Cambridge Marketing Review Issue 10 Summer 2015

CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW

AGILE MARKETING FEATURES

Agile Technology for Agile Marketing SOSTAC® for Agile Marketing The Rule of Thirds in Content Strategy FEATURES

The Politics of Marketing

AGILE MARKETING

Design Intervention in Marketing A Day in the Life – VP Facebook VIEWS

The Value Grid Gamechangers

ISSUE 10 SPRING/SUMMER 2015

NEW MARKETING:

REVOLUTION NOT EVOLUTION The reality is that marketing teams of today require an ever-shifting array of skills and roles… And just as there are roles now that weren’t conceived of a few years ago, there will be roles needed in five years’ time that we haven’t even thought of. For companies looking to deliver real growth and innovation, the general practitioner ‘jack-of-all-trades’ role is outdated.

At Mobas we embrace that revolution. As requirements change and roles shift, we respond with flexible and intelligent solutions – solutions that involve the relevant combination of our four specialist divisions to hit the mark. We know our marketplace and work hard to know our clients’. Only then can we apply our modus operandi. And achieve everyone’s aim. Inspired thinking. Delivered.

Read on, or find out more about our specialist skills, at:

mobas.com +44 (0)1223 841699

Divisions of Mobas Group

say.hello@mobas.com

CONTENTS

CONTENTS 3 EDITORIAL AGILE MARKETING

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AGILE TECHNOLOGY FOR AGILE MARKETING Tom Holden of The Creative Space reviews a range of new and developing technologies

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SOSTAC PLANNING AND AGILE TACTICS An excerpt from PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Guide To Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan

14 ‘THE RULE OF THIRDS’ IN CONTENT STRATEGY Neil Wilkins from Viper Marketing on delivering a responsive and agile stream of content

FEATURES

18 THE MARKETING OF POLITICS Alison Griffiths looks at marketing through the lens of politics 22 THE INDIVIDUAL AT THE CENTRE OF THE MARKETING MIX Frances Tipper from SpokenWord looks at how the individual marketer can best communicate effectively 26 DESIGN INTERVENTION AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN MARKETING John Mathers, CEO of the Deign Council asks the question ‘So what is Design?

40 A VIEW FROM THE NETHERLANDS ON INNOVATION Innovation, what is the standard? Willem de Vries, Managing Partner of STEM Industrial Marketing Centre and Erik de Boer, director of New Business Development Associates 44 HOW TELEMARKETING ENHANCES YOUR BRAND AND DELIVERS RESULTS

By Chris Walthew, Managing Director, Prospect Research 48 MARKETING MASH UP Peter Fisk explores the best new ideas in the world of brands, innovation and marketing 52 THE CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW ON AIR Kiran Kapur talks about the Cambridge Marketing Review Radio Show’s first season on Star 107FM 54 THE VALUE GRID: UNCHAINING FROM AN OLD MODEL Charles Nixon re-imagines the Value Chain which was originally described in1985

VIEWS

57 ACT-LEARN-ACT-LEARN

By Don Moyer

30 A DAY IN THE LIFE OF… DEBBIE FROST Debbie Frost, VP, International Communications and Public Affairs at Facebook

59 MARKETING BOOK REVIEW Charles Nixon, Chairman of Cambridge Marketing College, reviews GameChangers by Peter Fisk

33 THE FUTURE OF BRANDED

64 TECHNOLOGY REVIEW A selection of some new marketing technologies selected by the Editor

CONTENT MARKETING – PART 3 Justin Kirby draws on his research for his new book Best of Branded Content Marketing: 10th Anniversary Edition 36 A VIEW FROM FRANCE – ATTITUDES David Remaud, ex-engineer turned marketer, reflects on the nature of marketing in France CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

66 SUMMARIES Salient points of each article in this Spring/Summer 2015 issue of CMR on Agile Marketing

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EDITORIAL From Andrew Hatcher, Publishing Director of Cambridge Marketing College

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ne of the consequences of the rapid development of digital technology and media has been the associated increase in buyer power. This has, in turn, driven changes in marketing that are making it more responsive to demand. That doesn’t ANDREW HATCHER just mean ‘always on’ but, more importantly, always ‘relevant’ to context whether physical, digital or psychological. This should result in better targeted messages in terms of segmentation as well as in terms of benefit and acceptability. The combination of ubiquitous search, social media and mobile geography is creating a world where the buyer will commonly know more than the seller about whether the product or service they are considering is appropriate for them in terms of price, quality and function.

Understanding the process of matching current dynamic buyer behaviour is a challenge for most of us as we struggle to make the traditional modes of marketing fit and operate effectively. So it was with some trepidation that we set out to create an edition of the CMR that would address some of these issues and help you to better understand what you can do to adapt and exploit.

We lead the edition with a review from Tom Holden from The Creative Space on current and upcoming technologies that may assist marketers of all kinds to up their game. This is supported by both the father of SOSTAC®, Paul Smith, who provides insight into how we can use the accepted marketing mix in a more agile way, understanding what the potential outcomes could be from a customer satisfaction perspective and by a comprehensive technology roadmap from Richard Watson and Alex Ayad from Imperial College that will intrigue and surprise.

There are a few new elements to this issue of the CMR. We have initiated the process of gathering and using reader comments and this issue includes a new Feedback page that collates both good and bad which we will use to adjust the Review. We welcome comments and suggestions of all types so please send them to use at editor@cambridgemarketingreview.com.

In response to initial comments we have already made some changes, the first of which is the article summary page, located at the back of this edition, which provides a simple summary of the longer articles for those who want to be selective about what they read.

We have also added a new section on new or re-imagined marketing theory which starts out with a look at the Value Chain

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and how it could be replaced with a Value Grid. Charles Nixon provides a narrative as to why.

We have our regular top up of global trends from Peter Fisk along with an extract of his new book Gamechangers, the third article in Justin Kirby’s journey through branded content marketing.

Other elements of this issue look at the marketing of politics, the importance of design, telemarketing, the role of the marketer at the centre of the Marketing Mix as well as marketing views from the Netherlands and France.

We hope that you like the changes we have made so far, so please let us know either way so we can live by the words we print and truly adapt to our context. We look forward to hearing from you.

Andrew Hatcher Publishing Director

Andrew Hatcher is the Publishing Director at Cambridge Marketing Press and has responsibility for the catalogue of publications that are produced which apart from the CMR include the range of marketing handbooks as well as the upcoming set of companion guides which will start appearing in mid-2015.

Andrew has worked with Cambridge Marketing Colleges since 2002 alongside his role as MD at the Applied Knowledge Network, a training and consultancy services company.

CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

FROM THE EDITOR

FEEDBACK We have introduced this new feedback page in this edition and have initially sought specific feedback from people already connected to the Review and whose opinions we value. We will include it from now on as a regular feature and so would welcome any feedback you have – long or short, good or bad – as that is a great way for us to adapt the content and form of the publication. So please let us have your comments on any part of the CMR by sending them to editor@cambridgemarketingpress.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

How about a letters page for a bit of interaction? I also think you need to cater for people who don't have the time and inclination to write a detailed email/letter – how about some Twitter polls, hashtags or links to a LinkedIn discussion around the themes in the journal?

Rob Watson

Editor This is the start of

such a page. We will try and capture feedback from each issue from now on.

I think that the Wordle approach is over used and does not always sit comfortably with the academic nature of some of the content.

Steve Bax

Editor They have gone! If Wordle is ‘expired’ is there anything new that can help summarising the article content?

I think that there is an argument for an academic standard article that

expands personal knowledge/skills of readers.There are many marketers in colleges and universities who are looking for publishing opportunities and I’m sure that they would be interested.

Terry Savage

Editor We have included an article in this issue dedicated to revising an academic model. The start of many we hope.

I found it comprehensive.

Unlike the commonly available magazines it is tapping into the actual marketing challenges rather than just tackling spent figures, gossips or failure stories rather than success stories.

I also liked the practical approach to problems and how it helps marketers identify their gap of knowledge or malpractice and consequently draft their personal development plan.

Eddy Sleiman

The original intention of the publication, as I understood it, was to fill a gap for high quality feature writing that

CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

looked at marketing as a strategic discipline. I think the magazine does a great job in that sphere.

Nick Wake

I find the publication authoritative and wellwritten. I feel that most of the features do tend to follow a similar format and it might be good to break the style up a little bit with a series of shorter articles.These could be less in-depth but serve as tasters to new concepts/ideas/ best practice within the industry.

It always looks somewhat interesting, but lengthy, so I end up flicking through it thinking 'yes I'll read that later' and then never getting round to it. I wonder if this is the same for most people you send it to – have you thought about doing a survey and seeing?

Cate Elder

The article on Standards was really good – captured all the key points and good use of graphics – especially the large infographic.

Kim Tasso

Sally Charlesworth

One point of style that would be very helpful is if each article could have some sort of executive summary near the top – as HBR does. Otherwise, the reader has to read all the words before they can tell if the article is going to be useful.

Tony Wilson

I think CMR could pitch itself at forwardness in marketing approach, with challenging content, novel theory, and perhaps some reevaluation and analysis of current/ existing theories and putting them under the spotlight of the changing marketing and general business environments.

David Earp

Editor Summaries have been added

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AGILE TECHNOLOGY FOR AGILE MARKETING Tom Holden of The Creative Space reviews a range of new and developing technologies that are already, or soon will be, within reach of marketers

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ne of the key elements that is driving the agile marketing revolution is the arrival of a wave of new technology and sensors that can interact with humans (and with each other) to create a more detailed description of what is working and what is not in terms of customer response and preferences.

These descriptions are being developed from all the data that is being mined from these connections and savvy marketers are realising what that means and what is now possible.

TOM HOLDEN

There are so many technologies at varying stages of development it is hard to pick out the ones that we think will really be useful, and in some cases transformational, for marketers. So the approach of this review is to provide an insight into some of the technology that is already being deployed alongside some that are just emerging and may need time to fully mature in order to be useful for marketing insight.

This is in no way a comprehensive review of all new marketing orientated technology but it will provide a taste of what sort of help marketers can get to improve their segmentation, targeting and positioning. Further, how it can also help not only to optimise short-term results but also to develop longer-term understanding and insight into buyer behaviour in both B2B and B2C contexts.

LOYALTY PROGRAMMES We start with something that all consumers are already familiar with – loyalty programmes, such as those at Tesco, Boots, Costa, British Airways or many others. The uptake of loyalty programmes has been astonishing with almost 90% of British households signed up to at least one brand. Perhaps there is an undeniable logic about this adoption in that each buyer gets more than just what is purchased from the seller at no extra cost to them, apart from their demographic and personal data – but more on that later.

Loyalty programmes are progressing into more intense and deeper knowledge-based relationships with buyers as advanced data analysis can start to predict behaviour and perhaps, more concerningly, lead to insights as to how to manipulate such behaviour. The equally dramatic rise of smartphone ownership has enabled loyalty programmes to become app-based with some correlating GPS data

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CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

CHANGING CUSTOMERS AGILE MARKETING

with personal data to know when a buyer is close to a store and issue an offer to catalyse interest.

This process will intensify with the spread of localised Internet-connected sensors, such as iBeacons, which can interact with shoppers when, and even where, they are in the store and so issue even more focused and localised offers. One application in a museum in Antwerp in Belgium uses these sensors to assist visitors with localised guides for the exhibits by linking the museum’s app with iBeacons appropriately placed in galleries and next to important or interesting exhibits – as the visitor arrives at the exhibit the app provides information via voice or text.

INDOOR TECHNOLOGY As more and more smart technology is brought into the home and workplace, there is an increasing amount of data being generated about how people behave in these locations. Utilities are getting in on the act with the appearance of smart meters that can track usage and habits. Nest monitoring products, for instance, learn about behaviour and develop customised programmes based on history as well as make logical decisions like turning temperature down when there is nobody in the heated space.

The set-top box is another source of data which can be much cleverer about segmentation by combining demographic data collected at sign-up with usage data collected on the device about viewing habits, thereby creating a very rich picture of the household and how individuals and family groups behave and respond. The concept of micromarketing becomes very real when ads can be targeted differently from one house in a street to the next over the course of a week or even an evening.

Television technologies have also taken a couple of steps forward in terms of curved screens, 4k displays and a range of other incremental advances. But one very interesting idea is being trialled by Samsung which allows viewers of the same physical TV to view different programmes at the same time by using polarising glasses which themselves can collect user behaviour data to help understand preferCAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

ences better. These multiview devices could allow two viewers to see two separate messages delivered at exactly the same time.

The Internet of Things, as it is called, will enable more devices at home and in the workplace to provide data about usage and preferences. It is predicted that over 30 billion devices will be connected together over the web by 2020 and cities such as Santander in Spain have already installed 10,000 sensors that measure light levels, pollution, traffic, and humidity. This will enable services like parking search, environmental monitoring and waste management to provide realtime responses as to whether parking spaces are available, whether the atmosphere is polluted and where and when a public bin needs emptying.

UNIVERSAL CHANNELS One modern day phenomenon that frustrates marketers is our habit of switching from one medium to another without letting the advertiser know. We are all happy to switch from radio, to live TV, to catch up to on demand on our phones, tablets, computers and TVs. What hope does a marketer have of tracking where potential buyers are at any point? Marketers so far have attempted to thread channels together by using connectors from one to another. A TV show or newspaper ad links to a promotion or a competition on a website or a social media page.

Tracking behaviour as it switches from offline to online and back again is tricky (see face recognition later) but brands of all kinds are trying to link online data together by creating ID gateways that force users to identify who they are via login (often automatic) when you use a device or medium. This means that Sky for instance should be able to deduce when you are watching Game of Thrones on the TV and looking at the equivalent website on your tablet or Xbox. Statistics shows that over two thirds of younger TV viewers will use other media – mostly social – while watching, often to discuss or comment on the content of the show/movie/advertising.

All of this can only come about if the data management capability of the advertiser is huge and scalable, enabling it to crunch and analyse

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Douwe Egberts uses face recognition to identify a yawn – and vend a coffee all the relevant data to produce insight – the cost of which is currently very high but will, no doubt, reduce over time.

OUTDOOR INTERACTION Although still fairly unusual, the use of sensors and data in public environments is increasing, and it is likely to become more common as costs come down and experience with using the technologies increases. The use of Near Field Communications (NFC) points and QR codes has grown but has not yet created a revolution. More high profile usage of such equipment has recently included the installation of smart screens and startling images in bus stops in the Pepsi Max ‘Unbelievable Bus Shelter’ campaign and similar interactions through its Cube installation, both focused in London.

Social to physical interactions were enacted by MacDonald’s and British Airways when the former allowed visitors to Piccadilly Circus to

TECHNOLOGY IS ADVANCING AS RAPIDLY AS WE HAVE COME TO EXPECT AND IT IS AN EVER-PRESENT CHALLENGE FOR MARKETERS TO KNOW HOW TO ADOPT THESE TECHNOLOGIES APPROPRIATELY 8

create their own characters on a mobile website and then upload them to the massive electronic billboard. The latter implemented a more sophisticated system which made a character point to the sky every time a BA plane flew overhead and then displayed the flight and its destination on the billboard alongside an appropriate fare offer.

Other sensors including those that measure temperature are being used to make marketing displays dynamic and responsive to changing conditions. Unilever in Australia used a temperature-controlled advertising campaign to promote its Magnum and Lipton Iced Tea products when the daily forecast temperature exceeded the monthly maximum average in the local area. The technology allows the advertiser to tailor a campaign to respond to a range of triggers such as the weather, sports scores or social media. Each location automatically reacts to local conditions providing advertisers with an easy way to ensure highly targeted and relevant campaigns. Innocent have used similar tech to advertise drinks on hot days and Redoute did the same for clothes, promoting the most appropriate lines according to temperature.

DATA GOLDRUSH Data can also drive dynamic campaigns as Johnson and Johnson showed in a campaign for Benadryl, its allergy and anti-itch medicine. Utilising pollution data drawn from the UK’s meteorological office (www.metoffice.gov.uk) it fed that data to digital screens located where there were high pollen counts to warn hay fever sufferers.

Perhaps more controversial is the use of face recognition. A mall in South Korea is using the technology to tailor advertising to passers-by.

The cameras can record some features of the visitor and can then estimate their gender and age and then create tailored digital ads in real time. Many firms are using similar technology, including Tesco in the CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

AGILE MARKETING

Digital billboards can now sense their environments and display appropriate relevant to weather conditions UK at some of its petrol stations; others deliver targeted ads specifically to women waiting in bus stops and a male grooming brand in Taiwan offers hair-growing tonic to men with thinning hair.

One element that should already be firmly lodged in the marketer’s toolkit is data analysis of some sort. As we already know, if we allow it, and many of us either actively or passively do so, advertisers can use the trail of data we leave behind us as of goldmine of potential understanding. The value of cookie-derived data has been hugely enhanced by the ability to add both social media and geographical data – most effectively in the mobile world. This has two initial outcomes. The first is that a marketer can correlate the location and potentially the attitude and/or sentiment of the user of the device with its proximity to other locations such as retail outlets, entertainment centres and transport hubs. This combination allows for the delivery of appropriately phrased and targeted messages to the user which can encourage interactions or purchases. This provides the product or service owner with a tactical short-term ability to target and segment and boost sales.

BEING SENTIMENTAL The second outcome of this is rather more complex and long-term in nature in that it involves the development of deeper data about the user. Google Cards, for instance, use the data provided by the location of a mobile device to establish and deduce patterns of behaviour including where you work, how you get there, and what routes you take. This enables a brand to get a better understanding of the buyer’s actual rather than assumed behaviour and so should make the customisation of messaging better over time. Google should be able to work out whether you have changed job or taken up cycling.

Imagine such data being linked to Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and eBay and Amazon purchase history.

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The rise of sentiment monitoring systems will add new elements into the mix. These include simple solutions like Social Mention that can identify where and when a company or product is ‘mentioned’ on the web and can provide an indication as to whether the mention was positive, negative or neutral in nature. Meltwater monitors over 200 million sources and captures and analyses conversations relevant to a brand, a business or a market and from that data can derive a sense of the themes and flow of social conversation. Others like Klout, Kred and Peerindex provide some insight into how much influence is being created by a company and its competitors within certain markets.

All of this evidence shows that technology is advancing as rapidly as we have come to expect, and it is an ever-present challenge for marketers to know how to adopt these technologies appropriately and to use them to achieve tangible goals for their brands and organisations.

It is clear that some of these developments may need patience to implement successfully, as they may have to both overcome customer scepticism and also ensure that the marketing organisation is prepared to capture, analyse and act on the information and insight it can now generate.

Tom Holden is Social Media manager for The MAPP Ltd and senior writing partner in The Creative Space. His knowledge and skills in social media were gained in senior management posts – Community Relations Officer (Royal Air Force), Business Needs Analysis Manager at KnowledgePool (then wholly owned

by Fujitsu). A published author, Tom has written on subjects as diverse as Social Media and Armed Forces Resettlement along with Training Needs Analysis (Hodder & Stoughton, 2002).

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SOSTAC PLANNING AND AGILE TACTICS An excerpt from PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Guide To Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan

TACTICS ARE THE DETAILS OF STRATEGY. ‘TACTICS WITHOUT STRATEGY IS THE NOISE BEFORE DEFEAT.’ ­–SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR

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actics cover the old Marketing Mix. However, digital blurs the lines and morphs the mix. Social media, for example, is part of the product experience, promotional reach, physical evidence, and place/ distribution. Consider also ‘Location Marketing’ which identifies customers with mobile phones in specific places and then offers special prices and promotions. Here again, the old marketing mix is morphing, since a single digital decision impacts several elements of the marketing mix.

PAUL SMITH

While this applies across the whole marketing mix, let’s focus on the Communications Mix (also known as the Promotional Mix, which is one of the original ‘4Ps’ in the Marketing Mix) while acknowledging that detailed decisions about prices, product lines and distribution channels also have to be carefully considered. Having said all that, a clear overarching digital marketing strategy guides the subsequent detailed tactical decisions.

A SOSTAC® REFRESHER • • • •

Situation Analysis explores ‘where are you now’ Objectives defines where you are going Strategy summarises how you get there Tactics are the details of strategy (e.g. Marketing Mix) • Actions are the details of tactics (guidelines & systems) • Control answers ‘are we getting there?’ by including measureable metrics into the plan Add the 3Ms – the three key resources – into the plan: Men and Women (the human resource); Minutes (time scales) and Money (budgets).

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TACTICS ARE THE DETAILS OF STRATEGY ‘Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.’ (Sun Tzu, The Art of War) Strategy drives tactics, not the other way around.Tactical decisions are driven by the overarching strategy. Strategy must have a crystal-clear positioning statement and clearly defined target markets. Including another 7 strategic components help guide all the subsequent tactical decisions direction so that they target the low-hanging fruit and deliver maximum impact.

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TEN TACTICAL TOOLS – OFFLINE & ONLINE Tool Description Primary Objectives 1. ADVERTISING

Interactive ads, pay per click keyword, display ads, remarketing/ retargeting

Awareness (and credibility)

2. PUBLIC RELATIONS

Online editorial, newsletters, ezines, discussion groups, viral marketing, vine

Awareness (and credibility/reputation)

3. SPONSORSHIP

Sponsoring online events/sites service

Awareness (and credibility and sampling)

4. SALES FORCE/ AGENTS / TELE-MARKETING

Virtual sales staff, affiliate market- Sales (and relationship building ing, web rings, links/chat and gathering information)

5. EXHIBITIONS, EVENTS AND CONFERENCES

Virtual exhibitions, virtual events, Sales (and relationship building webinars and gathering information)

6. DIRECT MAIL

Opt-in email and eNewsletter

Sales (and relationship building and gathering information)

7. RETAIL STORE OR OFFICE HQ

Website (SEO and marketing automation opportunity)

Relationship building, database building, identifying prospects, enquiries, sales, CRM

8. WORD OF MOUTH

Recommendations, criticisms, feedback devices (e.g. reevoo. com), social media platforms, forums

Awareness, credibility (including endorsements and recommendations), conversions

9. SALES PROMOTION

Content marketing, incentives, rewards, online loyalty schemes, competitions

Conversion (enquiry/lead/newsletter/sale, post-sale relationship)

10. MERCHANDISING AND e-tailing, QR Codes, augmented PACKAGING reality, virtual reality

Conversion and relationship building

TEN TACTICAL TOOLS – ONLINE AND OFFLINE Here is a list of ten tactical tools – online and offline equivalents – which form the marketing communications mix.

Exhibitions are often used to establish a presence, or build awareness – ‘we have to be there since competition is there’ – however I argue that there may be more cost-effective ways to build awareness.

With the tactical tools in hand it is important to understand what each of them can achieve, which, in turn, helps to define the purpose or objective of selecting any particular tactical tool instead of another.

Is gamification a tactical tool? I tend to categorise it as a sales promotion (and therefore a tactical tool) whether it is aimed at customers, employees, distributors or any other stakeholder. See Gamification: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (on www.prsmith.org/blog) for more.

TEN TACTICAL TOOLS – PRIMARY OBJECTIVES I have simplified the purpose or objectives of each tactical tool listed in the table above and even though the primary objectives are clear there are some exceptions to these established generalisations such as with advertising and exhibitions.

There may be other exceptions but at the very least this table should generate a discussion regarding which tools will do what for your organisation.

Advertising is used to build awareness. It can also be used to reassure existing buyers that they are buying the right brands in the case of car advertisements. Pay Per Click (PPC) ads, and even display ads, can arouse sufficient interest that a percentage of the audience will click through to a website or a social media platform to eventually convert – whether this is registering for a newsletter, making an enquiry, trying a sample, buying a product or engaging with content that strengthens the ongoing relationships.

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WHICH TACTICAL TOOLS SHOULD YOU USE? One of the big decisions – which tactical tools to use – is partially answered by the objectives already set. Building awareness is often best done by advertising, PR and sponsorship, while converting awareness, or ideally preference, into sales can require direct mail (email and/or snail mail), websites (with strong calls to action) and/ or sales people (face to face, online or virtual) in retail stories, on the street or at events.

Each of these tools should be supported with some relevant sales

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SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING REQUIRES INTEGRATED STRATEGIES THAT CONSIDER HOW ORGANIC, EARNED, AND PAID MEDIA WORK WITH CONTENT AND INTERACTIVITY promotion whether this a gift or some useful marketing content to help to convert the prospect to the next stage. Again there are, of course, exceptions.

when a customer is due to move back into the repeat buying cycle, so marketers can optimise their offers at precisely the right time and block out competition with timely and relevant service.

Here are three stunning customer retention examples using different tactics, from sales promotions and ads to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes. All three also integrate with social media tactics. Sit back and enjoy these amazing tactical approaches to taking care of your existing customers – and getting some publicity for it.

1. ULSTER RUGBY Ulster Rugby rewarded some customers for renewing their season tickets with a customised and very personal touch by sending three of their star players out in a van to deliver the tickets personally. This created a beautiful customer experience which made great social media content, and which in turn spread awareness, affection, liking and maybe further down the road opened up the opportunity to convert some more sales.

You can see that in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets if you need to build awareness, you spend more on ads, PR and sponsorship. If you already have a level of awareness you can spend more converting this into sales by more expenditure on selling, direct mail (and email) and

‘Wow Customer retention’ on www.prsmith.org/blog

Splitting the marketing budget depending on what your objective is e.g. awareness or selling (B2C) events, conferences and exhibitions. There are of course, exceptions.

Some ads are designed to sell directly, or at least drive traffic to a website or even to a telemarketing team that will complete the sale.

CUSTOMER RETENTION TACTICS VS CUSTOMER ACQUISITION TACTICS Your digital marketing strategy will have identified which has priority – customer acquisition or customer retention – and therefore determine what resources will be allocated to each).

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2. SPORTS CLUB RECIFE Now this is a truly unique approach to customer retention by Brazilian football club Sport Club Recife, who reinforced their club’s community feeling by launching an organ donor campaign as a CSR programme. It strengthened the real community feeling that fans experience when they follow a club passionately. Driven by the club’s Facebook page, some leaflets and posters, the club now has 51,000 donors (the stadium only holds 41,000) with waiting lists for hearts, lungs and eyes eradicated. It’s clear how excited the fans became about this CSR programme.

A customer’s LTV (Life Time Value) might be worth sales of, for example, 20 cars or 50 mobile phones during the customer’s life. Obviously this is worth a lot more than selling one car or one mobile and hence why customer retention is deemed to be, on average, 6 times more profitable than customer acquisition. It is therefore, generally speaking, worth investing in customer retention.

See how fans reacted on www.prsmith.org/blog ‘Wow Customer retention’

Let’s assume you have identified retention as part of the strategy.

Once a company embraces this idea, the culture becomes more customer-centric, and part of this is carefully anticipating and planning

3. TD BANK TD bank in Canada turned ATMs into Automated Thanking Machines™ to create some very special moments for customers CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

ready to use. ‘Atomisation’ is the process of breaking content into micro assets or bite size chunks, some of which is done automatically through APIs. For example, posting on a blog automatically triggers a Facebook announcement which in turn triggers a tweet.

You can see how easily a survey can be repurposed into a book and then broken into a series of posts, tweets, videos, and infographics.

AGILE MARKETING

across the country. A simple thank you can change someone’s day. #TDThanksYou adds a personalised gift to it and people get very happy. This is ‘psychic income’, e.g. two tickets to a baseball game cost about $90. If you give someone $90 cash it won’t be remembered or loved as much as two tickets to see a baseball game. Why? Because this addresses Maslow higher level needs – transcendental/self actualisation. Add a relevant gift and people get ecstatic.

Owned, Earned and Paid Media can influence a prospect/customer at various stages of their buying journey. Paid Media is effective at generating awareness and perhaps preference or consideration amongst your target audience, while Earned Media is powerful at helping your prospects and customers to build loyalty and eventually become advocates. Owned Media can help to build consideration as well as deliver a positive customer experience.

Here is a different way of looking at how these tactical tools (Owned, Earned and Paid) affect the brand experienced by the customer/prospect on his or her journey towards a purchase.

See TD’s Automated Thanking Machine™ in action on www.prsmith.org/blog ‘Wow customer retention’.

In each case the organisation owns the media (the video) and they can post it on their ‘owned channels’, i.e. on their own YouTube channel, Facebook, Google+, Twitter stream, website and other social media platforms. This is ‘owned media’. If they decide to ‘promote’ a post or a tweet, this is ‘paid media’ as is any form of paid advertising. Any engagement (Likes, shares, comments) is earned by the quality of the content – hence called ‘earned media’.

CHOOSING WHICH TACTICS – OWNED, EARNED AND PAID MEDIA Owned Media includes your own website and your own social media platforms. Earned Media means the interactions, the engagement or conversations you earn on your platforms (or elsewhere) from good quality content. Paid Media is what it says on the tin – advertising which includes both PPC ads and banner ads. Paid placements (paying to promote your posts and tweets) has now also become part of effective social media tactics.

Owned, Earned and Paid Media can be integrated, particularly as social media platforms like Facebook are reducing organic reach and forcing marketers to pay for posts to reach wider audiences (paid placements.) As Marko Muellner (2013) said, ‘To influence significant numbers of people via social streams, you need to aggregate large fan communities and then, in many cases, pay per post or share, to increase your campaign scope to existing fans, friends of fans, and beyond. Successful social media advertising requires integrated strategies that consider how organic, earned, and paid media work with content and interactivity to drive outcomes.

They are all inexorably intertwined and must be planned and executed accordingly.’ For more, see The Rise and Fall Of Owned Earned and Paid Media on www.prsmith.org/blog.

All of these channels require you to have your content prepared and CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

This graphic is from ZenithOptimedia and it shows the consequences of activating a particular type of media (channel or tactical tool) on the journey towards purchasing.

For more on Owned, Earned and Paid see my post, The Rise and Fall Of Owned and Earned But Not Paid Media – World Cup Marketing Wars (www.prsmith.org/blog). Or if you want to see five different viewpoints try The difference between paid, owned and earned media – 5 viewpoints on SmartInsights.com.

THE FREE RIDE IS OVER FOR OWNED MEDIA Social Media Marketing always required great content, carefully seeded into the right influencers, at the right time and shared with your own audience which you built carefully. Today brands spend cash to reach an audience that someone else invested many millions to create. Today you have to ‘pay to play’ (but you pay a lot

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Source: ZenithOptimedia BrandExperience Map: BrandX 2014 Q1 less if you have great content). The ‘free’ ride (it was never quite free anyway) for brands on Facebook is coming to an end, and Facebook should now be moved into the ‘paid channel’ in the marketing budget. (See Bosomworth 2014 for how to respond to the decline in Facebook organic reach).

WHICH TACTICAL TOOLS – THE TACTICAL MATRIX This is another way of deciding which tactical tools to use. Assuming you are clear about what objectives you are trying to achieve,you can use my Tactical Matrix which is designed to trigger some discussion about which tactical tool is best for you.

Firstly we look at how good each tactic is at moving your prospects/customers through various stages of the lifetime buying process (note this is another variation on some of the other buying models, or stages of buying): • Awareness • Consideration • Purchase

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• Post-Purchase Relationship Building • Post-Purchase Repeat Sales The need for segmenting your customers or prospects by stage of the buying process emerges again. Now, depending on what stage of the buying cycle you are trying to move your prospects/ customers through, you can consider how good each tactic is across these nine criteria: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Reach (how big an audience can it reach?)

Speed (how quickly can it reach that audience?)

Time (how long to create and deliver this tactic?)

Message Volume (space to fit message in?)

Targeting (how granular or precise can the targeting be?)

Personalisation (can the tool personalise messages?)

Cost – is it expensive on a Cost Per Thousand (CPT/CPM) basis?

Control – can you control the message with this tactic?

Credibility – some tactics have more message credibility than others CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

OBJECTIVE ↓ Awareness/ Familiarity

Consideration

Decision

Post Purchase Relationship Building

Post Purchase Repeat Sales Loyalty…Adv..

TACTIC/ CHANNEL ↓ Display Ads PR Sponsorship Social media (content marketing)

Search Ads & SEO eMail (AM) Web Site Incentives

Reach

High High High

Speed

Lead Time

Message Size

Targeting

Personalization

Cost: CPC/ CPM

Control

Credibility (message)

Medium Large Small

High Low Low

Medium Low Low

Medium Low Medium

Medium Low Low

Low High Medium

Medium

Large

Medium

Med / Low

None

Low / Med

High

Medium Long / Med Medium Medium Low /Med Long

Low/Med/ Low / Med High Low/Med

Medium

Long/Med

Small

High

Medium

Medium

High

Low / Med

Med

High

Short

Large

High

Low

High

Medium

Low/Med

High High with Auto Marketing Med / Low

None

High

Medium

Low/Med

Low

Medium

Med / Low

Low

Short / Med

Large

Medium

None

Low / Med

High

Sales Pitch Search Ads & SEO eMail (AM)

Low/ Med/High Low

Medium

Short

NA

High

High

High

High

Med / High

Med / Low

Medium

Short

Small

High

Medium

Medium

High

Low / Med

Medium

High

Short

Large

High

Low

High

Medium

Web Site Incentives

Low

Low

Medium

Low

N/A

N/A

High

N/A

Telesales Sales Pitch

Low/ Med Low

High Medium

Short / Med Short

Large Low

High High

High High with Auto Marketing High High

Low High

High High

Medium Med / High

Exhibition

Medium

Medium

Med/Long

Large

High

Low

High

Medium

Med / High

Medium

High

Short (eM) Med (Dmail)

Large

High

High

Low (eMail) High (DM)

High

Medium

Low/High

Low

Short/Med

Large

High

Medium

None

Low / Med

High

Medium

High

Med/Short

Large

High

High

High (DM)

High

Medium

Low/High

Med

Short/Med

High

High

Medium

None

Low / Med

High

Social Media

Direct Mail/ email newsletter/ special offers added value Social Media Direct Mail/ eMail Social Media

The last three criteria (cost, control and credibility) are sometimes used initially when choosing which tactical tool to employ. We know that some tools give you more control over your message (advertising as opposed to PR or even social media), while some tools cost a lot more (direct mail vs advertising) in cost per thousand reached. It should be noted that they compare a bit better when looking at cost per eventual conversion.

Moreover, some tools have more credibility, e.g. PR, or editorial, which has arguably three times more credibility than advertising in the UK, while thousands of reviews on social media have, for many, the most credibility.

So this Tactical Matrix tries to encapsulate all of this – the 10 comms tools, the 5 stages of the buying process and the 9 criteria to help you to choose which tactical tool is best for your plan.

You can download this matrix from my www.PRSmith.org/blog.

It is something of a work in progress, designed to help marketers CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

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BENEFIT →

Tactics Matrix

discuss different criteria when choosing between different tactical tools or channels. I welcome all comments via the blog.

Paul Smith helps hundreds of companies from IBM to innovative start-ups to boost their results and create sustainable competitive advantage by integrating creative marketing with cutting edge digital marketing techniques. His six marketing books are published in seven languages (print and ebook).

Paul believes in edutainment which means his books and workshops are entertaining and educational. His unique SOSTAC® Marketing Planning System is used by organisations around the world. Paul‘s personal passion is his social media campaign, The Great Sportsmanship Programme, designed to inspire a new generation into global citizenship while boosting literacy, self esteem and interest in sport amongst youths across the world.

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‘THE RULE OF THIRDS’ IN CONTENT STRATEGY Neil Wilkins from Viper Marketing provides a proven and practical model for marketers striving to deliver a responsive and agile stream of content that is right for your target customers

F NEIL WILKINS

or many marketers and business decision makers the role of content creation has become the make or break factor in the success or failure of their marketing communications. Since the middle of the 1990s every sector in every country has experienced a gathering momentum of the importance of high quality words, images and video to convey key messages about the value of products and services.

In the early days of the Internet a brand’s custodian could decide upon the propositions, strap lines and lists of features and benefits and push these messages out through a variety of online and offline channels. This methodology relied upon the target audience, assuming the audience was being targeted, being receptive to such messages. It was a process of one-way communication; a monologue.

From the advent of Web 2.0 and the world we now call social networking, the balance of power has shifted from the brand owner to the target audience. Consumers, business buyers, the media and key influencers are now in charge of the communication process.

The marketer of today needs to understand that success in communication comes from what their target audience want, and needs to hear, rather than what they want to tell them.

COMMUNICATING OUTCOMES Herein may lie a challenge for the uninitiated communicator. It may be a wonderful synergy in that the story teller and the listener are in perfect harmony. They may understand each other’s nuances, language and subtleties and the conversation, whether online or in print, may flow effortlessly to a mutually beneficial conclusion.

However it is far more likely that the marketer and the prospect or customer have widely differing perspectives of the world. If this is the case, the marketer says what they believe they need to say, selling features and benefits, and the unique propositions and return on investment likely for those who listen, and the receiving party translates what they hear based on their values and previous experiences.

This is where the problems begin.

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We have all at some time experienced when we have said something to somebody, with good intention, and our words have been misconstrued, resulting in an argument, awkward silence or rejection. It could be a little arrogant for even the most experienced marketers to simply assume that because they communicate something on their terms that everyone will ‘get it’. This is very unlikely to be the case.

So we have now established that it is more about the receiver than the communicator. It is about what they need and want to hear and for the marketer there is a simple mantra they can focus on in all forms of content they create. The mantra is ‘I will communicate outcomes.’

MANAGING AWARENESS Outcomes are very different to the trusty, features and benefits. They are also very different to the more recently popular return on investment stories and even different to the outputs; things that the custom-

MARKETERS SEEK TO FIND THE BALANCE THAT CONVINCES THEIR CUSTOMERS THAT THEY ARE TALKING THEIR LANGUAGE er can see, hear and do as a result of acting on the messages or taking the products and services. An outcome from the customer’s perspective is how their world will be improved or how they will perceive an improvement. This is very different to a result or an output in that it engages at a deeper psychological level.

What is happening at this moment reflects the journey the customer is taking and this is particularly evident at the early phase of initial engagement with the person, brand or business. This phase is called the Awareness phase and it needs to be very carefully managed by the marketer. Succeed and the prospect journeys on to the phase CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

CHANGING CUSTOMERS AGILE MARKETING

at which they commit to becoming a customer. Fail to engage with stories of outcomes and the prospect goes elsewhere in their search for a solution to their need or want.

The psychology from their perspective is customers are transitioning through a process of hope, faith and trust. They arrive at the marketer’s door with the hope that they may find a solution. As they listen to stories of likely and possible outcomes they build faith that the solution lies within. Then when they hear outcomes of others just like them who have gone before, they begin to trust and the process of conversion to a customer can begin.

THE RULE OF THIRDS To strike a balance in such a verbal, visual or auditory transaction requires much more than simply a portfolio of sales-driven testimonials, case studies and references. Those will help, but they only take so far, the challenge of ‘does this company really understand me?’

What is truly required by the customer is that they feel and believe that this brand, product or business is just like them. Evidence they understand, evidence they listen and evidence they will contribute

checkpoint in the delivery of a highly effective content strategy.

The rule divides content into Personal, Point, Promote. Every third tweet, for example, should be Personal, every third tweet Point, and every third tweet Promote.

Personal This third is about getting to know the business, person or brand. The more personal the marketer can make it, the more effective it will be. For example in social media content, it is called ‘social‘ for a reason. Using one-third of content to help to get to know the characters behind the brand or in the business, is significantly more engaging than bland corporate information.

Point This third is about signposting to interesting third party blogs, articles, videos and content that the target audience will find engaging or useful. Knowing what subjects and interests your social media connections have and are discussing, will ensure you tap into conversations and topics that add value. Using a social networking insight service such as socialreport.com gives details of such subjects and by publishing one-third of all content in this way, the marketer, brand or business will be perceived as current, relevant and informed. These are vital ingredients in the building of faith and trust.

Promote Taking a step back to the old-school style of promotional marketing, one-third of what you publish can be of a promotional nature as long as you have added value with the previous two-thirds.

Remember here that it is about promoting outcomes and not just features and benefits.

We have discussed the content Rule of Thirds at the Awareness phase in the customers’ journey but it has equal value and merit at the Conversion and Retention phases. At the latter stages of customer engagement it can provide great value in keeping existing customers engaged, and importantly may help to inspire advocacy as they pass vital marketing messages onward to their contacts and peers, many of whom will be just like them. This enhanced reach is an essential benefit of consistently applying the content Rule of Thirds in all forms of information publishing, whether through words, images or video.

to the self-actualisation the customer eventually seeks.

The answer appears to lie in the ‘Rule of Thirds’ for content. This simple rule builds upon the theory that three is a fundamental prime number in nature and art and is a rule of natural balance. As marketers seek to find the balance that convinces their customers that they are talking their language, the content Rule of Thirds provides a daily CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

Neil Wilkins learnt his marketing with the likes of Orange, NatWest, BP, Castrol and Ordnance Survey, and now helps individuals and companies to communicate more effectively using strategic planning and dynamic tactical campaigns. Neil is the Founder and Managing Director of Viper Marketing, a marketing and communications company and co-founder of My Business Mentor.

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THE MARKETING OF POLITICS Alison Griffiths, an experienced B2B and B2C marketer and a prospective MP, looks at marketing through the lens of politics

M

y career in marketing has given me the opportunity to work with some of the world’s most iconic brands, in sectors as diverse as energy, healthcare and financial services. This has allowed me to build the robust commercial and business skills which many commentators say are so badly needed in the House of Commons. This is certainly part of what I believe I can contribute.

ALISON GRIFFITHS

I started on ExxonMobil’s marketing graduate scheme, spending six years in the oil and gas industry. From there, I moved to the bottling division of Coca-Cola, responsible for all trade marketing in the south of the UK. At NTL, I was responsible for consumer broadband strategy, before becoming head of corporate marketing for RAC and Aviva. Since leaving Aviva, I have worked as an interim marketing director and marketing consultant to global organisations including International SOS and Chatham House.

THE ATTRACTION OF POLITICS While this is a significant change of direction for me, it is the culmination of a fascination with politics which I have had since childhood. I certainly didn’t grow up wanting to be an MP. Rather, I was delighted to realise that my business and communications experience could make a difference in a wider political and social context.

WHEN DID MARKETING BECOME IMPORTANT IN POLITICS? Politics is about communications, and so in that sense it has also always been about marketing.

That said, things really started to change in the early 2000s with the maturing of digital communications, more extensive broadband, ubiquitous and 24/7 news and a consequent increase in the political awareness and sophistication of the average citizen. Politics had to play catch-up fairly quickly.

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POLITICS

By 2008, when Obama was running for his first term in office, his groundbreaking use of social media played a crucial part in determining the outcome both in terms of the kind of messaging used and how those messages were targeted.

In the 2015 UK general election, the proliferation of smaller parties (UKIP, the Greens, the SNP, Plaid Cymru) alongside non-partisan online campaigning groups such as 38 Degrees, has made the market more crowded than ever. The political landscape and the choices available to voters have become increasingly complex.

To make sense of this, political parties desperately need clear positioning, points of difference and to be clear on who their audience is for each message, and what their needs are.

In short, they need marketing.

MESSAGE SOPHISTICATION If we look back to the time of the election of Tony Blair in the UK in 1997, key themes were created centrally and were disseminated in a managed and highly focused way through the broad media channels which were still newspapers and TV. There was little variation in terms of message interpretation along the way between the sender and the receiver.

Nine years later, Obama’s campaign had a very different environment to deal with. This was one where the central teams created much clearer and distilled messages but then had to trust that those messages would penetrate through the myriad of smaller and faster media outlets, including Twitter and Facebook. They had to hope that the central messaging was good and strong enough to withstand all of the potential interpretations, both in cyberspace and on the street, that they might encounter on their way to the voter.

These experiences have created a new environment for the UK election in May 2015 where social media was vital in not only getting people interested in voting, but in providing them with the means to make more informed voting choices.

CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

What is absolutely clear from the start is that consistency is going to be a key element for success as each voter can check back on what was said before with ease. It is also very clear that in the world of shorter attention spans and more voting choices each candidate better have their own proposition clearly and succinctly developed – the five bullet points that make you worth voting for – along with a keen ability to deliver that pitch with commitment and enthusiasm.

These divisions of B2C and B2B do indeed exist and each section requires appropriate handling to ensure that they get the reassurance they are looking for from their politicians.

Businesses are the engine room of our economy and the creators of jobs. A rational approach to messaging is to be expected. However, we also need to engage with businesses at an emotional level to make the connection to voting intention.

EACH CANDIDATE BETTER HAVE THEIR OWN PROPOSITION CLEARLY AND SUCCINCTLY DEVELOPED In fact, it may be an unusual reversal whereby the voter (consumer) is now presented with a wider range of options and as a result makes a more rational decision in order to vote appropriately – choosing the candidate that does more for the money in their pocket, for instance.

The challenger will of course use data in a different way to make the voter feel insecure and to show that over the period the incumbent did not deliver what they promised.

What is becoming clear, however, as part of the rise in voter sophis-

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tication is that they understand that data is subjective in its interpretation, so may end up not believing anyone.

Getting the right message delivered at the right time is never easy when it comes to electorates.

There is an argument that marketing has created promotional politics, more attuned to the news values of the media and the mass consumer ratings of the polls than to the views of the engaged and debating public.

USING LOCAL CANVASSERS WITH A SCRIPT HAS BEEN TRANSFORMATIONAL AS A WAY TO CONNECT WITH VOTERS Certainly in the UK there is a sense that responsible citizens will show that responsibility in terms of how they care about the state and management of the National Health Service, educational standards, and so on. That means that the citizen voter is particularly susceptible to communications on those subjects that they are less selfish about, and that is something that the politicians have understood.

That said, there is no question that with rolling news media and always-on internet access, political parties always run the risk of running both generalised campaigns so as not offend anyone, as well as leaving themselves open to weaknesses in their messages thereby potentially allowing voters to lose faith.

MARKETING MIX This has turned into a two-part strategy in most political parties.

The first part involves the central marketing group developing more consumer-focused campaigns which can be delivered via broadcast and which are often non-specific in nature. The second part is where the local party activists generate more citizenfocused marketing, often matching the activity to more localised issues which can be addressed at a local level by the MP.

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In a sense this is very similar process to the one we used in my days at Coca-Cola where the same happened – global messaging came down from Atlanta and we then used these along with local market conditions to create local market campaigns. The key element in both scenarios is that the global and local messages have to be congruent and cannot create any dissonance for the voter/ consumer.

Leafleting (direct political mail) remains a key part of political marketing. There is a sense that everyone knows that these leaflets are a quick read, something that can be done in 5 minutes with a cup of tea. It provides a piece of physical evidence for the political party which can sit for some time on the kitchen table of a voter’s house providing a repeatable chance for the party to catch the voter. It is also an effective way to deliver local messages, specific to an individual candidate and constituency.

Old-school it may be, but there is evidence that even younger voters will still read the leaflets!

As already mentioned, social media’s importance is ever-growing although its bite-size messages are often a challenge to perfect in political terms. They are effective at spreading key national messages to large numbers of voters via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. At a local level, candidates need to work hard over time to ensure that they have sufficient local social media followers for their messages to be heard. Trying to turn this channel on only at election time is doomed to fail.

Another significant change which has altered the nature of party activism is the way in which telephone canvassing has developed.

New online software, coupled with unlimited telephone contract calling plans, have enabled activists to sit at home and make calls CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

POLITICS

choices have and will have significant impact in the world of multiparty choices.

The UK is just through five years of the country being run by a government that nobody voted for (a coalition). Lack of a clear majority creates uncertainty, as nobody can be sure of the outcome of post-election horse-trading. It is the responsibility of politicians to deliver clear and specific messaging, ensuring that the USP and positioning is easily understood and applicable to the individual or the organisation. to target voters without generating calling costs which would previously have been prohibitive. This process of using local canvassers with a script has been transformational as a way to connect with voters at scale but at a truly personal level. This process also allows the parties to build accurate and robust data trails which can indicate specific local, and in some cases personal, interests.

If it becomes clear from telephone canvassing that the NHS, for instance, is a key issue, then localised and personalised communications from the political party can be adjusted to match the interest/concern about the issue.

NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING It is true that negative campaigning is common in the political world but perhaps, rather soberingly, it is used because all the evidence shows that it is effective and so although there may be desire to remain positive it is often not a choice any campaign can choose to ignore.

The main parties have had to adapt to cope with the range of new choices that face their consumers. Much like supermarkets, insurance companies and a number of other sectors – new and niche players – are disrupting the status quo and are destabilising the market where two large players used to make all the rules.

My last thought, which I think laces all of these issues together, is that politics has depended perhaps too long on voter inertia, staying with the same choice as that is easier than changing.

All politicians have to address the ‘marketing’ issue of customer relationship management head on and instead of treating voters like short term purchasers they need to develop deeper relationships that create loyalty, repeat purchase and ultimately advocacy.

The evidence also shows that voters tend to respond to fear as much as they respond to positive messages. The key element, however, is that as the time for electioneering is limited (unlike the timeframe in which people can make many other consumer choices). The Election will take place on X date. It is imperative that all voters reach a decision in that time frame.

It is also the case that each individual decision will, collectively, impact the whole of UK society for several years to come. Thus, it is vital that voters are given the chance consider all the consequences of their decision before polling day, both positive and negative.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE What is clear in this and any future elections is that citizens are now much more in control than ever before – their individual decisions CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

Alison Griffiths is Marketing Director at Gisborne Ltd, a strategic marketing and communications consultancy, with clients in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. Previous to Gisbourne Alison worked in senior marketing and leadership roles in CocaCola, RAC and Aviva and in a commercial role at Exxon Mobil.

Alison is a Board Trustee at Meningitis Now which is a national UK charity which saves lives and rebuilds futures by funding research, raising awareness and providing support, and is a Fellow of the British American Project.

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THE INDIVIDUAL AT THE CENTRE OF THE MARKETING MIX Frances Tipper from SpokenWord looks at how the individual marketer who is at the hub of the marketing mix can ensure that they communicate effectively with influence and authority

T

here are a whole range of skills and qualities that identify a good marketing manager. The role requires the skill and ability to manage people from a range of different disciplines. One minute you may be dealing with a team of marketing executives, the FRANCES TIPPER next you could be liaising with the people in PR, production, merchandising, manufacturing, sales, distribution or finance. So you need to understand how each role within the organisation operates and be able to bring together these varying skills sets and direct them accordingly.

Of course, an understanding of marketing techniques and concepts are essential alongside the abilities to think creatively, identify trends, target markets and develop strategies to increase profitability in existing markets.

Above all, however, a marketing manager must be an excellent communicator. Anyone entering the marketing profession without this key skill will flounder in the role.

Marketing managers have to be able to persuade, influence, inspire, negotiate, present to a range of different groups and levels, listen and respond with empathy to a client or senior manager’s wants and needs, and also recognise how the psychology of communication affects consumer behaviours. Add diplomacy into the mix and it becomes evident that having excellent communication skills encapsulates a vast topic.

In some cases, the marketer has to influence without any direct internal authority, in order to persuade others to accept, for example, a particular marketing campaign or strategy. Most of this communication is done verbally at meetings or board room presentations.

Putting aside the strategic value of good stakeholder management, sometimes the marketer has just one chance to get a clear, influential and persuasive message across. Finding out and understanding the audience members and their conflicting interests are essential, and marketers have to adapt their messages to take into account these different needs, in particular those of the decision makers or internal influencers. Knowing how to communicate this message with skill and expertise has the power to change hearts and minds.

GETTING TO TENÂŽ There is a well established training methodology entitled Getting to TenÂŽ developed jointly by Spokenword Ltd (spokenwordltd.com) and The Applied Knowledge Network (theappliedknowledgenetwork.co.uk) , which enables marketing specialists to recognise how

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GETTING TO TEN

they need to develop their verbal and non-verbal skills in order to become expert communicators at all levels.

This article provides an insight into the Getting to Ten® methodology for expert communication and, not surprisingly, there are ten points highlighted.

1. VOICE Changes in your voice tone alter the very nature of your words and the way you are perceived. Whether you are introducing yourself or your team, engaging in small talk, presenting your case, developing an argument or asking a series of questions, you need to consider how you sound in order to engage with the people listening to you.

In fact, if you want to persuade or convince anyone to listen to you, you have to use your voice effectively. You have to sound as if you mean what you say.

Inject the appropriate emotion into your voice when you deliver a message.

This should be natural and effortless to a good communicator, yet sadly, many in the marketing profession take out any emotion in their voice making it sound flat and monotone, believing that this it is safer and more powerful to sound uninterested and factual. Others may deliver a message in their formal, presentation voice, using the standard presentation cadence where the voice starts higher and drops to a low at the end of each sentence.

Research shows that it is extremely difficult for anyone to listen, actively, to a message delivered in a flat, dreary voice or a voice that drops to a low consistently at the end of each sentence. Even when you try really hard to listen to a boring voice, knowing that there could be some information of great import, it is mentally exhausting to remain focused on the words.

So it is important to use a wider range of variety in the tone of your voice to engage and encourage people to listen to you. Only when they are listening can you start to persuade.

2. BODY LANGUAGE A great deal is known about how the correct use of your body language can be used to sell a message. Sales people are often taught to use the art of ‘mirroring’ in order to remove non-verbal barriers and encourage openness and honesty with their prospect. The expert communicator in marketing knows how to adapt their body language to the message and the audience. How to hold your body, to move, to know what to do with your hands, your eyes and your CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

gestures can make or break a presentation.

As an example, an expert knows that to present with ‘high status’ body language, which projects you as the person in command and gives the impression that you are giving directions rather than making requests, could cause offence to the board in a somewhat hierarchical organisation. Board members may feel challenged or threatened and dislike such a directive attitude. The expert, therefore, adapts their body language to appear with a more respectful demeanour and a lower status as this would be more likely to persuade and influence.

Similarly, an apparent lightweight presentation with levity, humour and a great deal of movement and animation could repel a serious, highbrow audience.

Knowing how to use your body language effectively at all levels and for every different situation and personality helps in developing your communication excellence.

3. CONGRUENCE AND INTEGRITY Far be it from me, a proud marketer, to say that we are a beloved profession by all around us. I know that, deep down, we are perceived by some with great suspicion and mistrust.

In order to break down the barrier of doubt and uncertainly, the expert communicator has to deliver a message with congruence and integrity. This means matching the voice and body language to the words to give them the correct impact. Voice and gestures have to be congruent. If not, everything you say will lack conviction and credibility. Your message becomes meaningless.

Many a time, I have watched a marketing presentation to the internal sales force promoting a new product or service to a hard and cynical audience. The presenter has obviously been told to whip up enthusiasm with the sales team and gear them up to ‘sell! sell! sell!’.

When the presenter is unable to match the passion of the words in the speech with their delivery, it can be painful to watch. You can see the sales managers waiting for the chance to leap in and crucify them. Salespeople, without any doubt, are experts at spotting incongruence and insincerity.

4. PURPOSE, INTENT, PASSION Top communicators in marketing recognise how to adjust their voice and their body language to make their message sound believable to a variety of different audiences and situations. They also know how to give their message an edge by injecting the correct amount of purpose, intent and passion into their delivery. It makes the message tangible, certain and assured. It gets people’s attention

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and encourages the message to spread as people are more likely to talk about it with the same enthusiasm and passion. Again, it has to be at the relevant level for the particular audience. An internal sales audience expects nothing less than extreme and intense enthusiasm about a new product or service, combined, of course, with the right levels of commission and targets. A finance department may regard excessive enthusiasm with deep suspicion and loathing and, although tempting, here it is best to focus on intent and purpose while reining in the passion.

5. BE CAREFUL OF IRRITATORS Irritators or fillers actually stop people in the audience listening – no matter how passionately the subject is presented or how carefully the message is crafted. It is important to find out your personal ‘tics’ from your colleagues – words or phrases that you use constantly that have no real meaning.

Here are just some of the many irritators that marketers (and others) have a tendency to use and please let the editor know any of your top irritators as I am sure there are many more:

The expert also prepares for the assertive component of negotiation by practising their story and arguments – saying out loud what they want, why, and how they can help the other side meet their needs. They revise and rehearse their story until they know it is strong and persuasive. Then they make a list of their key points so that they will be able to recall them when the negotiation begins.

A top communicator knows when and how to communicate the right level of power, how to modify deeply held assumptions through probing questioning techniques and sound argument, and how to enact new behaviours that will foster trust and rapport with the counterparty and lead to more successful negotiations.

At the end of the day To be honest You know Having said that Like Literally Seriously You must understand Sort of, kind of It becomes a game to start counting these, together with ‘ums’ and ‘ers’, rather than listen to what is actually being said.

6. NEGOTIATION SKILLS The marketing individual faces conflicts and negotiations on a dayto-day basis and poor communication skills can turn productive negotiations into unprofitable disasters. Communicate well and you will create value, exert more control and achieve better outcomes.

A fundamental challenge is to strike an effective balance between empathy and assertiveness. Empathy involves effectively understanding your counterparty’s perspective and expressing their viewpoint in a nonjudgmental manner. Assertiveness is the ability to express and advocate for your own needs, interests, and perspectives. When communicated incorrectly, you could be seen either as a soft, weak negotiator and get beaten down with relish, or you could be seen as too arrogant and create a power play struggle of defend and attack behaviours which you desperately want to avoid.

To practise and display empathy at the negotiating table, an expert will ask their counterparty to present their views first. They listen without judgment and make it clear that their understanding does not necessarily indicate agreement.

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7. DIFFICULT PEOPLE At times we all have to deal with difficult people. They might be stubborn, arrogant, hostile, greedy, or dishonest. You need to be able to adapt all your communication techniques to deal with each situation and, above all, manage your own emotions and reactions so you always remain in control. Here you need to use a range of communication skills: • Active listening skills combined with empathy and effective questioning techniques These may be needed when dealing with conflicts between team members, differences of opinions between departments for implementing a marketing strategy or balancing conflicting workloads with a technical team to meet specific timescales.

• Assertiveness skills to neutralise threats, lies and insults Hopefully, we do not have to face all of these at once, if at all, but internal politics exist to a greater or lesser degree in all organisations, no matter the size and you ignore it at your peril. Marketers have to play politics to win approval for their plans and strategies and have to deal with the lies and rumours that are spread about by their antagonists.

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GETTING TO TEN

Marketers also have to deal with accusations of poor market research, not understanding the customer, bad pricing policies and, of course, any changes to branding will be met with intense disapproval and abrogation. Knowing whether and how to deal with every criticism and spurious accusation is part of the Getting to Ten® toolkit that enables the marketer to navigate through the potential communication pitfalls with skill and ease.

• Management of status levels to display the right amount of control and power In order to manage your own status levels, you first need to recognise the status levels of others within a team or another company. The marketing manager, for example, has to know how to raise the status of a quieter member of the team by lowering his or her own status so that the quieter member feels comfortable and able to contribute productively to the team. Managing a contract with a PR firm, however, may require high status behaviours in order to get the correct level of service expected.

8. DIFFERENT CULTURES Recognising the varieties of styles, customs and idiosyncrasies both across countries and also with different organisations is essential to successful communication. It is very easy to underestimate the effect of cultural misunderstandings through poor communication. It can definitely stop a marketing plan going ahead. It is important to be aware and understand how to deal with any culture in any situation.

As a rule of thumb, avoid falling into the cultural stereotype trap. There are so many books about dealing with cultural differences that still, surprisingly, describe cultural characteristics for a particular country. I read one recently that says that English people like to have afternoon tea between 4 and 5pm. I had to check the publishing date as I was unaware this was a key characteristic of this century. Ask anyone to name a famous Italian and they might answer ‘Berlusconi’ but that does not mean that you can assume that every Italian with whom you deal is actually like Berlusconi.

It is important for the marketer to assess each person individually and deal with that person’s own characteristics in communication, whether forthright, direct and concise, warm, open and gregarious, thoughtful, silent, profound, vague, uncertain, slippery. There is no need to go further as anyone of us will recognise these characteristics in the people around us, let alone in other countries. Yes, customs and etiquette have to be observed but communicate with every person as an individual rather than, for example, a ‘French’ man or woman or an ‘Italian’.

9. QUESTIONING TECHNIQUES There is a well known phrase in sales, ‘Telling isn’t selling’. The more you talk, the less likely you are to persuade anyone. Questions should be seen as the ‘best friends’ of anyone in marketing. You CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

can identify interests and therefore understand how you can correct your pitch to that particular person or audience. How you ask your questions, however, can either engage or annoy the person on the other side. As soon as it feels more like an interrogation rather than a natural conversation, you will notice that answers become short and terse; the person begins looking away, or worse, at their watch and phone and will quickly end the conversation.

Forming the best questions for a marketing survey in order to gather the essential information about a product, service or marketplace is a craft in itself. In face to face communication, the marketer has to move from direct to probing, indirect to suggestive, using a range of techniques to find out information and subsequently persuade.

10. DIPLOMACY ‘Sometimes I feel as if I should be working at the UN.’ This is a statement from an international marketer responsible for the international development of marketing concepts – a role that requires constant coordination, collaboration and compromise with international colleagues. Of course you have to adapt an international concept to suit all the varying cultural climates. The challenge is to produce something that maintains impact and does not appear bland. Every local marketing specialist has their own idea about what works in their country and market sector. Your task of creating a ‘one size fits all’ concept requires diplomatic prowess and you need all the skills already discussed to pull it off successfully.

A successful marketing manager is not just someone who has inventive ideas and strategies to build market share, it is someone who can convince you that these are the right inventive ideas and strategies for your organisation.

This insight from Getting to Ten® offers just a slice of the whole communications skills pie. These skills are more subtle and powerful than standard marketing techniques and that is why, when perfected, they will move an average marketer up to the top league.

For more information on Getting to Ten® look out for the book Getting to Ten for Marketers due out later in 2015.

This article is the first of two on personal communications. The second, which is on written communications, will appear in the next CMR.

Frances Tipper is the Managing Director of SpokenWord Limited.

Frances delivers all aspects of business persuasion training and specialises in communication skills, presentation, selling, negotiation and personal impact training and development.

Frances developed the Getting to Ten® communications methodology jointly with The Applied Knowledge Network and the first edition of their book will be published later this year.

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DESIGN INTERVENTION AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN MARKETING John Mathers, CEO of the Deign Council, considers how the remit of designers now stretches beyond traditional categories and asks the question ‘So what is Design?”

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sked recently what she saw as the single greatest driver of social change, Melinda Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation replied, “Design.” How has design, which many still associate largely with style and consumerism, come to be someJOHN MATHERS thing one might look to for solutions to the most complex and challenging problems facing humanity today; problems requiring not just local fixes using clever design objects, but solutions that reimagine systems themselves? Are we, at this point, even still talking about the same discipline?

To begin to answer this, perhaps we need first to play the Socratic fool and risk the naive question: given the widely varying disciplines that make up the design profession (fashion, furniture, product, industrial, instructional, interaction, services and so on), what are the core elements that mean that design, in each of these contexts, is always design? In the protean blur of these varied and multitudinous design types, what is the golden thread running through them all?

The 2005 Cox Review of Creativity in Business puts it like this: “Design is what links creativity and innovation. It shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers. Design may be described as creativity deployed to a specific end.” This is an excellent general definition, but we still need to dig a little deeper to see how it works in practice.

At the Design Council, we itemise design’s basic roles as ‘framing’, ‘problem solving’, ‘form and function’ and ‘style’. These have different weightings depending on where you are on the spectrum of design disciplines, but problem solving and form and function are arguably the core. There is, of course, something of a popular stereotype associating design largely or even solely with

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style. However, given the long pedigree of, say, instructional design, it is not particularly radical to observe that, while aesthetic appeal is vitally important in many design contexts, it is not, in fact, an essential or defining element. What we might venture, at least to give us a working definition, is that design arranges largely physical elements to fulfil some specific function (which may include or even primarily be style).

In order to achieve this, designers over the years have developed a formidable arsenal of tools for framing and solving problems. For the uninitiated, a necessarily short and simplified primer follows.

Much, if not all, design process concerns itself with what designers call user needs. It is by examining these closely that designers fulfil the Cox definition’s function of shaping ‘ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users”, and not simply by concerning itself with style.

1. DESIGNING FOR EXTREMES A product designer, for example, wanting to work out the shape and functions of a vacuum cleaner, might map what is known as a user journey. This describes the steps a person would go through from storage to plug in, to all the various possible tasks – cleaning of floors, stairs, lampshades, picture rails and beyond – up to the point where the machine is unplugged and put away. In order to construct such a journey, a designer might engage in what is called ‘shadowing’, observing a real person in action.

Close observation like this has proved vastly more useful over the years than just interviewing users, as people are often unaware of what they themselves do.

Similarly, designers often design for extremes. Our vacuum cleaner designer might, for instance, take into acCAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

DESIGN

count the needs of wheelchair-bound or partially sighted potential users. This kind of thinking often results in solutions that are optimal for all users. For instance, in the recent, much lauded design of gov. uk, the UK Government Digital Service, the design team looked at the needs of dyslexic users and duly created a bold, simple, largefont interface. They then realised this would simply work better for everyone, and thereby set a new global standard for public service websites.

These and many other tools tend to be employed in an overall process of what is known as ‘divergent and convergent thinking’. In divergent thinking, a great number of possibilities are considered, while in convergent thinking, the possibilities are whittled down to one or a few. This tends to happen twice: first, many ways of defining the design problem are considered before being narrowed down. A brief can then be written and many solutions considered, then narrowed down to deliver a final design. In the course of this, the options will tend to be visualised and partially realised using diagrams and prototypes at varying levels of complexity, allowing design teams and other stakeholders to review and test solutions.

Approaches such as these have repeatedly proved effective in more and more contexts, giving rise to a proliferation of new design disciplines, especially in response to changing technological conditions: user experience (UX) design, interaction design and service design, to name a few, pioneered by agencies such as Frog, IDEO, Smart Design and, in the UK, Livework, Engine and Participle.

As their titles suggest, the nascent disciplines often presented a challenge to fundamental design notions by delivering work that did not necessarily take the form of individual physical objects.

Nevertheless, the core activity remained the one we have defined.

Even a service, as understood by designers, is still an arrangement of physical elements, or touchpoints as they are known within the discipline. Service touchpoints might include websites, telephone helplines, brochures, signage, instruction manuals, help desks and card readers, to give a few examples.

2. DO WE REALLY NEED DESIGNERS? We have come a long way, then, from our notional vacuum cleaner, but we are still very much talking about the same discipline. For example, the notion of touchpoints shows how design can be used to innovate and re-engineer not just objects, but entire systems with a core focus on how people operate in practice.

But this begs the question: to arrange such touchpoints and to think systemically, do we really need designers or design skills?

Well, one answer is to look at what happens without them. Most CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

of us, sadly, know first-hand the phenomenon of TV digiboxes that require some combination of divine insight, a three-day training course and Holmes-like powers of deduction just to be turned on.

Such aberrations are sometimes described as ‘engineer-designed’.

This is not to impugn the expertise of engineers, but to correct the tendency to impugn designers by leaving them out of the process entirely, or confining their remit to style.

Design’s contribution is not to supplant other areas of expertise such as engineering, but to link up all the necessary disciplines so they can be channelled towards the real needs of the end user. The three main areas of activity involved are systems, user engagement and multidisciplinary teams, and they are inextricably linked. Designers must understand how all parts of the system feed into the final product or service. To do that, they must work with experts from all parts of the system and, ideally, get them talking to each other so they can align their activities. And this multidisciplinary team-working will be even more effective if end users are also part of the conversation, so everyone has a clear picture of what they are working for.

3. FAIL EARLY AND CHEAPLY As noted by Christian Bason in his book Design for Policy, this co-creation or co-design approach is now seen as increasingly important. In this process, which could so easily descend into herding cats, design’s techniques of visualisation and prototyping provide focus, clarity and opportunities for testing so everyone can see what works and what does not. Further, prototyping addresses the problem of major change implemented too drastically. The faults with a new approach can often be discovered using very simple, small-scale prototypes, thereby saving the expense of discovering them during a large-scale pilot. The invaluable principle of design prototyping is ‘fail early and cheaply’.

Such a rapid run through the principles of design and design thinking – especially in terms of its recent, wider application – must, of course, leave out more than it includes. The key point, however, is to show why design is coming to be seen as so vital in addressing social problems. Let us take cities as an example, since they are the quintessential example of a large, complex social group. As quickly becomes clear in considering urban issues, problems are networked: good work opportunities are unlikely to appear without good transport infrastructure, affordable housing and general quality of life. Successful design approaches need to look at ways of fostering these capabilities as a whole, working with local communities, developers, central and local government and others to speed up development.

Another example is hospital accident and emergency (A&E) departments, recently the subject of much negative coverage, despite an extra £700m of budget. If money is not the answer here, what is? A recent project run by the Design Council, in partnership with NHS England, explored the systemic triggers for aggression, sadly a common feature of many A&E wards. Going through the process outlined above – building up the complex picture of how

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the ward worked and its wider context, for example – design solutions were then developed and tested using computer models and other prototypes.

A key insight was that a great deal of patient anxiety – often leading to aggression – was born of disorientation. One of the solutions with potentially the greatest benefit was therefore a comprehensive signage system, both electronic and static, to help patients understand where they were in the system. Prototype testing in real A&Es delivered interesting refinements: signage needed to begin in the car park, as much anxious disorientation began there, and should also be placed on ceilings to reassure patients on stretchers. What was produced was a relatively simple (and cost-effective) contribution to addressing what seemed like a complex and intractable challenge.

This simple outline of the process does not do it justice, but it does begin to pose another question. If this works, why isn’t the signage system used in all A&Es? Given the high-profile problems they now face, why aren’t such design-led approaches being applied across the system?

THE DESIGN LADDER In the ongoing spread of design’s applications, it has increasingly become clear that, if individual services and systems can benefit from this holistic, bottom-up design approach, then potentially, so can the organisations offering them. This applies to the private sector,

WHAT STEPS MUST WE TAKE TO ENSURE THAT DESIGN CONTINUES TO EXPRESS ITS BEST, MOST SOCIALLY PROGRESSIVE SELF? the public and all points in between and transcending. After all, if a service’s final interface cannot be seen as separate from the network of touchpoints that make it up, can it be seen as separate from the organisation that provides it, or, perhaps, the society in which it operates?

The Danish Design Centre has described the different levels of design use within organisations as a ladder: on the lowest rungs design is used not at all or only for styling, while further up it is used

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as integral to the development process or, at the top, a key strategic means of encouraging innovation. This places the design process at the base of change, enabling it to work with the entire structure. If we accept my opening hypothesis, this will also enable design input to have maximum impact. However, as we ‘go up’ the ladder, the obstacles can be formidable.

Large organisations, especially, are perpetually at risk of what the French call déformation professionelle, tending to insularity, silo structures (separation of disciplines) and general ossification of thinking. They become locked into processes and rules that can be extremely hard to question, whether due to habit or pressure of time.

Employees focused on pre-defined tasks forget about the changing landscape beyond their walls (sometimes fatally, as in the recent cases of fallen giants like Kodak and Woolworths) and different departments within the organisation forget or become unable to talk to each other.

THE PROBLEM WITH PROTOTYPING In the phenomenon sometimes known as ‘disjointed incrementalism’, solutions to problems are frequently bolted on, one after another, in firefighting mode, without examination of the underlying structural hindrances that may be the real issues. Where major reforms are implemented, they are often brought in too big too quickly, without being tested at a small scale. These are exactly the kinds of problems design regularly tackles in service situations such as the A&E example. But how much good can such solutions do if the organisations that should be delivering them are, themselves, too rigid to make the best use of them?

The example of prototyping may be enough to give a sense of the obstacles. In government, the default testing scenario is piloting, which is to say, a fairly large-scale test over, perhaps, an entire borough. But many of the issues pilots throw up can be identified at a much smaller scale – in one street, one house or even a mere mock-up of a house. Prototyping is quicker and more efficient. It is also much cheaper, which bizarrely, can actually work against such approaches. As one public sector designer recently commented, many people in government will not take you seriously if your project is cheap!

My point here is not to make the case for design as the next great management fad – a notion that tends to rear its head from time to time – but rather, to give as clear as possible an indication of design’s immense scope for tackling social problems and the challenges that remain in realising that potential. If we can overcome some of the challenges and get design working more and more at or near the top of the ladder, the potential boons are enormous. We could find solutions to some of the most ‘wicked’ problems of our time; we might even be able to tackle those designated as ‘super-wicked’, where would-be solutions repeatedly create negative knock-on effects elsewhere in the system.

Consider, for example, environmentalism, in which numerous CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

DESIGN

What hope then, for more altruistic design contexts in which there is no budget for learning on the job?

measures turn out to be unsustainable or even harmful (bio-plastic bags made from vegetable matter cannot meet the demand for plastic bags without creating food poverty, for instance). This is disjointed incrementalism writ large. What might we achieve if we were able to see the problem in its entirety, perhaps, in this example, using the world’s now formidable capabilities for employing big data?

SELLING DESIGN I am, arguably, here engaged in an activity that might be described as obsolete: selling design. The evidence shows that design is being ‘mainstreamed’. In the public sector, this means that countries that have led the use of design for public services are now making serious forays into design for policy. Denmark and Finland broke the ground here, with MindLab and Helsinki Design Lab respectively.

The UK has been close behind, with the Behavioural Insights Team and Policy Lab, headed by Andrea Siodmok, whose insightful piece, ‘Designer Policies’, appeared in a recent issue of the Journal. Meanwhile, in China and Singapore, service design is increasingly being seen as a major driver of innovation.

So, does this process simply have its own momentum? Not exactly. Three or four countries doing well at design does not a designled European Union make, much less a world. With other EU countries’ design industries often unversed in the necessary techniques, it is not a simple matter to bring advanced design thinking to their public services, no matter the benefits. Even in the countries that have gone the furthest, design for policy remains largely unproven, caught in a catch-22: resisted by government due to the small evidence base, unable to expand the evidence base due to resistance from government.

Finally, despite overwhelming evidence of design’s benefits for growth, it remains a struggle to get policymakers to foster creativity at all levels of education. And while the need to ‘sell’ advanced design may have almost dried up in business, there is a shortfall within higher education when it comes to introducing advanced design principles of the sort I have described here. One corporation to whom we have been talking, which is building a significant internal design team globally, calls this ‘the missing semester’ and is often forced to help its new employees acquire this know-how.

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DESIGNING THE FUTURE These issues are of first-order importance. For the Design Council, one approach has been to create a Design Academy programme to give students a solid grounding in design for innovation. Simultaneously, we are leading Design for Europe, an online resource and onthe-ground presence, offering tools, research and social connections to anyone interested in using design in business, the public sector and policymaking.

So far, so good. However, we need also to look to the future.

By way of a provocation and a blow against our own déformation professionelle, let us dare to finish with an issue for which there is not necessarily an immediate solution.

In a recent, much-discussed Wired article, former Frog VP Robert Fabricant points out that a dramatic trend towards having in-house design teams in big business threatens to sap the pool of designers willing and able to devote time to social and environmental projects. Design, then, even as it has developed a set of tools that appear uniquely effective for problem solving and innovation in tackling tough social problems, could find itself a victim of its own success.

We should be careful not to overstate the case. Design has always moved between profitable activities and socially beneficial ones, often with benefit to both sides. It will, most likely, continue in a similar vein. Nevertheless, Fabricant points to a crucial duty of care, inducing us to ask: What steps must we take to ensure that design continues to express its best, most socially progressive self?

What must we do to keep carving out that delicate yet very powerful space?

This article was originally published in the RSA Journal Issue 1 2015 (www.thersa.org)

John Mathers is the Chief Executive of the Design Council which exists to champion good design and use it to help accelerate innovation and growth, address the big issues in society and improve the way we work and live. John has been working for 30 years in the brand and design industry, leading a number of marketing, brand and design consultancies in the UK as well as a number of roles within FMCG and retail, including Head of Brand at Safeway. He joined the Design Council from a CEO role at the Holmes & Marchant Group. John is currently serving as President of the Design Business Association and acts as the spokesperson for its 20:20 Mentoring Scheme.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF… DEBBIE FROST We managed to book a slot in the diary of Debbie Frost, VP, International Communications and Public Affairs at Facebook to get a snapshot of what communicating about one of the world’s largest brands is really like

Can you define what Facebook actually looks like from the inside?

It may sound clichéd, but Facebook really is a mission driven company. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook with the goal of making the world more open and connectDEBBIE FROST ed. So everything we do is about helping people connect with friends, family and things they are talking about, and share what is important to them, no matter where they live or what language they speak. The product teams work on new ways of sharing and the business teams work on ways of making our advertising products relevant and useful by connecting people to businesses they like.

This is of course a very simplistic view – because behind the scenes there are also hundreds of engineers building new products and features, hundreds of people in community operations responding to emails or reports from users, and hundreds more focused on helping other businesses, organisations and individuals have a presence on our platform.

Can you describe what your role is in the organisation?

My role is to help different audiences understand Facebook. From our product, to our business, to our policies.

What range of activities do you get involved in on a dayto-day basis?

My day starts with calls to the teams in Europe or Latin America.

If it’s a good day, then these are mostly updates and check-ins on how our activities are progressing, and if it’s a bad day, they there are more time-sensitive calls about one issue or another that need immediate attention. Assuming the latter doesn’t happen, or can be quickly resolved, I spend a lot of time talking to various teams – product, growth, business – about how to support their work with communications. And then my day ends with calls to Asia, which is just starting its day. My days involve a lot of fire-fighting.

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What elements of the marketing mix seem to work best for Facebook in terms of driving signups?

I didn’t study marketing and we don’t really use marketing terms at Facebook, so I actually just had to Google ‘the marketing mix’. So I guess my answer is ‘product’.

We have a service that makes it easy and enjoyable to share and connect. This is a very basic human need. What drives sign-ups is friends. I don’t know which part of the mix that fits into. But what I do know, is that if you get an invitation from a friend, you are much more likely to sign up than just hearing about this service called Facebook.

Similarly, once you are on Facebook, you are much more likely to stay on and stay active (we define ‘active’ as having used the service once in the last 30 days) if you can find and connect with your friends quickly and have a good experience.

We spend a lot of time thinking about what that first experience looks like.

Back when I started, we were very focused on driving growth and we had a whole team dedicated to just getting people to sign up.

Things were easier then – in 2008 most people didn’t even have Facebook in their own language.

But whether it is 2008, or 2015, the simple fact is that if you don’t have a compelling service that fulfils a need it doesn’t really matter how much marketing you use to drive sign-ups….people won’t stay.

On Facebook people sign up because of friends and stay because of friends.

And advertisers?

I’m pretty sure what makes advertisers come to Facebook is the opportunity to deliver personalized marketing at an unprecedented scale. Advertising that is relevant to the customers that marketers want to reach, whether that’s hundreds of people or hundreds of millions, wherever they are.

The biggest advertisers in the world want to tap into Facebook’s ability to reach the right people, and reach a lot of them.

But I think what is interesting to advertisers now, is that we have one of the largest mobile audiences in the world, and mobile is CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

MASH UP

where people are spending more and more of their time. We also now have the measurement tools and data partnerships in place not only to show marketers that their ads work, but also to provide them with insights on how they can improve future campaigns.

What sort of impact do you think Facebook has on elections in the UK and in the US? If other elections are anything to go by, then I think we see politicians using social media as core pieces of their campaigns and Facebook – and other platforms – are a central place for people to discuss what is going on.

In 2014, 42% of the world’s population went to the polls to vote in major elections held in 40 countries. Across continents, we saw candidates and citizens using Facebook to discuss issues important to the future of their countries. The Indian elections were considered the most ‘social’ – 227m interactions from 29m people. Indian PM Modi is the 2nd most popular politician on Facebook with 25m fans. In the Indonesian elections, President Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) ran an unprecedented volunteer-based, youth-oriented campaign that relied heavily on social media. Only a week after his election,

have not been connected before.

And let’s not forget about the shift to mobile – probably the most important, fastest adoption of disruptive technology in history of communication. One that has created a new space in people’s routines that is changing the way we experience media.

Over the long term, I think we will focus on driving the fundamental changes in the world that we need to achieve our mission – connecting the whole world, understanding the world with big leaps in AI, and developing the next generation of platforms especially in computing.

We hope to bring the Internet.org app to many more countries. Soon.

We are also, through our acquisition of Oculus, making a long-term bet on the future of computing. Every 10-15 years a new major computing platform arrives, and we think virtual and augmented reality are important parts of what might be next.

From a marketer’s point of view is there a best way to use Facebook for commercial purposes?

Authentically.

What challenges do you see for Facebook in terms of communications in the future?

What I wouldn’t give to be able to predict future challenges. I think as our product and business grows we have challenges in explaining what we are doing clearly and openly.

Jokowi asked Facebook users to vote for the 34 people who should join his Cabinet.

What’s next for you and Facebook? Using Ansoff’s approach to growth, is Facebook moving forward in all areas of product and market development?

Just had to Google ‘Ansoff’. We’re a tech company whose heart is in innovation. We are always trying to move the product forward. We think about it in some short- and long-term ways.

In the short term, I think 2015 will be about connecting in big and small ways every day. From new ways to connect with friends, connecting one-on-one (such as with Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp), connecting to media and public figures (did you know that 800 million people are connected to public figures on Facebook?), to the Internet.org app that continues to roll out and provide free basic services in new countries to connect people that CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

Debbie Frost is VP of International Communications and Public Policy at Facebook, where she is responsible for developing and managing communications about products, advertising, policy and corporate affairs for Facebook outside of the United States.

Prior to joining Facebook, Debbie spent more than four years at Google, where she built the company’s international PR team and led communications across Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Debbie spent her early career in the UK and Europe, managing communications at Nike Inc. Debbie is an Australian, was born and raised in Hong Kong, and has an honours degree in Law (LLB) from The University of Warwick School of Law in the UK.

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Contact: Charlotte Lestienne | telephone: +44 (0) 1954 234941 email: charlotte@marketingcollege.com | www.marketingcollege/corporate

This is the third in a series of four articles by Justin Kirby that draws on his research for his new book Best of Branded Content Marketing: 10th Anniversary Edition produced in partnership with the BCMA. It shares part of Justin’s findings from industry experts around the world on what they expect to see change in the next five years

CONTENT MARKETING

THE FUTURE OF BRANDED CONTENT MARKETING – PART 3

T

he backdrop to this series is the prediction that branded content will be at the heart of every marketing strategy. However there’s still a lot of confusion about what it is, how you do it well, when and why. This is partly because the term ‘content’ is so JUSTIN KIRBY all-encompassing, but also because of the array of competing terms being bandied about by practitioners, such as ‘branded content”, ‘branded entertainment”, ‘content marketing”, ‘brand publishing’ and ‘native advertising’. That’s why the Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA) commissioned research from Oxford Brookes University in partnership with Ipsos MORI, from which comes the following overarching definition: ‘Branded content is any content associated with a brand in the eye of the beholder’ This is a useful first step, although it does not explain the marketing problems that branded content seeks to solve, how branded content is different from advertising, or strategic considerations such as: • What kind of branded content is created (or co-created) by whom and for whom?

• How is the audience built and its engagement managed?

• How is content distributed (i.e. where in the converged landscape of earned, owned and paid media, and when in the customer decision journey)?

• How is the success of each different part and their sum measured?

One of the reasons for using case studies in the Best of Branded Content Marketing (BOBCM) book series I curate is that it helps show how brands and their agency partners are addressing these considerations. This also avoids getting bogged down in protracted debate about definitions. I have included the ‘Three Circles of Branded Content Marketing’ diagram again because it is a useful tool not only for analysing these case studies, but also for thinking through the questions above as part of developing a branded content marketing strategy.

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Experts also see personalisation becoming more contextual so that marketing becomes more pulled than pushed, which is why contentbased approaches are predicted to be unrecognisable from traditional advertising in future. The current challenge that Barney highlights is more about the increasing need to use social platforms to reach people in what he calls their fractured passion centres (diverse and scattered social environments). As he points out, there are few people who really understand how to develop stories delivered through these mechanisms at scale.

There are, however, a host of other considerations that experts around the world have raised. Perhaps the most significant is that businesses have lost absolute control of their brands, which leads some to believe that brands now need to go beyond being just customer-centric to become completely customer-obsessed.

So, despite industry excitement about how technology is enabling brands to connect with customers via content in ever more sophisticated and creative ways, there’s also a growing consensus about a need to understand people and culture better.

CRAFTING THE RIGHT CONTENT The rise and rise of storytelling has been the most consistent theme to emerge from my discussions with experts. As mentioned in my last CMR article, this is something that former Ad Age editor Scott Donaton (now Chief Content Officer at DigitasLBi) believes changes everything about how brands go to market, and this means doing what they don’t like doing: making major changes to their processes, the skillsets of the people they hire, the timeframes they work within, and the way they allocate and think about budgets.

Scott also thinks that brands need to change their definition of creativity. This is interesting because technology is increasingly being seen by some experts as the ‘solution’ to content-based marketing strategies. Before looking at what’s on offer and what’s being predicted in this space, it would be useful to look at what’s going on at the macro-level as a modern version of what was once ‘creative and media’. As Th@t Lot’s MD Barney Worfolk-Smith explains, on one hand there are the ideas, content and messaging; on the other, there are the framework and mechanisms for delivering the former – and these are rapidly becoming more algorithmic, programmatic and predictive in order to help personalise and optimise content across multiple platforms.

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“What’s the point in spending all your time trying to get to the party if you don’t have anything to say when you get there? And vice versa, what’s the point in having something great to say if you can’t get to the party?”

The point Barney is making is that the media landscape isn’t what it used to be. It is more fractured and complex now, and this doesn’t necessarily favour the thinking that comes out of traditional-style media and creative agencies. This situation is linked to the changing skillset point made by Scott, and that’s why Barney recommends that brands and their agencies need to work with smaller specialists doing great work in the social arena, to try and figure out how this can be replicated at scale.

BRANDS MAY HAVE TO TAKE A LONGER-TERM VIEW AND RETHINK WHAT’S BEING MEASURED AND WHY As the lines between brands, media owners, agencies and even consumers continue to blur, we’re also seeing new agency models emerge that include publishers becoming agencies. As mentioned in my previous CMR article, this forms part of a trend for the production of continuous content by those who understand traditional editorial and programming, such as publishers and broadcasters. It is also less risky for brands to collaborate with content creators rather than compete with them. As Ogilvy Group UK’s Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland explains, you only have to look at Hollywood to see how many flops and duds are supported by a few successes.

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CONTENT MARKETING

However, others see the future being less about working with content creators and technology providers for better crafting of messaging and targeting, and more about using the insights derived from Big Data to make marketing into service opportunities that provide better customer experiences. This includes predictions about opportunities afforded by wearable technology, smart appliances, the Internet of Things and hyper geo-location.

Some experts, such as Leo Burnett’s James Kirkham, see branded content moving off screen, and translate making a gesture mnemonic to access the brand – for example, tracing out the Heineken star when you walk into a bar to access that brand’s content or order its beer. For James this is about brands thinking of the future less in terms of branded content and more about people’s branded life. This may be more relevant to some generations than others, particularly with the maturation of the millennial adult, who Tenthwave’s Eric Schwamberger predicts will ‘quickly become the most powerful consumer, literally ever.’

CHANGING BEHAVIOUR We may also see a resurgence of older media, such as radio and book publishing, that have been going through their own digital revolutions. In the meantime, mobile is increasingly becoming the first screen, which WME | IMG’s Doug Scott believes is driving content shifts. These include sharing on the living room screen, particularly around live programming, but also other real-time marketing initiatives such as public out-of-home advertising (OOH) where smart displays are triggered by mobile devices via beacons and other geolocation technologies.

It is worth noting that the changes in consumer media habits and behaviour, specifically those brought about by the rise of social media, have forced brands to rethink not only the way they conduct their marketing, but also how they measure it. In theory, the evergrowing number of data points can bring more rigour. In reality, the increase in data points is often driven by the multitude of measurement and analytical tools now available. This situation creates a danger of measuring data for the sake of it. When coupled with the growing obsession for all things real-time, this can lead to an overemphasis on the short-term rather than longer-term effects of marketing.

The fragmented media landscape also means that brands are now faced with the dual challenges of trying to figure out how individual channels or touchpoints are working at the micro level, and how they all fit together holistically. Tapestry Research’s Ian Wright thinks this CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

is a tough challenge, but he believes it can be met through a combination of small-scale qualitative insight, Big Data observation and survey-based interpretation.

Tim Foley at Pointlogic thinks that there is going to be a different set of challenges as market research gets turned on its head by the explosion of more data. He predicts that, rather than aggregating audiences around their demographics, it will be possible to value individuals based on purchase probabilities. As he points out, this changes everything in terms of how media works and who should be on the team to deliver and evaluate it.

MEASURING WELL It is not clear, however, how many brands are currently measuring branded content campaigns with the same rigour they measure advertising. More accountability and analysis is required if the branded content approach is going to show that it pulls its weight beyond the simple counting of views, shares, re-tweets, etc. Brands may have to take a longer-term view and rethink what’s being measured and why. As the BCMA’s Andrew Canter argues, branded content marketing is an investment that often pays back in the mid-to-long term rather than having an immediate impact.

The impact of technology aside, my discussions with experts raised an interesting question about the business model of the branded content approach, and whether this is different from traditional advertising where eyeballs are bought. The answer to this question may also influence what’s measured and why, particularly as the media landscape is being refined by the gradual merger of the advertising and media worlds. This is one of a number of new and emerging themes covered in the third edition of the BOBCM book that’s due out later this year. Before then, I’ll be looking at what experts think won’t change in the final instalment of this CMR article series.

Justin Kirby is a writer, speaker and strategist. He curates the Best of Branded Content Marketing book series and is currently working on the third volume. Justin also heads up strategic content marketing at Tenthwave Digital LLC, the new interactive agency from the US whose clients include Facebook, Google and eBay. You can follow his ongoing discussions with industry experts at BOBCM.net.

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A VIEW FROM FRANCE – ATTITUDES David Remaud, an ex-engineer turned marketer, reflects on the nature of marketing in France

I

was originally an engineer with a tech­nology background in software, cloud systems, hardware and telecoms, and worked primarily in R&D. Then I moved to sales positions where my customers were mostly telecoms and media companies. I was initially DAVID REMAUD involved in a company called Nextenso, a mobile technology company which was a spin-off of Alcatel, the major French telecoms equipment provider. After a stint in the larger corporate I founded and managed a startup called PlugnSurf, which had designed a new type of wifi router and which I sold after five years to Netgem, a major set-top box vendor. Since then I have become a marketing consultant working with a range of companies who are trying to launch innovative new technology products.

My lead into marketing was more by necessity than by choice as particularly in the startup you have no choice but to market and sell what you are creating. It is pretty unusual in France to find someone who can combine the technical experience with the awareness that marketing demands, which I think is a very valuable combination.

WHAT MAKES FRENCH MARKETS DIFFERENT? The French market is always fairly technically focused as we tend to assign much value, and sometimes too much, to the technology.

We rely on the fact that we have very good engineers and we have

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FRANCE

evidence of their skills in products such as the TGV trains, our aerospace technology, our nuclear technology and so on. What we do often lack however is the right skills to really exploit these successes outside France. The TGV hasn’t really ever been sold outside France, the Rafale strike fighter was sold abroad but only after 20 years of trying. The nuclear industry has proved not to be a scalable business and the few examples of foreign deployments, like for example the new generation nuclear power plant in Finland, have not yet proven their profitability.

FRENCH ATTITUDE TO SALES I think that we are good at demonstrating and selling products into domestic markets but are not so good at making them become global successes. Take the French Minitel service that was a pre- world wide web internet service where you could buy things, read news and

MARKETING IN FRANCE IS VERY WELL UNDERSTOOD IN SOME MARKETS ... WHILE STILL CONSIDERED AS A MINOR DISCIPLINE IN MORE TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN MARKETS However this seems to be changing. Most large French companies are now more international in nature and so now have many more international voices which are beginning to improve the situation.

There are still some behaviours which are frustrating. The story goes that when a French buyer is presented with two identical products in features, functions and price, the buyer will choose the one made abroad so that he cannot be blamed of having made a local nonobjective choice! French schools chose in the past to use Apple iPads for instance, rather than Archos, a home-grown alternative.

FRENCH CONSUMERS I would say that the French consumer is similar to most others in that they are looking for good value and, ultimately, bargains! The Consumer to Consumer economy is growing very fast with the concept of buying from your neighbour well advanced. Sites like leboncoin. fr are doing well at selling everything including houses, as are those they are selling discount or end of line stock, like vente-privee.com.

The sharing economy as a whole has found a willing home in France with services like Bla Bla Car for carpooling and luxury goods marketplaces like InstantLuxe and Vestiare Collective doing very well.

stock prices, and reserve train tickets securely using your credit card!

It was introduced in Brittany in 1978, was everywhere in France by 1982 and had over 26,000 services available by 1996. Despite the adoption of its basic technology in a number of countries it was not able to cope with the world wide web and was finally closed only in June 2012. We were unable to make it work for everyone else like they seem to be able to do in the US with ease, and as a result we feel like we lag behind others in this respect.

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The French consumer does have a tendency to prefer its homegrown products, especially in areas such as movies where there is a pride in the resistance to Hollywood. This does have its downside as it means that there is a reduction in international focus as a result. This is also changing as shown by the rise of McDonald’s which ranks France as its most profitable country outside the US and where it has the most locations per capita in Europe. There is also a trend away from the long-term loyalty to French built cars from Peugeot, Renault and Citroen which, while successful abroad, are gradually being replaced by German and Asian cars in most French cities.

WHAT SORT OF CAMPAIGNS WORK WELL IN FRANCE? A great example of a national campaign was developed for Orangina, the orange flavoured fizzy drink that has managed to keep all foreign competitors at bay for many years. One of the lasting

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case for the quality of French marketing and the development of long-term brands. As a group they almost define the whole of the sector – Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, Hermes, Chanel, Cartier, Dior and so on. What seems to be have been the formula was the pairing of the designer with a entrepreneur who understood how to create the desire for the seemingly inaccessible sophistication of French fashion.

brand/product attributes is that the user is urged to shake the bottle to somehow enliven or wake up the drink. They have used a long running and successful campaign theme that has introduced a range of ‘exotic’ animals integrated into human society as a key part of the brand character which have wide acceptance both with adults and children.

Humour works well in French markets, especially humour that is not necessarily politically correct. I am reminded of a campaign back in 1981 for the poster company Avenir which featured Myriam Szabo who appeared in a national campaign in a bikini on a beach promised to remove her clothes on specific days. The public was enthralled until the day when she was meant to bare all and the ad appeared with Myriam with her back turned. The tagline was ‘Avenir – the poster company that always keeps its promises’!

WHY ISN’T THERE A FRENCH WORD FOR MARKETING? It is well known that the French have an inherited resistance to the use of English and this does create a problem in that as a result we are not as able to express ideas as well in English, which of course is the language of trade. French product owners will start to think their pitch in French and then translate afterwards! That said and despite this apparent problem with one specific language, the French have been spectacularly successful in foreign countries with a roster of success in luxury like l’Oreal the cosmetics giant, Yves-Saint-Laurent and Chanel and in retail with companies such as Auchan and Carrefour the supermarkets, the latter of which now operates almost 11,000 stores in 34 countries and turned over nearly €75bn in its last trading year.

It is the vertical luxury brands, however, that really make the

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Marketing still suffers from an image problem in France with a sense that we retain an inability as a nation to be proud of having a good product. I would say that there is an inbuilt belief that if the product is good enough it won’t need any marketing and will sell itself. Marketing is still perceived as a way to sell ‘crap’ rather than anything to do with quality. This means that marketing is not really taught as a discipline at schools and only appears specifically in business schools.

There seems to remain a disconnection between the development of technology and product and the way in which the resulting products are effectively sold.

CONCLUSION In summary, I thing that marketing in France is very well understood in some markets (retail, consumer goods, foods etc.) while still considered as a minor discipline in more technology-driven markets (software, hardware, historical industries). However this is changing very fast because on the one hand, there is a strong will and need to sell services and products beyond French and European borders, which can be seen by the increasing number of French workers settling for two/three years abroad. And on the other hand, the fast growth of the French start-up eco-system – growth in terms of number of new ventures created per year and in valuation on international stock markets – makes more and more people, entrepreneurs and investors for example, believe that marketing is a mandatory skill to develop in order to become a global player.

David Remaud, founder of the marketing agency Out of the Woods, has more than 15 years’ experience with the launch of innovative products for start-ups, mid-cap enterprises and big corporates.

Previously David was founder and CEO of Plugnsurf, founder and head of the MVNE Business Units at Alcatel-Lucent, Marketing and Sales Director of various innovative companies.

CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

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A VIEW FROM THE NETHERLANDS ON INNOVATION Willem de Vries, Managing Partner of the STEM Industrial Marketing Centre in cooperation with Erik de Boer from New Business Development Associates (NBDA) take a look at the state of innovation within corporations in The Netherlands compared to other countries

I

‘The road to success runs uphill’

PDMA The American Product Development & Management Association is a leading association on the development of products, services and processes and the management thereof (www.pdma.org). In the Netherlands, there is a ‘chapter’ with well over 250 members: www.pdma.nl.

Prof. Henk Volberda is Professor of business policy at Rotterdam School of Management and the Scientific Director of Inscope Research for Innovation. His article ‘Dutch businesses innovate too little’ can be found in NRC, 1 October 2013 and can be found at www.stem-imc.com/dossierinnovatie.

The article is only available in Dutch and at the time of publication used data from the World Economic Forum survey of 2013.

If you are interested in more information about the Dutch article in NRC and/or actual data, please contact Willem de Vries.

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nnovation, what is the standard? Successful innovating: it is a matter of survival!

Many people believe innovation requires masses of creativity along with a good many brainstorming sessions at country retreats.

These things will obviously not hurt, but having an inspired idea is only 10% of the work. The hardest element of innovation is to successfully execute and launch a wonderful new idea. That is the other 90%. And it is often grossly underestimated. That is the cycle that goes from generating an idea to the evaluation of the market’s results and reactions; meaning the users and buyers. This creates input for a next step in the innovation process. But what is the standard in innovation? How much money should be invested in innovation? When is an innovation successful? And which approach to innovation management is best?

THE NETHERLANDS SCORES LOWER ON INNOVATION Recent studies of the global Product Development and Management Association (PDMA, see box at left) show Dutch businesses score lower on a number of aspects of innovation.

Prof. Henk W. Volberda (see box at left) also showed in his recent study that Dutch companies do not innovate enough. This has consequences; the Netherlands has dropped from fifth to eighth position on the ladder of the most competitive countries (World Economic Forum 2013) – in which the UK takes the number 10 position.

INVESTMENT READINESS When it comes to innovation you would think that spending a certain percentage of turnover would correlate in some way with success as

a result of that innovation, but sadly there is no evidence of this.

There is one connection, says Prof.

Volberda in an article WILLEM DE VRIES in Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad of 1 October 2013, as he believes that Dutch corporations limit their own innovation budgets ERIK DE BOER and, although this certainly is not the only cause, that does have an effect on Dutch corporate competitive strength in general. It also appears that the quality of the investment is less relevant, as the PDMA studies show that other aspects have more influence on the delivery of success. Unfortunately, these end up being exactly those aspects on which Dutch companies score lower compared to other companies in the world.

It turns out Dutch companies need more time for the innovation process overall. However, the use of extra time (see box, next page) does not necessarily lead to a better product, in terms of one that is then more successful when introduced to the market. The data shows that for products developed in the Netherlands, only 14 out of a 100 ideas lead to a market introduction and of those within two years, only 8 out of 14 products and services will still be successful. These results seem to match those from other countries in the PDMA survey including the UK.

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PDMA does regular research into the success factors of innovation. In 2013 a report appeared of the most recent study titled: ‘Winning at NPD: Success drivers from the 2012 CPAS study’ (CPAS = Comparative Performance Assessment Study.)

NETHERLANDS

Some results of the PDMA study

REDUCED CYCLE TIME On all three fronts of innovation Dutch companies need more time for development up to and including market introduction. Yet companies in other parts of the world have successfully lowered their time to market over the years. It is remarkable that the pace of Asian companies is significantly higher than in North America and Europe and that the effectiveness of Dutch companies scores below the European average.

Further analysis of these numbers shows that two things stand out:

VIGOUR IS ESSENTIAL So perhaps it is useful to ask the question ‘What are the keys to successful innovation?’

The PDMA study indicates there are five important criteria: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Shortening the time to market Having a clear strategy for innovation Managing the portfolio – both for New Product Development (NPD) and existing products and/ or services Using an NPD process but doing this in an appropriate and flexible manner Involvement of management

This is something we often see in organisations, along with other strategic choices, and the causes of it are diverse, with the two main ones as:

REDUCED CYCLE TIME & GEOGRAPHICAL DIFFERENCES NO. WEEKS

NETHERLANDS N. AMERICA

ASIA

EUROPE

RADICAL INNOVATION

137.7

97

40

135

MORE INNOVATIVE

70.8

67

41

66

INCREMENTAL INNOVATION

35.9

36

32

33

THE SO-CALLED DEATH CURVE OF NEW PRODUCTS In 1982 the PDMA researched the ‘mortality rate’ of NPD. Even though the number of ideas that are cancelled at an early stage of development has dropped considerably during 1982 and 1995, the success ratio has not improved since the 1980s. It is striking that premature cancellation of projects has hardly declined any further since 1995. Dutch innovations show the same trend.

• Management does not make the strategy clear and does not subsequently support it well enough • The strategy is not sufficiently strongly articulated in terms of outcome and motivation, so it fails to be adopted into each employee’s daily routines and choices CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

Source: PDMA-survey ‘winning at NPD: Success drivers from the 2012 CPAS Study’

It is notable that even though it is clear that ‘first to market strategy’ is a key principle when it comes to innovation, Dutch corporations do not score well on this point. Apparently, in the Dutch context, strategy and execution do not run in parallel.

1. Dutch companies are capable of being dynamic in the stages of idea generation, screening, business analysis and planning. Other companies from all over the world require more time in these stages.

2. Dutch businesses lose speed in the stages that ultimately matter most: development and testing, production and commercialisation. When it comes to incremental innovations Dutch companies are going at the same pace as the rest of the world and while this is important, the other numbers indicate a weakness in the effectiveness with which they take the lead in developments. Additionally, it turns out that the cost of innovation in these stages is higher in the Netherlands than it is in the rest of the world – especially in relation to the best performing companies worldwide. The best performing companies in the Netherlands do not perform that much better than the bulk of Dutch companies.

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Using a structure to manage the process of innovation itself is both loved and loathed. Opponents say creative processes should not be constrained and having a structure takes away all flexibility. Even so, the PDMA study shows the best-performing companies (in terms of innovation) will more often use a formal process for generating new ideas than those that don’t. Dutch companies apparently do not like the structured approach as they apply it considerably less than companies from other countries.

Over the years there has been a small decrease worldwide in the use of structure for the overall innovation process. However, the best performing innovators will use a structured process considerably more often than the others and this results in better performance. When the use of structure is approached in a flexible manner it has a positive effect on the success of innovations. The best performing companies more often apply flexibility to the process than the other researched companies with this flexibility focused on the business context and the type of innovation required or desired.

Alongside structuring the innovation process, managing the process is also a key success factor. Primary elements of success include: • Committed involvement of both junior and senior management • The provision of resources including tools, measures and incentives to corporate teams

NPD is becoming more efficient over time …

The PDMA study shows five criteria for successful innovation: 1 Success rate of innovations that are introduced on the market. The best performing companies had a score of 4 out of 5 successful introductions. The others scored about half. The Dutch numbers did not deviate that much, but were a little below the global average.

2

Success in relation to the profitability of innovations. This element shows that the best Dutch companies are competing but the rest perform at a lower rate.

3

The percentage of sales from new products. The best performing Dutch companies say almost 55% of their sales come from the introduction of new products. This is a considerably higher percentage than that of the others in the Netherlands and it is even higher than the global average of 47.9%. For the best performing companies these new products contribute the majority of their sales.

4

The percentage of profits from new products. Once again the best performing Dutch companies perform well here. The global figures for the last two measures of success have been generally stable since 2004.

5

The number of ideas it takes to have one successful introduction. The numbers speak for themselves. However the conclusion is that quite a lot of effort goes into new product development to make it a profitable success – even more reason to structure and monitor the process. Cancelling unpromising ideas in good time will help to keep the cost of innovation in check and increase the success ratios.

NETHERLANDS The best The rest

THE BEST

THE REST

% of innovations that are successful

78.7

47.6

82.2

52.9

% of Innovations that are profitable

78.4

40.6

78.2

47.9

% of sales from NPs

53.5

22.1

47.9

25.4

% of profits from NPs

57.8

23.2

48.5

25.0

Number of ideas needed to have one success

5.6

11.5

4.5

11.5

Dutch companies do not fare so badly against international competition on these measures although the involvement of senior

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From PDMA-research: Best Achieve Superior Results

MANAGING, STRUCTURING AND BEING COMMITTED On certain aspects, managing NPD effectively appears to be of great importance to success. If it comes down to portfolio management, the Dutch have not much to learn from the rest of the world. That said, it is an issue that requires regular attention from management to determine profitable and unprofitable products and to consider the whole portfolio of NPD.

THE KEYS TO INNOVATION It is hard to decide what the perfect combination is when it comes to innovation. Money is not the only issue even though it is clear that Dutch corporations in general invest considerably less in innovation and, as a result of that behaviour, both the competitive strength and relative competitive position of the Netherlands have degraded.

Other factors appear to be more important to successful innovation. Dutch companies that perform best on innovation score low on the most important of those factors. The time to market factor for these companies is considerably lower compared to equivalent companies worldwide. The lack of speed could be linked to the lack of investment in resources – including human resources – as these are proven to cause acceleration in the process.

Dutch companies that do not invest enough in resources run the risk of missing the boat.

However, the most underestimated success factor in innovation is following a structured process during the entire cycle: from idea generation to the evaluation of the market introduction. That process should not be followed rigidly. It needs to be adapted to the situation and the kind of innovation – especially at the idea generation stage. While Dutch corporations appear to be reluctant to adopt a structured approach, competitors abroad have taken the first steps towards setting up global guidelines for innovation processes (see right, A structured approach).

NETHERLANDS

management at the best performing Dutch companies is relatively low.

A structured approach There are supporters and opponents of a structured innovation process. The PDMA study shows that companies that perform best on innovation apply a structured process more often than the less successful organisations. There is also an increasing trend towards the implementation of structured guidelines for the innovation process. In business value chains, product development is increasingly conducted in consultation with chain partners. To develop completely new applications and developments there is a trend towards the use of open-innovation processes with experts of various (technical) backgrounds.

These types of collective innovations are expected to become more frequent over the next couple of years.

Indeed there is a clear trend internationally towards the development of guidelines to manage the innovation process of. These tend not to be rigid standards but rather tools and terminologies that describe the nature of innovation and which provide assistance with navigating the innovation landscape.

Worldwide, the Netherlands Standardisation Institute’s sister groups have now appointed national Technical Commissions who met for the first time in Paris on 4 and 5 December 2013. Up to this point, Dutch corporations had been somewhat reluctant to join this initiative and even though NEN was present, there was no official Dutch representation in Paris.

INFORMATION GATHERING The Netherlands’ most important export countries are strongly represented in the Technical Commission which proves that our trading partners do recognise the importance of common guidelines and would like to contribute to them. NEN sees its role as one of informing the Dutch market on the direction of global trends and to encourage interest in this area. As a result NEN will target groups of senior and innovation managers from the corporate sector, research institutions and government who have an interest in developing innovative practices. For more information on NEN go to: www.nen.nl/innovatie.

So in the end the issue is not so much about what the key elements are that make for optimal innovation, but more about whether the Netherlands lags behind when it comes to implementing such innovation structures. It is high time that corporations raise the bar by taking a step forwards, putting innovation back on the agenda and instead of following, leading the way for other countries to follow. The way you innovate determines the type of innovations you deliver and ultimately their success.

However you look at it, it is a matter of survival!

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This article was published the first time in NEN-magazine, March 2014 Erik de Boer is director of NBDA – New Business Development Associates BV, with offices in the Netherlands and in Singapore. NBDA teaches innovation management, coaches companies in their innovation process and consults on the development of new markets – especially economically booming areas like Asia, Turkey and South Africa. e.deboer@nbda.nl, www.nbda.nl.

Willem de Vries is managing partner with STEM Industrial Marketing Centre. STEM is internationally active in industrial/B2B marketing. With training courses, workshops and coaching programmes, STEM contributes to the improvement of organisations’ competitive position and consequently their bottom lines. willemdevries@stem-imc.com, www.stem-imc.com.

NBDA and STEM work closely together, both nationally and internationally, and support the projects of organisations from idea to successful market introduction in both profit and not-for-profit organisations.

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HOW TELEMARKETING ENHANCES YOUR BRAND AND DELIVERS RESULTS

By Chris Walthew, Managing Director, Prospect Research

TELEMARKETING REMAINS ONE OF THE MOST PROFITABLE MARKETING METHODS AVAILABLE TO BUSINESSES IN THE UK

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y company Prospect Research has recently celebrated 11 years trading as a business development and telemarketing company. Looking back over that time, there of course have been huge changes in the tools companies can use to market themselves and interact with their customers, particularly with the rise of social media.

CHRIS WALTHEW

What has not changed is that telemarketing is still viewed negatively by a large part of society. More than 175,000 complaints were made to the Information Commissioner’s Office last year about nuisance calls and text messages.

This negative view might explain why telemarketing is only used by a minority of business to business companies. according to research by the B2B Barometer, digital marketing now accounts for 39% of business to business marketing spend, compared to telemarketing which accounts for just 2%.

However, telemarketing can point to proven business and employment benefits to justify its existence. It remains one of the most profitable marketing methods available to businesses in the UK. According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, telemarketing delivers a £11 return on investment for every £1 spent. It also gives employment to thousands of people throughout the UK. According to Unison, the UK has a million people working in call centres, many in areas of historically high unemployment, in customer services, telesales as well as telemarketing roles.

I would like to use this article to give you some food for thought about factors you might want to consider when evaluating whether telemarketing is suitable for your business and then what I believe the three key ingredients are to achieve successful results.

My company specialises in business to business work, so my points are based from my experience in this area, but should be broadly relevant if you are in the business to consumer world as well.

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INTERACTIVE VS BROADCASTING CHANNELS The B2B Barometer Report 2014 included which channels marketers planned to increase and decrease spend on over the next 12 months. The top five channels likely to receive the most extra spend are either exclusively or predominantly online, but there is also a planned increase in telemarketing.

JUST UNDER HALF THE ENQUIRIES MY COMPANY RECEIVES ARE ONES THAT WE DO NOT PURSUE

The Report’s analysis is that the trend is for marketers to continue to move to using more interactive methods and that more ‘broadcast’ channels are in decline. Spend on direct mail is expected to reduce by 21% and print advertising by 26%.

direct mail and email marketing, however B2B telemarketing will be almost entirely unaffected by the new regulations.

TELEMARKETING AS AN INTERACTIVE MARKETING CHANNEL • Data can be purchased that very accurately reflects the profile of companies you want to target in the right sectors • You can identify the names of the correct decision makers • The Buyersphere Report 2015 found that 50% of Business to Business buyers surveyed did not use social media, so telemarketing allows you to directly engage with people that had it not been for your phone call, would not know about your company • Telemarketing allows you to have a two way conversation with decision makers. This brings about a whole host of benefits: – Your message is tailored to each prospect if necessary – More subtle points can be covered verbally that broadcast channels cannot convey – You can test whether they respond well to your message and make adjustments very quickly – If a sector is not proving fruitful, you can quickly move onto another one, wasting minimal time and money – You can match your benefits to the responses prospects give you during the conversation – You can get feedback whether prospects have a requirement or not – You have a chance to answer any objections from prospects There is also a new set of EU Data Protection regulations likely to come into force in 2016. This will place restrictions on the use of CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

WHEN TELEMARKETING IS THE WRONG OPTION Just under half the enquiries my company receives are ones that we do not pursue. Sometimes this is because they are for Business to Consumer campaigns which we generally do not cover, or related to a market or service that is not a specialism of ours.

However, we also turn away work because we feel that telemarketing is not going to be the right option for the prospect.

Here are the main warning signs I would check for to see whether telemarketing is the wrong option for you: YOU ARE STRUGGLING FOR SALES AS A BUSINESS For telemarketing to work, there has to be a demand for your products or services that the calling activity is uncovering. If you are struggling for sales, telemarketing can seem an attractive option because you can search for customers if they are not coming to you, but it is not a Bandaid for your problems. Before embarking on any spend, work out whether your lack of sales is down to a wider set of issues about what you offer.

LOW VALUE PRODUCT OR SERVICE The majority of our work is arranging face to face sales appointments for clients. If the value of your product or service is under several thousand pounds, you might well struggle to see a suitable return after taking into account telemarketing costs and costs of sending a salesperson to meetings.

If you can sell your product over the phone, the minimum viable sale value reduces, particularly if the sales process is relatively fast and straightforward.

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A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK A successful telemarketing call comes from finding a prospect who is in the market for your product or service at the time of a call and is willing to consider you as a potential supplier. If finding one of these prospects is a veritable needle in a haystack, caution needs to be applied. Persistence and determination are crucial in any telemarketing campaigns, as for even the most successful campaigns, you will receive more Nos than Yeses. However, if you are going days and days without finding a single interested prospect, particularly if you have low value sales, you will struggle to get a return from your activity.

questions which is crucial to finding prospects who have a genuine need and interest.

TELEMARKETING TRIALS Telemarketing works best when it is used as an ongoing activity, so I would plan for this to be the case. One of the strengths of telemarketing, however, is that it can be effectively tested quickly and inexpensively. Particularly if you have concerns that the above factors might apply to you but you feel it is important you try out, a trial period is a must.

Set targets, track results, work with them to solve objections and issues, give praise and most importantly give feedback about what is happening with the sales leads they have generated. Finding out that your leads have converted into sales, keeps the telemarketer believing what they are doing is worthwhile.

THE 3 KEY INGREDIENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL TELEMARKETING There are three key ingredients to get right: 1. Credible ambassadors on the phone 2. Targeting the right prospects – make the haystack smaller 3. A relevant call approach 1. CREDIBLE AMBASSADORS ON THE PHONE How your telemarketers come across on the phone will often be the first impression a new prospect will have of your company, so they need to be a credible ambassador for your brand. This should be at the top of your criteria for hiring in-house or outsourcing to a telemarketing company.

One of the traits I think is most important to look for in telemarketers is a sense of curiosity. This motivates you to pick up the phone to the next prospect as you are curious to find out if they have a need for you what you are selling and curiosity encourages you to ask

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Once you have the right people, you need to spend time carefully briefing them so they can engage prospects fluently about your company.

Finally, you have to keep motivation up. A telemarketer shoved in a corner, left to their own devices, with the rest of office keeping library levels of quietness, will likely lose the will to pick up the phone and give the necessary enthusiasm to their work.

2. TARGETING THE RIGHT PROSPECTS – MAKE THE HAYSTACK SMALLER I’ve talked about finding a needle in a haystack. Quoting a great line from my colleague James, ‘If you are looking for a needle in haystack, make the haystack smaller.’

There are so many companies, you need to be targeted with who you are contacting. Not only will the wrong targets be a waste of your time and budget, they are the ones that will find your call an intrusion because the call has no relevance to them (more of this in the next section).

Creating a targeted database and buying data is an article in its own right but if you are buying data choose a reputable specialist provider and specify detailed criteria of the companies you are looking for.

You might also want to think about any warm prospects you could contact, such as past clients, and your wish list of known ideal prospects.

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In some instances, it is productive to create your own lists if bought data does not quite produce the right collection of prospects; for example, members of a trade association or exhibitors at trade shows.

3. A RELEVANT CALL APPROACH Over five years ago, I did a talk to a business group on effective telemarketing techniques. The host of the event asked the audience what makes them accept and listen to telemarketing calls they receive. One answer summed up what I think is the most important part of a telemarketing call, which is ‘relevance’. Like any form of communication, first impressions count so make sure the call is relevant to that company.

Relevance is demonstrating in the first few precious seconds why you are calling this particular prospect today, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of other businesses you could call. If you do this effectively, the prospect is much more likely to move from seeing you as an irritating cold caller, to a professional who is making a business call to someone they have carefully targeted to approach. Even if a prospect is in the market for your services, if they feel they are being cold called, the instinctive reaction is to shut the gates and say they’re not interested. If you demonstrate the relevance of why you are calling them, they are much more likely to engage with you and even if the call ends with a no, they have given you a considered response.

product or service is like finding a needle in a very large haystack, coupled with the value of each sale being too low to give a sensible return compared to the leads that can be generated. However, for the right company and executed correctly, telemarketing is a very effective marketing tool and certainly worth considering when you are evaluating Business to Business marketing options.

TELEMARKETING CAN POINT TO PROVEN BUSINESS AND EMPLOYMENT BENEFITS TO JUSTIFY ITS EXISTENCE

Relevance is also about asking questions, listening and matching the benefits you can offer a prospect based on their responses.

How do you make yourself relevant? The key is how you help similar businesses. This is mainly industry but can be location, business situation such as fast growth companies or issues you have helped solve, but basically other companies your prospect can relate to.

CLOSING THOUGHTS Being in telemarketing, I am of course a flag waver for how effective it is for generating sales leads. It is not right for all companies, particularly if finding a prospect who has a requirement for your CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

Chris Walthew is Managing Director of Prospect Research, a business development consultancy, based in Cambridge, which focuses on managing targeted telemarketing, appointment setting, lead generation, employer engagement and market research campaigns. Chris’s experience has spanned a wide range of sales and marketing roles.

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MARKETING MASH-UP Peter Fisk explores the best new ideas in the world of brands, innovation and marketing

APPLE WATCH + THE INTERNET OF THINGS Apple Watch is upon us, with a very different marketing approach to before. From the iPod 14 years ago, to the iPad 5 years ago, Apple’s strategy was product-centric, PETER FISK focused on the device, with limited options.

Apple Watch is not about the device, but about what you can do with it. It’s about living better. From personal wellbeing and fitness tracking, to efficiency and fashion, it is about you, emotion and personal – enabling you to do more.

connection in the home. Forget shopping lists, forget shops, innovation is all about making life better.

ARM is one of many businesses thriving as technology miniaturises.

The Cambridge-based company has seen its fortunes rise rapidly as people switch from computers to tablets, smartphones and wearables. ARM’s business model has always been about design rather than manufacturing. Unlike Intel who has struggled, ARM has the agility to co-create with its customers, to change and customise, and keep moving with exponential markets.

BRAND FUSIONS + HIGH GROWTH MARKETS Last month I was working with Yildiz Holding, which is known in Turkey for its wide range of chocolate and snacks, imitating the concepts of global players then delivering them cheaper. How things change. Now Yildiz is devouring global brands itself, from Belgium’s Godiva Chocolatier for $1.3bn to Britain’s United Biscuits for $3.2bn. Now with 53 plants in 10 countries, and a portfolio of billion-dollar brands like McVities and its Jaffa Cakes, Yildiz is ready to take on the world.

It also has the potential to bring the Internet of Things into the mainstream. Kevin Ashton, a 46-year-old technologist from Birmingham, UK is responsible for that rather clumsy term, having played with RFID-tagged logistics as an assistant brand manager at P&G. Moving to MIT he created a fictional Mexican social media guru called Santiago Swallow who seeks to educate the world about the real potential of networks and connectivity.

Now we have a promise of 50 billion connected ‘things’ transforming the way we live, travel, shop, work and more. From the intelligent Nest thermostats, developed by ex-Apple designer Tony Fadell and acquired by Google for $3.2bn last year, to Amazon Dash, which has just launched magic brand buttons to place around your home.

Touch the Tide button on your washing machine, and a new box of washing powder is delivered to your door (often on the same day). This is revolutionary for consumer brands, building a direct

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However success requires change. In Yildiz’s case they want to double their revenue in four years. Securing a significant return on acquisitions requires more than just operating the existing businesses. It’s all ‘fusion’ … mixing up the new portfolio across markets, to combine brands and products, capabilities and channels. Kraft’s acquisition of Cadbury quickly gave us Philadelphia cheese with a twist of Dairy Milk, Ritz CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

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sandwiches and KitKat ice creams. Fun products, but the real money is in simplifying the complex product ranges through the lens of a small number of more powerful consumer-centric brands, and then taking those innovative ranges in new and relevant ways to the world’s fast growth markets.

India’s Tata Group has done a fabulous job of reenergising the Jaguar and Range Rover brands, encouraging new concepts and editions to reach out to new audiences, such as bringing the female-friendly Evoque to the streets of Shanghai. Whilst Tata has stayed loyal to the origins of the brand, giving new life to British carmakers, it has added the vision, networks and drive to win in new markets such as Brazil, China and India.

CHANGING THE GAME IN ARGENTINA + KAZAKHSTAN My new book, Gamechangers, is about the new breed of brands across the world which are shaking up markets, redefining them in their own vision, fusing digital and physical, and embracing new business models, for more profitable and positive impact. It includes 100 case studies, with new insights and ideas from every sector and region.

The best part of launching a new book, is getting out there, inspiring people with its messages, but also finding their own examples, and helping them to become ‘gamechangers’ too. Last year we discovered Aeromobil’s flying car in sleeping Slovakia, which quickly became a global media story, and will soon be production ready. This year in Buenos Aires, we held a Gamechangers competition to find the best local innovators, won by Taragui, which took the traditional drink mate, and gave it a modern day twist, now available in flavoured powders plus a range of merchandise. In Istanbul, another competition threw up 30 fantastic examples of local innovation, from Brisa’s car and tyre services CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

to LC Waikiki’s local twist on fast fashion.

Truly impressive was Kazakhstan’s new capital city Astana, which emerged 10 years ago out of the inhospitable central Asian steppe.

This is a nation that is larger in size than Europe, has a history of fearless horsemen, and is a bridge between Russia and China. It’s also a country of great ambition. Kazakhtelecom is building one of the largest fast broadband networks in the world, so with the prime minister we

explored how could the government use this infrastructure to become a gamechanging nation. From distributed e-learning to e-healthcare, leapfrogging old models to create new services... with Astana’s World Expo in 2017, watch out for the rise again of the Kazakhs.

CREATIVITY IN THE SKIES + STOCK MARKETS OF UAE Dubai hosts the World Expo 2020, and the UAE government has declared 2015 the year of creativity. Whilst the nation’s rapid wealth has come from oil and tourism, it knows it needs to move beyond this, to become a Singapore-like hub of knowledge, business and finance.

This is not just about ideas and innovation, but about thinking differently. In fact we will soon be launching a new Gamechangers competition to find the best innovators in the Middle East, innovation labs to drive action, and an online showcase of winners.

One of the most effective innovation tools is to ‘reframe’ what you do. Working with the UAE’s financial services authority, we initially talked about rules and regulation of its two growing stock markets in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. However it was only when we started thinking

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ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE INNOVATION TOOLS IS TO ‘REFRAME’ WHAT YOU DO. about what stakeholders, from investors to government, really wanted that we saw the opportunity to innovate – to attract new investors, to build a more vibrant market, and to drive growth in the national economy. Emirates, the airline, is a shining example of this, reframing from a regional airline built on Dubai as a destination, to the city as the global hub of international air travel. Not just an ambition, already a reality.

companies and fashion brands, media and telecoms to explore their potential futures, develop more innovative strategies, and accelerate profitable growth … This is achieved through a burst of keynote energy and inspiration, a short workshop to change ambition and direction, or a fast and practical project, working collaboratively with your team to make real ideas happen.

ZOOM IN ZOOM OUT + THE FUTURE OF MARKETING Marketers are the most natural gamechangers in business – whilst sales people try to sell more of what they have, operational people improve the efficiency of doing it, and finance count the numbers of the past – it is marketers who find the future, make sense of change, new opportunities for growth, and drive innovation. It is also marketers who then engage customers, shaping propositions and experiences, to build relationships and communities.

SDL is a great example of an analytics company that really does help marketers to do this. Fuelled by the Internet of Things, social media and more, big data will grow from 4 to 40 zettabytes (that’s trillions of gigabytes) over the next 5 years. For marketers this data is both a headache and moonshine, helping to target actions in real-time, influence individuals at the right moments, by developing powerful propositions and personal solutions. SDL turns this analysis into visual information, developing rich co-created content, and also helps you instantly translate across languages (27 languages covers 80% of the Internet), and deliver global yet personal customer experiences … be it for chocolate or cars!

Marketers need to be the strategists and scientists, storytellers and socializers … continuously ‘zooming out’ to see the big picture, shape the markets, champion innovation, and ‘zooming in’ on the detail, personal and profitable, relevant and real-time. Thinking in double time. But that’s what makes a business valuable – the sum of likely future cashflows – winning today and tomorrow. Of course that also means that marketing goes beyond a function, and becomes a mindset that pervades the C-suite through to the operations room, all thinking ‘outside in’ to create and capture more value.

INSPRING IDEAS + PRACTICAL ACTION The only real way to understand changing markets is to get out there. In recent months I have worked with cruise lines and hotel chains, food

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Next stops for me include projects in retail, telecoms and healthcare, plus a fantastic Corporate Leadership Program bringing together the disciplines of design thinking, business models, and strategic implementation, which I will be facilitating, based in three phases at the Hasso-Plattner Institute in Pottsdam, IE Business School in Madrid, and Nordic Executive Academy in Kolding. A range of workshops and masterclasses are also available, customisable to your business, from Cambridge Marketing Leadership Academy in partnership with Cambridge Marketing College.

Peter Fisk is a bestselling author, keynote speaker and expert consultant. He is founder of GeniusWorks, helping companies to develop more innovative strategies for brands and marketing. He was recently nominated to Thinkers 50 Guru Radar, as one of the world’s best business thinkers, and is visiting professor at IE Business School, Madrid. His book Gamechangers: Are You Ready To Change The World? was published in 2014. Find out more at www. theGeniusWorks.com or email peterfisk@peterfisk.com.

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THE CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW ON AIR Kiran Kapur talks about the Cambridge Marketing Review Radio Show which has completed its first season airing on Star 107FM

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he Marketing Review on Air is a weekly radio show, airing on Thursday evenings at 7pm on StarRadio in Cambridge, and via podcast thereafter. Started in 2014, the show is currently part way through its second season and includes interviews with leading marketing practitioners, thinkers and educators. Interviews consider practical aspects of marketing – such as how to run effective social media marketing campaigns – and marketing in different contexts, including charities, sports, arts and professional services.

KIRAN KAPUR

New for this season is the popular Jargon Buster! section where an expert explains an element of marketing theory. Theories covered include: • Red-Blue Ocean strategies: a company following a Red Ocean Strategy competes in an existing market place, aiming to beat the competition and exploit existing demand.

By contrast, with a Blue Ocean Strategy, companies look for ‘blue oceans’ of uncontested market space, creating new demand for their products • The Kano model: this new product development model states that in any new product, there are expected features, performance features and ‘wow’ factors that delight the customer • Above and Below the Line communications: Above the line is mass media advertising such as radio, TV and press advertisements. Below the line is non-media communications such as sales promotion and direct marketing NEW SEASON TOPICS The new season has allowed us to have series of interviews that consider a topic from a number of angles. The two series were on entrepreneurship, and on how get to a marketing job.

Brand Recruitment (www.brandrecruitment.co.uk) provided advice on how to get a dream job in marketing. Dominic Phipps advised on the skills marketers need. Many employers are looking for digital

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experience particularly within social media and email marketing and around 60 or 70% of clients Brand works with would ask for some form of marketing, PR or communications, specific education e.g. a degree or CIM diploma. He also suggested candidates should be openminded about B2B jobs. Many marketers assume they want to work for the big consumer brands but B2B marketing roles can be varied and interesing. Hannah Szurek advised candidates to tailor their CVs to the job they are applying for, such as changing their profile. She also advised against bland CVs, arguing that CVs should reflect your personality. Ursula Coleman pointed out that most recruitment consultants use social media to find candidates but hardly any employers do.

Our entrepeneurship series looked at developing companies, from defining a business concept to creating a high growth company. The series began with Sally Charlesworth advising how to set up and promote a cottage industry. Cottage industry companies are often arts and crafts based and tend to be run from a home workshop or even kitchen table. Hanadi Jabado of the Accelerate Programme at the Cambridge Judge Business School shared her experiences helping entrepeneurs define their business concept (sometimes called ‘ideation’) to launch. Peter Hiscocks, MD of the Executive Programme at the Cambridge Judge Business School, classified firms as ‘mice’ who are plentiful, such as cottage industries, and ‘elephants’ who are large and strong. His particular interest and advice was for fastgrowing ‘gazelles’, where he looks for not only passion and persistence but also a strong team to develop the business.

PRACTICAL ADVICE Several interviews have considered the constantly changing marketing environment. Terry Nicklin mused on how the perception of marketing has changed over time, moving from being seen as the ‘colouring-in department’ to the ‘typing-in department’. An Adobe survey last year said that marketing had changed more in the last 5 years than in the previous 50 years. When Terry started, marketers were good at communicating, liked networking, and had high tolerance of uncertainty. Due to more data and social media, marketers now need to analytical, be good at generating content, and to have a high tolerance of change.

Part of the show’s remit is to give practical guides of how to deliver effective marketing outcomes. Allison Thomas gave three masterclasses on how to get the most out of media coverage, how to organise a CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

marketing event and how small businesses can advertise effectively.

Cate Elder advised how to carry out a sales promotion campaign.

Terry Savage had data protection advice for both businesses storing customer information, and for consumers asked to give up their data.

Steve Bax explained how to make market research accurate.

On a lighter note, the show asked people to nominate their favourite marketing campaign and had a quiz of sonic logos – those music idents that can be as important to brands as their visual branding. You can try our quiz on show 6: http://bit.ly/1AC5y9k. You can hear past episodes of the show at http://bit.ly/1IQqVGW and on itunes.

Kiran Kapur is a Fellow of the Cambridge Marketing College and hosts the Marketing Review Radio Show. Podcasts of the show are available from bit.ly/1sy2Rl9 and on iTunes.

All the shows can be found as podcasts at http://www.marketingcollege.com/blog On YouTube: Cambridge Marketing Review Radio Show channel On itunes: search for Marketing Review on Air [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/cambridge-marketing-review/ id892342901] The show returns later in 2015.

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THE VALUE GRID: UNCHAINING FROM AN OLD MODEL Charles Nixon starts our series of examining and upgrading existing marketing models with a look at re-imagining the Value Chain which was originally described in1985

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he Value Chain has provided managers and marketers with guidance for 30 years and offers a good model for exploring the internal strengths and weaknesses of an organisation.

CHARLES NIXON THE OLD MODEL Originally first described and popularised

by Michael Porter in his 1985 book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance the Value Chain has worked well for many. However, it is perhaps in need of an overhaul in light of new environmental circumstances and technological shifts.

The key issue is that value creation does not end at the factory gate.

Nor indeed with the organisation’s own customer service. In today’s connected world, value is also added by users. Consequently, the role of the company now needs to extend beyond customer service into education of the customer and then to self-education.

The original model was based on a manufacturing scenario (though obviously applicable elsewhere). Since 1985, the world has moved on in several ways, leaving aside the shift to a more service based economy: • there are now greater levels of cooperation amongst organisations with more subcontracting and offshoring • there is a greater involvement of customers in the new product development process • there have been major changes in internet technologies and individual connectivity A NEW APPROACH These changes now require the addition of a new layer to the existing model, making it more appropriate for current environments. Whilst the original model focused on infrastructure and the importance of the underpinning organisation of the company structure, today we need to add an ‘Exo’ or ‘Supra’ structure that encompasses the organisation’s network and support for its suppliers and customers both before and after the internal processes of adding value.

This Exo-structure needs to engage customers in two ways. Firstly,

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as a means of understanding how to use the offering purchased and secondly as input into the development process for new products or services.

Standard company training programmes for customers, for instance, now need to go further, with the creation of online 24/7 company support alongside complementary user self-support forums and open source plug-ins. The self-support aspect creates considerable engagement and loyalty when done well. Customers may not always know best but there are more of them and they have considerable knowledge in many instances.

The case of the very successful US TV series ‘Lost’ is a case in point.

When the creators of the programme were writing the last series, they realised that they had forgotten what second meaning they had assigned to the code word ‘Canada’ in an earlier series as part of the convoluted plot. The series was so popular that fans had created a Wikia (based on open source Wikipedia code) to discuss the programme. The writers used this Wikia to consult the viewers and found the answer (whenever a character said ‘Canada’ in a sentence, it meant ‘lying’).

With customer engagement, companies can also capture the usage patterns of customers through their online activity, either measuring behaviours directly through user monitoring with cookies or by deduction from device tracking and analysis.

ENCOURAGING ENGAGEMENT More recently Porter advanced the idea of the smart connected product which fits with the Exo-structure concept (*Porter, 2015). But we need to go further than this, as the organisation’s human resources and technology support functions are also affected. A few key elements need to change; technology now needs to engage externally with users and promote the value add of support functions, desired HR skill sets needs upgrading to empower staff to engage with users more autonomously but with managed risk. A great example here is when Oreo allowed all of its staff to quote the phrase “You can still dunk in the dark” in social media contexts without getting clearance from line management.

We have gone from sales to sales and training, and now need to go to sales training and education, as sales training and education leads to CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

TODAY WE NEED TO ADD AN ‘EXO’ OR ‘SUPRA’ STRUCTURE THAT ENCOMPASSES THE ORGANISATION’S NETWORK AND SUPPORT FOR ITS SUPPLIERS AND CUSTOMERS Ambassadors of the company and Ambassadors lead to engagement and input into new product development.

Finally, the collaborative aspect of the Exo-structure needs to accept that increasingly more than one organisation is now involved in the creation of value. The need to coordinate disparate entities – including those owned, those contracted and those partnered – in the creation of the offering, necessitates the development of a new skill set and technological requirements. The Exo-structure meets these needs if designed to facilitate quick and regular monitoring of performance.

This is the first in a series of articles looking to redefine existing marketing models and paradigms and we would appreciate your views, comments, criticisms and suggestions.

So please let us know what you think by sending your thoughts to editor@cambridgemarketingreview.com. *How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition, Michael E. Porter and James E. Heppelmann, HBR, November 2014

Charles Nixon is Chairman and a founding director of Cambridge Marketing Colleges. He has many years of marketing experience across a broad range of industries including textiles, software, telecommunications and financial services. Charles has an MBA from Warwick Business School and is a Fellow of CAM, CIM and the Royal Society of Arts.

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Used with permission. Originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review Panel Discussion column.

By Don Moyer

Drawing © Copyright February 2005 Don Moyer.

VIEWS – DON MOYER

DON MOYER

ACT-LEARN-ACT-LEARN

eaders are taught that when they encounter problems, they should implement solutions. But you’ve doubtless noticed that many so-called solutions fail to work. That’s because problems can be harder to solve than they look, and few people are clever or lucky enough to reach a valid solution in one giant leap.

advocates an act-learn-act-learn approach to give leaders opportunities to see the real shape of their dilemmas through prudent experiments. ‘Their aim is not to solve problems with a brilliant insight, inspiring words, or a decisive act. Instead of trying to crack the case, they look for ways to work the problem.’

Underground Text of Systems Lore,’In dealing with the shape of things to come, it pays to be good at recognizing shapes.’ Most times we fail to do this and in turn miss the evidence as it accumulates.

As Joseph Badaracco, Jr., suggests in Leading Quietly, ‘Nudging, testing, and escalating gradually are often the best and fastest ways to make the world a better place.’ He

When we think about solutions, we tend to imagine only one possibility, unaware of the countless ways things can turn out. But as John Gall points out in Systemantics: The

Don Moyer has collected his series of cartoons as a book, entitled 64 Drawings.

It is available from Blurb at www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/949041

CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

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Listen to guest appearances from some of the country’s most esteemed marketers, including Charles Nixon, Professor Malcolm MacDonald, Peter Fisk of GeniusWorks, Peter Hiscocks and Hanadi Jabado of Cambridge Judge Business School Find out more about a wide variety of marketing topics from how to get a job in B2B and B2C marketing and Twitter’s Periscope to measuring marketing effectiveness and neuro-marketing

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Charles Nixon, Chairman of Cambridge Marketing College, reviews GameChangers by Peter Fisk

BOOK REVIEW

MARKETING BOOK REVIEWS

GameChangers: Creating innovative strategies for business and brands

BY PETER FISK

W

e have of late been in a rut as marketing thinkers. The application of the expected and acceptance of received ideas have stilted our creativity, stunted growth and stymied our thinking. What is needed is a breath of fresh air. And this has been provided in three books: GameChangers, Second Machine Age, Business Model Generation.

In these innovative books, new business models and ideas are presented that challenge the standard playbook of marketing and suggest new routes to market and new paradigms to consider.

In the first of these books (the others will be reviewed in future editions of CMR) Peter Fisk seeks to illustrate new standards of innovation and challenge us all to think again about how we approach the market. Fisk is Visiting Professor of strategy, innovation and marketing at IE Business School. He features in the prestigious ‘Thinkers 50 Guru Radar’ as one of the best new business thinkers and is a past CEO of the CIM. He is a regular business speaker and commentator and consults for a wide range of companies around the globe. As a result of these observations he has brought

together a considerable weight of evidence to suggest their are several new ways of working.

In an exhaustive interview program with over 100 CEOs and chief marketing officers, Fisk assembles a compendium of ideas and examples of companies which are revolutionising their sectors and in most instances creating new sectors. The old concepts have Red Ocean versus Blue Ocean writ large here.

The first half of the book attempts to lay out how the game can be changed in nine scenarios. It looks at the way in which people have thought differently about the nature of the product service and marketplace that they serve: Think – Explore – Disrupt – Inspire – Design – Resonate – Enable – Mobilise – Impact – Amplify In each of these chapters he outlines examples of the ways in which companies have achieved a new level of understanding and created higher value for the company. One of the lessons of the book is that the aim for many is not to be the biggest but it is often to be the best at what the company sees as its niche or target market.

The second half of the book gives examples from ten different business sectors to show how the world is changing. The sectors include: Stores: Amazon to Trader Joe’s Banking: Commonwealth Bank to M-Pesa Health: Aravind Eyecare to 23andMe Gadgets: Nike to Pebble Media: Coursera to Pixar

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Fashion: Threadless to Kering Travel: Airbnb to Zipcars Tech: ARM to Xiaomi Food: Graze to Nespresso Market makers: Tesla to Dyson One of the new trends in business books is to provide readers with practical tools to make use of the ideas that are stimulated by reading the books. At the end of the book there are 16 ‘canvases’ which allow the reader to explore how they may use the ideas in their own marketplace and for their own end.

This is a stimulating read even if you are outside the sectors highlighted and it is recommended.

To provide a taster of what the book contains, some excerpts from the first chapter are included in the next few pages.

GAMECHANGERS is published by John Wiley and Sons and is available through Amazon.

Have you read any other excellent marketing books that deserve a review?

Let us know by emailing the title to editor@cambridgemarketingpress.com

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ARE YOU READY TO CHANGE THE WORLD? Peter Fisk introduces a new generation of disruptive innovators – shaping markets in their own vision, changing the game not just playing it – in an extract from his new book Gamechangers: Creating Innovative Strategies for Business and Brands

‘MOONSHOTS’ ARE THE INCREDIBLE, SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE, IDEAS THAT CAN CHANGE OUR WORLD.

Google X is a moonshot factory. Full of creative thinkers, optimists, seeking out the big opportunities and most challenging problems, that with a little imagination and a lot of innovation might just make our world a better place. From intelligent cars to augmented vision, the [X] team fuses tech possibility with human need, to create more audacious, inspiring futures.

This is how we move forwards.

From Galileo’s vision to Da Vinci’s mechanics, Ford’s cars to Bell’s phones, Apple’s devices to Dyson’s cleaners. They enrich society, and make life better. Markets emerge out of new possibilities, seeing things differently, thinking different things. Brands capture big ideas, innovation turns them into businesses, and future growth.

We live in the most incredible time.

Days of exponential change and opportunities limited only by our imagination. A world where impossible dreams can now come true. A period of awesomeness. From Alibaba to Zespri, Ashmei to Zidisha, Azuri and Zipars, a new generation of businesses are rising out of the maelstrom of economic and technological change across our world.

‘Gamechangers’ are more ambitious, with

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stretching vision and enlightened purpose.

They see markets as kaleidoscopes of infinite possibilities, assembling and defining them to their advantage. Most of all they have great ideas, capturing by brands that resonate with their target audiences at the right time and place, enabled by data and technology, but most of all by rich human experiences. Social networks drive reach and richness, whilst new business models make the possible profitable.

Our challenge is to make sense of this new world, to embrace the new opportunities in innovative ways, and to be a winner. .....

THE GUIYANG CIRCLE: LIVING IN THE ZIGZAG ZEITGEIST More than half the world live inside a circle based 106.6° E, 26.6° N, and within 4100km of Guiyang, Guizhou Province, in southwest China. A quick snapshot of our changing world demonstrates the dramatic change which surrounds us, and is or will disrupt every business: • Middle world … Global population has doubled in the past 50 years, with a shift from low to middle income groups, a new consumer generation (OECD) • Young and old … As life expectancy has boomed, now over 70, and

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BOOK REVIEW

births have declined, from 5 to 2.5, we live longer, with different priorities (UN).

• Mega cities … Urban populations will grow from 3.6bn in 2010 to 6.3bn by 20, representing 96% of the global population growth (World Bank) • Flood warning … By 2050 at least 20% of us could be exposed to floods, including many cities, an economic risk to assets of $45 trillion (World Bank) • Brands come and go … with much more regularity, products are built across the world, small business working together in networks • Business life … Over 40% of companies in the Fortune 500 in 2000 were not there in 2010. 50% will be from emerging markets by 2020. (Fortune) • Made in the world … 55% of all products are now made in more than one country, and around 20% of services too (WTO) • Small is better … 70% of people think small companies understand

them better than large. The majority of the world’s business value is now in privately owned.

• Corporate trust … While 55% of adults trust businesses to do what is right, only 15% trust business leaders to tell the truth (Edelman) Technological innovation is relentless, currently digital and mobile, but rapidly becoming more about clean energy and biotech:

generating their own solar or wind power (GIGAom) Customers feel increasingly ambivalent to brands and companies. In a world of infinite choice, their priorities and preferences have changed: • Bland brands … 73% of people say they wouldn’t care if the brands they used disappeared. 62% say they are not loyal to any brands (Ad Age)

• Always on … 24% of world population has a smartphone, typically checking it 150 times per day, spending 141 minutes on it (Meeker)

• Customer emotions … 70% of buying experiences are based on how people feel, loyal customers are typically worth 10 times their first purchase (McKinsey).

• Digital markets … 80% of websites are US-based, 81% of web users are non-US based, 70% of the value of all e-commerce transactions are B2B (IAB)

• Service costs … 7 times more to acquire customers than keep them, 12 positive experiences to make up for one unsolved negative experience (IBM)

• Instant content … Content on the internet tripled between 2010 and 2013. 70% is now video. The half-life of social content is 3 hours (bit.ly)

• Family life … The amount of time parents spend with their children continues to go up, fathers spend three times more than 40 years ago (Meeker)

• Future energy … By 2017, there will be close to $11 Billion in revenue from 35-million homes

WHERE THE FUTURE BEGINS The value of business lies not in what is does today, but in what it seeks to achieve

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tomorrow. That might seem a little idealistic, given the short-term obsession of many organisations with operational performance, yet it is the future that most interests investors and private owners who now dominate the business world, hoping to see their investments grow through future profits.

Most business leaders are ‘heads down’ in a relentless battle to survive, to hang onto the status quo. But that can only lead to diminishing returns. The more enlightened leaders are ‘heads up’ looking at where they are going, making sense of how the outside world is changing with every day, identifying the new needs and expectations, the new competitors and challenges, opportunities and possibilities.

THE BEST BUSINESSES GO TO WHERE THE FUTURE IS They disrupt before they are disrupted.

They sell before they are worthless. They recognise that existing success is increasingly driven by out-dated beliefs and, a once-profitable niche that has now become the mainstream, a previous innovation that has been widely imitated, an economy of scale that has become irrelevant, a temporary monopoly that is no more.

As we explore the shifts and trends, the

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white spaces and technological breakthroughs, the new attitudes and behaviours, we need to learn to think in a different way.

The change is exponential. So we need to jump on whilst we can. Catch the new wave, or better still, learn to ride with the successive, and ever more frequent waves of change.

When we look around us at the companies who are challenging established positions, shaking up conventions and waking up tired consumers, they are not the big companies but the small ones. They are the speed boats, fast and flexible, rather than super-tankers, steady and stable. The challenge is extreme. It demands that we rethink where we’re going, and how to get there, rather than handing on to what made us great before.

In a fast and connected world, complex and uncertain, a winning business cannot hope to keep doing what it does, and do better. It has to do more, or different.

It really is a world limited only by our imaginations.

Back at the moonshot factory of Google X, they have a mantra which says “Why try to be only 10% better, when you could be 10 times better?”

10 times better provides much more than a temporary competitive advantage, it has sufficient capacity to change the game. The effort required to think in a bigger frame, to innovate things more radically, to deliver them faster, is relatively small compared to the benefits.

But that requires one more thing. To think different.

Apple, or rather its ad agency Chiat Day, conjured up that phrase, but it matters more than ever. The best companies today don’t just play the game, they think bigger and better, smarter and faster, in order to change the game.

© Peter Fisk 2015 Beyond the connectivity and applications, the social networks and artificial intelligence, we now live in a world that is more equal and accessible, where people are more knowledgeable and capable, than ever before.

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TECHNOLOGY REVIEW A selection of some new marketing technologies selected by the Editor

Google Ripples

Finding social media influencers has become something of a passion for many marketers and there are a range of influence measuring systems that can be used to do just that. One of the tools that is quite sophisticated but little known has been hiding inside Google+, allegedly the world’s second largest social network, for a number of years.

Rumours abound as to what Google is planning for this part of its world, but in the meantime there is a very clever way to see who has been re-sharing the posts that you have shared on Google+, and furthermore who they in turn have been sharing the posts with.This may already sound a little complicated but Google has created a visualisation that can help to understand the life and journey of public posts.

The appearance of a ripple will immediately identify whether the post has been successful or not, as the images above demonstrate. Each image will reflect the number of people who publicly shared the post.Those people who shared

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the post more often with more people appear as larger spheres and the display tool allows you to zoom in or out dependent on the complexity of the image to view the details of the individuals associated with the post’s journey.

The interface also provides: - an active list of everyone who has shared the post including their name and their comment - a ripple graph at the base of the image that shows an active timeline-based profile of the post’s journey - a set of statistics that quantify other parameters of the post’s life including which languages were used to comment on it Ripples can be accessed by clicking on the small grey arrow next to any public post seen on a feed and then on ‘View Ripples’ – at least for now.

Samsung LoopPay

Samsung is near to releasing its new mobile payment solution, through its handheld devices, which uses an innovative technology called magnetic secure transmission (MST) that it acquired when it purchased LoopPay in early 2015.Although it also uses the more common Near Field Communications (NFC) technology that existing contactless payment systems use, the key step forward is the MST which will allow it to interface with the vast majority of existing and older credit card swipe readers.What is also new is that the user can add multiple credit cards to the LoopPay system allowing them to pay with MasterCard and Visa as well as a range of others. In fact the only limit there seems to be on its adoption, assuming the retailer doesn’t have to do anything, is

the number of payment providers that sign up.All the security elements of the transaction and the choice of card to use are managed through the smartphone using its finger print sensor.When ready, the user just has to tap the merchant’s terminal to complete the transaction and it is this ability to work with pretty much all legacy systems that should make it very popular.

www.samsung.com

www.google.com

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TECHNOLOGY

Speechmatics

Speechmatics is cloud-based service which can take in multilingual video feeds and output highly accurate transcripts of speech contained in the video.

The system can create these transcripts from pretty much any common video file format but perhaps more interesting is the system’s ability to link the words in the transcript directly back to the video.This allows the user to click on a word in the transcript which will then link to the part of the video where the word is being used allowing the context of how the word was said to be heard and seen.This provides more insight into how the words were framed, what tone was used and other similar parameters which can provide more information about the sentiment of use of the words – personalities, brands, and products will all be interested in getting this information.

Speechmatics also provides

within the text transcripts added extras such as speaker recognition (diarisation), punctuation and capitalisation with full timings and an interesting pay-as-you-go business mode that lets users access the service as and when they need it.

Speechmatics has already been used in contexts such as the transcription of parliamentary hearings, and perhaps more specifically in a commercial context to create insights from call centre records where the system has been able to extract keywords which correlate to sales opportunities, potential cancellations, competitive mentions and trend detection.

www.speechmatics.com

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Awedience

The rise of social media has developed the world of Influencer Marketing, where almost anyone can become critics, reviewers and authors on a wide range of subjects and over a spectrum of different audiences. One challenge for marketers is to reach out and find bloggers and podcasters engaging with them around their products and services. Identifying these influencers is no easy task as online influence can be more subtle in terms of where and when they act.To the rescue comes Awedience, which is an influencer identification and engagement service which uses social media streams to identify who is saying what about brands and products and then allows those brands to interact with

those influencers ‘organically’ by letting them take part in the conversations they are having.

In this way Awedience is able to deliver a far more accurate picture of influence by using search keywords to filter influencer results using a set of parameters which can include what language they are using, what other influencer scores they have and which topics they are influential in.With a filtered list the user can then decide which ones they feel are worth approaching or not.The quality of results is going to very much depend on the choice of search phrase and how selectively the results are filtered but in general the service can add another dimension to finding influencers and seeding a marketing campaign.

www.awedience.com

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SUMMARIES The theme for this Spring/Summer 2015 issue of CMR is Agile Marketing – a concept we have defined as the process of matching current dynamic buyer behaviour with relevant and flexible marketing solutions and messages

AGILE MARKETING

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AGILE TECHNOLOGY FOR AGILE MARKETING – TOM HOLDEN Tom Holden looks at a wide range of technology, either already established or soon to arrive, that will enable marketers to respond with more agility to changing conditions, both in terms of environment but also to respond to changing individual and corporate behaviour. The review includes a wide range or technology from sensor-enabled outdoor and indoor devices which can communicate at a local level with the buyer through to data enriched and analysed loyalty programmes and behaviour tracking which enable the marketer to get an even deeper insight into buyer behaviour and sentiment across the customer journey whether explicitly expressed or deduced from behaviour. ®

8 SOSTAC PLANNING & AGILE TACTICS – PR SMITH Traditional models of implementation of the marketing mix can create barriers for marketers wishing to respond quickly to changing marketing conditions or customer behaviours. PR Smith has developed an approach based on his influential SOSTAC® model which gives marketers a useful tool and insight into how to deliver higher impact campaigns and marketing activities. He provides advice on which tactical tools to use especially when a specific strategy such as acquisition or retention is the stated intention. He also includes a section on how and when to use owned, earned and paid media and what this means for content creation and management for the marketer.

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14 THE RULE OF THIRDS IN CONTENT STRATEGY – NEIL WILKINS The role of creating useful, engaging and effective content has become a key tactical marketing skill. As audiences become more sophisticated, the choice of topic, tone and frequency becomes an important one for content managers. Neil Wilkins’ approach recommends a rule of thirds, that splits content evenly between Personal – insights that let the reader ‘get to know’ the writer, Point – where the writer signposts other interesting information for the reader and Promote where the writer describes what they have to offer.

FEATURES

18 THE POLITICS OF MARKETING – ALISON GRIFFITHS In the light of a range of elections being held across the world, Alison Griffiths, who has stood as an MP in the UK, reflects on the nature of marketing in politics and how it differs from commercial contexts.

Alison is clear that in a world where voters are more wary of political promises and associated messages, political parties have had to become better at creating appropriate and flexible themes that can be used centrally and on the doorstep. She discusses the use of negative campaigning and how, in the future, all politicians have to realise that the citizen is very much back in control and whereas before many political parties could rely on voter ‘inertia’ where they stayed with the same choices irrespective of the evidence, that situation has changed and all politicians now have to create true customer relationships.

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SUMMARIES

FEATURES

22 THE MARKETER AT THE CENTRE OF THE MIX – FRANCES TIPPER There are a whole range of skills and qualities that identify a good marketing manager and Frances Tipper from Spoken Word looks at at how the individual marketer sitting at the centre of the marketing mix can adjust their own personal status and impact to either complement or match the message being broadcast and delivered through the marketing mix. Frances uses a ten point model to identify those areas where each individual can adjust small elements of their personal behaviour to avoid irritation, create emphasis, manage difficult situations and communicate effectivley with customers, suppliers and peers who may all have different communication styles.

44 HOW TELEMARKETING ENHANCES YOUR BRAND – CHRIS WALTHEW Telemarketing is a tried and tested marketing tool that suffers from widespread negative associations and so is often omitted from strategic choices. Chris Walthew suggests that evidence shows that this method of customer interaction is highly profitable and perhaps more significantly in todays’ world, more measurable in terms of its success. Chris provides a structured approach to using telemarketing that includes three main steps which are having credible ambassadors on the phone, targeting the right prospects and developing a relevant call approach. He warns that telemarketing is definitely not suitable for all contexts but is one that should not be overlooked especially when operating in B2B markets.

26 DESIGN INTERVENTION – JOHN MATHERS According to the Cox Review in 2005, “Design is what links creativity and innovation. It shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers.” John Mathers, CEO of the Design Council thinks this means in practice that the remit of designers now stretches beyond traditional categories to be more focused on the framing and solving of problems using a set of tools including divergent and convergent thinking. He believes that designers, when allowed to, have made major steps forward but are still held back by dominant prevailing paradigms – comparing the major advances in design of the vacuum cleaner to the minor ones in the world of the TV set top box. John is frustrated by the clear evidence of design’s role in growth yet a lack of educational policy to reinforce the skills.

54 THE VALUE GRID: TIME FOR A CHANGE – CHARLES NIXON In the first of a new series on theoretical marketing models, Charles Nixon takes a look at whether Porter’s Value Chain model is capable of dealing with the modern marketing context – specifically where companies are now so much more involved in the post sale customer experience. He suggests a new approach called the Value Grid which incorporates a new layer, or exo-structure, which addresses the expanded nature of how value is provided to the buyer and how companies can use the new approach to identify and develop new strategies and tactics to meet the demands of the new contexts.

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Publishing Director: Andrew Hatcher Chairman: Charles W. Nixon Editorial Board: Charles Nixon, Andrew Hatcher, Anne Godfrey, Peter Fisk, Debbie Frost, Phil Ore, Roger Palmer and Theo Dingermans Contributors: Tom Holden, PR Smith, Neil Wilkins, Alison Griffiths, Frances Tipper, John Mathers, Debbie Frost, Justin Kirby, David Remaud, Willem de Vries, Chris Walthew, Peter Fisk, Kiran Kapur, Charles Nixon, Don Moyer Contact: Cambridge Marketing Review 1 Cygnus Business Park Middle Watch Swavesey Cambridgeshire CB24 4AA Tel: +44(0)1954 234941 Fax: +44(0)1954 234950 Email: editor@cambridgemarketingpress.com Issue 10 Spring/Summer 2015 ISSN 2047-962X

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CONVENTIONS: • We are marketers not marketeers; we are not cavaliers.

• We practise marketing not advertising or PR. • When we refer to products, we mean products and services.

Otherwise we refer to offerings.

CAMBRIDGE MARKETING REVIEW - ISSUE 10 Q2 2015

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