Arnold on Ethical

What do you believe? What do you passionately believe in?  God, football, politics, vegetarianism, ethics… don’t say you don’t, we are all hard wired to believe in things.

The trouble is, involuntarily we get caught up with faiths, some of which are fads. And by definition, a faith doesn’t require proof, which sometimes makes them dangerous things to follow.

Not being one who isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo, I’ve had my fair share of emails from people with opposite belief systems, through I prefer to think of myself as an open minded sceptic of many fashions within our industry, seeking maybe a more pragmatic, common sense approach. I think our industry’s disciplines are sometimes like football teams – each one has its passionate followers who believe in their team and values only.

I’ve often commented on the evangelistic nature of some marketers, who in my view over believe the hype and don’t want to be challenged. They adopt a trend, a sector of marketing or some rule with passion and can not let go. Are they narrow minded? No, just human?

How do you explain God? There’s no rational explanation, no solid proof and science can’t prove he exists. Of course if you are a true believer, you have faith. Yet despite this, billions believe in a god. So powerful is this belief that many will make significant sacrifices in his name, some will even die for their belief. Many use their belief to justify their actions, sadly those actions are sometimes plain evil, as we’ve recently seen.

I was talking with some fellow marketers at an event recently when one said, with a defined conviction, “It’s all changed, it’s all about story telling. If you want to engage people you need to tell stories.”

DEDICATED FOLLOWERS OF FASHION

Now this is a classic example of dedicated followers of fashion acting before they do any thinking. We all looked at each other and with a little interrogation it became obvious that our friend didn’t understand WHY story telling was better or could validate it. He just knew it was the next thing. Somewhere he’d been told, or read online, that story telling was the next big thing. Good reason to be wary of any article that includes the term ‘the new trend In marketing is…’ LinkedIn has loads of them – I think they should have a club for self appointed gurus.

Story telling can be a useful way of doing things, but you had better be the best story teller in the world if you want to use it to sell insurance or trainers. Waitrose have recently jumped on the story telling bandwagon and their TV ads are plain dull, while M&S’s food ads are many times better. And here lies another problem with belief systems, you don’t questions the methodology.

I prefer to think of marketing like a big tool kit. Don’t put all your faith in one tool, put it in the box, that way you’ll always use the right tool for the job.

We have all seen how too many clients jumped on the social media bandwagon, believing that SM would deliver a cheaper, more effective way to get their message into the minds and culture of consumers. But how many actually achieved the dream? How many big brands have turned back to TV – which is growing again. It takes a brave person to go against the grain, and recently Premier Food’s chief executive Gavin Darby bucked the social trend and said, they were “unashamedly sticking with TV advertising” and would not be shifting significant spend into digital channels.

SOCIAL NORMS

For those of you who have signed up to the church of Behaviour Economics (a great repackaging of basic consumer psychology) you’ll know about ‘social norming’ – people behaving like pack animals. Or sheep if you prefer.

It’s in our DNA to follower others and the fashion industry have used that factor as a marketing tool for generations. And no matter how bad the fashion is – low slung jeans exposing your pants or tank tops – we laugh at first then follow. There’s been many tests to prove (scientifically) how vulnerable we are to following the behaviour of others and therefore fashion. It is actually this factor that can make social media so powerful.

If we are under the impression everyone is doing X, we will do X as well. How many readers have adopted social media just because everyone else is? “What do you mean you don’t have a Twitter account,” is often said with condemnation these days.5 years ago people said “you have a Twitter account,” with surprise.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS…

Another interesting fact of psychology (yep, that’s what I believe in, back to basics and understanding how and why people do what they do) is first impressions – they really do count. I’m not talking about visual appearance but information. When introduced to something new, the first information portrayed as fact becomes embedded in the mind and attached to a belief system. If I tell a young impressionable intern that mobile phone advertising is all and everything and traditional digital is dead, it doesn’t take much to embed that belief.

If I take you to a strange land and tell you the woodlands are full of killer spiders, 90% of you will believe that and to a point where you’d try and stop the 10% taking a walk in the woods. Remember that film The Village?

Sure belief systems can be shaken but it’s harder to change them than to implant them. Even harder if they are based on fear. This is why each generation of entrants to our business believe passionately that their world is the new and right world.

Try selling a poster or TV campaign to a 26 year old digital planner who believes that old media is dead and mobile is everything. Even when you show them the facts, that big media still has the greatest influence, they won’t believe you. Belief systems are powerful and sometimes corrupting. Worse they can prevent us from making the right decisions.

A client of mine once said, “The trouble with marketing is that every discipline thinks it’s the right way. Everyone can prove that their way is the right way. But common sense tells you that isn’t right. The trouble is, common sense is not very common.”

#ibelieveinmarketing

Brand storytelling

http://tomfishburne.com/2011/04/brand-storytelling.html

My current trip to Spain, on a climbing trip, has ended up a bit like a weekend at a music festival – wet. But unlike the usual festival, the food here is excellent and I don’t have to suffer listening to 4o minutes of some terrible band that has been tipped as the next Artic Monkeys by some novice music journalist.

Spain is big on alternative power and is a big producer of solar and wind turbines. Today we drove past what must have been over 100 turbines all next to each other – a magnificent site.

By contrast, music festivals are not the greenest of events but they have beeen making efforts to improve their Eco creds. They produce tons of rubbish, human waste and create lots of unnecessary travel. You could add noise pollution if  you live near by.

But some are trying to improve. Glastonbury festival founder Michael Eavis has installed one of the largest private solar power arrays on the roof of his cow shed. Rothbury are offsetting by donating funds towards wind turbines, solar power schemes and even low energy light bulbs for local schools. Of course some bands would sound a lot better unplugged and could save power in the process! Green Day could live up to their name.

To reduce pollution, Shambal Festival put on coaches to discourage car use but in America they went one better and one festival chartered an entire train!

Human waste is not a plesent subject but it has led designers to come up with innovate solution alike the Thunderbox and the P-Tree.

General waste, and there’s a lot, has led many festival organisers to try and reduce the source – one has banned promotional gifts – bad news for those marketeers hoping to give away branded goodies this year.

Many are getting tougher on food and drink vendors, looking for more local, organic and Fairtrade sourcing of food. While some are even banning big brands they consider unhealthy. Plus all containers have to be biodegradable

Of course all this is small stuff when you look at the Eco footprint of the many musicians flying in with truck loads of equipment and crew – Madonna came a famous target of environmentalist when they discovered how extravagant her tour was.

Of course if you wanted the ultimate green festival you’d probably be best to go digital and just to hoast it all online. Think of the advantages – you stay dry, you can eat from your own fridge not  a dirty over priced burger van,  sleep in a warm bed rather than a muddy tent and you won’t have to queue 40 minutes for a filthy toilet. Surely if we did a research group on that proposition we’d get a thumbs up. It all makes logical sense, but consumers a rarely logical which is why we still prefer to stand in a field and suffer to see our fav band perform, the size of matchstick men, on a stage half a mile away. Nothing beats a real experience!

Shock may work well for artists with little talent because it gets you noticed, but when ad agency creatives indulge themselves with insensitive mock suicide scripts, because they can’t think up a really good idea, you have to question if they should keep their jobs.

Pipe Job (Link to video)

The viral ad, ‘Pipe Job’ for the Hyundai iX35, has backfired and seriously damaged the brand’s reputation. It was created by its South Korean ad agency Innocean (probably would ex agency by now if Hyundai didn’t own them). If I was Hyundai, to repent, I’d sack all involved and give their salaries to the Samaritans.

The ad simulates a man committing suicide… what were the creative department, and the rest of the agency, and the client thinking? Or maybe in South Korea that’s seen as funny.

The script: a middle-aged man, who’s decided to end it all, tapes up the iX35?s tail pipe in a closed garage. A moment later, however, the garage door opens and he walks away, alive. The punchline at the end? “The new iX35 with 100% water emissions.”

It’s now probably one of the top 5 biggest ad mistakes of all time and running ahead of terrorist bomber (the fake VW Polo ad) and Ford’s (it wasn’t use really who made this) ad showing a cat getting it’s head cut off by the electric sun roof. The social media equivalent was the campaign for Dr Pepper where they took over Facebook pages and ended up posting adult content on under 16 year sites. Dooh!

The irony is stupidity often repeats itself, 15 years ago Honda did a similar ad and got in deep water then. So not even an original script.

As if it didn’t get enough outrage, what has really got the most attention is a very moving blog form London based copywriter Holly Brockwell, whose father committed suicide this way.

See: AN OPEN LETTER TO INNOCEAN AND HYUNDAI. http://copybot.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/an-open-letter-to-innocean-and-hyundai/#comments

As 99.9% of viral films never get off the social media launch pad, it’s no surprise brands resort to being controversial, because that’s what often gets people talking. While others have just gone back to using TV because it actually sells a lot better and you don’t end up making gaffs like this.

Of course you’ll always find jerks who will defend these kinds of virals as a dramatic way to get noticed or claiming, “at least it got it’s message across.” Really? Ironically the message was about ethics (reduced pollution) – writing ads about people wanting to kill themselves is not ethical. So what impression that that leave about the brand? Forget ‘Love Brands’, truth ‘Most Hated Brand’.

There is some confusion about the ad being approved. Despite being posted on Hyundai’s official YouTube channel, they claim, “The video was created by an affiliate advertising agency, Innocean Europe, without Hyundai’s request or approval.” Really?

Even the Guardian, who had originally featured it, was forced to take the article down as it was seen as poor judgment.

The mistake, some social media marketing managers make (partly due to having no real broad marketing experience) is thinking that being talked about is the same as selling. Sorry, but chatter isn’t marketing, it’s just noise and often has a lifespan of seconds with no real sales outcome. Ask Guinness, they once commented on a TV documentary about advertising, that people up and down the land were talking about their TV ads…while drinking gin & tonics.

Unless it leads to a sale, it’s vacuous. As Leo Burnett once said, “if it doesn’t sell, it isn’t good creative”. Even if it provides numbers that makes some less smart marketers actually think they are achieving something.

You also need to remember a simple well researched fact, 90% of conversations about brands happen off line not online and when the media picks up the story, the reach is 1000x greater than any social media campaign can ever achieve. In fact a lot of online chatter is a reaction to what is in the media. Which is why we are all talking about it because it’s been on the BBC, in the Telegraph, Metro, Guardian, Mirror, Daily Mail, etc. Now that’s what I call a PR disaster!

Worse, off line (real world) conversations are 10 times more powerful as people discuss rather then just pass comment.

Online chatter: “latest Hyundai ad is shocking.”

Off line chatter: “Have you seen that Hyundai ad Sara?”

“Yes,I read about it in the paper, isn’t it terrible.”

“I can’t believe they did that, it’s disgusting.”

“How could they?”
“Me neither, would you buy one of their cars?

“No way.”

“How about you Sue, Jayne, Fiona…”

“No way.”

“I wouldn’t be seen dead in one.. OMG, did I actually say that?”

This week, by the way, the company announced a 15% drop in first quarter profits. If they think that’s bad, just wait until the next quarter results…

Of course putting aside the tasteless script, associating the brand with a depressed looser, is hardly a smart brand association. I think Hyundai needs to re-evaluate its brand strategy big time, it’s slogan, “New Thinking, New Possibilities” is just waffle. They make great cars and offer fantastic support, but that’s really only a value if people put you on the shopping list rather than the black list.

There is no win for Hyundai here, no matter how they try and spin the facts. Negative press and conversations of disgust about a brand that over steps the line is plain brand suicide.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grDbiKmDhyw

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#hyundaigaffad

The figures for death through dirty water is almost unbelievable – 2.2 million deaths a year. In fact it kills about 2,000 kids a day on average  - more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. That’s over 80 an hour, about 1 a minute.

783m people (10% of the world population) don’t have access to clean water, and 2.5b (2/5ths of the world’s population) lack basic sanitation.

At any one time, almost half of the hospital beds in the world are full of people suffering form sickness due to dirty water. It’s probably the biggest health crisis effecting people in the world.

In Africa and Asia the average distance people have to walk for fresh water is over 3 miles, bringing home about 20 litres of water. Which is about the amount you use washing the dishes, flushing the loo or taking a quick shower. Daily we use about 120 litres of water a day in the West.

Here’s another shocking fact, it takes 200 litres of water to produce one 35ml can of fizzy pop, 3,000 litres to produce 1kg of rice and 8,000 litres to produce a pair of leather shoes.

The next time you buy a bottle of water, or turn on the tap, you may want to consider just how lucky you are.

So P&G’s new CSR initiative with Asda, to help supply clean drinking water is literally a life saver. It’s developed a water purification product that can turn dirty water into clean water in just 30 minutes. However, some critics believe that longer term measures, like wells are a better solution.

P&G and Asda are running the campaign across all 1,200 SKUs (including Pampers, Arial, Oral B, Gillette, Pantene) and are pledging to provide purifying equipment that will produce 2 litres of clean water for each product sold. Their aim is save a life an hour.

Consumers can also support the campaign by liking the Facebook page, 1 Like = 1 day of water. The project aims to provide 25 million days of clean water over the next year.

P&G’s support for their campaign is bigger than their support for the Olympics according to P&G’s managing director Irwin Lee. In the US,

This isn’t the first time P&G have aligned with clean water campaigns, 7 years ago they set up The Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) Programme and have helped save more than 29,000 lives by purifying 4 billion litres of water. To date they have already donated over £20m towards clean water projects.

The new campaign is being supported by a major campaign on TV.

Of course the problem with initiatives like these is how do you ever exit them? And can you build them long term into your business ethos? A big challenge that faces all brands when they seek to do good. And given the cynical and critical nature of the UK media, as soon as you do try and exit you’ll be shot down. In the meantime, the campaign can only be applauded.

Walking for Water.

Last March was The World Walk for Water & Sanitation event (which is a co-operative event run by many water charities), when an estimated 400,000 people globally walked to raise funds and apply pressure to governments to do more.

If you want to raise money for any of the many water charities then visit – www.h2owalk.org  – it’s an open platform site that anyone can use to raise funds at any time. The idea is simple.

People do a sponsored walk from a place beginning with H to a place beginning with O (H to O). Home to office. Holborn to Oxford Circus. Hare & Hounds pub to the Old Mill Inn. It’s a simple fund raising idea that allows anyone to pick their own route and own charity.  Anyone can participate, anywhere.

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LINKS

http://www.wateraid.org/uk/what-we-do/the-crisis

www.h2owalk.org

http://www.worldwalksforwater.org/eng/

You can take a horse to water but even good ads can’t make it drink. And the same can be said about M&S. While their food range is selling well, with like-for-like food sales growing 4%, their clothing range is in trouble with a 3.8% decline. No surprise if you’ve been in store recently, it’s dull.

Critics have claimed the products are poor quality, to save money, and out of tune with consumer taste. Even the ethical Plan A hasn’t been able to stop the decline. So what’s Mark Bolland’s Plan B?

But the problem is more complex. As a growing number of consumers go online how well has M&S embraced that? Despite investing a ridiculous sum in their new ecommerce site – they’ll need to sell a lot of undies to get payback – it’s no guarantee with so many online retail sites competing with big brands.  Look at ASOS, it came form nowhere and now dominates online clothing retail. Mobile sales are up 70% though, but given this is a new area for both consumers and brands it’s easy to show large growth.

While their big stores are stuck in traditional high streets, the smaller food stores have been able to be tactically placed in better locations, including stations and even at petrol stations.

By contrast, many retailers have been doing better and John Lewis has been excelling. Besides popular ads, it has focused on quality in both what it sells and service.

A recent Mintel report reveals that ‘quality’ is the number one thing shoppers are looking for: 54% seek quality first, then 49% value, 42% availability, 37% range, 25% savings.

CEO of M&S, Marc Bolland has a tough challenge ahead of him and even if he is backing a big spend ad campaign it’s not the size of the spend but the quality of the idea that gets them in store and then the quality of the product that delivers the sale.

Personally, I think the ‘perfectly’ campaign is a bit defensive and bland, it’s just another shot of a woman in clothes and could be for any retail brand and could even help to reinforce M&S’s unispired image rather than make you think again.

Even though it’s shot by the fashion photographer Andreas Sjödin, whose photographs usually have a punky attitude, the images are so safe and Daily Mail you wonder why he was used other than for PR purposes.

Bolland could learn a lot form John Lewis and if he can bring the same quality values and innovation that the food division has to clothing, he could have a winning pair of businesses.

Longer term one has to wonder how long M&S can stay in two retail areas, or maybe it should throw in the grey towel and just focus on food.

The revelation that half of Bieber’s 37m Twitter fans are fakes comes as no surprise to many of us. We’ve all known for a long time you can buy fake Twitter and Facebook fans.

Social media statistics company, SocialBakers, estimates 16.7m of the singer’s 37m strong Twitter fan base are composed of ‘fake’ or empty accounts, with another 2.6m being inactive.

Bieber was number 1 and now falls to second place behind Lady Gaga – but are her fans real as well? In fact, all the top ten – which includes Katey Perry, Obama, Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Timberlake -  seem to have between 30 to 50% fake followers.

And if the music industry is now auditing their social media, shouldn’t all brands be doing the same? I can imagine the question being asked in boardrooms all over the business world is, “how many followers do we really have?”

Only recently a client told me he’d been called up by a salesman offering him 1000 Facebook fans for £500. “That’s disgraceful,” he exclaimed. But his dilemma wasn’t a moral one but one of price. “That’s disgraceful because I can get them for £250 a thousand,” and he slammed the phone down. No wonder Facebook has earned the nickname ‘Fakebook’ in marketing circles.

Another person I know bought 2000 Twitter fans for a few dollars online. It really is that easy.

The old saying, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” should maybe be rewritten as “Lies, damned lies, and social media statistics” in light of Bieber’s revelations. (The original quote came from the 19^th century British PM, Benjamin Disraeli, and was popularised by Mark Twain.)

The fact that Bieber has half the fans he claims really may not seem important, after all, who cares how many teenagers follow him? But what does matter is that it throws a dark shadow over the use of these figures as a measure of any value other than to massage an ego – I suspect the driving force here was record company egos. When real business or financial value is being measured, then we are now entering an area of fraud. And for an industry that has similar low trust levels as estate agents and used car salesmen, it does nothing for our profession.

Personally, I think faking up numbers to look good to your boss or worse – to get financial reward – is not only unethical and unprofessional but I would like to see some people done for fraud. If shareholder value was ever based on social media numbers then we need these figures to be professionally audited.

I can think of several brand websites that have a suspiciously high number of fans. One I investigated a few months ago for a blog (that we didn’t publish as it probably would have ended up in a law case) suggested that the brand’s agency was faking up a lot. We discovered a number of fans who only spent their time clicking on FMCG sites and had dubious profiles.

Another serious faking up comes from tricking real people into becoming fans when they had no idea. A well know cereal brand’s Facebook site is full of people complaining about being tricked into becoming fans of the site.

What started out as a piece of research with one top brand’s Facebook fans resulted in a revelation that half didn’t even know they were fans. It turned out that the digital agency was being paid an incentive and it was suspected they had tricked people onto the site.

Of course it’s easy to blame the small number of dishonest people you get in any business but you can also blame the ignorant ones who put pressure on marketing directors to get big numbers. Or marketing directors who lean on digital agencies.

I’ve recently done a small survey about this on LinkedIn (I can honestly claim all my 1163 followers are real).  Evaluating the comments, if an MD is pressurising his marketing director to get lots of numbers, of course he’ll take the easy route and “fake up”. As one contact put it, “If he’s too dumb to know the difference between what matters and what doesn’t, he’s too stupid to know they’re fake!”

The longer term damage of this scandal, and like horsemeat I suspect this is just the tip of an iceberg, is the discreditation of social media, which is a shame. On the good side, it is making us re-evaluate what numbers matter beyond the bottom line.

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#fakedup

In a week when John Hegarty, one of the smartest people I’ve met in advertising, did the unthinkable – he said the King was naked, it made us all rethink the value and role of data, as well as the dangers.

Of course that was after Martin Sorrell commented on Twitter being a PR medium that was good for WOM.

Two evangelistic camps have probably been upset, which begs the question, how divided is our industry by beliefs? It used to be just atl vs btl. Of course that’s human nature, as the quote goes, “never discuss politics, religion, football or women unless you want to divide people.” Add to that data. Human’s have a natural instinct to follow a tribe, to adopt beliefs and defend them with a passion.

When the digital evangelists were telling everyone that “TV was dead”, just as the original TV evangelists had declared “radio was dead” and the radio evangelists before them, declared “newspaper advertising was dead”, Hegarty was one of the lone voices defending TV. As he has been proven right, TV is still a powerful tool, and growing, if not the most powerful medium for both advertisers and PR. Big media makes a big impact, which is why most of the top 100 FMCG brands in the new Grocer report use it. As Hegarty said, and BBH has done more than almost anyone to use the power of TV to sell big brands, “Do interesting things and interesting things happen to you.”

As Bill Bernbach once said, “We are just glorified salesmen”, and Leo Burnett also said, “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative”. Today he’d probably say, “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t data worth having.”

We can easily become too focused on channels, marketing tricks, gimmicks, fads, the latest trend, data and false sciences, rather than adopting common sense and a pragmatic attitude and focus back on selling. “Follow your instincts not the latest trend,” would be a motto many marketers could benefit form. Bernbach also said, “Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be an art, not a science”.  Because while we are suffering from the latest digital trend or data distraction, we can easily forget the art of selling.

The fundamental flaw is thinking that you can actually find a magic answer to selling. The most common assumption is thinking that just because you know where some is, or what they do, means all you need to do is throw the right breadcrumbs in front of then and they’ll follow you to a sale. Wrong, this was the mistake direct marketers made in the early days when they thought all you needed was your address and we know what happened to most of that junk mail!. What we all need to do is get back to the art of selling not the science of assumptions.

You can say the right thing about a product at the right time but nobody will listen if it isn’t engaging. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut, in a way that makes them respond. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen. And if your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic. And no matter how academic you are, the consumer doesn’t care, all they care about is if they like your ad. Which is why big ideas still count, the problem is, they don’t come with a method of counting and marketers are under pressure to deliver numbers. And that’s where Likes, Tweets, data and many other numeric based methods win.

The Grocer 100 Biggest FMCG brands.

This week’s Grocer features the top 100 FMCG brands and it makes for interesting reading. Especially as it separates the big thinkers from the small ones.

For those who say advertising is dead, for many of the big FMCG brands it’s alive and selling. Brands like McCain’s, Heinz, Tropicana and Robinson’s are increasing ad spend.

Not surprisingly, most are broadening their reach through many other channels, including online.

For some, social media has been a glorious success, like Heinz’s “Get Well Soup’ and Walker’s ‘Guess the Flavour’. Heinz is now dedicating 20% of budget to online promotions. And it’s sales promotions that seems to be the best marketing disciple to ues online if you want sales up. But for others, a costly mistake.

All brands want to be the subject of conversations, but there’s always a mix of views about word of mouth – talk is cheap but does it sell? While some are exploiting Twitter, most brands are missing out on the bigger picture – 90% of WOM is off line still – think water cooler, school gates, coffee shops, bars and the 91 bus.

If you customer is the type who is spending a lot of time online and you can reach and influence them, it can be a great place to connect with them. Most brands now know that reach isn’t just about popping an ad up in front of consumers on a Facebook page, but reaching their feelings, their mind and desires.

But online has become a highly competitive environment, “think of a supermarket, TV is like competing against the products next to you, online is competing against every product in the supermarket at once”. But get it right and the winners can do well. But the wisdom is online is not enough on its own, it works best as a support medium to TV, PR and outdoor.

Big ideas – both in communications and product – are still key to effectiveness, dull ideas do nothing. You need to capture the imaginative of consumers if you want to engage them. Beware of gimmicks though, they can be seen as exactly that.  And here’s a warning to those thinking of just copying the latest YouTube idea or gaming idea, if it doesn’t link to your brand it won’t make the right impact.

What we often forget in the adland is that we are only a part of a marketer’s mix, NPD, promotions, distributions, store positioning are as critical, and in some case more important.The three key factors that have helped many brands increase sales last year are:

Promotions – almost all brands use them to stimulate sales, even Innocent had 70% of their juice range on promotions.

NPD – no brand can stand still, consumers are changing all the time, so brands need to as well. The cereal companies have been very active in developing new variants and new ways to eat on the go.

Advertising –  it still influences the most for us and generates Word of Mouth and PR.

Whatever methodology you are using – data, consumer psychology, research – understanding the consumer is still top of the list of needs of brands. Of course, anyone outside this industry could well ask, after almost 100 years of this industry being around, how come we are still trying to work out what the consumer wants? Maybe we can take support from Sigmund Fraud’s quote, “After 30 years of research, I still don’t know what women really want.” And as 85% of consumers are women, if Fraud can’t work it out, it’s no wonder we can’t.

The simple conclusion is – if you want to be big, you need to think big. Have big ideas. Value the big numbers, not the small ones. And to make big profits, you need to spend big. There are no easy magic solutions or get rich quick solutions, big brands work hard across many platforms to sell.

But most of all, in such a crowded, competitive environment you need to be visible, to stand out and shout louder than anyone else. And if you don’t stand out, you stand for nothing.

Great Minds Picture:

Leo Burnett • Martin Sorrell • John Hegarty • Bill Bernbach

#greatadminds

Having spent a long day at the IFE (International Food & Drink) show, it’s always interesting to see new trends in the market place.

Every time I go there’s always a new sector full of pioneers and followers. This year was no exception, but more later.

It’s also a great chance to catch up on some great reports by Mintel on trends (more of that tomorrow).

But if I had to pick one new product that caught my eye this year it would be Cho! The Drinking Gazpacho. Not only does the product taste great, it’s one of my favourite delights when I’m in Spain, but the packaging and collateral is beautifully designed. The fact it was created by people from the marketing industry is probably why it stands head and shoulders above many other new products.

For those who didn’t know, gazpacho is not actually a cold summer soup but more like a smoothie made from tomatoes and peppers. Call it a soup and you will upset a lot of Spaniards.

The product is made in Spain, in Andalucia, not a nasty factory in Slough, with recipes by award winning Spanish chef, Alejandro Sanchez.

For those who are purists, some of the new flavours may come as a surprise – Almond & Raspberry, Beetroot & Apple and Tomato & Strawberry, pushing them right into the alternative to smoothie category. And of course there’s also the classic Tomato & Pepper.

The brand has attitude and I would say has an Innocent approach but in a fresh way. I can certainly see it taking off in restaurants, cafes, delis and drunk by those with more culinary taste buds and individual nature. It has all the elements to become a cool brand.

I think it has great appeal to women too, as it’s natural and healthy, especially for the lunch market or as food on the go.

I think it may take a period for the Brits to discover it on mass before it’ll take off in supermarkets, which is probably a good thing as it’ll allow the brand to really define itself to a quality audience first.

I think this is a product that’s been well thought through, has the right mix of brand values, food values (it uses organic produce and mountain spring water) and so will appeal to foodies.

TRENDS – HEALTH OR INDULGENCE?

Natural, organic, traditional – year on year we are seeing brands try and move towards more ethical values in food as consumer are demanding better values. The recent horse scandal has only highlighted what crap we are often eating.

So just when you though everyone is eating healthy, and there’s certainly a big trend that way, it seems Pork Scratchings are making a come back. I’m told they are actually good fuel before activity.. um? Not convinced. Think I might need an extra hour at the climbing centre to burn those extra calories off. But they are very yummy.

With a market approaching $100m in Europe, Coconut waters continue to see new entrants into the market but I think if you are trying to get into the market now you’ve left it too late.

Brands like Vita Coco (the market leader) followed by  CHI (number 2 in the UK market) and Jax, plus a wide range others in both bottles and cans,  are all extending the market with flavoured varieties. Vita Coco are even producing a coconut water coffee drink.

Another growing trend is liquid breakfast. It’s a reflection of the times that we live in that we don’t have time to eat a bowl of cereal or a slice of toast in the morning but do seem to have time to check our Twitter feeds and Facebook. Too busy or just bad time management? I really don’t think the solution lies in liquid breakfast.

THAT WAS SO LAST YEAR…

At previous IFE’s there were lots of people jumping on the energy drink market. Thankfully most came, had a short burst of energy and fizzled out. The market is now dominated by Red Bull, Boost and the larger cans like Relentless, Monster and Rockstar, as well as own brands.

So I was a bit surprised to see a new brand, packaged in a black can and served by Russian glam girls in tight black jeans and crop tops – not sure who they think their market is. I give it less than a year before it burns out.

There’s certainly a growing market in the alternative, more natural energy drinks like Pussy, Firefly, Scheckter, SoBe, Together and my favourite, Little Miracles.

TRENDS IN FOODS…

Which is the fastest growing area of snacks? Find out tomorrow when

I’ll be covering some of the fascinating insights MINTEL have come up about trends in snack foods, flavours and shopping

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Links

Cho!   www.chogazpacho.com

IFE www.ife.co.uk

Trends & things: www.trendsandthingsblog.wordpress.com

While the media maybe championing data as the answer to the great mystery of understanding consumer behavior, our recent survey reveals many clients think psychology offers better insight and value than data. Of course, together they make a great pair.

Since my last article ‘Are you a Metricmaniac?” we wanted to discover how data performed against psychology for predicting consumer behaviour.

Data is certainly stealing all the limelight at the moment and is now even on the agenda of company boards (so we are told by the press), while psychology seems to be forgotten.

No one doubts that data, and even big data, is a valuable source of intelligence about consumer behaviour but is it enough on it’s own? Does it really tell you how, what and why? And well enough? Does it give you the whole picture? Or is it a bit two dimensional, as some experts feel it is?

It’s great when there’s no variations, but consumers change their buying habits all the time – you only have to look at the fashion, music, film, game and many other industries we spend money on to know that we our buying habits change.

Like research groups, how well data is interpreted is critical to how effective it is, if the person analyzing makes a wrong assumption (as I’ve seen previously with research) you get a false result.

We all know that statistics can be anything but truthful. I personally don’t trust software systems to analyse data, I believe you need the human element and intuition – you can’t analyse research groups without the human input. We are in a people to people business and you can’t ever ignore the power of human insight, whatever the machine is saying.

NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT…

The survey results may not be what you expect, though predictably, the two working together makes for better consumer insight, something I think we all agree with.

To have data without psychology is to have like watching a black & white silent movie, it’s ok if you haven’t watched in colour with great sound but once you’ve discovered the bigger picture there’s no turning back.

So before you sign off half your marketing budget to analyzing all that big data, in the quest to find what makes your customer tick, you might just want to read this and embrace a different view – especially those who believe psychology is better value.

THE SURVEY RESULTS

These are the questions and answers.

 1.   When trying to understand and predict consumer behaviour, which do you think is more important.

It’s not just WHAT? we do but WHY?  Just over half opted for psychology but a quarter of all respondents commented that both were as important as each other. So in general they are seen as equal, yet you’d never guess that from press coverage and industry trends.

 2.   When creating insight into consumer behaviour, which do you think offers better value?

Again, around a quarter of all respondents commented that both were as important as each other, but just over 60% opted for psychology with 18.2% opting for data. Could this be because of the escalating costs of data collection and analytics? Of course the cost of using psychology depends on who you are using and how. Used in conjunction with research groups can be expensive, but using simple like NLP based tools like AardVarK is cheap.

3.   How important is consumer insight and consumer behaviour to your marketing?

Not surprisingly 97% thought it was – 70% thought it essential, 27% important. The 3% who opted for ‘debatable’ or ‘not important’ may well be working in industries where insight is less significant. Or cynics. The question is, do we really have enough quality and useful insight into our customers to allow us to make smarter decisions and to help us use budgets more effectively?

4.   Have you used psychology to help you understand or predict consumer behaviour?

Surprisingly 82% had and only 15% hadn’t. But then maybe this is not so surprising when you consider predicting behaviour, rather than repeat behaviour, needs a human understanding. (Or could it be that people who use psychology are more inclined to respond to surveys because they have more spare time because they don’t have all that data to analyse?)

The conclusion is that using psychology is valued greatly by marketers, a little more than data but many see the two as good partners. For predicting behaviour it out does data, but with either, and both, it all comes down to how well you understand what you are looking at.

Of course, arguably, psychology is just data in another form. What we know has been gained for thousands of years of studying human behaviour.

The most obvious financial benefit is that psychology is seen as better value.

DO WE KNOW THE BASICS?

Another study we did last year with marketers as part of WHY WOMEN SHOP ON MARS AND MEN SHOP ON VENUS project (see full results at www.venus2mars.net ) revealed that the vast majority thought we didn’t even understand the basic differences between male and female consumers and as 85% of consumer spend is by women that is one hell of a gap in our knowledge as an industry. ’86-90% thought agencies/brands didn’t understand female consumers well enough.’

This is backed up by research from companies like Nielsen, ‘91% of women think advertisers don’t understand them.’

So maybe before we start to sweat the small stuff maybe we should be getting the big stuff sorted first.

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LINKS

SURVEY: If you want to add your voice, you can do the same survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FSGJCJX

SURVEY RESULTS – Do we really understand female consumers?

http://www.venus2mars.net/survey.pdf

WHY WOMEN SHOP ON MARS AND MEN SHOP ON VENUS

www.venus2mars.net

REFERENCE ARTICLES: Do we really get consumers? All that freshly sourced data may not be revealing as much about people as brands think. By Jonathan Akwue.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/analysis/1173334/really-consumers/

Big data without the human touch means big waste

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/1170489/Big-data-without-human-touch-means-big-waste/

Are you a Metricmaniac?

http://arnoldonethicalmarketing.brandrepublic.com/2013/02/07/are-you-a-metricmaniac/

http://tiny.cc/yl73rw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuzmpJoGycw

RECOMMENDED READING:

Recently the IPA, who have championed Behavioural Economics, had a very successful talk by Marcus Corah, author of The Persuader (how to use emotional persuasion to win more business), on NLP and it’s applications to agencies. Check out his book on Amazon.

NOTE:

Survey size was capped at 200. Number of marketers emailed with survey was 3,765.

TWITTER

#psychodata

News that the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) has finally cracked down on payday loan companies is good news for all, well unless you are a legal loan sharks making profit from exploiting the poor and vulnerable.

The consumer watchdog announcement it had discovered “widespread irresponsible lending,” how come that comes as no surprise to us all? But is the OFT’s bite as bad as their bark?

Payday loan companies have been given 12 weeks to change their business practices or risk losing their licences.

OFT chief executive’s Clive Maxwell commented: “We have found fundamental problems with the way the payday market works and widespread breaches of the law and regulations, causing misery and hardship for many borrowers. Payday lenders are earning up to half their revenue not from one-off loans, but from rolled over or refinanced deals where unexpected costs can rapidly mount up.”

Wonga is the biggest and best know payday loans company in the UK and saw it’s business triple in size, in part due to heavy TV advertising. Other brands include Speedy, PayDay UK, Donkey Loans, The Money Shop, QuickQuid, PoundstoPocket – in fact there are now 240 registered but 50 major players in the market.

Payday loans is a highly controversial business, and considered to be probably the most unethical legal business there is in the UK.  It’s been called “legal loan sharking’.  But it’s lucrative and worth over £2bn, so no surprise it attracts some dubious players.

Critics claim these companies prey upon the poor and vulnerable and exploit them by loaning money at astronomical rates – 4,214% APR in the case of Wonga, thanks to exploiting a loophole in the law.

One woman borrowed just £240 and had to pay back £1200, that was cheap! For the poorer in society it is often their desperation that leads them to go to theses companies, and because these companies are only in it for the massive profits, poor people are driven into a worse situation.

Many charities have condemned pay day loan companies, claiming they force people into further debt, and want them banned from advertising. The question many are asking is, why the government hasn’t shut them down before? Money Advice Trust (MAT) received over 20,000 complaints in 2012 with even more expected this year.

Muslims are also upset because under Sharia law you must not benefit from either lending money or receiving money from another person – meaning that interest is prohibited.

Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain said, “The idea is to protect the vulnerable and the needy from exploitation by the rich and powerful. When they are lending and are charging large amounts of interest, it means the poor will have short-term benefit from the loan but long-term difficulty in paying it back because the rate of interest is not something they can keep up with. The Islamic system is based on a non-interest-based system of transaction.” (Quote from the Independent.)

Leader of Newcastle City Council, Nick Forbes, commenting on Wonga’s sponsorship of Newcastle United football club, “I’m appalled and sickened that they would sign a deal with a legal loan shark. It’s a sad indictment of the profit-at-any-price culture at Newcastle United. We are fighting hard to tackle legal and illegal loan sharking and having a company like this on every football shirt that’s sold undermines all our work.” He has suggested that Wonga should put money into debt advice in Newcastle instead. Dream on Nick!

In their defense, you can partly blame the banks. The payday loan business grew out of a need for quick, short term loans and these were exactly what banks cut back on. If banks were more consumer friendly and less bureaucratic and cautious, payday loan companies wouldn’t exist.

The loan companies also claim that the vast majority of people are happy with their service and pay back their loans with weeks and so only pay small charges. But what about the rest? The OFT The review said: “It would appear that payday lenders’ revenues are heavily reliant on those customers who fail to repay their original loan on time.”

Wonga is the smartest of the brands when it comes to marketing (even if the ads are annoying). They are big spenders on big media (TV, posters, buses, radio, etc) while others seem to stick to PPC (expensive and doesn’t build brand).

Wonga has realised that brand building in this market is essential, and when you have a well known brand, people trust you and search for you – so the savings you can make on PPC offset the TV budget. Smart! Daily deal sites could learn a lesson from Wonga.

Recently, former Atomic Kitten star Kerry Katona (who ironically went bankrupt) caused a massive publicity backlash for appearing in a TV ad that targeting women for Cash Lady payday loans.

Few would disagree that payday loans companies represent the lowest ethical level of the financial industry, as one caller on LBC said, “It’s morally no better than exploiting kids, that’s why we banned child labour, pay day loans needs to be next.”

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a new regulator, takes over the consumer credit market from 2014 and has committed to bringing in tighter rules on payday lending. Labour said they would consider banning them if they win the next election. With such a tidal wave of opposition to them it’s only a matter of time before they get their wings clipped.

With such a black cloud over the payday loan industry these companies will be rushing to spend their ill gotten gains on advertising to try and get a share of share of market and raise their brand before they are stamped on, so should we not have a temporary ban on all payday loan companies? If not just for the sake of the vulnerable.

Of course the other reason to ban them is because they all do such terrible ads, just look at PoundstoPockets alien ad, Wonga’s elderly bunch or PayDay UK’s bomber pilot ad with the slogan, “Don’t say mayday, say Payday UK.” I rest my case!

#paydaysharks