend about this blog.)

I consume, therefore I am

2005-12-30T01:42:00.000-08:00

The newspapers recently reported that a man in Italy was suing the rail network for “existential damage”. He claims its failure to run trains on time has forced him to live with constant uncertainty. The uncertainty forces him at times to doubt if his life has any value or meaning. In other words, he says being treated as insignificant by a large corporation is affecting his sense of self.
Now apparently Italian courts have identified ‘existential damage’ as a real thing. And they’re right: it is real. Consumers feel disempowered and insignificant when they are treated like sh—by service providers and retailers. Humans judge the estimation in which they are held by the actions of the other party toward them. Oily words do not count. So when your actions say: “We consider you to be unimportant and disposable…” the consumer naturally resents the attack on their self image. This is why they are so impassioned when they react – like a spurned lover. The average person has only a limited grip on their self-concept. (Psychologists call it ‘differentiation’ or ‘individuation’. It means the ability to stand alone, free of emotional struts and supports propping up the individual’s stability.) The average person doesn’t like themselves. Even supermodels suffer from self loathing. Few people like what they see in the mirror.
Consumers treated like sh—react strongly not because they disagree with the message sent by the actions. Quite the opposite. It’s because they agree. “You remind me that I am sh—and I hate you for it…” This is existential damage. And this should be actionable at law… because the greatest damage you can do a person is to rob them of their integrity as a human being. Their existential anchor. Their answer to the question “who am I?” On one side of the line lies stability and security. On the other lies madness.

All marketers are liars!

2005-12-26T22:54:00.000-08:00

Seth Godin is a shameless self-publicist, second only to Tom Peters of "In Search of Excellence" fame. Seth, like Tom, can spin a good yarn. They can make a lot from a little. He understands marketing to the extent that he understands how to market himself. He's a 'speaker'. I've known many 'speakers' who claim to be marketing gurus on the basis of their own ability to self-promote. I saw him in action in the dot com boom/bust cycle. He took a concept we direct marketers have used for decades and rebadged it and voila: we got "permission marketing". Seth's books are "best sellers". One was 'best-selling marketing book of the decade". But my bullshit meter buzzes when I see 'best seller', knowing as I do how to manipulate publishers' statistics to create a best seller. Now all the above sounds like I'm down on Seth. I am not. I admire his gall. His latest book is called "All MArketers Are Liars!" But on the back of the flyleaf it says "Marketers Aren't Really Liars... It's the consumers who are liars..." Just where is this spin spinning us to? What is the pea and thimble trick?
I won't let Seth off the hook: the title of his book proves its point. Seth's title lies about its content. Seth the marketer in this context is a liar.
I believe, after 25 years in the front lines of marketing, that all marketers are liars. And that the ones who have the guts to tell the truth will win big time in future. (More next blog)

ADFACT#2: Don't do ads for your competition

2005-12-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

There is a commercial for beer running during the Cricket Test Match between Australia and South Africa this week. It features household appliances fighting over a bottle of beer. Very entertaining. Very funny. If you've seen the TVC, can you remember who it was for?
Two blunders: 1. The proposition for the TVC was that the beer was so good that appliances would fight over them. But there is no claim that another brand could not make. There was a time when ad agencies thought about the USP - unique selling proposition. But beer ads are now exclusively humourous. Jokey ads that you could simply change the end frame and they would apply with equal validity to all their competitors.
Blunder 2: Joking around. David Ogilvy said "People don't buy from clowns." There's an old saying: "When you got nothing to say, sing it. "He could just as easily have said "When there's no drama in the product, write comedy."

An anti-loyalty scheme

2005-12-17T09:48:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I did nearly all my Christmas shopping in Dymocks, The Booksellers. I am a member of their Booklovers loyalty program. I hand over my card and with each purchase I get discount vouchers, entries into prize draws and occasionally free books.
Let's get the minor issues out of the way first. The prize draws are irrelevant to me - the prizes are usually holidays in places I don't want to go to, like Iraq or Uzbeckistan (or similar). The free books are usually books I wouldn't read and can't even think of someone who'd like them. (Remaindered pulp fiction, mainly.)
What does interest me is the discount vouchers. I picked up about $25 in vouchers on around $350 spent. Now the vouchers have proven to be a useless benefit for me because of the redemption conditions Dymocks attaches to them. I rarely have one in my pocket when I get the urge to walk into the shop. So they are useless. And they won't let you use them the same day you earn them. So I couldn't buy an additional book with them yesterday.
Here's how Dymock's have devised an anti-loyalty program for me. First they tell me how important I am. They give me a card and a bunch of discount vouchers after each purchase. No I consider these vouchers are currency. It's just like they've given me money. But they refuse to allow me to spend it. I am not sufficently anal retentive to have my wallet neatly stuffed with discount vouchers. (Coles and Woolworths 4¢ a litre off fuel is a similar deal.)
So they promise me good things and merely set me up for a deep-seated negative "moment of truth" the next time I visit and I feel robbed because I haven't got the currency that was rightfully mine. Dymocks seeks to achieve its goal - repeat visits - by restricting the usage of the vouchers. But while pursuing a behavioural goal, it actively works against the more fundamental emotional goals of loyalty marketing - satisfaction and meeting expectations. Instaed of feeling special, I feel manipulated and dudded.
No it's not the same as if I forgot to bring cash. Cash is useful in all sorts of circumstances and it's relatively easy to carry. Special purpose vouchers are different.
Give me a stored value card - I can carry cards. But I can't always have my pockets stuffed with dicount vouchers.
So if you have a loyalty program, can you be sure it's not pissing people off. And I'm not just people. I buy a lot of books.

CRM scammers come crashing down

2005-12-14T13:20:00.000-08:00

I wrote an editorial for Marketing Magazine in October 2001 on the sleazy world of CRM. "CRM: let the buyer beware" was the heading. "Never in the history of hucksterism has so much money been chiselled out of so many companies in such a short time than with CRM. If your company is embarking on a CRM project or contemplating it, please be careful. The odds are stacked against you getting what you think you’re buying." In another editorial at about the same time, titled "CRM: Crooks! Robbers! Muggers!" I stated the obvious: "The one person who matters in the equation – the customer – has been ignored in the hype surrounding CRM. That hype has been whipped up by the IT firms who sell the systems (oh yes, CRM is an IT solution) and the management consultancies looking to invade the territory of ad agencies and marketing (as the cashflow from re-engineering and restructuring has tailed off). CRM has taken over where Y2K left off as the “Yellow Brick Road” for global consultancies."

Today in an ezine called CRMguru I read the following expose of the rort that was CRM:

Good-Bye Yellow Brick Road: CRM's Fairytale Start Fades Into a Pragmatic Finish
By Dick Lee, High-Yield Methods

"It's over, folks. It ended not with a bang but a whimper. That brilliant shooting star we called "CRM," which burst upon our horizon in the early 1990s, gradually burned up in the chilling business atmosphere and descended to Earth—to end its short life, or start its new life, as a mere business strategy. How ignominious...

"For as free and unfettered as CRMers felt, all along, the nascent CRM movement was operating under the thumb of an oligarchy, a small number of large software players; plus a small number of large consulting firms with back door ties to these software companies; plus a small number of large conference companies whose shows were deeply subsidized by these very same software companies. Despite competing with each other on one level, collectively they called the shots. They ran the show. They defined CRM.

"And where was the free press—the Doberman pincer that should detect such goings on? With the exception of this web site and a handful of others, the media was sucking up to the industry oligarchs to stimulate as much ad spending as possible. Not ever questioning industry claims that this shooting star was a second sun that would light the way for all of business.

"But largely unaware of which was doing what to whom, CRMers jammed the conference exhibit floors and packed the "educational" sessions, most of which turned into commercials, breathing each others' fumes, inebriated by self-importance and the smell of riches to be made. Riches to be made by marketers and sellers cozying up to end customers to achieve customer intimacy (which I always took to mean putting both hands in customers pockets); by consulting companies conveniently recommending to these marketers and sellers the very software in which they as "objective" consultants were trained to recommend and install (and, in some cases, for which they were financially rewarded); by software sellers abusing software buyers again by persuading them to invest in overpriced, ridiculously over-featured applications; and even by supposedly independent research companies taking software company money to report glowing customer satisfaction scores for applications most intended users quickly turned into shelfware."

Ironically the report's author Dick Lee is founder and principal of High-Yield Methods, "a consulting firm specializing in
helping clients achieve customer-centricity through CRM and proper alignment
of process and technology."

You can be sure, when it comes to CRM, everyone is on the take.

The ethics of commercial radio?

2005-12-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

Driving back from "Uamby" last night I scanned the Sydney radio dial to pick up news of the race riots. I found - amid the reports of legions of police patrolling the streets and overseas media focussing on Australia and trashing our image as a tolerant society - 2UE's Stan Zemanic (?) ranting like a reborn Ron Casey, urging all Australians to insist that "lebs" assimilate and become Aussies. He blamed multiculturalism and advocated cultural purity. (Does he know this was a central plank of National Socialism ideology). One of his guests was Pauline Hanson who said "the Shire" was like a second home to her. (Really? That could be the problem here.) She whined on in her semi-articulate, wheedling way, reciting her mantras ("If they don't like it here they can go back to where they came from...") and hitting all the code words for racism, including "I am not a racist, but". Stan then took calls from Lebanese women who he abused, called "halfwits", as is his way. He did point out he was being paid to abuse people on air. And he is. The Southern Cross Network pays Stan to attract listeners to hear their advertisers' commercials. But surely the act of inflaming racial tension and goading rioters should not form part of a company's commercial operation. Especially when the Government and the Police are trying to calm the warring sides down. Such Shock Jockery takes advantage of the freedom of speech in our liberal democracy to endanger public safety, social cohesion, and Australia's international image... for profit. This is the credo of commercial radio. A stick rattled in a swill bucket. Zemanic is a mouthpiece for his nasty views, his network and his industry. As is the king of shock jocks and cultural icon among John Howard's battlers, Alan Jones. (One doesn't need to switch on his show to know what he'll be saying. He's a Pauline Hanson devotee as well. And definitely Alan Jones is not a racist. He says so...)

John Howard: Master Marketer

2005-12-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

Recently Marketing Magazine asked me to comment on one of my own editorials from the mid 1990's, one that questioned our retro Prime Minister John Howard's marketing smarts. (They do it to rub my nose in it.) I wrote the following rather balanced appraisal, only to unleash the mighty pen of poison of a reader, quoted below. I received his criticism on the day we witnessed the worst race riots in Australia's history since the Gold Rushes. After a decade of Government-sponsored social change, this is John Howard's Australia...

Retro Marketing: Is John Howard in need of marketing advice?

John Howard is clearly a success story. He doesn’t need marketing advice from me. He is a great leader. He understands the Australian public better than any other politician for several generations. He knows how racist and xenophobic (afraid of foreigners) we are, he knows how greedy we are. He even convinced us that it was perfectly reasonable to confine children from the Middle East in concentration camps in the desert indefinitely, with no trial or recourse to the justice system. To take a nation known for its fairness and egalitarianism and transform it into a nation divided by power, status and race in a few short years is a major demonstration of leadership and marketing.

John Howard understands his market. He understands the deep underlying fear that runs like a yellow streak through our national psyche, living surrounded by Asian countries whose teaming millions would love to escape and take a piece of the Lucky Country (they think). He understands that we think we can’t stop the ‘Yellow Hordes’ if they want to come. Not without the help of a big white world power. For this reason he could convince Australians to happily follow Uncle Sam into yet another failure on a foreign battlefield, Viet Nam style. We would even be willing to make ourselves a target for terrorist bombings (Bali 1 and Bali 2) to stand loyally beside an American President and repeat his lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

He knew he could scare us into staying on our knees in loyalty to the kings and queens of little old England. He knows how we need the Union Jack in our flag to remind us of “home”, whose Queen’s authority is recognised in only a few decaying remnants of Empire, like Gibralta, the Falkland Islands and Australia.

I admire the way he manages his ‘brand’ so that the politician who, more than any other in recent decades, has mislead the public by his words (remember the ‘never ever GST” or “Lazarus with a bypass’) has managed to come across as “Honest John.” He understands that people have short memories (and beside, when the economy’s on fire, who cares?) In his dictionary ‘never, ever’ means ‘not until I think I can get away with it.’

He brings out the worst in us to do it, but he’s a winner.

> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Damian Young
> Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 22:12:23 +1100
> To: sam.mcconnell
> Subject: Comments on "Retro Marketing" article in Dec / Jan 2006 issue
>
> Hi Sam,
>
> As a long term subscriber to Marketing Magazine, I would like to offer
> some feedback on Michael Kiely's "Retro Marketing" piece in the Dec /
> Jan 2006 issue.
>
> His whole commentary was out of place. An editorial on morality
> masquerading as a marketing viewpoint.
>
> There was no real marketing analysis, just a left wing viewpoint,
> pitching everyone that votes conservative as evil.
>
> If Mr Kiely does not like our current democratically elected
> government, may I suggest that he run for parliament, start writing for
> The Age, or stage a coup with Mark Latham so that they can institute a
> fascist regime where he decides on what is right for the rest of us.
>
> Does he really think that the alternative of Mark Latham was a better
> option at the last election? Latham has truly shown the state of
> disrepair that the Labour Party has unfortunately fallen into.
>
> Indeed, his lip service comments on massive social issues tended to
> trivialise them and their importance to Australia's future.
>
> I would be interested in reading analysis of the issues from each
> election and commentary on the messages that each party focused on,
> without the moral judgements. Just the science.
>
> If I want political commentary or editorial, I will consult the
> relevant mainstream media. I do not expect to open up Marketing
> Magazine and virtually be yelled at that I am evil and in need of
> re-education.
>
> If I want to hear about the latest trends and ideas in Marketing I love
> consulting Marketing Magazine. I trust that this will not be an ongoing
> trend for Marketing Magazine.
>
> I hope that you understand my need to give this feedback.
>
> Regards,
> Damian Young
>
>
> My reply is this:

Damien, I am sure you are a nicer person than you sound.
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Turning human beings into revenue streams

2005-12-12T12:50:00.000-08:00

My latest column in Marketing Magazine (As executive editor of Australia's only national marketing magazine I contribute a monthly spray in the "Kiely" section...)

Bringing the consumer inside the circle

Recently I have been talking to groups of marketing people about issues that run a little deeper than the latest marketing gimmick. Issues that drill down to our personal ‘philosophy’ of life as it applies to marketing activity. The response has been significant, astounding even. Many readers commented on the column that recently appeared in this place on ‘The Philosophy of Marketing.” Many in the audiences I have addressed want to talk about their feelings. I sense a great need in our industry, post 9/11, for a spiritual “anchor”.
The phrase that resonates most powerfully with audiences is this: “are we simply turning human beings into revenue streams?” That is my definition of the objective of marketing most companies and individuals unconsciously cling to. It is the clear intent of loyalty and CRM programs. Since Day 1, Marketing has been the same top down, linear, one way, self-centred, ego-driven, male, mining-mentality, exploitative, dehumanising process of shoving things down consumers throats. It reduces human beings to revenue streams. How could it be otherwise when our definition of the purpose of marketing is ‘to move product’ in order to achieve our chosen definition of the purpose of a business: ‘to make profits’. Consumers in this process are the passive recipients of whatever we decide to send them or sell them. Consumers are “outside the circle of trust” (from Meet the Fockers.) The fact that we call them consumers says it all.
In the article on Philosophy I described the dominant paradigm, automatically revealing another alternative: a bottom up, lateral, omnidirectional, other-focussed model. This may take some thinking about, but the place to start is – as always – with the customer. Bring them inside the circle of trust and see what happens. Look what happened to Harley-Davidson when the company chose to follow product design innovations introduced by customers, such as the Hell’s Angels who first ‘chopped’ the bike and attached extended front forks, creating the Easy Rider look that is so much of the bike’s brand.

Harley-Davidson was, for a period of its history, in the hands of professional managers, not the bike enthusiasts who started and built the company. Naturally during this period the brand became irrelevant to ardent followers because they knew these guys in suits just didn’t get it. They weren’t in the Brotherhood of the Bike. The company went broke and was bought by the sons of the founders, who returned to the good old neighbourly ways. And profits returned. Not that profit is the company’s most dominant motive. The individuals who work there love the bikes just like the customers do. They are enthusiasts making and selling bikes to enthusiasts.

Which leads me to an 18th century Hasidic saying I use as the theme for my presentations on this subject: “When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you – and then they are purified and become and holy fire in you.” This may have several meanings, but what it means for me is that we are not separate individuals, like atoms, making our lonely orbit around some centre of gravity. We are living parts of a living organism called the human race and an organism called Planet Earth. What we do as individuals affects everyone.

How can you plan for marketing (which is, afterall, a form of warfare between competitors) . How can you bring the consumer inside the circle of influence? Holistic Resource Management – a radical methodology invented by Zimbabwe’s Alan Savory for managing enterprises – brings all stakeholders inside the circle by getting them to contribute to an “Holistic” Goal – a vision of the enterprise and the community it lives within and serves as they will be after a period of time. It is a shared goal, not something dashed off in a minute. Everyone must contribute and sign off on the Goal which is consulted each time a major decision is made, and is revisited as time passes to ensure it remains relevant and resonant within the hearts and minds of stakeholders.

The Hasidic saying contains the powerful truth for people in business today. What you carry in your heart determines the value and validity of what you do. The same action, done for exploitative and non-exploitative motives will have significantly different outcomes, if only in the heart and the soul. If you think of your customers as so many sheep to be sheared or suckers to be fleeced, eventually that attitude can’t remain concealed. But if you ‘love’ your customers and genuinely want to serve them, the feeling shows.

Bringing the customer inside the circle means relinquishing power to them. Letting them dictate company policy. Most companies are too scared for their future to try something different. After all, managers have to manage, don’t they? Managers make decisions, not customers (except whether to buy or not – pretty much the most important decision taken by anyone).

While lying on your death bed, will you look back on your life and say, ”I sold a lot of people a lot of crap.” Or “I made a difference in many people’s lives for the better. I helped a lot of people.”

I know what I would prefer…

Practical Branding #1

2005-12-11T15:26:00.000-08:00

Brand is impacted more by what you do to affect the experience of the consumer than by what you say about your brand. Personal experience drives the emotional message home far more deeply that mere advertising. The way a luxury car owner is treated when they contact the dealer or the company's customer care centre or attend an event... that says the brand more than the eccentic advertising for the marque. Seeing people using the brand is also more powerful than seeing an ad, yet agencies act like they believe they build the brand. If only. Research in the US indicates that recent buyers read ads, prospects don't. The first brand to grasp this reality and pour its money into fuelling word of mouth via its customers will leave the dinosaurs for dead. (See The Anatomy of Buzz and The Tipping Point for case studies and statistics about the power of word of mouth.)

Clients who lack courage

2005-12-09T04:50:00.000-08:00

A breakthrough in any category can change the order of leadership, taking an also-ran to market leadership. I spoke to a client today for whom I had written two scripts. She said I nailed the first TVC but not the second commercial. The latter uses mild humour to address the issue of death. Without giving the game away, I have done the analysis and can defend the idea based on human psychology. But the client won't even test the concept. (They are destined to be an also-ran. They were 2nd into the market and they are underspending the leader... so that can never catch up, without a breakthru.) Clients without courage get what they deserve - mediocre results

BRANDFACT#1: Be like Donald Trump

2005-12-06T07:27:00.000-08:00

I just watched an episode of The Apprentice. Donald Trump is a brand. He's his own man. He stands for something. Excess. People are dying in Iraq so that other people can enjoy the right to aspire to be like Donald Trump. Let's face it, if he didn't exist we'd have to invent him. He's a symbol. He is uncomplicated. He has a simple message: "I am so wealthy and successful that I can get away with this hairstyle. But you can't..." He has everything a great brand needs. So don't worry if your brand looks a little daggy. If it's outrageously successful, you can give them the bird. Donald Trump, you're hired!

CUSTOMERFACT#1: Be a Good Guy

2005-12-05T17:00:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I am writing this one... James Hardie Industries (a name Australians have learned to trust for building products) recently gave the world a lesson in how not to conduct a compensation case. It has been forced to pay $4billion to people who are dying from asbestos-related diseases. Naturally you owe it to shareholders to minimise outgoings. But when a tribunal of the land has ruled that your actions have killed people and are killing others, it's time to take your medicine, admit your mistake, and come clean. You can rehabilitate your name that way. WHAT did James Hardie Industries do? First it moved its headquarters out of Australia to the Netherlands to minimise the legal risk. Then it stonewalled and sandbagged every step of the way until it was forced - at the barrel of a gun - to cough up. The State Government of New South Wales had to threaten special legislation to force the company to pay to get it to act. James Hardie made no attempt to explain its actions. Every day that passed, victims died. It looked as though James Hardie thought that if it waited long enough they'd all die and it would get off scot free. The name James Hardie now stinks in the nostrils of the marketplace. It is a symbol of corporate greed and irresponsibility. The trade unions supported the company in its fight because of all the jobs at stake. Unions that have no principles are often bedmates with companies which have no principles. James Hardie as a brand is forever compromised and stained by this incident. If they have corporate relations consultants, they should hang their heads in shame at entertaining such a client. James Hardie Industries now represents a name risk for every company associated with it. Shareholders should consider the ethics of their continued support for such an unethical company.

AD TRUTH #1: Avoid generic images

2005-12-04T15:36:00.000-08:00

This is me, holding the Pitchfork of Absolute Truth. I intend to prick the pretty balloons of illusion or lance the boils of insanity that marketing people suffer from... The first victim is Optus. Ever since I can remember any Optus advertising they have relied upon images of animals - cute penguins and polar bears, etc. The headlines tried valiantly to make the animals relevant to the message. The most recent evolution of this campaign has the animals singing. Clever. Entertaining. Effective?
Only Optus could know... But my experience in the ad game for more than 20 years tells me that, while animals test strongly as a positive, attractive image, they are generic. Anyone can... and does... use them. It wouldn't take long going back thru the archives to find the last time they were used, and the time before that, and the time before that. Optus can't ever own the images because they are everyones'. Therefore it costs a vast amount more to get audiences to register the imagery as being associated with the brand. Any generic image is hard to link in the mind. David Ogilvy's ad "The Man In The Hathaway Shirt" put the model in an eye patch to make the image distinctive. In O&M circles, the term "eyepatch" came to mean a visual hook that linked the brand to the image instantly. Optus not only suffers from animals. It has too many animals. If they focussed on one animal they'd have a better chance of linking the image to the brand. An animated animal is a stronger candidate: look at Louie the Fly. He says Mortein. The animals of the world don't say Optus. They don't sing it, either.

What is "Truth"?

2005-12-04T14:03:00.000-08:00

This is the question that Pontius Pilate put to Jesus. He spoke for Western men and women in all ages: How can I trust anything I am told? You can't. Everybody's pushing some barrow or other. Everyone offering access to free information on the Internet has an ulterior motive. The difference is whether they're upfront about it. While I hate bullshit, I'm probably as full of it as the next guy. My motive is to make a connection with you and impress you with the information I supply that you'll feel inclined to pay for access to more of it... Even a consultation, online, by phone or face-to-face. You can reach me at michael@michaelkielymarketing.com.au
What is "absolute truth"? "Absolutely" is a cliche, meaning "Yes" in some circles. "Absolute" means nothing, as any philosopher will tell you. But a copywriter will tell you it is a provocative word to use in a headline.
So if "truth" is uncertain and "absolute" means nothing, what can "the absolute truth about marketing" be? At best, it means you'll see some sacred cows slaughtered here. Bullshitters exposed. And the tinsel torn away from the tin pan alley shysters who seek to confuse and bamboozle the innocent.
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