Archive for August, 2009

27
Aug
09

A Marketing Revolution – no, but not the ’same old same old’ either?

By pendrywhite Leave a Comment
Categories: Market Challenges
Tags: , , ,

The past year has seen some shifts in companies’ attitudes towards marketing.

When recession hits activities that do not deliver direct to the bottom line, such as marketing, corporate social responsibility and training, these activities are often cut back drastically or even stopped completely.  This was certainly the case in the recession of the early 1990s.

However, this time around, when faced with average internal cuts of 20%, marketing departments appear to be working hard to re-focus their efforts so that they deliver a far more visible return on investment. It is not just a case of slash-and-burn but stop-and-think.

The pain in the market may not be all that it appears – instead of cuts that will simply see a catch-up in funding when recovery comes, we may be seeing a re-orientation of effort.

More cash may be being removed from conventional agencies than the reported gross budget cuts imply but funds may equally be being redirected into the learning curve required to manage participation in the new communications technologies. As things stand, the evidence is still largely anecdotal.

Nevertheless, recent Forrester research highlighted that, faced with these cuts, Chief Marketing Officers were shifting away from traditional plans and diverting marketing spend into different channels in order to communicate directly with customers.

Even the best of us cannot claim to understand perfectly how the new channels work to build sales or brand or how different channels can be integrated together. There is a lot of suck-it-and-see out there and experimentation means some caution on spending to offset the emphasis on multiple risk-taking with ideas and projects.

Forrester’s research was no surprise to us. These findings echo conversations with our own clients. Many have not stopped marketing - they are just doing it differently. The change in approach might be attributed to two factors:

  • self-evidently, marketeers need to demonstrate a better return on investment in the current climate and old media are beginning to look expensive compared to their upstart rivals; and,
  • they need to be able to communicate more effectively in a market where customers have many more choices of channel for their own information needs.

Marketeers need to deliver measurable results quickly on a reduced budget while cash remains the main concern of the finance department.

For many, it is about unlocking the hidden value in their existing customer base (rather than seeking out new investment-heavy markets) and strengthening their brands so that customers choose theirs rather than seek to exploit the current situation and drive down prices or go to ‘cheaper’ alternatives.

It is a strategy that Pendry White has also been pursuing. Pre-crisis we would do a lot of face-to-face networking. Now we are complementing these efforts by building up our networks online through B2B channels such as Linked In. 

For us, the virtuous circle lies in content distributed through new channels that reach our current networks (and their networks) more effectively. These networks then create debate and discussion that generates new content that … and so on.

We are a business based on consulting in a rapidly changing world and this contains inherent risk for us. Fortunately, many of our competitors seem locked into systems more appropriate for a world of heavyweight print media and centralised command-and-control. Since both of these aspects of communications are under threat, we feel confident that we are ahead of the game here.

We have also changed the focus of our previous direct contact programmes. We have long since given up on direct mail , costly, difficult to tailor and slow to reach the intended recipient.

Instead, we have been sending out email bulletins and getting instant responses because we make sure that they are not just e-versions of the printed page but are geared to the new media. Useful content (not the usual sales patter) is reachable through a click to the web with minimal glossy photography and design that slows down read-time on receipt. Our brand here is our thinking process. The prettification of our service is less important than having the service in the first place.

Above all, we have concentrated on this virtuous circle of content -> channel -> target. We have been leveraging the benefits of blogs (not just Whiteboard but that of our political and international affairs associate As It Happens and private LiveJournal, LinkedIn and Facebook presences), filtering the content through to our networks, groups and followers online. We are not afraid of having different Twitter accounts targeting not volume followers but followers relevant to our market. We even have an internal guidebook that makes it clear how they are to be used.

Our aim is a direct conversation with our own clients and prospects, a friendly conversation where it is safe to raise almost any problem or issue with us and know that we will not try and grab it willy-nilly but will give best advice – even refer it on to others.

This raises an important issue of business integrity. The very complexity of the new channels and their community ethos means that the old system of selling at someone, taking the business and hoping you can service it with a bit of intelligent ducking and diving is now far too risky – errors will get publicised. Nothing can be swept under the carpet any more.

While investing in new or non-traditional channels may be uncharted territory (we know that we are wasting some time, though little capital, in our experimentation), this investment is certainly something that everyone in the marketing industry will have to embrace at some point in the near future. We do not mind at all being in the experimental vanguard.  

Is this a marketing revolution? We think this revolutionary aspect is being exaggerated by over-enthusiastic special interests. Whilst marketers are changing the way that they do things, the new channels will (at least for a while yet) complement rather than completely replace traditional channels.

Print media, for example, are in serious trouble and their future is dire but information provision through online media is not so drastically different in style while broadcast looks set to strengthen its hold on the market both with the broadband revolution and the integration of home entertainment and the internet.

The new tools, especially those related to networked online communities and to new forms of global messaging, will be added to the communications mix. They will complement existing activities.

All in all, this is a major change, a massive correction, in marketing communications but, when the dust has settled and what may be a painfully slow recovery has got under way, the new marketing landscape will be different but it will be well within the ability of marketing professionals to manage and exploit. We’ll see you on the other side!

If you would like to discuss the issues raised in this posting, please comment or contact Roger White on rwhite@pendrywhite.com

25
Aug
09

fan conventions – an immature market that needs intervention

By pendrywhite 3 Comments
Categories: Market Challenges
Tags: , , ,

What is the business logic, other than that of short term financial greed, for commercial organisations in sucking the life blood out of their own market? 

Well, there is the argument that the market rules and that anything goes but the last two years have seen the disastrous and painful effects of economic short-termism. It is about time that we did some hard thinking about whether efficiency and effectiveness (and the survival of the liberal capitalist system) are best served when the de facto governors of a market allow it to operate without any rules or regulations.

The fan convention market is now following the path of football, once a binding force for local communities, into difficult territory. Fans of popular culture spin-offs are like those of football clubs before globalisation but spread thinly across space and ultimately connected into communities through the internet rather than a locality.

At a certain point, these communities become brand opportunities – this may give orgasmic pleasure to marketeers but it also shifts the nature of such communities from something in which the customer is deeply engaged on equal terms with the owners into something where its engagement can be cruelly exploited.

We may all remember the public relations problems that the big football clubs had when they tried to suck the cash out of their lower wage earning supporters by changing their kit regularly, following the model of planned obsolescence that had Vance Packard screaming from the rooftops nearly fifty years ago.

In the end, the clubs and the public came to an accommodation but the quality of fandom had changed. Inevitably something similar will happen and is happening in the convention market but how we get from A to B is the big question.

The fan convention market looks ready to make some of the same mistakes of all new industries where there is no-one to monitor the behaviour of the players.

There is no issue here about making money. The point is part a moral one and part a business one. Three or four years ago, we might have laughed off morality or considered Government to be the regulator of what is good while the market just got on with doing what it does best.

But the last few years have reinstituted morality as an aspect of business practice. First, because morality is, in itself, good business as the British Victorians understood, if not their contemporary American robber baron cousins. Second, because Government has been proven as, if not more, a-moral than the market.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Trekkie (a Star Trek fan), a Doctor Who fan, a Buffy groupie or even one of the new Torchwood Hub faction, the chances are that you are facing an ever increasing number of commercially driven convention opportunities, some making dubious promises about celebrity attendances, and at prices that seem to escalate regardless of the real economic world in which fans live.

It is, in short, like the Wild West out there! The core brands of the ultimate producers of these popular culture icons are moving from the happy anarchy of genuine enthusiasm, organised (if that is the right word) by loving amateurs, to the ‘everything goes’ of get-rich-quick merchants who smell a fast in-and-out buck.

We do have to declare an interest here. One of our clients is a Dr Who Convention Regenerations09 possibly the last of the true Dr Who fan conventions to be organised by fans for fans. We work with them because we like them and we like the people they are serving. Yes, that makes us a dash eccentric by conventional business standards but we made a promise to ourselves when we started up in 2004 to do something fun every year.

This particular convention is organised by Cary Woodward, a true enthusiast, with one of the largest personal collections of Dr. Who memorabilia. The Convention is a labour of love on all sides. If Cary ever gets rich organising Regenerations we will be amazed.

We work on a sort of quasi pro bono basis – if he has any money left at the end we get paid something. (By the way, other than a major international healthcare charity, we have not made a habit of this, so please do not try it on unless you are very, very, very interesting indeed.)

Regenerations is loved by the fans who attend but also by the stars who come to entertain them. This year Sir Derek Jacobi is one of the big names and he has recently reconfirmed his attendance.

But Regenerations faces a difficult challenge – in the last year there have been over 40 commercially operated Dr Who conventions which have left the real enthusiasts confused, possibly broke and, in many cases, disappointed. In general, we are talking about relatively low income purchasers here - you don’t see many MPs turning up on expenses or investment bankers.

Conventions are not cheap to attend if you are on the national average wage or below and the fans can generally only afford to do a couple each year. This plethora of profit driven events has seen the market begin to crumble – we understand that one large London based commercial convention saw its attendance numbers crash to less than a third of last year.

Meanwhile, the actual owners of the brands, big corporate players like the BBC, seem to be unaware of what is happening. What was good public relations in just letting fans get on with their fandom is in danger of degenerating into a more exploitative and opportunistic market.

It’s not just about Dr Who. Whatever your enthusiasm, commercial over-exploitation is like over-fishing, driving the true fan-organised event out of the market. Just as Governments have to step in over fishing stocks so brand owners may now have to step in to cut appropriate deals with those providers who have both the critical mass amongst the fan base and can effectively manage the demand.

Organisations like the BBC have a vested interest in the characters and concepts that create the fan base. They need to get behind the real fan-driven events, otherwise they will see the value of their own franchise diminished and damaged.

We make no excuses for declaring our self interest – like the team at Regenerations we do this for fun – but we believe there is a place for both profit and consideration for the fans that pay the bills. It just needs a bit of common sense and, dare we say it, cooperation between all the interested parties – and, just as the days of dog-eat-dog capitalism become a questionable inheritance, a little bit of interventionism might not go amiss.

Regenerations 09 takes place in Swansea on September 19th and 20th.  Tickets are still available and there will be a Pendry White contingent amongst the Daleks and Cybermen that weekend, so please come and say hello!

21
Aug
09

A New World Order for Comms Directors?

By pendrywhite Leave a Comment
Categories: In-House Challenges
Tags: , , ,

Senior communications professionals are only slowly coming to terms with a rapidly changing media environment.

Greater demands on less resources, using some entirely new communications channels, mean that, for some, a radical rethink of traditional patterns of thought is required. This is something we have seen at close quarters, not just in relation to our own clients but in our own business.

Fortunately for us, our focus has always been more on strategic  and reputational communications, strong on content creation and the use of all available channels, than on classic media relations-based PR.

But this new world order, intensified by the surprisingly sudden emergence of social networking and new and basically indiscriminate mass-communication tools like Twitter, might mean that some in-house professionals and old school agencies will now be at sea.

If professionals cannot adjust to, or buy-in, the skills to exploit these phenomena, they will get a soaking and then be hung out to dry, both by their more experienced digital publics and by those competitors who are already setting the pace.

PRWeek’s 2009 Survey of Communications Directors showed some interesting trends in in-house communications. More than two thirds have seen their annual budgets cut in the last year, with a third of Communications Directors reporting budget cuts of over 20%.

The fascinating thing is where those cuts are being applied – two thirds have cut paper based content production; half have slashed conferences and events; and two in five have cut their PR agency budget. Two thirds have also cut their own in-house headcount

Those categories are identified as being ripe for even further cuts as “nice to haves” hit the cutting room floor in favour of “need to haves” in a recessionary environment where weakening revenue competes with the need to invest in new tools.

Also telling are the critical issues that they are addressing. Two thirds are desperately trying to ensure a consistent brand message in a world of overlapping social networks that do not believe in the hard sell of corporate messaging and have the means to debunk them at a stroke.

One clever viral video – as John McCain found when Paris Hilton decided to counter his criticism of her with an energy policy of her own – can unravel all the good work of the most skilled of traditional advisers.

William Shatner’s devastating reading of Palin’s ‘work’ on the prime time Conan O’Brien show stateside would have been irritating a decade ago – now it gets a cult following and can be accessed day or night anywhere in the world.

Not surprisingly then, over half of Communications Directors are trying to execute an effective digital strategy (and are probably struggling) and half again are claiming that their prime concern is the maintenance of public trust. The two aims are already in tension.

The most pressing issues facing them as functional heads are doing more with less people, demonstrating how PR supports the business, and a lack of time to contribute strategically. In other words, they are so busy doing that they have no time for thinking.

They are trapped. They are pushed from pillar to post by a demand that the world that they know well should deliver more coverage and clearer messaging at cheaper cost just as a new world dawns that offers better and cheaper delivery if only they knew how to work it.

Old communications hands may say “so what’s new about that”?  What is new is the almost manic speed with which things are changing.  The shift from pen and ink to printing is, in fact, the nearest analogy. Even News International is troubled!

The ever increasing pace at which PR and communications will have to move away from the traditional printed channels means a profound loss of direct control over the corporate message.  Yet our professional class has sold itself to its employers as a class in control of its public.

What is also undoubtedly true, as ever, is that “Content Is King”. Distribution is so free and easy and can reach anywhere in the world that the quality and integrity of the material that goes on or in the new channels becomes more critical than ever. Serious slip-ups are humiliations.

The art is to channel material through to individuals who will make a quick link to information that makes them linger and then connect with operational people able to solve a problem. Instead of just promoting brand value, communications become implicated in direct sales!

This means not just a strategy for using the digital media but a strategy and programme for creating continuous high quality content that is going to feed a beast with an insatiable appetite. Each content production now has to be as big as the distribution system that it enters.

If you would like to discuss the issues that this new world order in media is creating for your communications, contact Roger White on rwhite@pendrywhite.com       

 

August 2009
M T W T F S S
    Sep »
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  

Copyright

©2009-2010 The Pendry White Partnership Limited. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pendry White and Whiteboard with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.